OP THE LATE MB. WILLIAM 8TURG1. 79 



" Descending to the earth we trace its circumfluent streams 

 polarizing this vast ball of matter, on which we are destined 

 to live and perform all our actions, and insinuating its resist- 

 less influence in all the silent, mysterious, attractions of the 

 magnet. 



" Trace it to the laboratory of the chemist, and we find it 

 the most active and vigorous agent in accomplishing all those 

 astonishing changes which give new forms, and new qualities, 

 to passive, obedient matter. 



" Besides all these important operations of nature, accom- 

 plished by the agency of electricity, it is capable of restoring 

 the dormant muscular and nervous powers of man, which have 

 been prostrated by accident or disease ; and of giving new 

 life, and new vigor, to parts which have bid defiance to every 

 other mode of medical treatment. 



" In plants also, as well as in animals, it is said to facilitate 

 their growth, and to give health, vigor, and beauty to their 

 general appearance. 



" Indeed, so universally does the electric fluid appear to 

 be employed in most, if not all, the grand processes of nature, 

 that there is not, perhaps, a plant that grows, nor a limb that 

 moves, but is, in some measure, influenced by its powers. 



u Nay, it is, perhaps, this astonishing, this most gigantic 

 of physical agents, which is employed by the Great Creator 

 to spin the earth and planets on their axes, to sweep them 

 through the heavens in their regular periods of revolutions, 

 and to keep in uniform motion all those massy orbs of matter 

 which compose the counties* systems of the universe. 



" Brief and imperfect as is the outline which I have thus 

 portrayed of one individual branch of science, perhaps we 

 may venture to ask, who is there, then, who knows the ad- 

 vantages, the beauties, nay, the pleasures of scientific know- 

 ledge, who would think his time misspent, or his labours 

 useless, in the accomplishment of so noble an acquisition ? 



"It is by the cultivation of the mind that one man be- 



