A Discourse on the Character and Services of Thomas Jefferson, More Especially as a Promoter of Natural and Physical Science: Pronounced, by Request, Before the New York Lyceum of Natural History, on the 11th October, 1826

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G. & C. Carvill, 1826 - 67 pages

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Page 13 - If the view from the top be painful and intolerable, that from below is delightful in an equal extreme ; it is impossible for the emotions arising from the sublime to be felt beyond what they are here : so beautiful an arch, so elevated, so light, and springing as it were up to heaven ! the rapture of the spectator is really indescribable!
Page 29 - They have traced the Missouri nearly to its source, descended the Columbia to the Pacific ocean, ascertained with accuracy the geography of that interesting communication across our continent, learned the character of the country, of its commerce, and inhabitants ; and it is but justice to say that Messrs. Lewis and Clarke, and their brave companions, have by this arduous service deserved well of their country.
Page 8 - The following Notes were written in Virginia in the year 1781, and somewhat corrected and enlarged in the winter of 1782, in answer to Queries proposed to the Author, by a Foreigner of Distinction, then residing among us. The subjects are all treated imperfectly ; some scarcely touched on. To apologize for this by developing the circumstances of the time and place of their composition, would be to open wounds which have already bled enough. To these circumstances some of their imperfections...
Page 17 - Such is the economy of nature, that no instance can be produced, of her having permitted any one race of her animals to become extinct; of her having formed any link in her great work so weak as to be broken.
Page 34 - I suppose an amendment to the Constitution, by consent of the States, necessary, because the objects now recommended are not among those enumerated in the Constitution, and to which it permits the public moneys to be applied.
Page 34 - The present consideration of a national establishment, for education particularly, is rendered proper by this circumstance; also that, if Congress, approving the proposition, shall yet think it more eligible to found it on a donation of lands, they have it now in their power to endow it with those which will be among the earliest to produce the necessary income.
Page 15 - I believe there are, as I see to be the case in the races of other animals. I only mean to suggest a doubt whether the bulk and faculties of animals depend on the side of the Atlantic on which their food happens to grow, or which furnishes the elements of which they are compounded. Whether Nature has enlisted herself as a Cis- or Trans-Atlantic partisan.
Page 64 - I strongly suspect that our geographical peculiarities may call for a different code of natural law to govern relations with other nations from that which the conditions of Europe have given rise to there.
Page 66 - Perhaps no man was ever more conscious of the approach of death than Dr. Priestley, or made more exact arrangements for that solemn event. In one of his letters to Dr. Mitchill, dated January 9, 1802, he expressed himself thus : — ' I am at present very much behind-hand in philosophical intelligence, by which I suffer much. In winter also I am not fond of going much into my laboratory, so that I do very little in the way of experiments at present, though in other respects I am not quite idle. I...
Page 29 - The expedition of Messrs. Lewis and Clarke, for exploring the river Missouri, and the best communication from that to the Pacific ocean, has had all the success which could have been expected. They have traced the Missouri nearly to its source, descended the Columbia to the Pacific ocean...

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