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sublimity and a deeper pathos, had he been acquainted 

 with the great discoveries of modern science ! with the 

 fact, that the luminous vibrations which reach us from 

 the smallest faintly glimmering telescopic stars of a 

 resolvable nebula, come to us like the voices of the past, 

 leading us back through myriads of centuries into the 

 depths of antiquity ! and with the wonderful connection 

 which exists between sun-light and all the organic and 

 physical processes which take place on the surface of our 

 planet ! 



And it must not be forgotten, that all the phenomena 

 of the physical world are mutually connected. It is a 

 fact, long attested by the history of science, that in the 

 observati»)n of a phenomenon, which at first sight appears 

 to be wholly isolated, may be concealed the germ of a 

 great discovery, which shall enlarge the boundaries of 

 thought and fertilize the fields of fancy. Great truths, 

 truths of mighty significance in the physical and intel- 

 lectual condition of our race, may be dormant within a 

 fact apparently insignificant and unpregnant of result. 

 A few examples will be sufficient to illustrate this imi- 

 versal affinity of the truths of physical science. Who 

 could have dreamed of the import of the truth which 

 quivered forth in the vibrating muscles of the dead frog's 

 leg as it hung upon the wires in the laboratory of Aloysio 

 Galvani ? His contemporaries could never have antici- 

 pated that it placed in the hands of his successors a pow- 

 erful instrument of chemical analysis, and at the same 

 time, a thermoscope and a magnet. Who could have 

 imagined that there dwelt within those quaint old cups 

 of Alexandre Volta, still preserved in the Museum of 

 Como, a Promethean power which now strings the earth 



