“In every part of the world manufactures made from the mere clay and pebbles of your soil may be found; and to what is this owing? To chemical arts and experiments. You have excelled all other people in the products of industry. But why? Because you have assisted industry by science. Do not regard as indifferent what is your true and greatest glory. Except in these respects, and in the light of a pure system of faith, in what are you superior to Athens or to Rome? Do you carry away from them the palm in literature and the fine arts? Do you not rather glory, and justly too, in being, in these respects, their imitators? Is it not demonstrated by the nature of your system of public education, and by your popular amusements? In what, then, are you their superiors? In every thing connected with physical science; with the experimental arts. These are your characteristics. Do not neglect them. You have a Newton, who is the glory, not only of your own country, but of the human race. You have a Bacon, whose precepts may still be attended to with advantage. Shall Englishmen slumber in that path which these great men have opened, and be overtaken by their neighbours? Say, rather, that all assistance shall be given to their efforts; that they shall be attended to, encouraged, and supported.” On a subsequent occasion, when the subjugation of Europe was threatened by the restless military spirit of France, he thus dilated upon the influence of experimental philosophy in strengthening the desire for rational freedom:-- “The scientific glory of a country may be considered, in some measure, as an indication of its innate strength. The exaltation of reason must necessarily be connected with the exaltation of the other noble faculties of the mind; and there is one spirit of enterprise, vigour, and conquest, in science, arts, and arms. “Science for its progression requires patronage,--but it must be a patronage bestowed, a patronage received, with dignity. It must be preserved independent. It can bear no fetters, not even fetters of gold, and least of all those fetters in which ignorance or selfishness may attempt to shackle it.