military tactics, and the elegant or magnificent forms of palaces and 

 temples. The more simple cloathing— the leaves or barks of trees, 

 or the skins of animals, were succeeded by complicated manufactures, 

 elegantly and beautifully formed ; the difficulties of manual labour, 

 were gradually removed by machinery, and hence new powers and 

 agents, which are still far from having attained their highest state of 

 perfection. Almost all the substances upon the surface of the earth, 

 have l)een applied to some purpose, or for some end, either as objects 

 of comfort or of luxury. The simplest method of reckoning time, 

 the hour glass, or the graduated candle of Alfred, slowly led to 

 the pendulum clock, and the spring watch, which have become 

 instruments enabling us to measure even space by motion : and the 

 rude wheel and pulley for raising water, led to a succession of 

 inventions terminating in the Steam Engine ; the various applica- 

 tions of which are, at present, such great sources of the superiority 

 of our country. 



In Astronomy, and its connection with navigation, there has 

 been the same slow yet certain progress, and perhaps a more extra- 

 ordinary exhibition of the powers of the human mind. The heavenly 

 bodies, at first the objects of superstitious worship, became gradually 

 subjects of scientific observations ; and the regularity of their 

 motions led to the idea of some great law in nature. For ages 

 this law was only viewed faintly and indistinctly, and pursued at 

 a distance ; and it was reserved for modern times, and to be 

 the glory of a genius in our own country — to give to it a 

 luminous and distinct form — to establish it as an unalterable truth. 

 The progress of discovery in this science will be stated to you by a 

 practical master ; and it will be no uninteresting labour to follow 

 the various attempts made for the explanation of the systems of the 

 universe ; from the moveable spheres of the Greeks, and the cycles 

 iind epicycles of Ptolemy, to the grand principle of gravitation. The 

 knowledge of the position of a few stars, enabled the early navi- 

 gators to steer their vessels, but they dared not venture far from the 

 land, and coasted along the old world. The Astronomical Dis- 

 coveries of the moderns, assisted by the Invention of the Compass, 

 have led to the knowledge of a new world, and to the entire sub- 

 jugation of the ocean. This is a triumph of human power : but 

 perhaps it is a still greater triumph that a mere atom in the scale of 

 things, fixed as it were on a point in space, should be able to weigh 

 and measure the great bodies of the universe, ascertain their dis- 

 tances from each other, predict their motions and their changes ; 

 and judge of his own system in its relations to an infinity of worlds. 



Natural History depends much more upon accurate observation 

 than upon experiment, yet even this department of Science, has 

 received its greatest elucidation in modern times. The connection 

 of Mineralogy with the Metallurgical arts, and with the mining 

 interests of the country, ought to render the courses of mineralogy 



