H. K. OLIVER'S ADDRESS. 567 



that burrow in its dirt, — seeing nothing of the transcendant 

 wonders that are about and above, and beneath you ? 



*' There are more things in Heaven and earth, Horatio, 

 Than are dreamt of in your philosophy." — Shakspeare's Hamlet. 



And will you dwell within this great laboratory of God, where- 

 in He works out the mystery of His experiments, and refuse 

 the invitation which even he gives, to take benefit of His les- 

 sons and their teachings, and to be wise to your own profit? 

 Will you listen to the murmuring of the brook, that irrigates 

 your meadow, and makes its rich crop ready for your scythe, 

 and live in ignorance, that every drop of its waters is but the 

 chemical result of the mingling of two invisible gases, without 

 the presence of one of which in all the watery world, the 

 other would, by its specific levity, seek 



The upper regions of the air, 

 Doing, I know not what great mischief there ; — New Sonc/. 



and leaving the cavernous abysses of the ocean revealed to the 

 light of day, with 



" Wedges of gold, great anchors, heaps of pearl, 

 Inestimable stones, unvalued jewels, 

 Wooing the slimy bottom of the deep ;" — Shakspeare's Richard III. 



and its myriads of known and unknown monsters, to flounder, 

 to struggle for water, and to perish for the lack of it ? 



Will you walk abroad and breathe the pure atmosphere of 

 Heaven, neither knowing, nor caring to know, that, although 

 apparently invisible, it is really not so ; that it has all the pro- 

 perties of matter, — inertia, weight, impenetrability, elasticity, 

 and compressibility, — and yet is likewise but the chemical 

 union of tw^o invisible gases, in such mixture that while one 

 alone would produce death to all that should inhale it, and the 

 other alone would produce excess of life, — the two are so 

 justly and nicely balanced by the wise laws of an all-wise God, 

 as to form an air, at once best fitted to support life, animal and 

 vegetable, and best fitted for respiration ? Are you wiUing to 

 be ignorant, that if to certain proportions of the three gases of 

 which I speak, — oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen, — you add 

 carbon, which is, in its pure state, as furnished by nature, the 

 diamond that dazzles from the brow of royalty, and in its 



