In this country, should a father observe in his gifted son a tendency to physical philosophy, he anxiously endeavours to dissuade him from this career, knowing that not only will it tend to no worldly aggrandizement, but that it will have the inevitable effect of lowering his position in what is called, and justly called, good society--the society of the most highly educated classes. At one of our universities, physical science is utterly neglected; at the other, only certain branches of it are cultivated. There are, it is true, university professors of each branch of physics, some of whom are able to collect a moderate number of pupils; others are obliged to carry with them an assistant, to whom alone they lecture, as Dean Swift preached to his clerk. But what part of the regular academic education does the study of Natural Philosophy occupy? It forms no necessary part of the examinations for degrees; no credit is attached to those who excel in its pursuit; no prizes, no fellowships, no university distinction, conferred upon its most successful votaries. On the contrary, physical, or at all events experimental, science is tabooed; it is written down "snobbish," and its being so considered has much influence in making it so: the necessity of manipulation is a sad drawback to the gentlemanliness of a pursuit. Bacon rebuked this fastidiousness, but in vain. "We will, moreover, show those who, in love with contemplation, regard our frequent mention of experiments as something harsh, unworthy, and mechanical, how they oppose the attainment of their own wishes, since abstract contemplation, and the construction and invention of experiments, rest upon the same principles, and are brought to perfection in a similar manner."[19] [19] Impetus Philosophici, p. 681.