BRITISH ASSOCIATION.- 1835 . 
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transient, but abiding : these influences will be with us long; 
let us hope that they w T ill never leave us : they will cheer, they 
will animate us still, when this brilliant week is over ; they 
will go with us to our separate abodes, will attend us on our 
separate journeys; and whether the mathematician's study, 
or the astronomer’s observatory, or the chemist’s laboratory, or 
some rich distant meadow, unexplored as yet by botanists, or 
some untrodden mountain top, or any of the other haunts and 
homes and oracular places of science, be our allotted place of 
labour till we meet together again, I am persuaded that those 
influences will operate upon us all, that we shall all remember 
this our present meeting, and look forward with joyful expec¬ 
tation to our next reassembling, and by the recollection and 
the hope be stimulated and supported.’’ 
Highly, however, and justly as we prize the social and sym¬ 
pathetic ardour of mind which these meetings spontaneously 
produce, we must not confine our views to this object in such a 
manner as to propose to dispense with more direct endea¬ 
vours to effect the advancement of science. On this subject 
some remarks were offered by Mr. Harcourt, at the close of 
his statement of the Recommendations of the Committee and 
of the appropriation of certain sums to scientific purposes. 
After adverting to some remarkable instances which had 
come to his knowledge of the actual effect of these meetings 
in awaking the dormant spirit of science, and enumerating 
among the indirect benefits that arise from them the means 
which they supply to persons whose merits have been ob¬ 
scured by accidental circumstances, of vindicating their own 
rightful claims, and of repelling that false and partial criti¬ 
cism by which genius had in former days been too often de¬ 
pressed, he proceeded to say, “ After all, every important 
advantage which these meetings possess, and, above all, the 
maintenance in them of the true principles and character of 
philosophical investigation, will entirely depend on the con¬ 
tinued presence and concurrence of the master-spirits of 
science ; and it must be remembered that these are the per¬ 
sons whose attendance, from the value of their time, it is 
most difficult to secure. From the first commencement of 
the Association I have always held that there is but one mo¬ 
tive strong enough to tear those persons from their retire¬ 
ments and to bind them to these annual meetings. If you 
here offer to them the direct and acknowledged means of ad¬ 
vancing the science to which they are attached, if you assist 
the astronomer in effecting the reduction of the elements of 
his calculations, if you establish for the meteorologist a 
system of conjoint and extended observations from which the 
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