Expectant mediocrity would have urged on his claims to remuneration, and those who covered their selfish purposes with the cloak of science, would have hastened to shelter themselves in the mantle of his glory .-- But the philosopher may find consolation for the tardy approbation of that Society, in the applause of Europe.

If he was insulted by their medal, he escaped the pain of seeing his name connected with their proceedings.] Where would have been the military renown of England, if, with an equally improvident waste of mental power, its institutions had forced the Duke of Wellington to employ his life in drilling recruits, instead of planning campaigns?
If we look at the fact, we shall find that the great inventions of the age are not, with us at least, always produced in universities.

The doctrines of "definite proportions," and of the "chemical agency of electricity,"-- principles of a high order, which have immortalized the names of their discoverers,--were not produced by the meditations of the cloister: nor is it in the least a reproach to those valuable institutions to mention truths like these.

Fortunate circumstances must concur, even to the greatest, to render them eminently successful.

It is not permitted to all to be born, like Archimedes, when a science was to be created; nor, like Newton, to find the system of the world "without form and void;" and, by disclosing gravitation, to shed throughout that system the same irresistible radiance as that with which the Almighty Creator had illumined its material substance.