brings with it difficulties. So many points, once
considered impossible, have been proved possible, that to some minds
the suggestion of impossibility seems an argument in favour of
possibility. Because steam-travelling was once laughed at as visionary,
aerial navigation is to be regarded as practicable--perhaps, indeed, it
_will_ be so, give but the time _proportionably_ requisite to master
its difficulties, as there was given to steam. What proportion this
should be we will not venture to predict. There can be little doubt
that the most effectual way to induce a more accurate public
discrimination of scientific efforts is to turn somewhat more in that
direction the current of national education. Prizes at the universities
for efficiency in the physics of light, heat, electricity, magnetism,
or chemistry, could, we conceive, do no harm. Why should not similar
honours be conferred on those students who advance the progress of an
infant science, as on those who work out with facility the formulae of
an exact one; and why should not acquirements in either, rank equally
high with the critical knowledge of the _digamma_ or the _a priori_
philosophy of Aristotle? Is not Bacon's Novum Organon as much entitled
to be made a standard book for the schools as Aldrich's logic?
Venerating English universities, we approve not the inconsiderate
outcries against systematic and time-honoured educational discipline;
but it would increase our love for these seminaries of sound learning,
could we more frequently see such men as Davy emanate from Oxford,
instead of from the pneumatic institution of Bristol.

Provided science be kept separate from political excitement, we should
like to see an English Academy, constituted of men having fair claims
to scientific distinction, and not "deserving of that honour because
they are attached to science."

It is unnecessary here to touch upon the details of such an Academy.
The proposition is by no means new. On the contrary, we believe a wish
for some such change pretty generally exists. Iteration is sometimes
more useful than originality. The more frequently the point is brought
before the public, the more probable is it that steps will be taken by
those who are qualified to move in such a matter. The more the present
defective state of our scientific organization is commented on, the
more likely is it to be remedied; for the patency of error is ever a
sure prelude to its extirpation.

CHR