Page:The open Polar Sea- a narrative of a voyage of discovery towards the North pole, in the schooner "United States" (IA openpolarseanarr1867haye).pdf/503



It is not needful that I should here demonstrate the advantages to be derived from a continuation of the line of exploration which I have indicated;—the age in which we live has too much profited by researches into every department of science, which, not immediately prosecuted with the view to practical advantage, have, by a steady enlargement of the boundaries of human knowledge, promoted the interests of commerce, of navigation, of the arts, and of every thing which concerns the convenience and the comfort and the well-being of mankind. In truth, civilization has profited most by those discoveries which possessed at the outset only an abstract value, and excited no interest beyond the walls of the academy. The vast system of steam communication, which weaves around the world its endless web of industry, began in the apparently useless experiments of a thoughtful boy with the lid of his mother's tea-kettle; that wonderful net-work of wires which spreads over the continents and underlies the seas, and along which the thoughts of men fly as with the wings of light, results from the accidental touching of two pieces of metal in the mouth of Volta; the lenses of the mammoth telescope of Lord Rosse, which reduced to practical uses the celestial mechanism, came from observing the magnifying powers of a globule of water; the magnetic needle which guides the navies of the world to their distant destinations, succeeds the casual contact of a piece of loadstone and a bit of steel: everywhere, indeed, we witness the same constant growth from what seemed unprofitable beginnings;—the printing-press, the loom, the art of solar painting, all sprang from the one same source,—from minds intent only upon interrogating Nature, and revealing her