ADDRESS <>F HON. S. S. COX. 101 



heroism is not comparable with that of humble Edmund Halley, 

 who investigated the properties of the atmosphere, the tides, mag- 

 netism, and the comets, and who periled his life in seeking the 

 distant Island of Saint Helena, there to map out in sublime isola- 

 tion the southern constellations. He was no prisoner, no exile, no 

 modern defiant Prometheus chained to a rock. He was the 

 peaceful observer and serene conqueror of worlds which Alexan- 

 der never sighed to conquer and which Napoleon never looked 

 upon save in selfish moodiness from that historic rock. 



Lord BACON has been referred to most pertinently by the learned 

 gentleman, Professor Rogers. May I make another reference to 

 the father of induction? lie gave us written wisdom beyond that 

 of the ancients. He has said that — "Whereas founders of State-, 

 law-givers, extirpers of tyrants, fathers of the people were honored 

 but with titles of worthies or demi-gods — inventors were ever 

 consecrated with the gods themselves." 



These are golden word-. They properly interpret a philosophic 

 mind. In Bacon's meaning of the word inventor, he compre- 

 hended those who both discover and apply, originate and use, the 

 secrets of nature for the increase and diffusion of knowledge and 

 the benefaction of mankind. 



States come and go; a king to-day is a subject to-morrow; the 

 discrowned suzerain of the Orient last year, this year is the vassal 

 of a newly crowned empress. Lawgivers who pursue their tortuous 

 and tangled paths, what can they do among the atoms or the spaces? 

 They appropriate money, fix taxes, raise armies, declare war; but 

 to change one little chemical relation, how powerless! Not all the 

 statutes ever inscribed on parchment can stop soft iron from becom- 

 ing a magnet by a certain process of galvanic polarization; vet he 

 who discovered mi simple a relation with such magnificent results 

 would have been deified by the Greeks alone,- with that god of 

 beauty who drove the chariot of the sun or that god of strength 



