234 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



the intellectual effort which they have inspired, nor to count 

 the scholars they have created, nor to value too highly the 

 assurance which they have given to mankind, that the monu- 

 ments of genius shall not decay, even though material grandeur 

 shall perish and be buried beneath accumulating dust. We 

 are willing to walk hand in hand with them through those long 

 ages, in the darkness of which their lights were not extinguished, 

 and in the radiance of which it was their scholarship which 

 prevailed. But we can imagine how our obligations to them 

 would have been increased, had they and their followers sub- 

 stituted for wearying disputations, an encouraging word for 

 natural philosophy as the foundation of useful discoveries, and 

 not as a subject for fresh controversy and mere mental exercise. 

 Nature and the generations of men can afford, I have no doubt, 

 to wait for light ; but still the hours are weary. And I know 

 no story in all the history of man's intellectual endeavor, sadder 

 than that of the one great scientist of the middle ages, who, 

 blinded by the lustre of scholasticism, and bound hand and foot 

 by the rigors of ecclesiastiaism, smuggled in vain to emancipate 

 practical science, and left behind hin his own hints as a guide, 

 and his own failure as a warniii^ to l^s great namesake, who, 

 coming after him, fell on more fWtunau* times. We are told 

 that when Roger Bacon in 1234, studied mathematics, physics, 

 and astronomy, and impoverished himself and his friends in 

 purchasing the most costly instruments *f his t, meS) experi- 

 mental philosophy was little in vogue, and his researches excited 

 the hostility of his fellows. He was a devoted 4udent of Aris- 

 totle and all his commentators in every language ; V u t he found 

 it impossible to carry the teachings of this great philosopher 

 into practical science, at a time when all science was considered 

 no better than heresy, and its results no better than nwve. 

 His writings were condemned ; in his old age he was imprisoned; 

 and he died in neglect. He was the great anticipator of science 

 and the scientific age, which dawned upon the world three cen- 

 turies after his death. He conceived the discovery of the 

 telescope, and knew the composition of gunpowder, but was not 

 permitted to witness the glorious revelations of the one, nor the 

 irresistible force of the other. With his mind filled with visions 

 of scientific grandeur, he could get but little farther than to 

 declare that the causes of the intellectual torpor and ignorance 



