Proceedings of the British Association. 593 



falls too faintly on my ear to allow me to join in the service of the 

 altar. The pile is a vast one ; but who shall live to pronounce it com- 

 plete? New edifices are daily arising round the central structure. 

 Many a shaft remains to be polished, and many a capital to be 

 elaborated into new forms of fitness and of beauty. The architects, I 

 know, are at work. I hear with you the clink of the towel and the 

 hammer. The builder is busy on the ground from which Bacon cleared 

 the rubbish of centuries, and shaped the vast esplanade, the Moriah 

 of philosophy, into a fit foundation for the subsequent erections of 

 Newton and others. All this is going on, — I may and do congratulate 

 you on the fact; but it is not for me to describe and particularize the 

 progress of the labour. This will be done by the builders themselves 

 in those sectional departments into which they have divided them- 

 selves. There the geologist will teach and learn the results of recent 

 research and adventurous travel. Mr. Lyell is still, I believe, pur- 

 suing his investigations in the distant regions of the new World, but 

 Mr. Murchison is returned rich with the results of his exploration of 

 an interesting portion of the Old, and to tell you how highly and how 

 justly such objects and such labours as his have been appreciated, how 

 honourably to himself they have been assisted and promoted by the 

 sovereign of those vast domains. With the political nature or extent 

 of that sovereign's power we have here nothing to do. Quid bellicosus 

 Cantaber aut Scythes cogitet is no subject for our thoughts or disquisi- 

 tions ; but his liberal appreciation of science, as evinced in the recent 

 case of my friend Mr. Murchison, is worthy of our warmest acknow- 

 ledgments; and I trust that those distinguished men among his sub- 

 jects who have honoured us with their presence on this occasion will 

 bear back to him evidence of the fact, that the followers of science in 

 England duly appreciate his conduct towards their countrymen. You 

 will learn in those Sections through what new channels the electrical 

 inquirer has directed the fluid which Franklin snatched from Heaven, 

 into what shapes, and what service, the grasp of science has compelled 

 the imponderable Proteus it is his mission to enslave, to his bidding. 

 The communication and the discussion of these past achievements, the 

 suggestions of new methods and branches of inquiry which spring from 

 such discussion, are among the main purposes of our meeting, and the 

 volumes of this Society's Transactions bear ample witness to their ac- 

 complishment. We have, indeed, no longer to deal with conjecture 

 in this respect ; we have no longer an estimate to show, but an ac- 

 count, a profit, and a dividend. It was well for the originators of this 

 Society to enter into calculations of prospective advantages, to fore- 



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