306 INDUSTRIAL MUSEUMS IS THEIR 



every side infant sciences of giant blood have grown before our eyes 

 into a stately adolescence, which, but that we anticipate for them a 

 protracted old age, we should style a grave maturity. Since 1800, great 

 chemists have arisen in France, Germany, Italy, Scandinavia, England, 

 America, who have shown us, to the wondrous extent He has permitted 

 them to show, how God has weighed the mountains in scales, and the 

 hills in a balance ; and how we, as His children, reading His laws 

 impressed upon every thing He has made, may transmute air, earth, and 

 sea, into all that the body needs, or the senses, the intellect, and the 

 fancy require. Within the century great mechanicians have wrought 

 with a faith in God's laws which has enabled them to remove moun- 

 tains, to make hills valleys, and crooked places straight ; and though 

 they themselves perhaps did not always care for that, many have in 

 consequence run to and fro, and knowledge has increased. Within the 

 century, great geologists have opened up for us, and deciphered the 

 pages of that most ancient of books, in wdrich in primaeval lithography 

 is written, ages before Job annormced it — " Surely there is a vein for 

 silver, and a place for gold where they fine it. Iron is taken out of the 

 earth, and brass is molten out of the stone." Within the century, great 

 naturalists, patiently gazing with the eyes of genius when there was 

 light sufficient for illumination ; and, when all was dark, feeling about 

 with sensitive fingers, have caught the clues which lead into some of 

 the innermost recesses of living nature, and have brought us throivgh 

 what seemed hopeless labyrinths, face to face with the mysteries of 

 organic life, and shown us how to make practical application of the 

 open secret. 



I name no other class of philosophers. Those named may stand for 

 all. Throughout this century each of the physical sciences, moving 

 exultingly forward, has acted on all the other sciences, and been re- 

 acted on by them ; and together they have conspired to give indus- 

 trialists of every class a command over material nature, such as the 

 most sanguine of our forefathers did not hope to see attained, even after 

 the lapse of centuries. 



Side by side with all this, the moral earnestness of the community 

 has increasingly deepened. The slave has been set free. The liberties 

 of the people have been enlarged. The rights of conscience have 

 been day by day more respected. Feelings of mutual respect and 

 sympathy have been fostered among the different ranks of the nation, 

 and among the different nations of the world ; and "the breasts of all 

 thoughtful men have brimmed with gratefulness to God that he has 

 so long heard and answered their prayer — " Give peace in our time, 

 Lord !" 



The culmination of the star of peace, under which this progress 

 was made, marked the close of the half -century. In 1851 the monarch 

 of Modern Babylon wrote as did Nebuchadnezzar of old from his great 

 city beside the Euphrates: — "Victoria, the Queen, unto all people, 



