PROCEEDINGS OF THE MEETING. XXV 



of board glides through the furious and apparently deadly line 

 of breakers, to the traveller vi'ho starts along a rail-road with 

 a rapidity that dazzles the eye, this triumphant joy in suc- 

 cessful art is universally felt. But we shall have no difficulty 

 in distinguishing this feeling from the calm pleasure which we 

 receive from the contemplation of truth. And when we con- 

 sider how small an advance of speculative science is implied in 

 each successful step of art, we shall be in no danger of im- 

 bibing, from the mere high spirits produced by difficulty over- 

 come, any extravagant estimate of what man has done or can 

 do, any perverse conception of the true scale of his aims and 

 hopes. 



" Still, it would little become us here to be unjust to prac- 

 tical science. Practice has always been the origin and stimulus 

 of theory : Art has ever been the mother of Science ; the 

 comely and busy mother of a daughter of a far loftier and 

 serener beauty. And so it is likely still to be : there are no 

 subjects in which we may look more hopefully to an advance in 

 sound theoretical views, than those in which the demands of 

 practice make men willing to experiment on an expensive scale, 

 with keenness and perseverance ; and reward every addition 

 of our knowledge with an addition to our power. And even 

 they — for undoubtedly there are many such — who require no 

 such bribe as an inducement to their own exertions, may still 

 be glad that such a fund should exist, as a means of engaging 

 and recompensing subordinate labourers. 



" I will not detain you longer by endeavouring to follow 

 more into detail the application of these observations to the 

 proceedings of the General and Sectional Meetings during the 

 present week. But I may remark that some subjects, circum- 

 stanced exactly as I have described, will be brought under 

 your notice by the Reports which we have reason to hope for 

 on the present occasion. Thus, the state of our knowledge of 

 the laws of the motion of fluids is universally important, since 

 the motion of boats of all kinds, hydraulic machinery, the tide^, 

 the flowing of rivers, all depend upon it. Mr. Stevenson and 

 Mr. Rennie have undertaken to give us an account of different 

 branches of this subject as connected with practice ; and Mr. 

 Challis will report to us on the present state of the analytical 

 theory. In like manner the subject of the strength of materials, 

 which the multiplied uses of iron, stone and wood, make so inter- 

 esting, will be brought before you by Mr. Barlow. These were 

 two of the portions of mechanics the earliest speculated upon, 

 and in them the latest speculators have as yet advanced little 

 beyond the views of the earliest. 



