13 



up manufactories, who mined from the deep earth its coals and minerals; of 

 those who started on its unending track the locomotive, and made the ship 



"Against the wind, against the tide, 

 To steady with an upright keel." 



Let history and biography be so written, and their study will serve to elevate 

 the industrial classes in their own estimation, and make them true to them- 

 selves ; and being so in their political relations, they will be false to no duty ; 

 as they have been in times past, to themselves and to the country, save in the ready 

 sacrifice of life to defend it in the field against leaders not of their class and pur- 

 suit. Then the theory of our government, that the humblest citizen may 

 attain the highest offices, will be a reality in this, that he can do so through the 

 pursuit of that industrial occupation which has had its just weight in deter- 

 mining political power. Eminence in that occupation, joined to the enlarged 

 and liberal mind which the education of the industrial colleges should give, 

 will render illustrious, as was Cincinnatus when called from the plough to save 

 Rome, or as was Washington, in whom the surveyor's chain brought out quali- 

 ties that raised him to the highest military command. 



There remains but one more matter of general remark. We have seen how 

 parallel run the social and public duties of all_classes in the community. What- 

 ever studies are essential to disciplining the mind of the professional man, are 

 they not as important to the industrial mm 1 The power to think, and to ap- 

 ply thought, is indeed more necessary in thft inventions, in finance, and in the 

 more extensive commercial pursuits, than in the professional. Those destined 

 to follow the mechanic arts must study mathematics. The commercial pursuits 

 demand a knowledge of political economy. What, then, prevents those destined 

 for professional . occupations from acquiring in these industrial colleges the in- 

 struction they need ? Are not the sciences the best of all branches of study for 

 them 1 



By the preacher the study of science can no longer be disregarded, for that 

 exalted feeling which is poetry or religion, according as it is produced by a con- 

 templation of the works of nature, or of the wisdom of nature's God, becomes 

 still higher arid more intense when science reveals the infinitude of that wisdom. 

 "Whoever," say a writer, "will dip into Hugh Miller's works on geology, or 

 read Mr. Lewis's Sea-side Studies, will perceive that science excites poetry 

 rather than extinguishes it; and whoever will contemplate the life of Goethe 

 will see that the poet and the man of science can coexist in equal activity. Is 

 it not, indeed, an absurd and almost a sacrilegious belief, that the more a man 

 studies nature the less he reveres if? Think you that a drop of water, which 

 to the common eye is but a drop of water, loses anything in the eye of the 

 physicist, who knows that its elements are held together by a force Avhich, if 

 suddenly liberated, would produce a flash of lightning 1 Think you that what 

 is carelessly looked upon by the uninitiated as a mere snow-flake does not sug- 

 gest higher associations to one who has seen through a microscope the wonder- 

 fully varied and elegant forms of snow-crystal 1 ? Think you that the rounded 

 rock, marked with parallel scratches, calls up as much poetry in an ignorant 

 mind as in the mind of a geologist, who knows that over this rock a glacier slid 

 a million years ago ? The truth is, that those who have never entered upon 

 scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are sun minded. 

 Whoever has not in youth collected plants and insects, knows not half the halo 

 of interest which lanes and hedgerows can assume. Whoever has not sought 

 for fossils, has little idea of the poetical associations that surround the places 

 where imbedded treasures were found. Whoever, at the sea-side, has not a 

 microscope and aquarium, has yet to learn what the highest pleasures of the 

 sea-side are. Sad indeed is it to see how men occupy themselves with triviali- 

 ties, and are indifferent to the grandest phenomena ; care not to understand the 



