11 



reason to be ashamed, and which has not failed to excite the 

 admiration of visitors from other parts of the kingdom. 



There may be some, perhaps, who may regard the success 

 of this appeal to the public with diflFerent feelings, and, in 

 order to place it in an invidious light, may say that the sum 

 which has been thus collected, might have been bestowed 

 upon more useful objects. But it may be doubted whether 

 they who would thus damp the zeal of the friends of 

 science, have sufficiently weighed the real value of those 

 pursuits, which they place so low in the scale of utility. 

 If all the aids which human life has derived from 

 philosophical speculation were to be lost, it would then be 

 universally agreed, that the most useful of public institutions 

 would be that which should have a tendency to replace 

 them. Withdraw from the sailor the gifts which astronomy, 

 and optics, and mechanical science have bestowed upon 

 his perilous occupation; take away his chronometer, his 

 telescope, and his quadrant ; and you would make no amends 

 to him for the security of which he has been divested, if you 

 should even found a hospital for his reception. Deprive 

 the miner of the safeguard by which experimental chemistry 

 has of late years provided for his preservation ^ and the 

 explosive atmosphere through which he now passes uninjured, 

 will resume its destructive force, and leave no doubt of the 

 utility of the science by which the blasts of death have been 

 disarmed. 



The effect which the abstract meditations of philosophy 

 have had upon the business and fortunes of mankind, is 

 B 2 



