INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS. 
275 
many instances of students who, whilst conducting themselves with general 
and ostensible propriety, have failed to take the position foreshadowed by 
the earlier portion of their course, through disregard of the proper relation 
of amusement to study. We need not wonder that this has been so, for 
ability to withstand the attraction of pursuits innocent in themselves, im¬ 
plies an amount of self-denial which mental discipline alone can give, but we 
may draw from it the reiterated warning that things intrinsically harmless 
become a snare in proportion to their seductive influence on the individual. 
But if this light sort of amusement is to absorb so small a fraction of the 
time not occupied under the direct supervision of teachers, how is the re¬ 
mainder to be employed ? When the mind has about it the vigour of youth, 
change of occupation is of itself relaxation. Each of you desires to be some¬ 
thing more than a mere chemist and druggist,—to take a position in society 
quite apart from that gained by technical ability. This is what must be kept 
in view in determining the employment of your leisure. As far as opportu¬ 
nities permit, cultivate a taste for literature and general science. A fair 
knowledge of our English classics, is, at the present day, almost essential to 
one laying any claim to a respectable education, and assuredly there is no 
mental training, except the direct observation of the works of God, that is at 
once so varied, so ennobling, and so instructive, as that to be derived from 
the writings bequeathed to us by the great men whose inner life they portray. 
Of the cultivation of scientific tastes, or rather of those departments of sci¬ 
ence which depend on the direct observation of natural objects and pheno¬ 
mena, I hesitate to speak, for I have before me the words of Sir Philip 
Sydney, in the introduction to his ‘ Apologie for Poetrie ’—“ Selfe-loue is 
better than any guilding to make that seeme gorgious v:herein our selues are 
parties and I dare only urge what I have to say, in so far as it is a well- 
supported testimony, not on the ground I should have preferred—that of per¬ 
sonal experience. 
I will not allude in any prominent manner to botany, for in some of its many 
bearings it will, happily, form a part of your daily work ; and its claims as 
a study and a recreation have been alike ably set forth on many occasions, by 
one who will not fail to present them to you in their clearest light. I owe too 
much to the teaching of Professor Bentley to dare to follow him in an expo¬ 
sition of the advantages to be derived from the pursuits with which he has 
identified himself. I wish now to take a far wider ground, and without in¬ 
dicating any individual group of created things, as more worthy than the rest 
of loving regard and intelligent observation, I would only urge a general 
claim on their behalf. The advantage of employing some part of your 
leisure time on subjects collateral with those which occupy you in class, is 
even greater than might be looked for. The history of the animal and 
mineral kingdoms cannot be unimportant in its bearing on the branches of 
science which occupy the chief part of your attention. Zoology has the 
closest relationship to botany, mineralogy to chemistry, and if denied the 
opportunity of pursuing either line of observation in the field, there is still 
left for you the microscope, which, from the most accessible materials, will 
open to you a new world of wonder and delight, and one which will lead you, 
as you become adepts in what Schleiden calls the “ art of seeing,” to those 
still too little-cultivated departments of research,—micro-chemistry and micro- 
pharmacy. 
The additions you may thus make to your store of facts are of themselves 
valuable; but far more so is the interest awakened by a voluntary pursuit of 
this sort. It is a ray of sunshine which soon spreads beyond its first narrow 
range, till it brightens even those dull chapters which are inevitable portions 
of all routine study. 
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