ve in France, it is underrating it to say
it is equal to 2000L. in this country.

Let us now look at the prospects of a young man at his entrance into
life, who, impelled by an almost irresistible desire to devote himself
to the abstruser sciences, or who, confident in the energy of youthful
power, feels that the career of science is that in which his mental
faculties are most fitted to achieve the reputation for which he pants.
What are his prospects? Can even the glowing pencil of enthusiasm add
colour to the blank before him? There are no situations in the state;
there is no position in society to which hope can point, to cheer him
in his laborious path. If, indeed, he belong to one of our universities,
there are some few chairs in his OWN Alma Mater to which he may at some
distant day pretend; but these are not numerous; and whilst the salaries
attached are seldom sufficient for the sole support of the individual,
they are very rarely enough for that of a family. What then can he reply
to the entreaties of his friends, to betake himself to some business
in which perhaps they have power to assist him, or to choose some
profession in which his talents may produce for him their fair reward?
If he have no fortune, the choice is taken away: he MUST give up that
line of life in which his habits of thought and his ambition qualify
him to succeed eminently, and he MUST choose the bar, or some other
profession, in which, amongst so many competitors, in spite of his great
talents, he can be but moderately successful. The loss to him is
great, but to the country it is greater. We thus, by a destructive
misapplication of talent which our institutions create, exchange a
profound philosopher for but a tolerable lawyer.

If, on the other hand, he possess some moderate fortune of his own; and,
intent on the glory of an immortal name, yet not blindly ignorant of the
state of science in this country, he resolve to make for that aspiration
a sacrifice the greater, because he is fully aware of its extent;--if,
so circumstanced, he give up a business or a profession on which he
might have entered with advantage, with the hope that, when he shall
have won a station high in the ranks of European science, he may a
little augment his resources by some of those few employments to which
science leads;--if he hope to obtain some situation, (at the Board of
Longitude, for example,) [This body is now dissolved] where he may
be permitted to exer