0 
14 
yet independent study, has enabled a Le Verrier and an 
Adams to herald the existence of new worlds undetected by 
the inquisitive astronomer, and of the patient meditations of 
other men who have spread out before him unimagined won¬ 
ders. Methods of treating abstruse topics are simplified ; 
improvements in the instruments to assist philosophical inves¬ 
tigation succeed each other to an extent which, while they 
excite a just admiration, hold out a belief that we are hovering 
on the threshold of more astoimding discoveries than any 
which have hitherto awed us by their sublimity or gratified us 
by the practical usefulness which has tended so extensively 
to the civilisation of mankind. 
And is it for us to lag behind in the race in which the sages 
of our time shew us such an example of diligence and acti¬ 
vity ? Is it to be said of us, the tenants of a portion of one 
of the grand divisions of the globe—a storehouse of unrevcaled 
mysteries—the theatre, we may presume, of future great 
actions—that we have no ambition but to vegetate on its 
surface, mere “ air plants, whose roots are the lungs,(as 
Novalis quaintly terms men) w'ithout even contributing our 
quota of information respecting those things daily exposed to 
the obserAung eye, or endeavouring to a%vaken an appreciation 
of their concert, or aspiring to add a sign to the zodiac of 
science } 
Are we to waste life in frivolity, or in occupations which, 
when we perish, will leave no memorial of even our own 
existence ; and allow our era to be cited as that of the Cim¬ 
merian obscurity of the Southern Hemisphere ? Are we to 
shrink from solving our portion of the great problem of truth, 
or is it apprehended that the grandeur of the theme should 
repulse us, that we should doubt our powers, distrust our 
endurance, and he fearful for our success ? 
Such timorous diffidence, such unworthy distriist is unbe¬ 
coming, and ought not to be sufiered to interpose the fluctu¬ 
ation of a wavering instant; and even were there grounds to 
apprehend a want of ^^gour to sustain this Institute, I would 
say, 
“ Yet where an equal poise of hope and fear 
Does arbitrate the event, my nature is 
That I incline to hope and not to fear." 
