1 8 Contemporary Evolution. 



tinued from pure love of and devotion to sciences which 

 repaid persevering inquirers with responses definite, trust- 

 worthy, and capable of reiterated verification. 



The transition which took place at the period of the 

 Renaissance was a change from a social condition in 

 which considerations relating to a future world still, at 

 least apparently, predominated, to one revelling and ex- 

 ulting in physical nature and in this world as it offers 

 itself spontaneously to our senses and our intellect. Such 

 a change must have been like that which would be 

 induced by passing from within some grand mediaeval 

 abbey church into a modern museum. Perhaps no man 

 could, for the first time, so pass without unjustly depre- 

 ciating the merits and the beauties of the one or of the 

 other, so great seems at first the divergence between the 

 spirits respectively embodied in those two manifestations. 



Let us enter an old English abbey Catherine of Ar- 

 ragon being still queen ! The massive pillars of its 

 nave, in long drawn series, have for five hundred years 

 looked down on worshippers at the daily office. The 

 successive styles of different portions of the fabric speak 

 of the continued zeal for the beauty of God's house in 

 successive generations of its cloistered inmates. Every 

 window glows with colours artistically blended, revealing 

 saintly forms. The light of day struggles in with diffi- 

 culty, while here and there, in deeply shaded nooks, 

 twinkling lamps burn before sacred images, and the 



