CLOSING ADDRESS, 
BY THE 
HON. JOHN C. SPENCER. 
Gentlemen: The time has arrived when the friends of science who attended in 
this city on the invitation of the National Institute, are about to separate from 
those whom they have so kindly visited. The delightful intercourse of mind, and 
the exchanges of intelligence, which have been so vigorously maintained for the last 
week, are now to be suspended—wo hope not terminated. Personal acquaintances 
have been formed, calculated to promote mutual respect and good will, which will 
guide its future correspondence between gentlemen engaged in kindred pursuits; 
and it is hoped that all will feel invigorated in their efforts for the promotion and 
diffusion of science. 
In behalf of the committee appointed by the National Institute to arrange the 
literary and scientific meetings which are now to close, I tender the thanks of that 
body, and I venture to say the thanks of the gratified audiences who have heard 
the learned, able, interesting, and valuable papers which have been read, to the 
gentlemen who have prepared and furnished them. The doubts which hung over 
the inception of the plan for these meetings have been dissipated, and the ability 
of our country to exhibit an array of learning, of scientific enterprise, and of talent, 
in all respects creditable, has been established. 
The confidence inspired by such a result will secure for future assemblages of 
a similar description, a great increase in the attendance of the literary and scien¬ 
tific men of the United States, while those who shall invite and organize them, 
will be enabled, by the experience they have had, to supply any omissions, and pre¬ 
vent any irregularities that may have attended this first experiment. 
We expect not to compete with the learned men of Europe in the exhibition of 
scientific attainment. We are too well aware of the demands of our new country 
for what is of immediate, direct, and practical utility—of the want of that leisure 
which wealth confers, and of those appliances, books, apparatus, museums, galle* 
ries, which national munificence and private liberality provide in other countries 
for the destitute sons of genius. We are too well aware of these and other causes 
operating to our disadvantage, to challenge comparison with the literary and scien¬ 
tific associations of the Old World. But we know also that to enterprise and per¬ 
severance there are no barriers but those which nature itself prescribes ; that by 
mutual conference and combined effort we can strengthen each other’s hands, warm 
each other’s hearts, and brighten each other’s hopes ; and that by patient and mo¬ 
dest investigation we may largely increase the stock of American contributions to 
the world’s treasury of useful facts, original inventions, and discoveries of new 
applications of science to the purposes of civilized life. 
In this hope we met; may I not say in this confirmed conviction we separate ? 
In closing these delightful meetings, and in bidding our guests an affectionate 
farewell, I would invoke upon our cause, and upon all who engage in it, the bless¬ 
ing of that gracious Being whose works we study, whose goodness we adore, and 
without whose favor all our labors are vain. 
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