CHEMISTRY. 249 



mated. Accumulated capital is essential to the profitable employ- 

 ment of labour ; and if this maxim be applicable to political econo- 

 my, how much more so to the economy of knowledge. Each suc- 

 cessive generation is in possession of the resources, the accumulated 

 labour, of former generations ; and more knowledge is now easily 

 acquired, than the labour of a life could formerly have secured. He 

 would now be denominated poor, who is not really richer than the 

 wealthy of two hundred years ago ; and that man would be consi- 

 dered as ignorant, who is not possessed of more valuable information 

 than the learned of an earlier period. There was then no '' Royal 

 road to learning ;" but now, the forests are cleared, the morasses 

 are drained, the hills are levelled, and such suitable conveyances 

 have been provided, that a journey, formerly toilsome and tedious, 

 is now easy and agreeable. The traveller has no longer to trace for 

 himself a path through an unsurveyed wilderness, sometimes lying 

 down in despair, and at others threading, with indefatigable per- 

 severance, a maze terminating far wide of the track he ought to 

 have pursued. The path, now, '^ is so smooth, so green, so full of 

 goodly prospects and melodious sounds on every side, that the harp 

 of Orpheus was not more charming." And are the multitudes who 

 are in pursuit of knowledge, because they have climbed no rugged 

 steeps, and have ascended by easy acclivities, to be told that they 

 are loiterers, and have attained to nothing ? General readers on 

 science are situated like the inhabitants of Mexico, who, it is 

 true, dwell upon a plain, but it is a plain elevated, indeed, above 

 the tops of the mountains with which our forefathers were ac- 

 quainted. 



Among the sciences ther^ is none which has become so popular 

 as Chemistry, and for this it is by no means difficult to account. 

 The commencement of most studies is tedious, but the very rudi- 

 ments of Chemistry are interesting, and are enlivened by curious 

 and beautiful experiments. Most sciences are of remote origin, and 

 their advancement is slow, but Chemistry, as a science, is altogether 

 of recent creation, while the rapidity of its progress, the brilliancy 

 of its discoveries, and the astonishing facts which it reveals, con- 

 stantly excite, in the mind of the student, the pleasure arising from 

 novelty and surprise. 



