Page:The Harveian oration, 1875 (IA b22314611).pdf/57

myself up with the greatest pleasure to studies of this kind.'”

To incite the fellows and members of this college “to search and study out the secrets of nature by way of experiment” was, you may remember, a duty imposed on the Harveian orator. What better course, I ask myself and you, is open to him to promote this object, than to present Harvey, the discoverer, in his old age, still finding “ the greatest pleasure” in his studies, and a solace and balm to his spirit in the memory of his observations of former years; realizing to the full the truth of his own words, that the “pains of discovering are amply compensated by the pleasure of discovery.”

There sits the aged philosopher, the toil and weariness of the past transformed into tranquil satisfaction, as his mind’s eye rests on some spot once dark and barren, now bright and fruitful, bathed in the “ flood of light and truth,” which he has shed upon it or peering into the unrevealed future, “dark with excess of light,” feeling even then what we know now, that in the sense in which “a thing of beauty is a joy for ever” a truth discovered and established is an everlasting gain, conferring on generations yet to come, in the life that now is,