Genre:

Short Fiction, Serial

Subjects:

Education, Heat, Instruments, Exploration, Piety, Climatology, Providence, Biblical Authority, Theology of Nature, Menageries, Scientific Practitioners, Heroism

    On a further winter walk, one of the pupils, Henry, observed how cold it was, and how low the thermometer must be. Edward observed: 'I dare say Captain Parry feels it to his finger ends, poor man!' (191) The narrator turned the conversation of his pupils to their minister's recent sermon about winter, including biblical references to being 'whiter than snow', to the relation of the seasons to the divine covenant, and to the divine power to make the 'elements insupportable to his creatures'. (191–92) The narrator observes to the reader: 'So much for theology of nature, my dear children. How sweet are the lessons which it teaches us!' (192). In their continuing conversation, Edward was led to discuss, among other things, 'the beetle's wings at the Microcosm' and 'the denizens of Adkins's travelling menagerie' (194). At Westminster Abbey they examined the statue of Isaac Newton; the narrator describes the statue, observing: 'Not only a sagacious reader of the works, but of the word of God, his was the true philosophy'. The narrator urged upon his pupils the 'comparative unimportance and worthlessness of all human wisdom [...] when unaccompanied with the wisdom that cometh down from above'. (197)