It is too common to treat Science as ascetic and austere, and deny to her the ability of unbending to animate and to please. You recollect the enthusiastic apostrophe of the poet, who exclaims, with a greater generosity, to which I hope I hear an echo:—

"How charming is divine philosophy!
Not harsh and crabbed, as dull fools suppose,
But musical as is Apollo's lute,
And a perpetual feast of nectar'd sweets,
Where no crude surfeit reigns."

Who, then, is so impassive as not to feel delight in dwelling on the vast design of Nature, the order and beauty with which it is maintained, and yearn for an insight into its great arcana? Whether we survey the celestial scheme which prescribes to planets and their satellites stated revolutions, and upholds all, without dislocation of the marvellous mechanism, producing in the infinitely diversified movements of its members, by an all-wise counteraction of discordant discord, such surprising harmony; or whether we behold the terrific wonders of the atmosphere torn by devastating hurricanes, or agitated by conflicting, currents, laden with pestilence, dealing death around; or its soothing airs breathing life and health. Whether we study the structure of the solid globe, and the alterations it constantly undergoes, by the agency of heat or magnetism, or those subtile powers which generate the volcanic shock, and work the perpetual transmutation of its compact ingredients; or the properties of elementary substances, their union and reciprocal action; or the structure, development, and admirable adaptation of the vegetable and animal kingdoms, ascending in unbroken series to man; whether we look around and behold the curious felicity of his inventive genius, through which he has gained a mastery over the resisting elements, the stubborn earth, the treacherous ocean; and made the explosive steam, and the "thwart flame" of the "slant Lightning" ministers obedient to his behests; or the perseverance of his unremitted toil, by which he has reared in every zone monuments of his piety, his ambition, his ostentation; or the fertility of his aspiring ingenuity, by which he has increased his sources of comfort, and encumbered the field of enjoyment with the prodigality of his luxury; or, finally, whether we cast our thoughts inward on ourselves, and consider the constitution and operations of the mind, the working of the passions, the sway of the affections, the faculties of the understanding, the dominion of the reason?

Royal Society of Victoria