LECTURES. 



LECTURE ON THE STEAM ENGINE. 



By Professor James Rknwick, of Columbia College. N. Y. 



It is hardly necessary to say that I felt highly complimented by the 

 invitation of the American Institute, to deliver a course of lectures. 

 The invitation was therefore cheerfully accepted, and the hope was 

 at first entertained that leisure might be found to prepare and present 

 to this audience, something novel in the way of science, or capable of 

 being considered popular by brilliancy of illustration. These hopes have 

 not been fulfilled. Engagements, at all times paramount, have inter- 

 posed, and I am compelled to appear before you with what is to me, 

 and I fear may seem to you, a hacknied subject. 



Twenty years since, at the opening of the lectures of the Athenae- 

 um, I performed my share of one of the winter's duties, by a series 

 of lectures upon the steam engine. A few years subsequent, and in 

 connection with the duties of a professor in Columbia College, a more 

 full and extended course was undertaken. In these a full discussion 

 of all the physical and chemical principles involved in the operation 

 of the steam engine, was attempted. At this epoch, even elementary 

 works on this subject were rare, practical treatises were wholly want- 

 ing ; no lecturer had yet travelled through the Union dispersing po- 

 pular information, and whether in the more popular form of the first 

 series, or the more scientific plan of the latter, the lecturer had the 

 advantage of touching at every step upon principles understood by 

 few, and facts unknown to the greater portion of his audience. 



If the publication of numerous works in the interval have blunted 

 curiosity, and lessened the general interest in the novelty of the sub- 

 ject, I have personally a still greater difficulty to contend with, for 



[Assembly, No. 244.] M 



