Introductory address read before the Cuvierian Natural History Society, at its first meeting in the University, November 1837 / by James Macaulay.

Date:
1837
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Introductory address read before the Cuvierian Natural History Society, at its first meeting in the University, November 1837 / by James Macaulay. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    veared ami adorned the sciences, and marking the steps by whioh tliey wore led on to success, and by which they ros€ from laborious details to their noble generalizations, our minds are best brought into the discipline and aptitude for original inquiry. For although the book of Nature is ever open to the perusal of all, it is not every mind that can in- terpret her language, that can trace the happy accidents continually presented, or detect the valuable principles that lie concealed amid common and trivial events. It required the eye of Mains to see the new field of science which was first illuminated by the ray from the palace of Luxembourg; and thousands gazed on the lamp of the Ca- thedral of Pisa, without being led to the discoveries which rendered Galileo immortal. Gentlemen, It has been said that eulogium is always tire- some, and that all panegyrics seem to have been cooked in poppy juice. The subject of every eloge is, as a matter of course, the most virtuous and benevolent, as well as one of the wisest, of men; and it is not surprising that histories, which are all alike, should be accused of monotony. Another kind of oration, which, from the nature of the subject, most of us must often have felt as tiresome, is that species of introductory lecture in which the teacher of each class, standing forth as the representative and herald of his own branch of learning, proclaims the superior power, and resources, and dignity of its territory, till he deranges all our notions of what place it should actually occupy in the Geo- graphy of Science. It reminds one of Sir Harry Wotton's definition of an ambassador, that he is a man sent abroad
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