PERIOD OF THE FOUNDATION 3 



John Herschel and Playfair were among the first 

 to speak out ; Sir Humphry Davy began a book 

 upon the subject, but died (1828) before complet- 

 ing it. Charles Babbage, however, while Lucasian 

 Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge, published 

 (1830) his Reflexions on the Decline of Science in 

 England, and this work was dealt with in the 

 Quarterly Review by Sir David Brewster, 1 whose 

 article is a review not only of Babbage's book, but 

 of the whole position of science in this country as 

 compared with others. 



BREWSTER'S VIEWS ON THE POSITION OF SCIENCE 



Brewster was a man capable of strong sym- 

 pathies and (on required occasion) an ardent cham- 

 pion; and the common literary style of the period 

 was certainly not a medium for understatement. 

 ' The return of the sword to its scabbard,' he 

 wrote, ' seems to have been the signal for one 

 universal effort to recruit exhausted resources, to 

 revive industry and civilisation, and to direct to 

 their proper objects the genius and talent which 

 war had either exhausted in its service or repressed 

 in its desolations. In this rivalry of skill, England 

 alone has hesitated to take a part. Elevated by 

 her warlike triumphs, she seems to have looked with 

 contempt on the less dazzling achievements of her 

 philosophers, and, confiding in her past pre-eminence 

 in the arts, to have calculated too securely on their 

 permanence. Bribed by foreign gold, or flattered 

 by foreign courtesy, her artisans have quitted her 



1 Vol. xliii, pp. 305 et seq. The article is unsigned, but its authorship 

 is confirmed in Home Life of Sir David Brewster (1869), by Mrs. M. M. 

 Gordon, his daughter, and in other references. 



