r the fragments of beautiful statues, which separately are
of no value, and which appear of little value to the persons who found
them; but which, when selected and put together by artists and their
defective parts supplied, are found to be wonderfully perfect and worthy
of conservation. Look to the progress of the arts since they have been
enlightened by a system of science, and observe with what rapidity they
have advanced. Again, the steam-engine in its rudest form was the result
of a chemical experiment; in its refined state it required the
combinations of all the most recondite principles of chemistry and
mechanics, and that excellent philosopher who has given this wonderful
instrument of power to civil society was led to the great improvements he
made by the discoveries of a kindred genius on the heat absorbed when
water becomes steam, and of the heat evolved when steam becomes water.
Even the most superficial observer must allow in this case a triumph of
science, for what a wonderful impulse has this invention given to the
progress of the arts and manufactories in our country, how much has it
diminished labour, how much has it increased the real strength of the
country! Acting as it were with a thousand hands, it has multiplied our
active population; and receiving its elements of activity from the bowels
of the earth, it performs operations which formerly were painful,
oppressive, and unhealthy to the labourers, with regularity and
constancy, and gives security and precision to the efforts of the
manufacturer. And the inventions connected with the steam-engine, at the
same time that they have greatly diminished labour of body, have tended
to increase power of mind and intellectual resources. Adam Smith well
observes that manufacturers are always more ingenious than husbandmen;
and manufacturers who use machinery will probably always be found more
ingenious than handicraft manufacturers. You spoke of porcelain as a
result of accident; the improvements invented in this country, as well as
those made in Germany and France, have been entirely the result of
chemical experiments; the Dresden and the Sevres manufactories have been
the work of men of science, and it was by multiplying his chemical
researches that Wedgewood was enabled to produce at so cheap a rate those
beautiful imitations which while they surpass the ancient vases in
solidity and perfection of material, equal them in elegance, variety, and
tasteful