Imperial Academy of Sciences of St Petersburg. 99 



worthily the sentiments by which I am animated. But I am 

 aware, Gentlemen, that the charm of eloquence, were it even in 

 accordance with the vivacity of feeling, is not sufficient in this 

 assembly. You have been charged in this vast empire with the 

 grand and noble mission of giving a general impulse to the cul- 

 tivation of science and literature — of encouraging the labours 

 which are in harmony with the present state of human know- 

 ledge — of vivifying and enlarging the mind in the domain of 

 the higher mathematics, the physical history of the globe, and 

 the historv of the nations as illustrated by the monuments of 

 different ages. Your view is directed forwards to the career 

 which remains to be run, and the tribute of gratitude which 

 I offer you — the only tribute worthy of your Institution — is 

 the solemn engagement by which I now bind myself to remain 

 faithful to the cultivation of the sciences to the last moment of 

 an already advanced career, to explore nature unceasingly, and 

 to pursue a course which has been traced by you and your il- 

 lustrious predecessors. 



This community of action in the higher studies, the aid which 

 the different branches of human acquirement lend to each other, 

 and the efforts that have been made at the same time in the two 

 continents, and in the wide expanse of the seas, have impressed a 

 rapid movement upon the physical sciences, as, after ages of 

 barbarism, the simultaneousness of efforts similarly affected the 

 progress of reason. Happy the country whose government ac- 

 cords^n august protection to literature and the arts, which do not 

 merely delight the imagination of man, but also increase his in- 

 tellectual power and enlarge his conceptions ; — to the physical 

 sciences and the mathematics, which have so beneficial an influ- 

 ence upon the development of industry and public prosperity ; 

 — to the zeal of travellers, who force their way into unknown re- 

 gions, or explore the riches of their native soil, and determine 

 by accurate measurements the nature of its configuration ! In 

 here recalling to mind a small part of what has been done in 

 the year now about to close, I am rendering to the Prince a 

 homage which, by its very simplicity, cannot be displeasing to 

 him. 



While MM. Rose and Ehrenberg and myself have, between 

 the Ural, the Altai, and the Caspian Sea, examined the geogno- 



62 



