250 
SIR RODERICK I. MURCHISON’S ADDRESS. [May 24, 1858. 
given encouragement to science, and wlien I was one of the few 
men who assembled at York to support the scheme suggested by 
Sir D. Brewster, and worked into an efficient system by my en- 
lightened friend William Vernon Harcourt, Lord Fitzwilliam, in 
describing the benefits to be expected from the institution of the 
British Association for the Advancement of Science, over the first 
meeting of which he presided, thus spoke : “I hope that the meet- 
ings thus auspiciously begun, will rapidly advance to still greater im- 
portance, and become the source of incalculable advantage to science 
hereafter. In addition to other more direct benefits, I hope they 
will be the means of impressing on the Government of this country 
the conviction, that the love of scientific pursuits and the means of 
pursuing them are not confined to the metropolis ; and I hope that 
when the Government is fully impressed with the knowledge of the 
great desire entertained to promote science in every part of the 
empire, they will see the necessity of affording it due encouragement, 
and of giving every proper stimulus to its advancement.” 
The death of this good and patriotic nobleman was as deeply de- 
plored by all those persons of the upper and middle classes who 
partook of his widely-spread hospitality, as by the masses of the 
people, of whom he was the ardent friend and protector. 
The life of Lieut. J. Baptiste Holman, well known under the 
name of the “Blind Traveller,” was a special illustration of the pursuit 
of knowledge under apparently insurmountable difficulties. At the 
age of twenty-five he was obliged to leave the naval service, a pro- 
fession of which his active mind and singular aptitude for the acqui- 
sition of practical information would have rendered him a distin- 
guished ornament. The illness which ended in the total deprivation 
of sight resulted from the anxious discharge of his professional 
duties. At first some hope was entertained that his sight would be 
preserved, but when at length it became certain that there was no 
prospect of recovering the power of vision, his resolution to adapt 
himself to these distressing circumstances showed at once that 
mental courage which was afterwards so remarkably developed. 
The appointment as a Naval Knight of Windsor seemed to afford an 
easy retreat from turmoil to a person in his circumstances. But 
the seclusion of Travers College was ill-suited for his anxious mind ; 
and his bodily health also suffering from that routine life, he ob- 
tained permission to travel. His first journey, made in the years 
1819, 1820, and 1821, was through France, Italy, Switzerland, and 
parts of Germany bordering on the Rhine, Holland, and the 
