ADVANTAGES OF ARCTIC EXPLORATION.
It is not needful that I should here demonstrate
the advantages to be derived from a continuation of
the line of exploration which I have indicated;—the
age in which we live has too much profited by researches
into every department of science, which, not
immediately prosecuted with the view to practical advantage,
have, by a steady enlargement of the boundaries
of human knowledge, promoted the interests of
commerce, of navigation, of the arts, and of every
thing which concerns the convenience and the comfort
and the well-being of mankind. In truth, civilization
has profited most by those discoveries which
possessed at the outset only an abstract value, and
excited no interest beyond the walls of the academy.
The vast system of steam communication, which
weaves around the world its endless web of industry,
began in the apparently useless experiments of a
thoughtful boy with the lid of his mother's tea-kettle;
that wonderful net-work of wires which spreads over
the continents and underlies the seas, and along which
the thoughts of men fly as with the wings of light,
results from the accidental touching of two pieces of
metal in the mouth of Volta; the lenses of the mammoth
telescope of Lord Rosse, which reduced to practical
uses the celestial mechanism, came from observing
the magnifying powers of a globule of water; the
magnetic needle which guides the navies of the world
to their distant destinations, succeeds the casual contact
of a piece of loadstone and a bit of steel: everywhere,
indeed, we witness the same constant growth
from what seemed unprofitable beginnings;—the
printing-press, the loom, the art of solar painting, all
sprang from the one same source,—from minds intent
only upon interrogating Nature, and revealing her
