people into the deserts of North America and into the wilds of Canada.  In the common history of the world, as compiled by authors in general, almost all the great changes of nations are confounded with changes in their dynasties, and events are usually referred either to sovereigns, chiefs, heroes, or their armies, which do, in fact, originate from entirely different causes, either of an intellectual or moral nature.  Governments depend far more than is generally supposed upon the opinion of the people and the spirit of the age and nation.  It sometimes happens that a gigantic mind possesses supreme power and rises superior to the age in which he is born, such was Alfred in England and Peter in Russia, but such instances are very rare; and, in general, it is neither amongst sovereigns nor the higher classes of society that the great improvers or benefactors of mankind are to be found.  The works of the most illustrious names were little valued at the times when they were produced, and their authors either despised or neglected; and great, indeed, must have been the pure and abstract pleasure resulting from the exertion of intellectual superiority and the discovery of truth and the bestowing benefits and blessings upon society, which induced men to sacrifice all their common enjoyments and all their privileges as citizens to these exertions.  Anaxagoras, Archimedes, Roger Bacon, Galileo Galilei, in their deaths or their imprisonments, offer instances of this kind, and nothing can be more striking than what appears to have been the ingratitude of men towards their greatest benefactors; but hereafter, when you understand more of the scheme of the universe, you will see the cause and the effect of this, and you will find the whole system governed by principles of immutable justice.  I have said that in the progress of society all great and real improvements are perpetuated; the same corn which four thousand years ago was raised from an improved grass by an inventor worshipped for two thousand years in the ancient world under the name of Ceres, still forms the principal food of mankind; and the potato, perhaps the greatest benefit that the Old has derived from the New World, is spreading over Europe, and will continue to nourish an extensive population when the name of the race by whom it was first cultivated in South America is forgotten.

“I will now call your attention to some remarkable laws belonging to the history of society, and from the consideration of which you will be able gradually to develop the higher and more exalted principles of being.  There appears nothing more accidental than the sex of an infant, yet take any great city or any province and you will find that the relations of males and females are unalterable.  Again, a part of the pure air of the atmosphere is continually consumed in combustion and respiration; living vegetables emit this principle during their growth; nothing appears more accidental than the proportion of vegetable to