And forever and forever,
  As long as the river flows,
As long as the heart has passions,
  As long as life has woes;

The moon and its broken reflection
  And its shadows shall appear
As the symbol of love in heaven,
  And its wavering image here. 
                             —­Longfellow.

CXII.  OBJECTS AND LIMITS OF SCIENCE. (394)

Robert Charles Winthrop, 1809-1894, was a descendant of John Winthrop, the first Governor of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay.  He was born in Boston, studied at the public Latin School, graduated at Harvard in 1828, and studied law with Daniel Webster.  Possessing an ample fortune, he made little effort to practice his profession.  In 1834 he was elected to the Legislature of his native state, and was reelected five times; three years he was Speaker of the House of Representatives.  In 1840 he was chosen to Congress, and sat as Representative for ten years.  In 1847 he was chosen Speaker of the House.  He also served a short time in the Senate.  His published writings are chiefly in the form of addresses and speeches; they are easy, finished, and scholarly.  As a speaker, Mr. Winthrop was ready, full-voiced, and self-possessed. ###

There are fields enough for the wildest and most extravagant theorizings, within man’s own appropriate domain, without overleaping the barriers which separate things human and divine.  Indeed, I have often thought that modern science had afforded a most opportune and providential safety valve for the intellectual curiosity and ambition of man, at a moment when the progress of education, invention, and liberty had roused and stimulated him to a pitch of such unprecedented eagerness and ardor.  Astronomy, Chemistry, and, more than all, Geology, with their incidental branches of study, have opened an inexhaustible field for investigation and speculation.  Here, by the aid of modern instruments and modern modes of analysis, the most ardent and earnest spirits may find ample room and verge enough for their insatiate activity and audacious enterprise, and may pursue their course not only without the slightest danger of doing mischief to others, but with the certainty of promoting the great end of scientific truth.

Let them lift their vast reflectors or refractors to the skies, and detect new planets in their hiding places.  Let them waylay the fugitive comets in their flight, and compel them to disclose the precise period of their orbits, and to give bonds for their punctual return.  Let them drag out reluctant satellites from “their habitual concealments.”  Let them resolve the unresolvable nebulae of Orion or Andromeda.  They need not fear.  The sky will not fall, nor a single star be shaken from its sphere.

Let them perfect and elaborate their marvelous processes of making the light and the lightning their ministers, for putting “a pencil of rays” into the hand of art, and providing tongues of fire for the communication of intelligence.  Let them foretell the path of the whirlwind, and calculate the orbit of the storm.  Let them hang out their gigantic pendulums, and make the earth do the work of describing and measuring her own motions.