338 Decline of Science in England. 



bv their personal and individual exertions ; and appealed only 

 to public opinion when other means had proved unavailing. 

 The evil management of the Royal Society, and its baneful ef- 

 ects upon science, were exposed, not to lacerate private feelings 

 or promote private ends, but to advance the character of an in- 

 stitution whose history was interwoven with that of the bright- 

 est period of British science. The decay of mathematical 

 and physical knowledge was pressed upon public notice, not 

 to depreciate the character of English philosophers, but to 

 raise them to new exertions to revive and extend the one, and 

 to raise and ennoble the other. The splendour of foreign ta- 

 lent was brought forward, not to derogate from the lustre of 

 British genius, but to exhibit the happy influence of Royal 

 favour and of national institutions ; and the liberality of fo- 

 reign o-overnments was justly placed in painful contrast with 

 the shallow and ignoble policy of our own, with its habitual 

 neo-lect of intellectual worth, with its exclusion of genius from 

 all the offices and honours of the state, and with its more than 

 barbarous indifference to the true glory of a civilized empire. 

 Such were the undoubted motives of the reformers of science, 

 and we have reason to know that many of its youthful culti- 

 vators have not only justly appreciated them, but have con- 

 sidered the declining state of English science as a ground for 

 more strenuous exertions to maintain the honour of the na- 

 tion. Many of our readers will probably bear testimony in 

 their own hearts to the existence of such a feeling, and we trust 

 that there is a numerous class of scientific men who will cherish 

 the noble sentiments so well expressed by Mr Bray ley in the 

 following commentary upon Mr Babbage's views, which seems 

 to have been composed for the very purposes of our argument. 

 It occurs in a well written work, " On the Utility of the Know- 

 ledge of Nature, considered in reference to the General Edu- 

 cation of Youth.' — London, 1831. 



" Strong representations,'" says he, " have of late been made, 

 " and among other competent advocates, by the consummate 

 " mathematician who now occupies the chair in the University 

 " of Cambridge, once filled by Newton, of the paucity, in this 

 " countrv, of high mathematical knowledge, as well as that of 

 " interest in the more elevated pursuits of those sciences which 

 " are immediately connected with it, such as astronomy, and 



