THE 



EDINBURGH NEW 



PHILOSOPHICAL JOURNAL 



Inaugural Lecture^ the General Bearing of the Great Exhibi- 

 tion on the Progress of Art and Science.* By WiLLIAM 

 Whewell, D.D., F.R.S., Master of Trinity. 



It seems to me as if I were one of the persons who have 

 the least right of any to address an audience like this on the 

 subject of the Great Exhibition of the Art and Industry of 

 All Nations, of which the doors have so lately closed ; inas- 

 much as I have had no connection with that great event, nor 

 relation to it, except that of a mere spectator — one of the 

 many millions there. The eminent and zealous men in whose 

 wide views it originated, by whose indomitable energy and 

 perseverance the great thought of such a spectacle was em- 

 bodied in a visible, material shape ; those who, from our own 

 countries or from foreign lands, supplied it with the trea- 

 sures and wonders of art ; those who, with scrutinizing eye 

 and judicial mind, compared those treasures and those won- 

 ders, and stamped their approval on the worthiest ; those 

 who can point to the glories of the Exhibition, and say, 

 " quorum pars magna fui f — those persons may well be con- 

 sidered as having a right to express to you the thoughts 

 which have been suggested by the scenes in which they have 

 thus had to live : but of these I am not one. I have been in 

 the Exhibition, as I have said, a mere spectator. Neverthe- 

 less, the Council of the Society of Arts have done me the 



* A copy of this very important Lecture was presented to us by its illustri- 

 ous author, who read it at the meeting of the Jjondon Society of Arte in the 

 end of November 1851. 



VOL. LII. NO. cm. — JANUARY 1852. A 



