318 Sir David Brewster's Address * 
lands. Their President and Councilar are necessarily resident in 
London, and the talent and the genius of the provinces are ex- 
cluded from their administration. From this ee we must 
except the distinguished philosophers of Cambridge and Oxford, 
who, from their proximity to the capital, have been the brightest 
ornaments of our metropolitan institutions, and without whose aid 
they could never sah attained their present pre-eminence. It is, 
gs therefore, in-the more remote parts of the empire that the influ- 
ence of a national oan would be more immediately felt, 
and nowhere more powerfully.than in this its northern portion. 
Our English friends are, we believe, little.aware of the obstruc- 
~~ * tions which oppose the progress of sciencg. ie Scotland. In our 
‘five universities there is not a single Fellowship to stimulate the 
genius and rouse the ambition of the student. The church, the 
law and the medical proféssion hold out no rewards to the culti- 
“-vators of mathematical and physical science ; and were a youth- 
vie oe 
ful Newton or Laplace to issue from any of our universities, his: 
best friends would advise him to renounce the divine gift and to“ 
seek in professional toil the well-earned competeney which can 
alone secure him a just position in the social scale and an énvi- 
able felicity in the domestic circle. Did this truth fequire any 
evidence in its support, we find it in the notorious faet that our 
colleges cannot furnish professors to fill their: own important 
offices ; and the time is not distant when all our chairs in Mathe- 
matics, ’ Natural Philosophy, and even Natural History, will be oc- 
cupied by professors educated in the English universities. But 
were a Royal Academy or 3 like that of France, estab- 
lished on the basis of our - existing institutions, and a class of resi- 
ent members enabled to devote themselves wholly to science, 
the youth of Scotland would instantly start for the prize, and. 
would speedily achieve their full.share in the liberality of t 
ate. Our universities would then breathe a more vital air. Our. 
science would put forth new energies, and our literature might 
rise to the high level at which it minale in our sister land, But 
At is to the nation that the greatest advantages would accrue. With 
ships on every sea,—with a system of agriculture leaning upon 
science as its mainstay —with a net-work of railways demanding 
moning to the service of the ro all the theoretical and practi- 
cal wisdom of the country,—for rousing what is dormant, com- 
bining what is insulated, and uniting in one great institution the 
living talent which is in active but undirected unsupported. 
exercise around us. 
x. 
—s* 
