10 Dr Whewell's Itmugural Lecture. 



minute, by rushing to the borders of the solar system, where 

 the images are still travelling outwards, see the first inhabitant 

 of this island placing his foot upon its coast ; and in the in- 

 termediate distances we should successively overtake and see, 

 with our bodily eyes, in inverted order, the events of the 

 English, Norman, Saxon, Roman, and British times ; and we 

 might mark, at each period, the food, the clothing, the arms, 

 the tools, the houses, the machines, and the ornaments of the 

 various times. 



Now that which this scientific dream thus presents to us 

 in imagination, the Exhibition of the Industry and Arts of all 

 Nations has presented as a visible reality ; for we have had 

 there collected examples of the food and clothing and other 

 works of art of nations in every stage of the progress of art. 

 From Otaheite, so long in the eyes of Englishmen the type 

 of gentle but uncultured life, Queen Pomare sends mats and 

 cloth, head-dresses and female gear, which the native art of 

 her women fabricates from their indigenous plants. From 

 Labuan, the last specimen of savage life with which this 

 country has become connected, we have also clothes and 

 armour, weapons and musical instruments. From all the 

 wide domains which lie within or around our Indian empire 

 we have rich and various contributions ; from Sincapore and 

 Ceylon, Celebes and Java, Mengatal and Palembang. The 

 ruder and more primitive of these regions send us their 

 native food and clothing, their fishing nets and baskets ; but 

 art soon goes beyond these first essays. From Sumatra we 

 have the loom and the plough, lacquered work and silken 

 wares ; and as we proceed from these outside regions to that 

 central and ancient India, so long the field of a peculiar form 

 of civilization, we have endless and innumerable treasures of 

 skill and ingenuity, of magnificence and beauty. And yet we 

 perceive that, in advancing from these to the productions of 

 our own form of civilization, which has, even in that country, 

 shewn its greater power, we advance also to a more skilful, 

 powerful, comprehensive, and progressive form of art. And 

 looking at the whole of this spectacle of the arts of life in all 

 their successive stages, there is one train of reflection which 

 cannot fail I think to strike us ; namely, this : — In the first 



