INTRODUCTORY LECTURE. 275 
to US, yet in its interior arrangement, in the manner and 
proportion in which its integrant particles are united, there 
is as much symmetry, harmony, and regularity of proportion, 
as in the most finished architectural structure that art can 
design or erect. 
How great, then, must be the interest inspired by the study 
of a science, which is capable of unfolding the beauty and 
regularity concealed in the rugged mass of granite lying in 
the quarry; and with what intense anxiety must the experi- 
menter watch a process that is about to develope some new 
revelation of an unknown reality, crowning, perhaps, the 
pyramid which he has erected upon the basis of observations 
acquired during years of previous toil! Numerous are the 
instances in which a general principle has required a century 
for its development. Facts have accumulated upon facts, and 
been regarded as mere isolated entities, until a master spirit 
has arisen, at whose command they have all arranged them- 
selves in order; apparent incongruities reconciled themselves, 
and a law whose existence has been coeval with the creation 
of the world, been adduced, to the astonishment of those who 
had never conceived the possibility of its existence. 
The discovery of the laws regulating the formation of com- 
pounds from their simple elements, was of this character. Vari- 
ousfacts respecting compound substanceshad been observed and 
recorded; speculations had been entered into respecting the 
causes of the phenomena observed ; additional facts were 
accumulated, when soon after the commencement of the pre- 
sent century, the genius of Dalton conceived the idea of 
arranging all these phenomena, and deducing from them the 
circumstances under which they were exhibited; happily 
for the science, his effort was successful. He succeeded in 
demonstrating, that these combinations were perfect harmony 
and order themselves ; that the measure of their proportions 
could easily be ascertained, and that when ascertained, could 
be applied as the measure of all future combinations of the 
same elements. 
A Saxon chemist had previously shown the positive identity 
