320 
France issued in a military despotism, 
and her fortunate chief marched for- 
ward in his conquests with a speed, for 
which, his ambitious predecessor in pow- 
er dared not to hope. 
Spain had fallen from her greatness at 
the above-mentioned period; butshe had 
not lost her nationalenergy. She is now 
sunk in sloth and weakness, and has 
scarcely any influence upon the impor- 
tant events of Europe. 
Holland was then rising in the strength 
of republican virtue and commercial en- 
terprize; her public virtue now appears 
to be lost; her strength is certainly pal- 
sied. 
The Swiss, then a generation of in- 
dustry, sobriety, and happiness, are now 
convulsed by party dissention, oppressed 
by foreign requisitions, and miserable by 
the devastations of war. 
Prussia, under the direction of her po- 
litic and martial monarch, grew up toa 
great and powerful kingdom, and early 
withdrawing from the war, which now 
rages with unprecedented destruction in 
Europe, she has reserved her numbers 
and resources, 
The house of Austria, powerful and 
ambitious, has seen her richest provinces 
wrested from her; her resources are ex- 
hausted; and she wages unequal war 
with her too potent neighbour. 
At the beginning of the century Po- 
Jand was sovereign in her government, 
viumerous in population, and influential 
in her national character. Her name, as 
a distinct and independent country, is 
now blotted from the register of nations. 
~ The schemes of the Great Peter of 
Russia have been in operation for the 
Jast hundred years; under two discern- 
ing and ambitious female sovereigns, im- 
provements of every kind have been 
made through the provinces of this ex- 
tended empire. Russia is the only con- 
tinental power that can now balatice the 
weight of France. 
Italy, with a great part of Europe, at 
the commencement of the century, ac- 
knowledged spiritual allegiance to the 
church of Rome; which impiously as- 
sumed the direction of the consciences 
of men, and pretended, by divine autho- 
rity, to regulate the concerns of the hu- 
man soul with its God; which in the 
suppovt of spiritual tyranny has exercised 
oppressions and cruelties, at the review 
ot which reason is abashed, and buma- 
vity mourns. At that period, although 
some parts of Christendom were too 
much enlizitened to submit to her im- 
A Review of the Eighteenth Century. 
[Nov. 1, 
positions, yet she then retained great inf- 
fluence in alt the political transactions of 
Europe; the sovereign pontiff is now de~ 
spoiled of civil power, is degraded from 
his exalted seat, is Gependent on the will 
of an antichristian military despot, and is 
deprived of the means to do good or 
evil. 
The once commercial and weighty re- 
public of Venice has been bartered to the 
house of Austria, and most of the Italian 
states are now affiliated with the Great 
Nation. 
These are the revo)utions which with- 
in the eighteenth century changed the 
face of Europe. 4s the century began, 
so it closed, with war; a war perhaps 
more destructive to man, than Christian 
Europe ever before knew; a war origi- 
nated by civil dissentions in France, 
which in atrocity and barbarity were only 
equalled by the massacres and devasta- 
tions of the ancestors of Frenchmen upon 
the Roman empire. 
Within the period of our review, im- 
provements in arts and sciences have 
been great. Sir Isaac Newton was born 
in the seventeeth century, but he pub- 
lished some of his most valuable works 
in the eighteenth ; and within it his dis- 
coveries have been more generally com- 
municated, and the world more generally 
enlightened by them. The method of 
investigating truth, previously suggested 
by Lord Bacon, has been universally 
adopted. Hypotheses in philosophy have 
been exploded, and those principles alone 
are now admitted as legitimate, which are 
the result of fair and repeated experi- 
ments, The last century has raised elec- 
tricity from darkness almost to perfect 
knowledge; and our own countryman 
led the way in this improvement. Great 
discoveries have been made in chemistry 
and in the properties of air. Men in 
their enterprize have essayed a new ele- 
ment; they have dared to sail in the 
ocean of the atmosphere; ‘but this dis- 
covery promises little utility; the former 
are applied to the most important pur- 
poses of human life. 
In astronomy, Herschel has added a 
planet to the solar system, and the great 
improvement in optics has enabled men 
of this science to take a more accurate 
survey of the heavenly bodies. 
The healing art has received improve 
ments. The human frame has been more 
accurately analyzed; the nature and ope* 
ration of medicine more fully imvestis 
gated; and in many instances a bolder} 
and a more successful practice adopted, 
Lnoculation 
