with information to appreciate their labors, and to throw off prejudices and break through established customs so far as to adopt in practice what speculation teaches will be useful. Many important discoveries made in preceding ages, when the mass of the people were sunk in ignorance, have been lost to us, because there was not that diffusion of information necessary for preserving and handing them down. It may be said that science has nothing to fear from such a state of things for the future, since the press and other means of diffusing information preclude all danger of any of its discoveries being lost. We readily admit the great advantages afforded by the press and the extensive intercourse between different parts of the world in preserving and transmitting knowledge. But how many discoveries which contained the germs of future {91} sciences have been made and neglected for the want of a proper depository in a cultivated and enlightened community? Scarcely a branch of science can be mentioned, in tracing the history of which, we cannot refer back to some neglected discovery which was its real origin. But neglect has not been the only impediment to the progress of science. The difficulties which the fathers of science had to contend with, in the prejudices of the people, at the revival of letters, are familiar to all. The propagation of the true doctrine of the solar system exposed Galileo to the persecution of the age in which he lived. Yes--not the illiterate only--the learned Cardinals of the seventeenth century (if they deserve the title of learned) compelled him, under pain of the awful terrors of the Inquisition, to abjure his conviction of the most sublime truth in science. And while Philosophy must drop a tear over this weakness in one of her most distinguished promoters, every friend of human happiness must regret that ignorance, or execrate that bigotry which could impose such degradation on one of the greatest geniuses of any age.