Another member, meantime, shall as honestly
search, sift, and as truly report on British mythology, the Round
Table, the histories of Brut, Merlin, and Welsh poetry; a third, on
the Saxon Chronicles, Robert of Gloucester, and William of Malmesbury;
a fourth, on Mysteries, Early Drama, "Gesta Romanorum," Collier, and
Dyce, and the Camden Society. Each shall give us his grains of gold,
after the washing; and every other shall then decide whether this is
a book indispensable to him also.
THE DIAMOND LENS.
I.
THE BENDING OF THE TWIG.
From a very early period of my life the entire bent of my
inclinations had been towards microscopic investigations. When I was
not more than ten years old, a distant relative of our family,
hoping to astonish my inexperience, constructed a simple microscope
for me, by drilling in a disk of copper a small hole, in which a
drop of pure water was sustained by capillary attraction. This very
primitive apparatus, magnifying some fifty diameters, presented, it
is true, only indistinct and imperfect forms, but still sufficiently
wonderful to work up my imagination to a preternatural state of
excitement.
Seeing me so interested in this rude instrument, my cousin explained
to me all that he knew about the principles of the microscope,
related to me a few of the wonders which had been accomplished
through its agency, and ended by promising to send me one regularly
constructed, immediately on his return to the city.
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