﻿XXV. 



THE SEVENTH 



ANNIVERSARY DISCOURSE, 



DELIVERED 25 FEBRUARY, l^QO. 

 BY THE PRESIDENT. 



Gentlemen, 



ALTHOUGH we are at this moment considerably 

 nearer to the frontier of China than to the far- 

 thest limit of the British dominions in Hindustan, yet 

 the first step that we should take in the philosophical 

 journey, which I propose for your entertainment at the 

 present meeting, will carry us to the utmost verge of 

 the habitable globe known to the best geographers of 

 Old Greece and Egvpt ; beyond the boundary of whose 

 knowledge we shall discern from the heights of the 

 northern mountains an empire nearly equal in surface 

 to a square of fifteen degrees ; an empire, of which I 

 do not mean to assign the precise limits, but which we 

 may consider, for the purpose of this dissertation, as 

 embraced on two sides by Tartary and India, while 

 the ocean separates its other sides from various Asia- 

 tic isles of great importance in the commercial system 

 of Europe. Annexed to that immense tract of land is 

 the peninsula of Corea, which a vast oval bason divides 

 from Nifon, or Japan, a celebrated and imperial island, 

 bearing in arts and in arms, in advantage of situa- 

 tion, but not in felicity of government, a pre-eminence 

 among eastern kingdoms analogous to that of Britain 

 among the nations of the west. So many climates 

 are included in so prodigious an area, that while the 

 principal emporium of China lies nearly under the 

 tropic, its metropolis enjoys the temperature of Sa- 



