590 SELECTIONS FROM ADDRESSES. 



What astonishing improvements have taken place in the 

 manufacture of cloth, since the inventions of Arkwright and 

 others ! — in the art of printing and electro-magnetism, since 

 the days of our Franklin ! — in the application of steam, since 

 the discoveries of Fitch and Fulton ! To what vast regions 

 of illimitable space, our solar system has been found to extend, 

 since the discoveries of La Place and Newton, several new 

 worlds having been added to the sisterhood of planets. And 

 what splendid triumphs of art over nature, in almost every 

 branch of natural history, have distinguished the age in which 

 we live. 



What has wrought these wonders ? Education, or the appli- 

 cation of science to the useful arts. 



By these means, man seizes upon the elements of nature, and 

 subordinates them to his will. Look for illustration to the 

 benefits resulting to our own country from the application to 

 these arts, of that invisible agent which already drives our cars 

 over ten thousand miles of railroad, and when present contracts 

 are completed, will compass ten thousand more, — which, de- 

 spite wind and wave, storm and tide, propels the thousands of 

 steamboats that plough our navigable waters, and which turns 

 the machinery of the world. Its magic power gives new 

 direction to energy and capital, brings distant places into prox- 

 imity, and unites them together by bonds which no party ani- 

 mosity, no sectional prejudice, and no vandal barbarity shall 

 ever sunder. 



But why should not its fearful energies assist the farmer, as 

 well as the manufacturer, the mechanic and the navigator? 

 Why not? It already does aid him in the use of the imple- 

 ments of husbandry. Why should it not assist him in the 

 manufacture of manures and in many of the arts of cultiva- 

 tion ? especially in the decomposition of rocks, from which our 

 soils are primarily formed, and the production from them of 

 fertilizing matter. It is already beginning to do this, if we 

 may credit the statement of Professor Tighlman, who, by the 

 aid of water at a very high temperature, has decomposed feld- 

 spar, a common stone, and obtained sulphuric acid and the salts 

 of potash. 



