My own private opinion about these sciences is, they 're capital things for employing young people, and keeping them out of wickedness! The fellows that teach them, too, are musty, snuff-taking, prosy old dogs, with heavy shoes and greasy cravats,--the very reverse of your race of dancing and music masters, who are a pestilent crew! So that, for a man who has daughters abroad, my advice is--stick to the sciences. Gray sandstone is safer than the polka, and there's not as dangerous an experiment in all chemistry as singing duets with some black-bearded blackguard from Naples or Palermo. Now mind, Tom, this counsel of mine applies to the education of the young; for when people come to the forties, you may rely upon it, if they set about learning anything, they 'll have the devil for a schoolmaster. What does all the geology mean? Junketing, Tom,--nothing but junketing! Primitive rock is another name for picnic, and what they call quartz is a figurative expression for iced champagne. Just reflect for a moment, and see what it comes to. You can enter a protest against family extravagances when they take the shape of balls and soirees, but what are you to do against botanical excursions and antiquarian researches? It 's like writing yourself down Goth at once to oppose these. "Oh, papa hates chemistry; he despises natural history," that's the cry at once, and they hold me up to ridicule, just in the way the rascally Protestant newspapers did Dr. Cullen for saying that he did n't believe the world was round. If the liberty of the subject be worth anything,--if the right for which the same Protestants are always prating, private judgment, be the great privilege they deem it,--why should n't Dr. Cullen have his own opinion about the shape of the earth? He can say, "It suits _me_ to think I 'm walking erect on a flat surface, and not crawling along with my head down, like a fly on the ceiling! I 'm happier when I believe what does n't puzzle my understanding, and I don't want any more miracles than we have in the Church." He may say that, and I'd like to know what harm does that do you or me? Does it endanger the Protestant succession or the State religion? Not a bit of it, Tom. The real fact is simply this: private judgment is a boon they mean to keep for themselves, and never share with their neighbors. So far as I have seen of life, there's no such tyrant as your Protestant, and for this reason: it's bad enough to force a man to believe something that he doesn't like, but it's ten times worse to make him disbelieve what he's well satisfied with; and that's exactly what they do. Even on the ground of common humanity it is indefensible. If my private judgment goes in favor of saints' toe-nails and martyrs' shin-bones, I have a right to my opinion, and you have no right to attack it. Besides, I won't be badgered into what may suit somebody else to think. My opinion is like my flannel waistcoat, that I'll take off or put on as the weather requires; and I think it very cruel if I must wear _mine_ simply because _you_ feel cold.