DR. cxahkb's ADBRBSS. 203 



directly or remotely to the sum of human happiness, by im- 

 proving the condition, multiplying the comforts, and advanc- 

 ing the civilization of mankind. Beds of coal and iron, for 

 example, give birth to numberless results no less useful and 

 humanizing, than the processes by which these ends are ac- 

 complished are interesting and beautiful. The ravages of 

 the marauding insect, or the parasite fungus, which laughs to 

 scorn the labours of the husbandman, and in a few weeks 

 lays waste the promise of the year, relinquish their noxious 

 power, when the discovery of their antagonist or corrective 

 has rewarded the labour of the persevering naturalist. Tlie 

 history of our science, indeed, warrants the assertion that no 

 natural evil exists without its corresponding antidote, which 

 the Author of Nature has left to the discerning sense and 

 reasoning faculty of man to discover and apply. " The pes- 

 tilence that walketh in darkness,'' which struck with horror 

 the men of one age, from the vague mystery which hung 

 over its origin, is patent as the sheen of the mid-day sun to 

 those of another ; nor do we doubt that the disease of the 

 most useful of edible plants, which, with sudden and in- 

 sidious step, lately gave up to wretchedness and death so 

 many of our fellow-subjects, and hung with awful menace 

 over the empire at large, is yet destined to become a palm of 

 triumph in the hands of some ingenious student of Nature. 



" Difficulty,'' says Burke, " is our helper ;" — and the history 

 of man is but a history of difficulties overcome— of mysteries 

 made plain — and of the material elements, once his dreaded 

 masters, enlisted in his service ; and as there is no error so 

 fatal to our advance as a supine belief that all calamities 

 spring from the inevitable ordinance of God, which it would 

 be impiety to endeavour to avert, so, it appears to us, there 

 is no truth more clearly revealed — no commandment more 

 distinctly traced by the finger of God himself, both within 

 and without us, as that our senses and faculties were given 

 to be employed for our advantage — that difficulties and ob- 

 stacles are but steps in our onward course — and that Pro- 

 gress, incessant and continued, is the great law of the 

 human race. 



