Matthew Fontaine Maury

“ The air, itself refreshed upon the deep, becomes gray from the vapour which envelops the promontories in mist, and curtains the inland with dark clouds. The land is discernible only by the darker tint which it gives to the mist; but the distance cannot be estimated. The sailor thinks himself farther from shore than he really is, and steers on his course carelessly", while the capricious wind lashes the waters, and makes a short and broken sea, from the white caps of which light curls are torn, with sportive hand, to float away like parti-coloured streamers in the sunbeam. ”

“ AS we sit by our firesides and peer into the glowing coals, or watch the bright jets of flame spring into existence to throw their cheery light into the room, making weird, fantastic shadows on the wall, and bringing with them such comforting cheer to our senses of sight and feeling, we are often brought into very reflective moods, especially if we are sitting in the twilight, while the cold wind is whistling, and the sharp snow and hail of winter are clicking against the windows. ”

“ The camels rock us almost as if we were in a little boat on the sea. Some of us feel seasick. Soon something even worse than seasickness comes. A dark cloud is driven toward us by the wind. The air is filled with sand and dust. The sun is darkened. We are in a sandstorm.
The camels turn their backs to the wind, kneel down and put their noses close to the ground. We lie down and cover our faces with handkerchiefs. Soon the storm is over. The camels rise, we shake the sand from our clothes, and begin the journey again. ”

“ As we go down into the depths of the sea, we find that we are just beginning to penetrate the chambers of its hidden things, and to comprehend its wonders. The heart of man was never rightly attuned to the music of the spheres until he was permitted to stand with his eye at the telescope, and then, for the first time, the song of the morning stars burst upon him in all its glory. And so it is with the harmonies of old Ocean when contemplated through the microscope; then every drop of water in the sea is discovered to be in tune with the hosts of heaven, for each stands forth a peopled world. ”

“ And so it is in the moral world: the progress of man must be upward and onward, or downward and backward. His mind cannot stand still. There is no such thing as a stationary condition for the human understanding. To stand still is death; to go backwards is worse.
With the advantages of the good training which you have received here, you cannot go amiss for subjects of study and improvement. The rock at your feet, the plant in every walk you tread, the air that surrounds you, the insect that flits across your path, the stars that look down upon you, are all suggestive of knowledge. ”

“ Philosophers have found new elements. The old dogma of fire, earth, air, and water, is exploded. Light, heat, and electricity are now the agents; with these we send invisible couriers through the air; with these we print and paint, spin and weave, and endow machinery almost with the attributes of intelligence. With such agents the world is set in motion. Nature employs them in all her works, and when man begins to enlist them into his service, he may well boast of a step gained, and talk of advancement and improvement. ”

“ Finally, the aggressive and fanatical spirit of the North ran to such a pitch against us, that just before the Southern people began to feel that patience and forbearance were both exhausted, a band of raiders, fitted out and equipped in the North, came down upon Virginia with sword and spear in hand. They commenced in the dead of night to murder our citizens, to arm the slaves, encouraging them to rise up, burn and rob, kill and slay throughout the South. ”

“ It induced Tycho Brahe to undertake his catalogue.
It may be that there is now, at this very time in the firmament above, a world on fire. Argus, a well-known star in the Southern hemisphere, has suddenly blazed forth, and a star from the 2nd or 3rd magnitude now glares with the brilliancy of the first.
It is man’s boast that he was made to look aloft; for his alone is the privilege to pry in “Nature’s infinite book of secrecy,” and can it be therefore profitless to him and of no value to posterity to survey the skies, map the stars and contemplate “the eternal flowers of heaven?” ”

“ And yonder, farther still, away to the south, float the Magellanic clouds, and the "Coal Sacks"—those mysterious, dark spots in the sky, which seem as though it had been rent, and these were holes in the "azure robe of night," looking out in the starless, empty, black abyss beyond. One who has never watched the southern sky in the stillness of the night, after the sea breeze with its turmoil is done, can have no idea of its grandeur, beauty, and loveliness. ”

“ There are minds whose exuberant fancy leads them off from the paths of science into the regions of fable and romance; there they build their airy castles, and lighting them up with the brilliancy of their imaginations, they revel on with fairy queens or goblins bold. There is a reality in store for the youth of such a mind. ”

“ The ceremonies and festivities of the occasion which calls us together, mark a period in the career of the student, and give date to an era in his life as a man. The young graduate is now about to take a position in society of great dignity—the independent doer of his deeds; and to realize a day-dream of his boyhood, by finding himself at last completely and fully invested with the prerogatives and duties of fresh, vigorous, glorious, young manhood.
The responsibilities of a freeman, and the obligations of a citizen in a land where the people rule, are looming up before you, gentlemen. ”

“ There is a constant ratio between the quantity that runs down and the quantity that is carried back. Were evaporation to cease, or the atmosphere to stand still—were the winds never to blow, our rivers would become dry, and the earth itself unfit for man's use. What a circulator, purifier, cooler, and condenser! In every point of view this atmosphere is a grand machine—perfect in all its parts, wonderful in its offices, sublime in its operations. ”

“ Within the arctic circle is the pole of the winds and the poles of the cold; the pole of the earth and of the magnet. It is a circle of mysteries; and the desire to enter it, to explore its untrodden wastes and secret chambers, and to study its physical aspects, has grown into a longing. Noble daring has made arctic ice and snow-clad seas classic ground. It is no feverish excitement nor vain ambition that leads man there. It is a higher feeling, a holier motive—a desire to look into the works of creation, to comprehend the economy of our planet, and to grow wiser and better by the knowledge. ”

“ How much higher and more noble as to position, is he who, keeping clear of this vortex, has in the meantime been improving his mind and estate, and assisting to advance the prosperity of the commonwealth; who has made two blades of grass to grow where only one stood before; who, besides performing all the duties of the good citizen, has been quietly enlarging his sphere of usefulness, and causing it to spread itself like a circle on the water. ”

“ Leaching.—The waters which dash against the shore, which the running streams pour into the flood, or with which the tides and currents scour the bottom of their channel ways, have soaked from the soil, or leached out of the disintegrated materials which strew the beach or line the shores, portions of every soluble ingredient known in nature. Thus impregnated, the laughing, dancing waters come down from the mountains, turning wheels, driving machinery, and serving the manifold purposes of man. At last they find their way into the sea, and so make the lye of the earth brine for the ocean. ”

“ The business of life, the world and its ways, are to them like an unknown island to the mariner in the midst of the ocean—beautiful in the distance, rich with verdure and enchanting to the imagination, but surrounded with shoals he knows not where, and peopled with inhabitants he knows not whom. ”

“ Quantity of salt in the sea.—If all the salts of the sea were precipitated and spread out equally over the northern half of this continent, it would, it has been computed, cover the ground one mile deep. What force could move such a mass of matter on the dry land? Yet the machinery of the ocean, of which it forms a part, is so wisety, marvellously, and wonderfully compensated, that the most gentle breeze that plays on its bosom, the tiniest insect that secretes solid matter for its sea-shell, is capable of putting it instantly in motion. ”

“ We hunger, and take for nourishment this same carbon again into the stomach, there elaborate it into flesh and blood, and again, with every breath, after it has performed its office and expended its vitality, cast it forth, like the exhausted steam of an engine, into the atmosphere, where it is again, in never ceasing round, filtered through the vegetable process, and re-adapted for animal use. ”

“ The youth here have had not only all the advantages of education which we had in our day, but they have had the benefits also of all the new lights, the discoveries and improvement that have since been made. They are the greybeards, we the striplings.
As knowledge increases, our views are enlarged, our wants multiplied, and our social condition improved; under the pressure of newly constituted wants, there has gone forth from the schools a spirit of philosophical research which gives new strength to the human mind, and imparts to the ingenuity of man energies whose compass cannot be measured. ”

“ By such a one, the wind and rain, the vapour and the cloud, the tide, the current, the saltness, and depth, and warmth, and colour of the sea, the shade of the sky, the temperature of the air, the tint and shape of the clouds, the height of the tree on the shore, the size of its leaves, the brilliancy of its flowers—each and all may be regarded as the exponent of certain physical combinations, and therefore as the expression in which Nature chooses to announce her own doings, or, if we please, as the language in which she writes down or elects to make known her own laws. ”

“ There is no expression uttered by nature which is unworthy of our most attentive consideration—for no physical fact is too bald for study—and mariners, by registering in their logs the kind of lightning, whether sheet, forked, or streaked, and the kind of thunder, whether rolling, muttering, or sharp, may be furnishing facts which will throw much light on the features and character of the clouds in different latitudes and seasons. Physical facts are the language of Nature, and every expression uttered by her is worthy of our most attentive consideration, for it is the voice of Wisdom. ”