, 246 



can alone ensure their accomplishment, are comparatively 

 humble. They are patient labor and sober thought ; these 

 each of you can give, and with these every thing can be ac- 



Since this address was delivered, I have met with the follow- 

 ing passage in Dr. Young's lectures, deUvered at the Royal 

 Institution of Great Britain, which affords a proof that the 

 assertion made in page 233, of our own country, is true also 

 in England : 



*' We may also be able to render an important service to socie- 

 ty, and to confer a still more essential benefit on individuals, by re- 

 pressing the premature zeal of unskilful inventors. We need only 

 read over the monthly accounts of patents intended for securmg 

 the pecuniary advantages of useful discoveries, in order to be con- 

 vinced what expense of time and fortune is continually lavished on 

 the feeblest attempts to innovate and improve. If v/e can be suc- 

 cessful in convincing such inconsiderate enthusiasts of their real 

 ignorance, or if we can show them, that even their own fairy 

 ground has been preoccupied, we may save them from impending 

 ruin, and may reUeve the public from the distraction of having its 

 attention perpetually excited by unworthy objects. The ridicule 

 attendant upon the name of a projector, has been in general but 

 too well deserved ; for few. very few, who have aspired at iraprove- 

 mfint. have ever had the patience to submit their inventions to such 

 ts as common sense would suggest to an impartial 

 may venture to affirm, that out of every hundred 

 of fancied improvements in arts or in machines, ninety at least, if 

 not ninety-nine, are either old or useless: the object of our re- 

 searches is, to enable ourselves to distinguish and to adopt the 

 hundredth. But while we prune the luxuriant shoots of youthful 

 invention, we must remember to perform our task with leniency, 

 iind to show that we wish only to give additional vigor to the health- 

 ful hranches, and not to extirpate the parent plant." 



