he unexplored
depths of nature. A finer feeling, however, directed your attention to
me. You have assured me, that while, during an absence of many years,
and in a distant quarter of the globe, I was labouring in the same
cause with yourselves, I was not a stranger in your thoughts. You have
likewise greeted my return home, that, by the sacred tie of gratitude,
you might bind me still longer and closer to our common country.

What, however, can the picture of this, our native land, present more
agreeable to the mind, than the assembly which we receive to-day for
the first time within our walls; from the banks of the Neckar, the
birth-place of Kepler and of Schiller, to the remotest border of the
Baltic plains; from hence to the mouths of the Rhine, where, under the
beneficent influence of commerce, the treasuries of exotic nature have
for centuries been collected and investigated, the friends of nature,
inspired with the same zeal, and, urged by the same passion, flock
together to this assembly. Everywhere, where the German language is
used, and its peculiar structure affects the spirit and disposition
of the people. From the Great European Alps, to the other side of the
Weichsel, where, in the country of Copernicus, astronomy rose to renewed
splendour; everywhere in the extensive dominions of the German nation
we attempt to discover the secret operations of nature, whether in the
heavens, or in the deepest problems of mechanics, or in the interior of
the earth, or in the finely woven tissues of organic structure.

Protected by noble princes, this assembly has annually increased in
interest and extent. Every distinction which difference of religion
or form of government can occasion is here annulled. Germany manifests
itself as it were in its intellectual unity; and since knowledge of
truth and performance of duty are the highest object of morality,
that feeling of unity weakens none of the bonds which the religion,
constitution, and laws of our country, have rendered dear to each of
us. Even this emulation in mental struggles has called forth (as the
glorious history of our country tells us,) the fairest blossoms of
humanity, science, and art.

The assembly of German naturalists and natural philosophers since its
last meeting, when it was so hospitably received at Munich, has, through
the flattering interest of neighbouring states and academies, shone
with peculiar lustre. Allied nations have renewed the ancient alli