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mal creation. itself. The endless varieties of form, organizations, habits, instincts, food, and habitations, which it exhibits, constitute a subject for the full employment of a whole life. And if we may judge from the enthusiasm and cheerfulness of those who have devoted themselves to it, it is one of the most fascinating of pursuits. No man seems so entirely absorbed, so completely happy, as the practical naturalist. There is no province of nature which does not rivet his attention, and engross all his faculties. He watches with intense interest the sports of the monsters of the deep, he pursues the lion to his fastness, and the eagle to his cliff. The chirp of the bird has to him a meaning, and the bleached bones of the desert are, by his imagination, clothed again in flesh, and reassume the forms of which they once constituted an element.

This constitutes a world of

In this enumeration of the pleasing and the useful in natural science, chemistry should not be forgotten. Of old, chemistry was thought to be allied to magic, and the reasons why it was so, are more and more developed. It is, in fact, the master key by which man unlocks the mysteries of nature. Armed with this, he boldly enters the very laboratories where her most secret processes are carried on, and learns to investigate and imitate the means by which the most astonishing results are produced. He

decomposes and reconstructs the hardest and most refractory substances, and analyzes the most complex. The earthquake is only a

larger exhibition of a power, which the chemist every day produces, and he is able to imitate the might and the destruction of the bolt of heaven. Having rifled almost every other secret of nature, chemistry seems now to be knocking hard at the door of that dark apartment, where the awful mystery of life has hitherto been veiled from the eye of man.

I have reserved moral and intellectual philosophy for the last of the subjects which I wish to recommend to your attention, because, though highly interesting, they do not fall within the range of common tastes and common opportunities. They tend to make you accurate thinkers and reasoners, rather than to enlarge the bounds of your knowledge, to prepare you to communicate it to others, rather than make it a greater source of pleasure or profit to yourselves. To examine the structure of our own minds, to take notice of the operations by which we observe, remember, reflect, compare, and imagine, to investigate those moral laws by which we are bound to each other, and to the Author of our being, is certainly the highest object of philosophical inquiry.

But it is farthest removed of all studies from the common pursuits and habits of men. It is

chiefly useful as a discipline of the mind, a training of the faculties for those investigations and controversies which belong to professional life. In a mind, however, that is truly accomplished, and well balanced by a strong preponderance of common sense, ethical and metaphy. sical studies add a certain compactness and vigor to the intellectual faculties, which give point and brilliancy to conversational power, and even seem to increase the energy and efficiency of business talent.

Such, ladies and gentlemen, are the studies which invite your attention, and which there is not one of you who has not an opportnnity of pursuing. The books are written which contain all this information, and wait the perusal of all who feel disposed to enlarge the circle of their knowledge. The great book of nature, of which all other books are but slender extracts, and imperfect translations, lies ever open before you. And for what purpose were your senses and your understandings given you, but to read and meditate therein? Such is the present perfection of the mechanic arts, so shortened and simplified are all the processes by which human wants are supplied, that the servile task of toil, which once bore so heavily upon man, has been relaxed, and large portions of time have been thrown unemployed upon his hands. How shall he dispose of it? Shall he make

larger provisions for the gratification of sense? This would be measuring back his steps to savage and brutal life. Shall he turn the force of his faculties to the study of luxury, magnificence, and ostentation? He knows before hand, that the end of all this is vanity and vexation of spirit. There remains nothing then as a safe, a moral, a pleasurable employment of our leisure hours, but the cultivation of the mind, those quiet studies, which are for ever the same, and yet for ever new, which employ without tiring, which exhilarate without intoxicating, which satisfy without satiating the soul.

Ladies and gentlemen of Baltimore, in taking leave of you and of the subject, I can not but express the hope that a brighter day is about to dawn upon the literary condition of our city. A taste for intellectual culture is gradually dif fusing itself in our community, from which the best results are to be anticipated. And I call upon all who hope for a better state of things to help forward the cause of letters by every means in their power. The materials, the capacity, the motives, are all here. It only requires the irresistible fiat of the will to accomplish it.

I invoke the aid of all good men and true, to make our beautiful city as distinguished for its literary culture, as it is for its splendid works of art, for the enterprise, the generosity, the urbanity, the hospitality of its inhabitants.

BURKE, FOX, AND PITT, COMPARED WITH CALHOUN, CLAY, AND WEBSTER.*

I PROPOSE to give you, this evening, some thoughts on the three great cotemporaneous orators and statesmen of England and America, Burke, Fox, and Pitt, and Calhoun, Clay, and Webster. In so doing, I shall develope, as far as my limits will permit, the sphere and importance of popular eloquence, the forms which it takes under different circumstances, and the increasing influence which it is destined to exert upon the condition of mankind.

Popular eloquence is the natural and necessary product of freedom, and of a popular form of government. It is, therefore, a plant exclusively of European and American growth. The literature of Asia has nothing of this species to present, if we except perhaps the speeches of St. Paul, recorded in the New Testament, and those which Josephus puts in the mouths of his historical personages, and they may be said to

* A lecture delivered before the La Fayette Lyceum, 1845.

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