PHYSICAL WITH THE MATHEMATICAL SCIENCES. 53 



matics and in Physics, with which Professor Leslie has en- 

 forced his observations. 



" It must be confessed that, in this country, the culti- 

 vation of the higher branches of the Mathematics, and the 

 invention of new methods of calculation, cannot be too much 

 recommended to the generality of those who apply them- 

 selves to Natural Philosophy ; but it is equally true, on the 

 other hand, that the first mathematicians on the Continent 

 have exerted great ingenuity in involving the plainest truths 

 of Mechanics in the intricacies of Algebraical formulas, and in 

 some instances have even lost sight of the real state of an in- 

 vestigation, by attending only to the symbols, which they have 

 employed for expressing its steps." (Lectures on Natural 

 Philosophy, vol. ii. p. 670.) * 



Professor Leslie has himself remarked, in reference to the 

 progress of science in England, that " perhaps few nations in 

 Europe have less availed themselves of the results of abstract 

 science towards aiding and correcting the operations of prac- 

 tice f." This also is true ; but it is a fact equally incontro- 

 vertible, that those operations of practice, which are of the 

 greatest importance to civilized and refined society, which 

 are most eminently conducive to the happiness of the human 

 species, have been carried, among us, to a degree of perfec- 

 tion unknown in other nations. In the varied applications of 

 science comprised in Civil Engineering, we have no equals : 

 witness our Steam-Engines, our Machinery, our Bridges, our 

 Canals, and unless we have been equalled or perhaps even 

 surpassed in Ship-building by the Anglo-Americans, in fol- 

 lowing the same track, arid with the same intellectual re- 

 sources as ourselves our specimens of Naval Architecture. 

 As we are a manufacturing and a commercial, so are we, pre- 

 eminently, an experimental people : our own constructions have 

 been made upon principles which have been discovered or 

 regulated by experiment, and the validity of those principles 

 has been proved by the experience of their application ; while, 

 in many cases, Continental structures, dependent on principles 

 theoretically investigated, have shown, by their own instability, 

 ths inadequacy of the theories which had presided over their 

 erection. 



Examples of these facts may be found in the history of many 

 public works ; and that of Suspension-Bridges, will afford us 

 a striking one. In Great Britain, these structures have been 



* " Dissertation Fourth ; [prefixed to the seventh edition of the Ency- 

 clopaedia Britannica;] Exhibiting a General View of the Progress of 

 Mathematical and Physical Science, chiefly during the Eighteenth Century," 

 by Professor Leslie : p. 616. 



f Ibid. p. 579. 



