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Yes: a single eye can but trace a very few and simple varieties of the enormous universe of Snobs. I sometimes think of appealing to the public, and calling together a congress of SAVANS, such as met at Southampton each to bring his contributions and read his paper on the Great Subject. For what can a single poor few do, even with the subject at present in hand?
However, I think I have said enough to shew that one of the striking effects of the revolution has been to make the arts and sciences popular in France. It has rendered common those doctrines which had till then been reserved for first-rate savans and genuises.
A few, more interested, beheld in the coming of the seat of government higher rents and increased patronage, crowded hotels, and railway stock at a premium; but the mass, with the enthusiasm of women or children, thought only of their beloved city growing in rank and power; the home of legislators, orators, and savans; the seat of all rank and the depository of archives.
If all those who have attended his lectures are to be reckoned his pupils, there will be found in the number names illustrious among the savans of France. Unfortunately, this veteran of science has created for himself a particular system in chymistry, and this system differs from that of LAVOISIER, FOURCROY, GUYTON-MORVEAU, BERTHOLLET, CHAPTAL, &c.
If theories of derivation could only stop here, content with explaining the diversification and succession of species between the tertiary period and the present time, through natural agencies or secondary causes still in operation, we fancy they would not be generally or violently objected to by the savans of the present day. But it is hard, if not impossible, to find a stopping-place.
Now the savans heard all this, and pronounced that it could not be; and for a long while every report of the kind was treated with contempt. Now every one knows, and every one is fully satisfied of the fact, and not the least surprise is expressed when they are told of the circumstance.
Names of wives of cabinet-ministers appear on the same page with the names of wives of humble laborers, names of duchesses and countesses, of wives of generals, ambassadors, savans, and men of letters, mingled with names traced in trembling characters by hands evidently unused to hold the pen and stiffened by lowly toil.
Rolland Michel Barrin, Count de la Galissoniere, was remarkable no less for his philosophical attainments, that ranked him high among the savans of the French Academy, than for his political abilities and foresight as a statesman.
Such a "rude hunter" as Gordon Cumming, for example, has done more to increase the knowledge of African zoology than a whole college full of "speculating" savans. These four kinds are known among the natives as the "borele," the "keitloa," the "muchocho," and "kobaoba."
I always maintain there is no interest about insane people, except to the man of science; and even he very soon gets to that "ass's bridge," on the other side of which Nature, as the genius of occult things, stands with a satirical smile on her face, as she sees the proud savans toppling over into the Lethe of sheer ignorance, and getting drowned for their insane curiosity.
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