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overcome another obstacle, formerly insuperable in aqueducts, when the 
head of the supply was too low ; as now, by the power of wind or steam, 
or water itself, a quantity of water can be elevated into reservoirs high 
enough and large enough to spread a sufficiency, both for ornament and 
use, over our most populous cities. The Fair Mount works at Phila- 
delphia, present one of the most beautiful specimens of this victory over 
natural difficulties, applying the principle on a most magnificent scale, 
which had, by science, been otherways used before, no less than since, 
to irrigate the banks of rivers, or raise water from the ocean into nume- 
rous vats to be evaporated into salt. But surpassing, in some respects, 
perhaps, all the monuments, as to hydraulics, of modem times, or even 
antiquity, whether in Egypt or Carthage, Greece or Italy, is the Croton 
aqueduct of the empire city of New York ; whether we look to its 
length, capacity, and expense, or consider that it is the enterprise of a 
single city, instead of a State or kingdom, and that it has been com- 
pleted, not by plunder or the forced toil of enslaved millions, but by the 
free will of free men, and by their own voluntary contributions and ob- 
ligations. The extensive use of science in canalling in this country, is 
another illustration of our great progress in the encouragement of it for 
practical objects. It is not merely the introduction of locks, instead of 
cranes and inclined planes, which has changed the whole aspect of ca- 
nals in modem times, from what it was in antiquity, or is now in China, 
though so long celebrated for its artificial aids to internal commerce. 
But, beside the great number here, what in length, and grandeur, and 
difficulty, are the eighty miles of Egyptian canal across the isthmus 
of Suez, or a few furlongs more of it, a century or two ago, through 
the swamps of Holland, compared with those uniting the Ohio with our 
inland seas, and the three or four hundred miles that wed the waters of 
the Atlantic with those of Lake Erie? And how strikingly does the last 
enterprise develope again the combined power of a few free people here, 
over the might of monarchies or despotisms elsewhere, even in matters 
requiring scientific exertion, when we behold this, emanating from only 
one State out of twenty-six in our youthful confederacy, and being the 
freewill undertaking of its masses ? 
The improvements in railroads among us, are another evidence of all 
these positions, and are full of hope for the cause of science, when use- 
fully directed. With what success has it enabled these roads to extend 
from the inclined plane of collieries and mines, not only over the level 
paths of the ancient Roman highways in England, but here to cut 
