28 



before be proceeds with his course. But the tower still 

 rises, and already the morning sun gilds its topmost layer 

 with the glory of a grander civilization than earth has 

 ever known, sustained by true science and ennobled by 

 free religion. It will yet higher rise for no Babel tower 

 is this, even though dogmatists in theology or science 

 howl and chatter about its base in all the jargons known 

 to philology or commerce ; — slowly, it may be, as the 

 islands rose out of the sea in the upheaval's geology tells 

 of — vet as surely ; and ages hence no doubt marine fos- 

 sils will be found upon its top, and clinging to its sides, 

 far above their native beds. The use of fossils is one of 

 the most fortunate discoveries of 'our era, — thanks to 

 da Vinci and Lamark. Many a mollusk and many a man 

 has been of great service in that shape, whose particular 

 object in existence had previously been a profound 

 mystery. 



We glory in the advance of science and we glorify 

 ourselves thereat, prone to forget the numerous fanciful, 

 plausible, yet preposterous hypotheses which learning has 

 introduced into the world ;— which have lived out a gen- 

 eration, been condemned, consigned to unhonored graves 

 and forgotten. All the patent offices and museums of the 

 world would not hold the models of abandoned and ex- 

 ploded theories which promised to immortalize their au- 

 thors and revolutionize the nations. All of his knowl- 

 edge did not prevent Liebnitz, the great physicist and 

 mathematician, from trying to form an universal alpha- 

 bet with algebraic signs instead of syllables and words. 

 The philosopher Locke, so far in advance of his time, con- 

 structed a model government for North Carolina which, 

 like many other ideal republics, proved to be a most vis- 

 ionary and impracticable scheme. How many inven- 

 tions for securing perpetual motion, getting power out of 

 one end of a machine without putting it into the other, 

 have deluded their builders. 



Yet many a seeker for perpetual motion has stumbled 

 on a valuable labor saver, as many a hunter for gold has 

 found a more valuable mineral. Chemistrv descended from 



