It is, on the other hand, sad to think how many of our greatest
benefactors are unknown even by name. Who discovered the art of procuring
fire? Prometheus is merely the personification of forethought. Who
invented letters? Cadmus is a mere name.

These inventions, indeed, are lost in the mists of antiquity, but even as
regards recent progress the steps are often so gradual, and so numerous,
that few inventions can be attributed entirely, or even mainly, to any one
person.

Columbus is said, and truly said, to have discovered America, though the
Northmen were there before him.

We Englishmen have every reason to be proud of our fellow-countrymen. To
take Philosophers and men of Science only, Bacon and Hobbes' Locke and
Berkeley, Hume and Hamilton, will always be associated with the progress
of human thought; Newton with gravitation, Adam Smith with Political
Economy, Young with the undulatory theory of light, Herschel with the
discovery of Uranus and the study of the star depths, Lord Worcester,
Trevethick, and Watt with the steam-engine, Wheatstone with the electric
telegraph, Jenner with the banishment of smallpox, Simpson with the
practical application of anaesthetics, and Darwin with the creation of
modern Natural History.

These men, and such as these, have made our history and moulded our
opinions; and though during life they may have occupied, comparatively, an
insignificant space in the eyes of their countrymen, they became at length
an irresistible power, and have now justly grown to a glorious memory.