115 



has engaged the labours of but few persons, but that all great 



discovery, all brilliant result, all actual advance, has been the 

 product of their spontaneous and unpurchased zeal. In mo- 

 dern times, and since the natural sciences have been cultiva- 

 ted by the methods of true philosophy, profound investigation 

 and discovery have been pursued and wrought out in a great 

 degree by individuals attached to learned institutions;* these 

 institutions having, for the most part, one of these two objects 

 in view; either directly the cultivation of learning by the mem- 

 bers as a substantive business, and the publication of the re- 

 sults of their labors, in the manner of the Royal Society of 

 England, or their design has been instruction to resident scho- 

 lars, as in the colleges and universities in Europe and in our 

 own country. Sometimes, however, both objects have been 

 united, if not at the beginning, in the progress of their ex- 

 istence, as in the instance of the academies at Paris and Berlin. 



But attached or not, to learned associations, deep and suc- 

 cessful study has always resulted from the natural and resist- 

 less promptings of individual mind, impelling to severe and al- 

 most superhuman effort, in a sphere quite above any assumed 

 or assigned range of private or professorial duty. It has been 

 effort which princes have not been rich enough to purchase, 

 and which principalities and powers have not been able to re- 

 press. Let gentlemen pass the field in review before the mind, 

 and they will satisfy themselves that this remark is of almost 

 universal truth and application. 



See how it has been with Astronomy. Copernicus was a 

 Doctor of Medicine at Cracow, and went into voluntary exile 

 in Italy for many years, becoming a student at Bologna and 

 a professor at Rome, that he might prepare himself to bring 

 out his system. Kepler was the recipient of imperial favors, 

 in the form of appointments to professorships, but war and bi- 

 gotry cheated him of his salaries, and he was forced to study 

 and practise physic for his hvelihood, while actually engaged 

 in prescribing laws for the courses of the planets. And not to 



