rushed froia ihvarfisb to gigantic ilimensions witli self-accelerative si)ee(l, almost 

 within human memory. A glance over Sir C. Lyell's sketch of the progi-ess of 

 geology, in his great work, leaves one amazed at the childish absurdity of view, 

 on the structure of the world and the facts of animal and vegetable life, enter- 

 tained by men of ability but half a century ago. The changes that that period 

 has witnessed have never been better desci-ibed than in Lord Macaulay's summary 

 of the fruits of inductive research applied to the facts of the physical world. 

 " It has lengthened life, it has mitigated pain, it has extinguished diseases, it 

 has increased the fertility of the soil, it has given new seciu-ities to the mariner, 

 it has furnished new arms to the warrior, it has spanned great rivers and 

 estuaries with bridges of forms unknown to our fathers, it has guided the 

 thunderbolt innocuously from heaven to earth, it has lighted up the night with 

 the splendour of the day, it has extended the range of the human vision, it 

 has multiplied the power of the human muscles, it has accelerated motion, 

 it has annihilated distance, it has facilitated intercourse, correspondence, all 

 friendly offices, all dispatch of business ; it has enabled man to descend to the 

 depths of the sea, to soar into the air, to penetrate securely into the noxious 

 recesses of the earth, to traverse the land in cars whirled along without horses, 

 and the ocean in ships which run ten knots an hour against the wind." All this 

 it had done when this impressive summary was penned five-and-twenty years ago. 

 But how far does this fall short of what has since been accomplished ! We have 

 since seen it, by the investigation of the mysteries of light and colour, analyse 

 the substance of the sun, and the more distant bodies of space ; it has followed 

 and mapped the course of the Tempest that sweeps over the ocean and the land . 

 it has solved the ancient problem of the Sources of the Nile, and the modern 

 one of the North "West Passage. It has not only conveyed the lightning to the 

 earth, but laid it beneath the ocean, to re-\inite the kindred language of distant 

 Hemispheres. If it has not yet destroyed the scourge of War, it has so revolu- 

 tionized its practice, both naval and military, that ah-eady its worst featiire, 

 that of duration, is probably abridged for ever. 



Surely such a change as this is enough to show that man is essentially 

 the child of progress. Viewing his career, from the days of flint hatchets to 

 those of ocean telegi-aphs, it would seem as if, except in the very roots of his 

 moral and intellectual natm-e, he is a changed being. His conception of the 

 whole universe around him is so totally different to that which was once enter- 

 tained, that the forms of language and even the very structure of his thought, 

 have to be modified. Not only has he bid farewell to the wonder, and terror, and 

 mystery, and superstition, of ignorance, but even the Convulsions and Cataclysms 

 of science have yielded to calmer and gentler views of the power and processes 

 of natui-e ; and the Present is seen stretching back by a harmonious unity of law 

 into the vista of the Past. 



To look into the Future is indeed not granted us ; but where is the prophet 

 who does not use the Past as the instrument by which to judge of the Future ? 



