ADVANTAGES OF ARCTIC EXPLORATION. 453 



,It is not needful that I should here demonstrate 

 the advantages to be derived from a continuation of 

 the line of exploration which I have indicated ; — the 

 age in which we live has too much profited by re- 

 searches into every department of science, which, not 

 immediately prosecuted with the view to practical ad- 

 vantage, have, by a steady enlargement of the bound- 

 aries of human knowledge, promoted the interests of 

 commerce, of navigation, of the arts, and of every 

 thing which concerns the convenience and the com- 

 fort and the well-being of mankind. In truth, civili- 

 zation has profited most by those discoveries which 

 possessed at the outset only an abstract value, and 

 excited no interest beyond the walls of the academy. 

 The vast system of steam communication, which 

 weaves around the world its endless web of industry, 

 began in the apparently useless experiments of a 

 thoughtful boy with the lid of his mother's tea-kettle ; 

 that wonderful net-work of wires which spreads over 

 the continents and underlies the seas, and along which 

 the thoughts of men fly as with the wings of light, 

 results from the accidental touching of two pieces of 

 metal in the mouth of Volta ; the lenses of the mam- 

 moth telescope of Lord Rosse, which reduced to prac- 

 tical uses the celestial mechanism, came from observ- 

 ing the magnifying powers of a globule of water ; the 

 magnetic needle which guides the navies of the world 

 to their distant destinations, succeeds the casual con- 

 tact of a piece of loadstone and a bit of steel : every- 

 where, indeed, we witness the same constant growth 

 from what seemed unprofitable beginnings ; — the 

 printing-press, the loom, the art of solar painting, all 

 sprang from the one same source, — from minds intent 

 only upon interrogating Nature, and revealing her 



