Page:Inaugural address, delivered before the members of the Victorian Institute, on Friday the 21st of September, 1854 (IA inauguraladdres00barr).pdf/17

13 kingdoms, ascending in unbroken series to man; whether we look around and behold the curious felicity of his inventive genius, through which he has gained a mastery over the resisting elements, the stubborn earth, the treacherous ocean, and made the explosive steam or the "thwart flame" of the "slant lightning" ministers obedient to his behests; or the perseverance of his unremitted toil by which he has reared in every zone monuments of his piety, his ambition, his ostentation; or the fertility of his aspiring ingenuity, by which he has increased his sources of comfort and encumbered the field of enjoyment with the prodigality of his luxury; or, finally, whether we cast our thoughts inward on ourselves, and consider the constitution and operations of the mind, the working of the passions, the sway of the affections, the faculties of the understanding, the dominion of the reason?

These afford themes which will for ever create fresh interest, for ever yield new gratification, for ever mock the efforts of the human race to exhaust them. From these, as the elegant relaxations of our prudently-husbanded vacation, we may harvest riches which neither birth nor fortune can confer, which neither poverty nor the vicissitudes of adversity can take away.

If it be necessary to adduce further reasons besides those indicating the good results expected to follow on the establishment of this Institute, let me call your attention to what is going on elsewhere, without the boundaries of our immediate range of action; amongst other nations with whom, in the charities of art, and the catholicity of science, we may claim kindred. Every department of philosophy is marching onward with gigantic steps, each stride elongated beyond the last! Every year teems with some new disclosure, respecting the phenomena of nature and the laws by which they are governed, While Humboldt, eminent for the remarkable diversity of his matured knowledge, is endeavouring to prepare his cosmical sketch of creation, he finds himself outstripped, and forced to pause that he may append by supplemental annotation to each part as it issues forth, the results of that inductive reasoning which, carried on by simultaneous