290 British Association for the Advancement of Science. 



and accompanying them in their voyages as their host ; the 

 kindred spirit evinced by the Directors of the Dublin and 

 Kingstown rail-road, who provided gratuitous conveyance 

 from the coast to the capital ; the splendid entertainments 

 given in the Zoological and Botanic Gardens ; the hospitali- 

 ties of the Royal Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons, and of 

 that illustrious academical body on which rested the chief 

 charge and credit of receiving the Association ; the partici- 

 pation in these festivities of the Representative of the Sove- 

 reign, and the happy manner in which he seized the occa- 

 sion of conferring a public mark of distinction on the highly- 

 gifted mathematician and astronomer who held office as one 

 of the Secretaries of the Meeting ; — in addition to these open 

 testimonies of respect for scientific pursuits, the silent under- 

 current of refined and invisible hospitality by which the guests 

 of Ireland found their expenses contracted and their cheer 

 enhanced, — all these were indeed but collateral circumstances 

 attending that meeting, and managed in such a manner as to 

 interfere with none of its scientific labours ; but they were 

 not ineffective in kindling a warmth of feeling by which the 

 powers of the mind are capable of being invigorated even in 

 the pursuit of abstract truth. The moral calm, too, which the 

 meeting seemed to communicate, — the suspension of every 

 feeling but that of a common interest in promoting the know- 

 ledge of nature, — this, in like manner, was but an incidental 

 circumstance, yet it raised thoughts of the usefulness as well 

 as the dignity of those studies which possess a charm not only 

 to elevate the individual but to bind the species together. 



Reflections of this kind, which crowd upon the mind on 

 such occasions, and which the meeting at Dublin excited in 

 a peculiar degree, contribute their share to that general effect 

 of which Professor Hamilton gave so eloquent a description 

 in his preliminary address, whilst asserting the power of so- 

 cial sympathy over the most private moments of exertion in 

 the secret retirements of science. " We meet, we speak, we 

 feel," said the Professor, " together now, that we may here- 

 after the better think and act and feel alone. The excitement 

 with which the air is filled will not pass at once away ; the 

 influences that are now amongst us will not, we trust, be 

 transient, but abiding : these influences will be with us long ; 

 let us hope that they will never leave us : they will cheer, they 

 will animate us still, when this brilliant week is over ; they 

 will go with us to our separate abodes, will attend us on our 

 separate journeys; and whether the mathematician's study, 

 or the astronomer's observatory, or the chemist's laboratory, or 

 some rich distant meadow, unexplored as yet by botanists, or 

 some untrodden mountain top, or any of the other haunts and 



