"Although I will not admit that there is a single citizen within the limits of Virginia more desirous than I am to domesticate here every thing needful to the well being of the state, yet I neither consider many of what are called modern improvements as coming within this description, nor do I regard it as wise to attempt such domestication prematurely. It is among the wise dispensations of Providence, that all things really necessary to man are placed within the grasp of every community composed of men, and that much of what is not necessary, but convenient only, is of easy acquisition in every civilized society. But when you ascend higher in the scale, and seek to teach or to learn all the sublime and long hidden truths of modern science, it is perhaps fortunate for our race that there are not many any where who feel the inclination to become scholars, and very few indeed who are qualified to teach such lessons. Such science may truly say she is of no country; for no single country on the habitable globe could fill the chairs of the instructers, or the forms of the pupils. Accident generally lays the foundation of such seminaries, and the contributions of the civilized world are required to erect and preserve the edifice. Does any country grudge to pay her quota to the common stock, or seek to pluck from the wing of science the particular feather which such country may claim as her own?--each will do so in its turn--and the bird which might have soared to a sightless height, when stripped of its plumage, will but flutter on the surface, unable to wing her way on high." Now we confess that we do not understand to our entire satisfaction this extract from the report. The figure of the bird with the plucked plumage, neither strikes us as in very good taste nor very intelligible; but as we have more to do with his Excellency's arguments than his rhetoric, we shall leave the latter to those who are better skilled than we are in following "the mazes of metaphorical confusion." The governor proceeds: "If this is the case with science, in what may now be considered its higher departments, how much stronger is the appeal humanity makes in favor of benevolence and christian charity. These are of no country, certainly. They but sojourn on earth, teaching frail man to do his duty to his maker, in providing for the wants of his unfortunate fellows, so far as is practicable. To them it must be of little consequence indeed, whether the mute by nature is made a rational being by arts employed in his education, either in one place or another. So far as regards the unfortunate mute, the only inquiry is, where can he be best taught? The only inquiry of the benevolent ought to be, where can he be so taught at the least cost? This last is an inquiry suggested not less by benevolence than the former; for as the means of even charity are necessarily limited, that application of them is best which promises to do the greatest good with the least expenditure.