EVOLUTION OF MODERN SOCIETY. 519 



This brings us to our furthest and our highest point. From the 

 height now attained we have au ahnost boundless view over the ages 

 that liave gone before, and we can survey them with the tranquillity of 

 the scientific observer. 



The progress of society, the gradual emancipation of the individual, 

 the steady development of mind and resource, and uhe spread of their 

 influences to all classes of society, had its active rise in the fifteenth 

 century. By the seventeenth century the development had assumed 

 marked forms and signally asserted itself. By the eighteenth century 

 it had grown to proportions against which the old order of things could 

 not possibly hold out, and it inaugurated the nineteenth century with 

 a revolution of society more direct, drastic, and immediate, if not more 

 thorough or momentous, than the Protestant Reformation. 



The political history of the present century — which is always the 

 reflex of the internal social workings — is a recorcj of universal awaken- 

 ing. This undoubtedly was hastened by jSTapoleon's vast attempt to 

 restore despotism. The whole of Europe, upon which the influences 

 we have been tracing had been long working, was roused into action. 

 Napoleon staked the cause of despotism at Waterloo, and lost. Shortly 

 before this Holland had shaken off the foreign yoke; Greece, once 

 more, for a brief space, something like her old self, after Missolonghi 

 and Navarino, regained her independence from the Turks; shortly 

 after, Belgium was declared free; and, later still, we follow the noble 

 efforts for freedom in Italy, under the patriot Garibaldi ; and we behold 

 them crowned with success. Surely these events — revolutions in a sec- 

 ondary sense — are deeply significant. They were the natural fruits of 

 the forces at work from the earliest period of human history. 



The influences in Britain at this time were no less marked, though 

 they were not characterized by the same violence. That stage had 

 been passed two centuries before. The changes were of a semipolitical 

 character, in which sense I mean that they more immediately concerned 

 the people themselves than their relations with the rest of the world. 

 Social and parliamentary reform formed the basis of the agitations. 

 The immense increase of wealth and spread of knowledge had thrown 

 open the roads to places hitherto jealously guarded. The common 

 bond of individuality and natural freedom had been irrefragable. It 

 was no longer mere birth that ranked before worth. Thus united, 

 society became molded into a solid and clearly defined body. 



Intellectual progress in the seventeenth century was great; more so 

 in the eighteenth. But the nineteenth century has surpassed all in the 

 purity and clearness of its intellectual sky and the intensity of its 

 intellectual sun. 



This is amply evidenced by the paramount importance attached to 

 education and the universal desire for the same; the enormous increase 

 and perfection of industries; the growth of vast cities; the extent of 

 international relations, political and social; the spread of and height 



