It is true, these persons were guided by false views, yet they made most useful researches; and Lord Bacon has justly compared them to the husbandman who, searching for an imaginary treasure, fertilised the soil. They might likewise be compared to persons who, looking for gold, discover the fragments of beautiful statues, which separately are of no value, and which appear of little value to the persons who found them; but which, when selected and put together by artists and their defective parts supplied, are found to be wonderfully perfect and worthy of conservation. Look to the progress of the arts since they have been enlightened by a system of science, and observe with what rapidity they have advanced. Again, the steam-engine in its rudest form was the result of a chemical experiment; in its refined state it required the combinations of all the most recondite principles of chemistry and mechanics, and that excellent philosopher who has given this wonderful instrument of power to civil society was led to the great improvements he made by the discoveries of a kindred genius on the heat absorbed when water becomes steam, and of the heat evolved when steam becomes water. Even the most superficial observer must allow in this case a triumph of science, for what a wonderful impulse has this invention given to the progress of the arts and manufactories in our country, how much has it diminished labour, how much has it increased the real strength of the country! Acting as it were with a thousand hands, it has multiplied our active population; and receiving its elements of activity from the bowels of the earth, it performs operations which formerly were painful, oppressive, and unhealthy to the labourers, with regularity and constancy, and gives security and precision to the efforts of the manufacturer. And the inventions connected with the steam-engine, at the same time that they have greatly diminished labour of body, have tended to increase power of mind and intellectual resources. Adam Smith well observes that manufacturers are always more ingenious than husbandmen; and manufacturers who use machinery will probably always be found more ingenious than handicraft manufacturers. You spoke of porcelain as a result of accident; the improvements invented in this country, as well as those made in Germany and France, have been entirely the result of chemical experiments; the Dresden and the Sevres manufactories have been the work of men of science, and it was by multiplying his chemical researches that Wedgewood was enabled to produce at so cheap a rate those beautiful imitations which while they surpass the ancient vases in solidity and perfection of material, equal them in elegance, variety, and tasteful arrangement of their forms. In another department, the use of the electrical conductor was a pure scientific combination, and the sublimity of the discovery of the American philosopher was only equalled