72 Dr BREWSTER on the Construction of Polyzonal Lenses. 



as its first reception has been, it requires no prophetic spirit to 

 anticipate its early and complete triumph. I am aware of the 

 prejudices, and, I grieve to add, the sordid interests with which 

 it must contend ; but these are not the days in which the tide of 

 knowledge and improvement can be thus stemmed. The force of 

 reason will gradually dispel the one, and before the frown of pu- 

 blic opinion the other will disappear. 



It is in Great Britain, if any where, that the lighting of her 

 shores ought to be an object of national concern. Her naval and 

 commercial pre-eminence, the sum of human life, and the a- 

 mount of valuable property which are risked at sea, call loudly 

 for every aid which science can confer. The ingenuity which 

 has been already exhausted, the humanity which has been al- 

 ready roused, and the national liberality which has been already 

 freely dispensed, in devising and promoting- every scheme for 

 saving the shipwrecked mariner, cannot now receive a nobler 

 direction, than in rendering more effective those beacons of mer- 

 cy which light the seafaring stranger to our coasts, and warn 

 him of the wild shelves with which it is defended. 



