12 TRANSACTIONS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. [VoL VI. 
internal trade, and materially advancing the development of the resources 
and commerce of the country ; and have commenced the formation of a 
museum for collections of models and drawings of machines and 
constructions, new inventions and improvements, geological and minera- 
logical specimens, and whatever may be calculated, either as natural 
productions or specimens of art, to promote the purposes of science and 
the general interests of society.’ It is to be regretted, I think, that 
general literature is rather implied than expressed, in the enumeration of 
objects whose cultivation it is hoped to encourage, by the powers conferred 
by this Charter. It was possibly considered that even as the ‘ king him- 
self is served by the field, so must every special department of know- 
ledge derive its support from this which is the common parent of all. 
At all events, since no one now esteems it a ‘kind of dishonour unto 
learning to descend to enquiry or meditation upon matters mechanical, 
so neither (to borrow another quotation from the same author), does 
anyone now doubt that the men, (and we have such among us), who 
could obey the counsel of the alchemist,‘ to sell their books and to build 
furnaces, quitting and forsaking Minerva and the Muses, as barren 
virgins, and relying upon Vulcan, are on that account unwilling, 
unworthy, or indisposed, to listen to those of other tastes and other 
habits, when they offer them the fruits of their studies. Such then, is 
the character and the ambition of the Canadian Institute. It aspires as 
the report just read informs us, to supply to Upper Canada, the place 
of those societies, which every other civilized country possesses under 
the denominations of literary, or philosophical, or professional societies 
or academies, or whatever title they may prefer, to express ends which 
are essentially the same in all; but it aims to do this modestly and 
gradually, availing itself first, and principally, of those elements which 
offer themselves spontaneously in the progress of the country. Does 
any one here question that this populous Province, with its skilled and 
learned professions, its universities, its halls of education, possesses the 
intellectual resources upon which such a thing can be based, or believe 
that, possessing them, there is not spirit, energy or unanimity to turn 
those advantages to account? I cannot think so. It is surely time 
that what the sister capitals, Quebec and Montreal, have now possessed 
for many years should come into being here; that there should be in 
Upper Canada, a centre to which the treasures of experience, observa- 
tion and discovery, of this generation should naturally flow ; at which, 
as in a focus, the attainments of her most gifted sons, may, by degrees, 
be brought to bear on objects of universal interest, and by whose 
example and influence those pursuits may be encouraged, which extend 
the bounds of human knowledge, while they promote, in a high degree, 
a 
