In science as in war, ranks after ranks may fall; but the living press on to fill the vacant places. The squadrons are ever full and eager for service. To search new lands through and through, or to drag old cities from the graves of centuries, men will advance as heroically as an army moves to the capture of Chapultepec. Not a flower can breathe forth its fragrance, though in marshes full of venomous serpents and of as deadly malaria, but science will count its leaves, and copy with unerring pencil the softest tints that stain them with varied bloom and beauty. Science will detect every kind of rock in the structure of the most defiant crag. Not a bird can chant or build its nest in the most leafy shade, but science will find the nest, describe every change of color on the feathers of the little singer, and set to music every tone that gushes from its tiny throat. Not a gem can repose safe from seizure, in the rocks, in the sand, or in the torrent. Not a star can twinkle in the abyss of night, but science will tell its rate of light, and describe its silent and mysterious orbit. Torrid heat, the earthquake, the tornado, the pestilence, mountains of ice, craters of flame--science will dare them all, to know one more law of nature. God speed the daring of science, if only her votaries will not place the law in the place of Him who made both it and the works which it was commissioned to guide. Science, when she has found the highest and the most comprehensive law of nature, has not touched Deity itself; she has but touched the hem of the garment of the Great Lawgiver.
One veteran of science, Alexander von Humboldt, has yielded to the great law of humanity, as inexorable as any that he found in nature. His researches in South America, though mainly confined to the valley of the Oronoco, were most thorough, and his array of facts and observations are of inestimable value. Yet, Humboldt searched into nature with the coldness of the anatomist, content with examining its material structure, rather than with the zeal of one who seeks images of Divine power impressed alike on solid rocks and gliding streams. Science, however rigid, would not have restrained the ardor of homage to the Author of creative energy and grandeur, bursting forth irrepressibly in scenes where angels would have adored the Great First Cause, and where man can do no less.