and New Museum. 217 



to appropriate his whole labour, and continue his whole age in that 

 function and attendance; otherwise,' says he, 'if the fathers of 

 sciences be of the weakest sort, or ill maintained, etpatrum mvalidi 

 referent jejunia nati:' to which he adds, ' There will hardly be any 

 main proficiency in the disclosing of Nature, except there be some 

 allowances for expenses about experiments, whether they be experi- 

 ments relating to Vulcan or Daedalus, furnace or engine, or any other 

 kind; and therefore as secretaries and spials of princes and states 

 bring in bills for intelligence, so you must allow the spials and in- 

 telligencers of Nature to bring in their bills, or else you shall be ill 

 advertised; Now this defect has not been supplied in the constitution 

 of the Royal Society, or of any of the Societies which have been since 

 formed in England ; in them the sciences have still, for the most part, 

 no more than fractions of men. In saying this, I do not mean to 

 undervalue the labours of those who unite scientific pursuits with the 

 active business of life. I do not forget, that the very author of the 

 remarks I have quoted, lived himself in the full tumult of human 

 affairs, and was at once the first philosopher and the most consum- 

 mate speaker and comprehensive lawyer of his day. I wish, indeed, 

 it were enough considered, that men may contribute very usefully to 

 philosophy without taking the name of philosophers. I wish it were 

 fully unde'rsttfod, that philosophy itself is after all no more than an 

 ignorant child capable of gaining instruction from the commonest 

 observations, and being improved by the slightest hints : but how are 

 these scattered lights to be concentrated, if there be no one whose 

 business it is to collect them ? How can we expect any great or uniform 

 progress in the most arduous of all business from gratuitous services 

 and broken time ? In thus noticing. Gentlemen, the defects as well 

 as the merits of other societies, it has been my object to deduce from 

 this experience the path which we ought ourselves to pursue. To a 

 great metropolitan institution the point of which I speak is only 

 a question of a greater or less degree of vigour; to us 1 am per- 

 suaded it is a question of life or death. The edifice, indeed, in which 

 we are now for the first time assembled, seems to promise us some 

 kind of perpetuity ; all the fortunate circumstances with which we are 

 surrounded are so many pledges of permanence ; but whether it shidl 

 be a perpetuity of honour, and a perseverance of utility, or whether we 

 shall be obliged in the issue to own that we have abused the favour of 

 the Crown, and wasted the money of the county, depends in my opinion 

 principally on one thing, on our allowing or not allowing liberal 

 salaries to the scientific servants of the Society, such salaries, that is, 

 as will enable them to devote their whole time to the objects of the 

 Institution. It is not the mere arrangement of a Museum, or the 

 care of a Garden, which is to be provided for by such a Society 

 as this, — the materials for a natural history of Yorkshire should be 

 collected, its antiquities investigated, its arts and manufactures 

 examined, and the principles of science applied to their improve- 

 ment. There is also a philosophical correspondence to be maintained; 

 there are scientific foreigners to be received ; there are inquiries of 

 N S. Vol. 7, No. 39. Marc/i 1830. 2 F students 



