philosophy; and if you attend to the science taught in them, you will find it vague, obscure, and full of erroneous notions. You will find in this early period of improvement branches of philosophy even applied to purposes of delusion; the most sublime of the departments of human knowledge--astronomy--abused by impostors, who from the aspect of the planetary world pretended to predict the fortunes and destinies of individuals. You will see in the laboratories alchemists searching for a universal medicine, an elixir of life, and for the philosopher's stone, or a method of converting all metals into gold; but unexpected and useful discoveries you will find, even in this age, arise amidst the clouds of deception and the smoke of the furnace. Delusion and error vanish and pass away, and truths seized upon by a few superior men become permanent, and the property of an enlightening world. Amongst the personages who belong to this early period, there are two whom I must request you to notice--one an Englishman, who pointed out the paths to the discovery of scientific truths, and the other a Tuscan, who afforded the happiest experimental illustrations of the speculative views of his brother in science. You will see academies formed a century later in Italy, France, and Britain, in which the sciences are enlarged by new and varied experiments, and the true system of the universe developed by an illustrious Englishman taught and explained. The practical results of the progress of physics, chemistry, and mechanics, are of the most marvellous kind, and to make them all distinct would require a comparison of ancient and modern states: ships that were moved by human labour in the ancient world are transported by the winds; and a piece of steel, touched by the magnet, points to the mariner his unerring course from the old to the new world; and by the exertions of one man of genius, aided by the resources of chemistry, a power, which by the old philosophers could hardly have been imagined, has been generated and applied to almost all the machinery of active life; the steam-engine performs not only the labour of horses, but of man, by combinations which appear almost possessed of intelligence; waggons are moved by it, constructions made, vessels caused to perform voyages in opposition to wind and tide, and a power placed in human hands which seems almost unlimited. To these novel and still extending improvements may be added others, whish, though of a secondary kind, yet materially affect the comforts of life, the collecting from fossil materials the elements of combustion, and applying them so as to illuminate, by a single operation, houses, streets, and even cities. If you look to the results of chemical arts you will find new substances of the most extraordinary nature applied to various novel purposes; you will find a few experiments in electricity leading to the marvellous result of disarming the thunder-cloud of its terrors, and you