It Has Indeed Produced Upon The Popular Intellect An Influence Almost As Great As - I Might Say Analogous To - The Great Change Which Was Produced Upon The Old Commercial World By The Discovery Of The Americas.

A new standard of value was introduced, and, after this, to be distinguished - man must be intellectual.

Nor, indeed, am I surprised that this feeling has so powerfully influenced our race; for the idea that human happiness is dependent on the cultivation of the mind, and on the discovery of truth, is, next to the conviction of our immortality, the idea the most full of consolation to man; for the cultivation of the mind has no limits, and truth is the only thing that is eternal. Indeed, when you consider what a man is who knows only what is passing under his own eyes, and what the condition of the same man must be who belongs to an institution like the one which has assembled us together to-night, is it - ought it to be - a matter of surprise that, from that moment to the present, you have had a general feeling throughout the civilized world in favour of the diffusion of knowledge? A man who knows nothing but the history of the passing hour - who knows nothing of the history of the past but that a certain person, whose brain was as vacant as his own, occupied the same house as himself, who in a moment of despondency or of gloom has no hope in the morrow because he has read nothing that has taught him that to-morrow has any changes - that man, compared with him who has read the most ordinary abridgment of history, or the most common philosophical speculation, is as distinct and different an animal as if he had fallen from some other planet, was influenced by a different organization, working for a different end, and hoping for a different result. It is knowledge that equalizes the social condition of man - that gives to all, however different their political position, passions which are in common and enjoyments which are universal. Knowledge is like the mystic ladder in the patriarch's dream. Its base rests on the primaeval earth - its crest is lost in the shadowy splendour of the empyrean; while the great authors, who for traditionary ages have held the chain of science and philosophy, of poesy and erudition, are the angels ascending and descending the sacred scale, and maintaining, as it were, the communication between man and heaven. This feeling is so universal that there is no combination of society in any age in which it has not developed itself. It may, indeed, be partly restrained under despotic governments, under peculiar systems of retarded civilization; but it is a consequence as incidental to the spirit and the genius of the Christian civilization of Europe as that the day should follow night, and the stars should shine according to their laws and order. Why, the very name of the institution that brings us together illustrates the fact - I can recall, and I think I see more than one gentleman around me who equally can recall, the hours in which we wandered amid

"Fields that cool Ilyssus laves.

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