Observations on the Decline of Science in England. 9 



can only be attributed to tbe great interest taken in these inqui- 

 ries, and to the encouragement afforded to their pursuit by the 

 French Government. In England a very different state of 

 things prevails. There, with a few occasional exceptions, every 

 thing is left to private emulation and the promptings of com- 

 mercial enterprise ; so that those branches of science which do 

 not bear so strongly and directly on public utility, as to offer 

 by their cultivation the prospect of fair commercial returns, are 

 left altogether tn their own unassisted resources. Yet, even in 

 the vulgar calculation of pounds, shillings and pence, it is a 

 question, whether the policy of the French Government is not 

 superior to ours. It is at all events certain, that their well fur- 

 nished museums, with the fame of their savans, have the effect 

 of attracting numerous visitors to their capital. It is equally 

 certain, that if any one thirst after scientific knowledge he will 

 go to Paris, as being sure to find there such aid, with ' all ap- 

 pliances to boot, 1 as can be had in no other city in the world. 

 In fact, if London be considered the capital of the commercial, 

 Paris may be said to be that of the scientific, world, which, 

 though a smaller body, is not without its influence ; at least for 

 good, if not for evil. Paris is pre-eminently the city of the 

 sciences — yet why it should be so, save from the indifference of 

 our influential personages, it would be difficult to say. 1,1 



Captain Herbert enters still more fully into the subject in his 

 analysis of Mr Babbage's book, which he appears not to have 

 seen when he composed the preceding extract. 



" The picture, 11 says he, " which is here drawn of the state of 

 English science is melancholy in the extreme, and certainly makes 

 the wonder less that we should be so much below the nations of 

 the continent in the cultivation of every branch of science. In 

 one point, however, we differ from our author : he considers the 

 vile system he has exposed, to be the cause of the decline of 

 science : we, on the contrary, arc disposed to think that science 

 must already have been at a miserably low ebb in any country 

 where such things ' can be, and not o'crcomc us as a summer 

 cloud with special wonder. 1 Where such things could pass as 

 every day matters, there science must have already declined. 



" That the low state of science in England is mainly owing to 

 the system of education, is an opinion we had ventured to give be- 



