Art. XVI.--General view of the Scientific researches recently carried on in the Russian Empire.

In a discourse pronounced at the Extraordinary sitting of the Imperial Academy of Sciences of St Petersburg, held on the 28th November 1829.

By Baron Alexander de Humboldt .

We are glad to be able to lay before our readers the very eloquent discourse of this distinguished traveller and philosopher, who has been so kind as to favour us thus early with a copy of it.

It was printed by order of the Academy of Sciences.

If, in this solemn assembly, which evinces so noble a desire to honour the labours of human intelligence, I venture to solicit your indulgence, it is only to fulfil a duty which you have imposed upon me.

When I had returned to my native country, after having travelled over the frozen crest of the Cordilleras and the forests of the lower equinoxial regions,--when I was restored to agitated Europe, after having for a long time enjoyed the calm of nature, and the imposing aspect of savage fertility, I received from this illustrious Academy, as a public mark of its favour, the honour of being made one of its members.

Even now it is agreeable to look back to that epoch of my life when that same eloquent voice which you have heard at the opening of this meeting, called me among you, and almost persuaded me, by ingenious fictions, that I had deserved the palm which you had given me.

How little could I then conjecture that I should again sit under your presidency, after having returned from the banks of the Irtish, from the confines of China, Songaria, and the borders of the Caspian Sea!

By a fortunate combination of events, in the course of a troubled and sometimes laborious life, I have been able to compare the auriferous soil of the Oural and of New Granada; the elevated formations of porphyry and trachyte of Mexico, with those of the Altai, and the Savannahs (Llanos) of the Orinoco, with the Steppes of Southern Siberia, which present a vast field for the peaceable conquest of agriculture and to the arts of industry, which, while they enrich nations, soften their manners, and gradually ameliorate the condition of society.

I have been able partly to carry the same instruments, or those of a similar but improved construction, to the banks of the Obi and the Amazon, during the long interval which has separated my two journeys, the aspect of the physical sciences, particularly of geognosy, chemistry, and the electro-magnetic theory, has been considerably changed.

New apparatus, I had almost ventured to say, new organs have been created, to bring man into the most intimate contact with the mysterious forces which animate the work of creation, and of which the unequal struggle, and the apparent perturbations are subject to eternal laws.

If modern travellers are able to observe in a short time a great part of the surface of the globe, it is to the progress of the mathematical and physical sciences, to the precision of instruments, to the improvement of methods, and to the art of grouping facts and raising them to general laws, that they owe the advantages which they enjoy.

The traveller who is fitted for observation, is he, who, by the valuable influence of Academies, and by the pursuits of a sedentary life, has been prepared in the silence of his study.

In order to form an accurate judgment of the merit of travellers of different periods, we must be acquainted with the simultaneous progress of practical astronomy, geognosy, meteorology and natural history.

It is thus that the more or less flourishing cultivation of the great domain of science ought to reflect itself in the traveller who wishes to rise to the level of his age; and that voyages undertaken to extend the physical knowledge of the globe, ought, at different periods, to present an individual character,-- the physiognomy of a given epoch,--and that they ought to be the expression of the state of cultivation at which the sciences have progressively arrived.

In thus tracing the duties of those who have pursued the same career with myself, and whose example has often roused my ardour under difficulties, I have noticed the source of that small success which your generous indulgence has deigned to honour by public suffrage.

Having happily terminated a distant voyage, undertaken at the command of a great monarch, and having been assisted by the talents of two philosophers whose labours Europe appreciates, MM.

Ehrenberg and Rose, I might confine myself at present to lay before you the homage of my warmest gratitude, --I might solicit from him, who, though yet young, has dared to penetrate into ancient mysteries, (the memorable sources of the religious and political civilization of Greece,) to lend me his eloquence, that I might express more worthily the sentiments with which I am impressed.

But I know, Gentlemen, that eloquence which is not in accordance with the sincerity of the heart will not be sufficient in this assembly.

You have been entrusted in this vast empire with the great and noble mission of giving a general impulse to the cultivation of the sciences and literature, to encourage labours connected with the actual state of human knowledge, and to stimulate and enlarge the powers of the mind, in the field of the higher mathematics and of terrestial physics, and in that of the history of nations illustrated by the monuments of different ages.

Your views have been directed to the career which is yet to be pursued; and the tribute of thanks which I now offer you,--the only one indeed worthy of your institution, is the solemn obligation which I take to continue faithful to the cultivation of science, even to the last hour of a life already advanced,--to explore nature unceasingly, and to follow in the route which you and your illustrious predecessors have traced.

This community of action in the higher studies,--the reciprocal aid which the different branches of human knowledge derive from each other,--the efforts made simultaneously in the two continents, and in the vast extent of the ocean, have given a rapid impulse to the physical sciences, in the same manner, as after the barbarous ages, simultaneous efforts gave an impulse to the progress of reason.

Happy is the country whose government yields a noble protection to letters and the fine arts, which not only delight the imagination of man, but augment also his intellectual power, and give energy to his noblest thoughts;-- to the physical and mathematical sciences which have such a happy influence on the progress of industry and public prosperity;--to the zeal of travellers, who, forced to penetrate into unknown regions, or to examine the riches of the soil, or to obtain a correct knowledge of its surface.

To recount at first a small part of what has been done in the year which is about to close, is to render to the Sovereign a tribute which, by its very simplicity, must be agreeable to him.

While in the Oural, the Altai, and the Caspian Sea, the efforts of MM.

Rose, Ehrenberg, and myself, were directed to the geognostic constitution of the soil, the relations between its elevations and depressions indicated by the barometer; the variations of terrestrial magnetism in different latitudes (particularly the increase of the inclination, and of the intensity of the magnetic forces;) the interior temperature of the globe; the state of humidity of the atmosphere by means of a psychrometrical instrument which had never before been employed in a distant voyage; the astronomical position of places; the geographical distribution of vegetables, and of several groupes of the animal kingdom hitherto little studied--of the philosophers and intrepid travellers who smiled at the dangers of the snowy summits of Elborouz and Ararat.

I congratulate myself in seeing safely returned into the bosom of the Academy, him from whom we have derived the most valuable notions on the horary variations of the magnetic needle, and to whom the sciences owe (independent of his ingenious and delicate researches on crystallography,) the discovery of the influence of temperature on the intensity of the electromagnetic forces. M. Kupffer has lately returned from the Alps of Caucasus, where, after the long migrations of the human species in the great shipwreck of nations and of languages, so many different races have taken refuge.

With the name of this traveller is associated the labours of a philosopher who has struggled with a noble perseverance on the flanks of Ararat, (considered as the classical soil of the earliest and most venerable recollections of history,)--against obstacles which were opposed to him, both by the depth and the softness of eternal snow.

I am almost ashamed to wound the modesty of a father in adding, that M. Parrot, the traveller of Ararat, sustains in the sciences the lustre of hereditary celebrity.

In the more eastern regions of an empire, for ever illustrious by the labours of my countryman Pallas (pardon me, Gentlemen, for claiming for Prussia a part of that glory which is sufficient to distinguish two nations at once,) in the mountains of the Oural and of Kolyvan, we have followed the more recent routes of MM.

Ledebour, Meyer and Bunge, and MM. Hoffmann and Helmersson.

The fine and numerous Flora of Altai has already enriched the botanical establishment of this capital, which has risen almost as by enchantment, through the zeal of its directors, to the rank of the first botanical gardens of Europe.

The learned world expects with impatience the publication of the Flora of Altai, of which Dr Bunge himself was able, in the vicinity of Zmeinogorsk, to show to my friend, M. Ehrenberg, some interesting productions.

This was, without doubt, the first time that a traveller in Abyssinia, in Dongola, Sinai, and Palestine, had climbed the mountains of Riddersky, covered with perpetual snows.

The geognostic description of the southern part of the Oural was entrusted to two young philosophers, MM. Hoffmann and Helmersson, one of whom had first made known the volcanoes of the South Sea.

This selection was due to an enlightened minister,--a friend of science and of its cultivation,--M. Le Comte de Cancrin, whose affectionate care and provident activity will never be forgotten by my colleagues and myself. MM. Helmersson and Hoffmann, pupils of the celebrated school of Dorpat, have successfully studied, during two years, the different branches of the Oural mountains,--from the great Taganai and the granites of Iremel, to beyond the plateau of Gouberlinsk, which is connected farther south with the mountains of Mougodjares; and to Oust-Ourt, between Lake Aral and the Caspian Sea.

Even there the rigour of winter did not prevent M.

Lemm from making the first astronomical observations in this arid and uninhabited country.

We enjoyed the great pleasure of being accompanied for nearly a month by MM. Hoffmann and Helmersson, and it was they who first showed us near Grasnuschinskaia a formation of volcanic amygdaloid, the only one which has been yet found in the long Ouralian chain which separates Europe from Asia,--which presents on its eastern declivity the most abundant eruptions of metals,--and which contains, either in veins or in the detritus, gold, platina, the osmiuret of Iridium, the diamond, (see this Number, p. 261) discovered by Count Polier in the alluvium to the west of the high mountains of Catschcanar, zircon, sapphire, amethyst, ruby, topaz, beryl, garnet, anatase, discovered by M. Rose, ceylanite, and other valuable substances found in India and the Brazils.

I might extend the list of the important labours of the present year of his Majesty's reign, by mentioning the trigonometrical operations of the west, which, by the united labours of MM.

General Schubert and Tenner, and of the great astronomer of Dorpat, M. Struve, have made known on a great scale the figure of the earth;--the geological constitution of Lake Baikal illustrated by M. Hess;--the magnetic expedition of MM.

Hansteen, Erman and Dowe, justly celebrated over all Europe, and the most extensive and the boldest that was ever undertaken by land, (from Berlin and Christiania to Kamtchatka, where it joined the great labours of Captains Wrangell and Anjou);--and, finally, the circumnavigation of the globe, which Captain Luetke has executed by order of the Sovereign,--a voyage abounding in fine astronomical, botanical, physical, and anatomical results, with the co-operation of three excellent naturalists, Dr Mertens, Baron Kittliz, and M. Postels.

I have ventured to notice this community of efforts by which several parts of the empire have been explored, by carrying into them the aid of modern knowledge, new instruments, new methods, and views founded on the analogy of facts already known.

It is also by a community of interests, that, launched once more into the career of travels, I have thought it right to adorn my discourse with names which are dear to science.

After having admired the riches of the mineral kingdom and the wonders of physical nature, we love to celebrate (and it is an agreeable duty in a foreign land, and in the midst of a listening assembly,) the intellectual riches of a nation, the labours of men useful and disinterested in their devotion to the sciences, who either travel through their country, or in solitude prepare, by calculation and experiments, the discoveries of future generations.

If, as we have proved by recent examples, the vast extent of the Russian empire, which exceeds that of the visible part of the moon, requires the concurrence of a great number of observers, this same extent presents also advantages of another kind which have been long known to you, Gentlemen, but which, in relation to the actual desiderata of terrestrial physics, do not appear to have been generally enough appreciated.

I will not speak of that immense scale on which, from Livonia and Finland to the South Sea which washes Eastern Asia and Russian America, we may study, without going out of the empire, the stratification and formation of rocks of all ages,--the spoils of marine animals which the ancient revolutions of our planet have engulphed in the bosom of the earth,--the gigantic bones of terrestrial quadrupeds whose congeners are lost, or live only in the tropical regions.

I will not fix the attention of this assembly on the aid which the geography of plants and animals (a science scarcely yet blocked out,) will some day derive from a more profound and specific knowledge of the climateric distribution of organized beings, from the happy regions of the Chersonesus and of Mingrelia,--from the frontiers of Persia and Asia Minor to the sad shores of the Frozen Sea. I shall confine myself at present to those variable phenomena whose regular periodicity, confirmed by the rigorous accuracy of astronomical observations, will conduct directly to the discovery of the great laws of nature.

If they had possessed in the school of Alexandria, and at the brilliant epoch of the Arabs, (the first masters of the art of observing and interrogating nature by experiment,) the instruments which belonged to the great age of Galileo, of Huyghens, and of Fermat, we should have now known, by comparative observations, if the height of the atmosphere, the quantity of water which it contains and precipitates, and the mean temperature of places have diminished since those times.

We should have known the secular changes of the electro-magnetic charge of our planet, and the modifications which may have taken place, either from an increase of radiation, or from internal volcanic changes, in the temperature of the different strata of the globe, which increases with the depth.

We might have known, in short, the variations in the level of the ocean, the partial perturbations which the barometrical pressure produces in the equilibrium of its waters, and the relative frequency of certain winds, depending on the form and condition of the surface of continents. M.

Ostrogradsky would have submitted to profound calculations these data, accumulated for centuries, as he has recently resolved with success one of the most difficult problems in the propagation of waves.

Unfortunately, in the physical sciences the civilization of Europe is not of remote date.

We are, as the priests of Sais said of the Hellenes, a new people.

The almost simultaneous invention of those organs which bring us nearer to the material world, as the telescope,--the thermometer,--the barometer,-- the pendulum, and that other instrument, the most general and powerful of all,--the infinitesimal calculus, are scarcely older than thirty lustra.

In this conflict of the forces of nature, a conflict which does not destroy stability, the periodical variations do not seem to go beyond certain limits:

They cause the whole system to oscillate (at least in the present state of things, since the great convulsions which have buried so many generations of plants and animals,) round a mean state of equilibrium.

But the value of the periodic change is determined with a degree of precision proportional to the interval which has elapsed between the extreme observations.

It is to scientific bodies which are renewed without interruption; it is to academies,--to universities,--to different learned societies in Europe, in the two Americas, at the southern extremity of Africa, in India, and in that Australasia lately so uncivilized, and where there has already risen a temple of Urania, that we must look for regular observations, to measure, and to watch, as it were, whatever is variable in the economy of nature.

The illustrious author of the Mecanique Celeste has often expressed verbally the same thought in the bosom of the Institute, where I had the happiness of sitting with him during eighteen years.

This Observatory was the work of our eminent countryman Sir Thomas Brisbane, whose fate it seems to be to have his labours every where praised, and even the observations which he established, published, without the mention of his name!--Ed.

The western nations have carried into different parts of the world these forms of civilization,--this developement of human knowledge, whose origin remounts to the epoch of the intellectual greatness of the Greeks, and to the gentle influence of Christianity.

Divided by language and manners, by political and religious institutions, enlightened nations form in our day (and it is one of the happiest results of modern civilization) but a single family, when they are occupied with the great interests of science, of letters, and of the arts,--of whatever, having its origin within, raises man above the vulgar wants of society.

In this noble community of interest and action, most of the important problems relating to terrestrial physics which I have above noticed, may doubtless become the object of simultaneous researches; but the immense extent of the Russian empire in Europe, Asia, and America, presents peculiar and local advantages well worthy of one day occupying the attention of this illustrious society.

The impulse given from such a height would produce a powerful activity among the philosophers and observers with whom your country is honoured.

I venture to point out at present, and to recommend to your special care, three objects which are not (as was formerly said in a misconception of the connection of human knowledge,) purely speculative, but which closely affect the most material wants of life.

The art of navigation, the study of which, encouraged by the highest suffrage, has assumed (under the direction of a great navigator,) such a fortunate developement in this country,--the art of navigation has required for centuries a precise knowledge of the variations of terrestrial magnetism in the declination and dip of the needle, and in the intensity of its force; for the declination of the needle in different countries, which is more exclusively required by sailors, is intimately connected in theory with the other two elements, the inclination and the intensity as measured by oscillations.

At no preceding epoch has the knowledge of the variations of terrestrial magnetism made such rapid progress as within the last thirty years.

The angle which the needle forms with the vertical and with the meridian of a place, --the intensity of the forces which I have had the good fortune to observe from the equator to the magnetic pole,--the horary variations of the declination,--the inclination and the magnetic intensity often modified by the aurora borealis, earthquakes, and mysterious motions in the interior of the globe,--the starts or non-periodical perturbations of the needle, which, after a long course of observations, I have distinguished by the name of magnetic storms, have become in their turn the object of the most elaborate research.

The great discoveries of Oersted, Arago, Ampere, Seebeck, Morichini, and Mrs Somerville, have disclosed to us the mutual relations of magnetism with electricity, heat, and solar light.

There are only three metals--iron, nickel, and cobalt, which become loadstones.

The astonishing phenomenon of the magnetism of rotation, which my illustrious friend, M.

Arago first made known, shows us that almost all the bodies of nature are transiently susceptible of magnetic action.

The Russian empire is the only country which is traversed with two lines of no declination,--that is, in which the needle is directed to the poles of the globe.

One of these two lines, whose position and periodical motion of translation from east to west are the principal elements of a future theory of terrestrial magnetism, passes, according to the latest researches of MM.

Hansteen and Erman, between Mourom and Nijni-Novgorod; the second some degrees to the east of Irkoutsk, between Parchinskaia and Iarbinsk.

We do not yet know their prolongation to the north, or the rapidity of their motion to the west.

Terrestrial physics requires the complete trace of the two lines of no declination at equidistant epochs, every ten years for example, --the precise absolute variations of inclination and intensity in all the points where MM.

Hansteen, Erman, and I, have observed--in Europe, between St Petersburg, Kasan, and Astrakan,--in Northern Asia between Iekaterinebourg, Miask, Oust- Kamenogorsk, Obdorsk, and Jakoutsk.

These results cannot be obtained by strangers who traverse the country in one direction, and at one time.

It is necessary to establish a system of observations well arranged, continued during a long space of time, and confided to philosophers established in the country.

St Petersburg, Moscow, and Kasan, are fortunately placed very near the first line of no declination which traverses European Russia.

Kiachta and Verkhne-Oudinsk offer advantages for the second, viz. that of Siberia.

When we reflect on the comparative precision of observations made by sea and land with the aid of the instruments of Borda, of Bessel, and of Gambey, we may be readily convinced, that Russia, by its position, may in the space of twenty years cause the most gigantic progress to be made in the theory of magnetism.

In entering upon these considerations, I am, so to speak, only the interpreter of your wishes, Gentlemen.

The eagerness which which you have received the request which I addressed to you seven months ago, relative to the corresponding observations of the horary variations made at Paris, at Berlin, in a mine at Freyberg, and at Kasan by the learned and laborious astronomer M. Simonoff, has proved that the Imperial Academy will ably second the other academies of Europe in the thorny but useful research of the periodicity of the magnetic phenomena.

If the solution of the problem which I have mentioned is equally important for the physical history of our planet and the progress of the art of navigation, the second object to which I wish to draw your attention, Gentlemen, and for which the extent of the empire presents immense advantages, is more closely connected with general wants,--with the choice of cultivation, --the study of the configuration of the soil,--and the exact knowledge of the humidity of the air, which obviously decreases with the destruction of forests and the diminution of the waters of lakes and rivers.

The first and the noblest object of the sciences lies no doubt in themselves, in the enlargement of the sphere of our ideas, and of the intellectual energy of man.

It is not in an academy like yours, and under the monarch who rules the destiny of the empire, that the investigation of great physical truths requires the support of a material and external interest--of an immediate application to the wants of social life; but when the sciences, without deviating from their noble and primitive object, can boast of their indirect influence upon agriculture and the arts of industry, (too exclusively called the useful arts,) it is the duty of the natural philosopher to bring forward the relations which exist between the study and the increase of territorial wealth.

A country which extends over more than 135 degrees of longitude, from the happy zone of the olive tree to the climates where the soil is covered only with lichens, may advance more than any other the study of the atmosphere, the knowledge of mean annual temperatures, and what is more important for the cycle of vegetation, that of the distribution of the annual heat over the different seasons.

Add to these data, in order to obtain a group of facts intimately connected with one another, the variable pressure of the air, and the relation of this pressure with the prevailing winds and the temperature,--the extent of the horary variations of the barometer, (variations which, under the tropics, transform a tube filled with mercury into a kind of clock with the most undisturbed movements)--the hygrometric state of the air, and the annual quantity of rain, so important to be known for the purposes of agriculture.

When the varied inflexion of the isothermal lines shall be traced by accurate variations, and continued at least during five years in European Russia and Siberia;--when they shall be prolonged to the Western Coasts of America, where that excellent navigator, Captain Wrangell, will soon reside, the science of the distribution of heat at the surface of the globe, and in the strata accessible to our researches, will rest on solid foundations.

The government of the United States of North America, deeply interested in the progress of population, and of the varied culture of useful plants, has felt, for a long time, the advantages presented by the extent of its territory, from the Atlantic to the Rocky mountains, from Louisiana and Florida, where sugar is cultivated, to the lakes of Canada.

Meteorological instruments, compared with one another, have been distributed over a great number of points, the selection of which has been the subject of discussion, and the annual results, reduced to a small number of figures are published by a central committee who watch over the uniformity of the observations and the calculations.--(See this Journal, No. xvi. and No. ii. New Series, p. 249.)

I have already mentioned, in a memoir where I have discussed the general causes on which the difference of climates in the same latitude depends, upon what a great scale this fine example of the United States may be followed in the Russian empire.

We are fortunately far from the epoch when philosophers believed that they knew the climate of a place when they knew the highest and the lowest temperature during the year.

An uniform method, founded on the choice of hours, and on a level with the knowledge recently acquired respecting the true means of the day, the month, and the year, will replace ancient and defective methods.

By this labour several prejudices on the choice of culture, on the possibility of planting the vine, the mulberry tree, fruit trees, the chesnut or the oak, will disappear in certain provinces of the empire.

To extend it to the most distant parts we may reckon upon the enlightened co-operation of many of the young and well educated officers of the Corps of Mines,--upon that of medical men, animated with a zeal for the physical sciences,--and the pupils of that excellent institution the School of Roads and Canals, in which the higher mathematical studies create an instinctive tact for order and precision.

Besides these two objects of research which we have examined in reference to the extent of the empire, (terrestrial magnetism and the study of the atmosphere which leads at the same time by the aid of barometrical measurement to a perfect knowledge of the configuration of the ground,) I will place a third kind of investigation of a more local interest, though connected with the great question of physical geography.

A considerable part of the surface of the globe round the Caspian Sea is found inferior in level to that of the Black Sea and the Baltic.

This depression, which has been suspected to exist for more than a century, and measured by the laborious operations of MM. Parrot and Engelhardt, may be ranked among the most interesting phenomena of geognosy.

The exact determination of the mean annual barometric height of the town of Orenburg due to MM. Hoffmann and Helmersson, a levelling by station made by the same observers with the aid of a barometer, from Orenburg to Gourief, the east part of the Caspian Sea; corresponding measures taken during several months in these two places; and lastly, observations which we have recently made at Astrakhan and at the embouchure of the Volga, corresponding at the same time to Sarepta, Orenburg, Kasan, and Moscow, will serve (when all the data are united and rigorously calculated) to verify the absolute height of this interior basin.

On the north side of the Caspian every thing at present appears to indicate a progressive depression of the level of its waters; but without placing too much trust in the relation of Hanway (an old English traveller, otherwise very estimable) respecting its periodical increase and decrease, we cannot deny the encroachments of the Caspian on the side of the ancient town of Terek, and to the south of the embouchure of the Cyrus, where scattered trunks of trees (the remains of a forest) are found constantly inundated.

The small island of Pogorelaia Plita, on the contrary, seems to increase and rise progressively above the waves which covered it a few years ago, before the jet of flames which navigators perceived at a distance.

In order to solve completely the great problems relative to the depression, perhaps variable, of the level of the sea and that of the continental basin of the Caspian, it would be desirable to trace in the interior of the land round this basin, in the plains of Sarepta, Ouralsk, and Orenburg a ligne de sonde, by uniting the points which are exactly on the level of the Baltic and the Black Sea, which will be compared with marks placed on the coast in the whole circuit of the Caspian, (like the marks placed almost a century ago on the Swedish shores by the Academy of Stockholm) if there is a general or partial, a continued or a periodical depression of its waters, or if rather (as has been conjectured for the whole of Scandinavia, by that great geognost, M. Lepold de Buch,) a part of the neighbouring continent is raised or depressed by volcanic causes acting at immense depths in the interior of the globe.

The mountainous isthmus of the Caucasus, composed partly of trachyte and other rocks, which owe their origin to volcanic fire, bounds the Caspian Sea to the west, whilst it is surrounded to the east with tertiary and secondary formations, which stretch towards those countries of ancient celebrity, of which Europe owes the knowledge to the important work of Baron de Meyendorf.

In these general views, which I submit to your consideration, Gentlemen, I have endeavoured to point out some of the advantages which the physical history of the globe may derive from the position and extent of this empire.

I have explained the ideas which were deeply impressed upon me by a sight of the regions which I have visited.

It appeared to me more suitable to render public honours to those, who, under the auspices of government, have pursued the same career as myself, and to draw attention to what remains to be done for the progress of science and the glory of your country, than to speak of my own efforts, and to condense into a narrow space the results of observations which require still to be compared with the great mass of partial data which we have collected.

I have mentioned in this discourse the extent of the countries which separate the line of no variation to the east of Lake Baikal, from the basin of the Caspian;--of the valleys of Cyrus and the frozen summits of Ararat.

At these names we involuntarily revert to that recent struggle, in which the moderation of the conqueror has increased the glory of his arms, which has opened new roads to commerce, and completed the deliverance of that Greece, which has long been the abandoned cradle of the civilization of our ancestors.

But it is not within these peaceful walls that I should celebrate the glory of arms.

The august monarch who has deigned to invite me into this country and to smile upon my labours, appears to me as the genius of peace.

Encouraging, by his example, all that is true, great, and generous; he has been pleased, from the dawn of his reign, to protect the study of the sciences which strengthen reason, and of letters and the arts, which adorn the character of nations.