Co n temporary Evolution . 



details of the plants, animals, and men brought from 

 the lately discovered western lands to Castile, such a 

 Florentine, if he (considering the coincidence of the dis- 

 interment of an old world with the discovery of a new) 

 consoled his Israelitish guest with the assurance that they 

 were the beholders of events destined to result in the 

 overthrow of the existing theocratic forms, would in no 

 way have overstated the consequence and meaning of the 

 period in which he lived. 



That spectator who in 1789 when witnessing the long 

 train of black-coated members of the "tiers etat" pre- 

 ceding the plumed nobles and brilliant court on their 

 way to the solemn mass of the Holy Ghost before the 

 opening of the States-General exclaimed, " There goes 

 the funeral procession of the French monarchy," showed 

 a remarkably correct appreciation of the fatal significance 

 of the passing pageant. Not, of course, but that the con- 

 ditions for the coming explosion had been slowly, almost 

 imperceptibly, accumulating for centuries before ; yet the 

 fact of such accumulation in no way detracts from the 

 truth that the end of the eighteenth century in France 

 will be for ever memorable as the epoch of the actual 

 occurrence of those changes which had taken so long in 

 becoming proximately potential. 



We in England (and, indeed, in Europe generally) may 

 not improbably be traversing an epoch destined to be 

 memorable for a long time to come, and one which 



