153 MISCELLANEOUS SELECTIONS. THE rapidly improving taste for literature and science, and the consequent efforts to cultivate them in our country, are among the most gratifying indications of its general advancement in whatever can give strength, felicity, and true glory to a nation. An evidence of that taste and those efforts is afforded by the increase of our literary and philosophical societies. These establishments, arising from the love of learning, become themselves a new cause for promoting it, and increase the source from which they spring. They answer besides several other useful and agreeable purposes. They offer refined relaxation to professional men: they provide congenial company and interesting conversation for persons who are devoted to study; and they enable those who aspire to advance the sciences and extend the bounds of human knowledge, to conduct their inquiries with greater facility and make their experiments upon a larger scale.. The National Institute of France and the London Institution, are illustrious examples of what may be accomplished by means of such establishments. From the rich materials for observation which those societies provided, and the clusters of genius they collected together, have emanated some of the noblest inventions and discoveries, which have ever benefited or delighted the world: inventions which enable man to subdue, restrain, or render subservient to his own use, the most dangerous and apparently the most uncontrollable powers of nature: discoveries which develop and explain the wonderful mechanism of the movements of the celestial bodies; discoveries at which even their authors look back with astonishment, and the contemplation of which almost induces ordinary men to doubt of their own mortality, and claim kindred with a divine nature. We should not be surprised that such institutions have been made the object of foolish ridicule; nor should we be deterred from the attempt to emulate them because their proceedings are sometimes aped and burlesqued by ignorant and presuming people, who having nothing else to do, give themselves some scientific nickname, and meet to talk of the weather, and make ludicrously solemn faces at each other. We have been led to these reflections by the re-perusal of Mr. Elliott's admirable address to the Philosophical Society of South Carolina. It was briefly noticed in our number for February last, (p. 187) but we are persuaded that most of our readers will be gratified to have it entire; for although it was delivered so long ago as the month of August, 1814, we apprehend it is yet but little known beyond the state in which it was first published. The correct, enlarged, and liberal scientific views; the practical good sense, the unaffected modesty, (not always a characteristic of philosophers,) and the excellent style of writing which it exhibits, do honour not only to the author, but to the society in which he presides, and the community by which it is patronised. It would, we think, be desirable that all the addresses and other communications made to such societies should be first printed in separate pamphlets; from which selections should be made in due time of such as were worthy of being preserved in their proceedings. A printed paper is more easily examined, and more justly appreciated than the best written manuscript. Public opinion would aid those who were entrusted to make the selections, and friendly criticism might enable the authors of the chosen productions to correct and improve them. The records of these societies might thus be kept clear from rubbish; an article of which a very large proportion has been sometimes admitted into the works of very learned bodies. We should regret exceedingly to find any thing of this kind bound up along with Mr. Elliott's discourse: If the Society of South Carolina will exclude from their philosophical compilations, whatever is not worthy of being placed beside that production, they may not indeed publish often, but their volumes will rank among the most distinguished records of science. An address to the Literary and Philosophical Society of South Carolina: by Stephen Elliott, Esq. President of the Society. GENTLEMEN. In obedience to the appointment of the society, I rise to address you; and little as I may have merited the honour you have conferred upon me, I should feel still more unworthy if I permitted the calls of business, or private avocations, to excuse me from the performance of any duty you may impose upon me, however imperfectly the execution may answer your expectations or my own wishes. In associating to prosecute and encourage literary and philosophical pursuits, you have given a testimony of your respect for science, and of your desire to render an important service to your country; of your wish to promote researches which give dignity to individual reputation, and are eminently calculated to advance public welfare, to multiply national resources, and to elevate national character. In the prosecution of this design let us add zeal to knowledge, and perseverence to enterprize. In the early dawn of science in modern Europe, literary and scientific societies began to flourish, and with the increasing day they have continued to multiply. Men of science have every where been eager to encourage their forination; nations have sometimes considered them an ornament and a benefit. Their uses are important and diversified. Not designed to form theories, to establish or support particular systems, either in science or in art; it has been their more humble province to collect the scattered and fading rays of philosophic light, to record detached and isolated facts, to encourage the pursuit and investigation of truth, to give to science popularity, to draw the human mind, if possible, from the trivial and often unworthy inquiries of momentary interest or passion, and to afford the friends and cultivators of literature and philosophy some point of union and of concert. It is not easy, now, to determine how much these associations have aided the improvement of civilized society, or added by their labours and researches to the mass of human knowledge. Their task has been to collect the stone, the mortar, and the block, with which the future architect may rear his edifice, and like the workmen of the quarry, although their individual labours may be unnoticed or hidden in the finished structure, yet, have they, nevertheless, essentially contributed to its solidity or magnificence. In Europe, where the pursuit of science has long been a cherished and a fashionable occupation, and where the number of literary and scientific men has become so great as almost to crowd and jostle on the road, societies have been formed to promote the study of each distinct branch of knowledge: but with us it has been deemed advisable to unite in one society all who should be willing to associate in our labours; while by arranging our members into different classes, and assigning to each class distinct and determinate objects, each individual will find himself co-operating with associates, having common views and occupations. On this occasion it will not, perhaps, be an inappropriate theme, to recal to your remembrance, and to present to public view, the great objects of our association, and after passing briefly in review the arrangements of the society, after faintly delineating their extent and magnitude, to offer some general observations on their ultimate importance and value. I feel that this sketch will be drawn with a weak and unsteady hand. To few has it been given to view the extended field of science with strong and distinct vision, to portray each separate compartment in colours at once lu minous and true; nor will time permit me to do more than merely to point out the extent and importance of our pursuits, their influence on individual character, and on national prosperity. The objects to which the society has deemed it advisable to direct the attention of its members, have been distributed into the following classes: 1. MATHEMATICS AND MECHANICAL PHILOSOPHY. The mathematics form one of the great foundations of science; in their first elements an attainment of indispensible necessity to society, in their higher branches distinguished for the sublimity of their views, and the extent and utility of their application. This science is peculiarly the science of truth, no doubt hangs upon its processes, no uncertainty attends its result. Whatever relates to number, to proportion, to magnitude, it exclusively comprehends. All the branches of mechanical philosophy, mechanics, optics, hydrodynamics, astronomy, are but illustrations of its principles in the wonderful diversity in which they are applicable to matter when in motion or at rest. Armed with its intelligence, man reduces to system the extended movements of the universe, reduces to order the erratic marches of the planets, brings to measurement their distances, their magnitude, their density, their velocity; explains their apparent irregularities and eccentricities, calculates and determines the all-pervading power of gravitation, numbers the stars in the firmament, and metes out the limits of the constellation. The mathematics give to geography its precision, and of course all its value; they point out to the mariner his track on the pathless ocean, to the traveller his road through the untrodden wilderness, to the miner his rout in his subterranean journey. Many of the arts of civil life, architecture, civil, naval and hydraulic, fortification, surveying, navigation, depend exclusively on their assistance, and most of the machinery that gives to man such stupendous power is formed and guided by their principles. Without their aid, society itself, like some neglected column, or tower, like Palmyra or Babylon, would moulder into ruin. In the investigation of mathematical and geometrical truths, some of the most profound and sublime efforts of the human intellect have been displayed. Yet, after all that has been accomplished, this science is not exhausted; even in that field which has been explored by the great minds of a Euclid, an Archimedes, a Copernicus, a Kepler, a Leibnitz, a Newton, a Euler, a La Place, there remain many hidden truths. Discoveries still due to genius, merited rewards for labour. And in the application of mathema tics to the pursuits and occupations of man, to mechanics, to machinery, to the arts, the limits are perhaps interminable. II. CHEMISTRY, INCLUDING ELECTRICITY, GALVANISM AND MI NERALOGY. No science is so intimately connected with the pursuits of man, or mingles so extensively with his occupations, as chemistry. It embraces the whole range of created nature, it comprehends in its.researches, all substances animate or inanimate: it explores their elementary principles, it unfolds their combinations, it traces their affinities, it ascertains the result of new associations, new combinations. In every employment we feel its influence or want its aid. Most of our arts and manufactures have their foundations in the principles of chemistry, or are guided and enlightened in their progress by chemical researches. In our food, in our medicine, in our clothes, in the decorations of our houses, we trace its operations. The processes of the dyer, the painter, the gilder, the glass maker, the potter, the tanner, the distiller, the brewer, the baker, are purely chemical; and metallurgy, which extracts the metals from their earths and ores, and gives to man these instruments of power, exhibits one of the triumphs of chemistry. Gunpowder, which has made so great a revolution in military science, and changed the whole artillery of war, is a chemical compound. The power of steam is generated, guided and governed by chemical processes, while the application of its gigahtic force is left to mechanical arrangement. Chemistry ascertains the nature and properties of those airs or gases, which exist in the atmosphere, and perhaps pervade all nature; it analyses the composition of the atmosphere and endeavours to elucidate its changes. Hence those modifications of the air, which constitute the science of meteorology, the result of combinations of the gaseous fluids, varied probably by electric and magnetic influence, become objects of chemical inquiry. Electricity, from its influence on the atmosphere, from the impossibility of reducing its laws to mathematical calculation, and from its general effects on chemical analysis and combination has been referred to this class. With it has also necessarily been connected galvinism. This wonderful modification of electricity, whose very existence is a late discovery, and whose prodigious effects have been but recently made known, has now become one of the most powerful re-agents of chemistry. No discovery in very recent days has opened so new and extensive a field of experiment, as the voltaic, or galvanic battery, nor one which has excited more general or anxious inquiry. It had long been doubted whether the earths and alkalis, as known to us, were simple elementary substances. While some were thought to have affinities to the acids, others where supposed to consist either of elements still more simple and which had not yet been detected, or to be the oxyds of unknown metals. Galvinism has partly |