ti |Tag Sermous, (Essatrs, nnft gUbietxrs. LI. 



The fact is perhaps rather too much," than too little, 

 forced upon one's notice, nowadays, that all this mar- 

 vellous intellectual growth has a no less wonderful 

 expression in practical life ; and that, in this respect, if 

 in no other, the movement symbolized by the progress 

 of the Royal Society stands without a parallel in the 

 history of mankind. 



A series of volumes as bulky as the Transactions of 

 the Royal Society might possibly be filled with the 

 subtle speculations of the Schoolmen ; not improbably, 

 the obtaining a mastery over the products of mediaeval 

 thought might necessitate an even greater expenditure of 

 time and of energy than the acquirement of the " New 

 Philosophy ;" but though such work engrossed the best 

 intellects of Europe for a longer time than has elapsed 

 since the great fire, its effects were " writ in water," so 

 far as our social state is concerned. 



On the other hand, if the noble first President of the 

 Royal Society could revisit the upper air and once more 

 gladden his eyes with a sight of the familiar mace, he 

 would find himself in the midst of a material civilization 

 more different from that of his day, than that of the 

 seventeenth, was from that of the first, century. And if 

 Lord Brouncker's native sagacity had not deserted his 

 ghost, he would need no long reflection to discover that 

 all these great ships, these railways, these telegraphs, 

 these factories, these printing-presses, without which the 

 whole fabric of modern English society would collapse 

 into a mass of stagnant and starving pauperism, that 

 all these pillars of our State are but the ripples and the 

 bubbles upon the surface of that great spiritual stream, 

 the springs of which, only, he and his fellows were 

 privileged to see ; and seeing, to recognise as that which 

 it behoved them above all things to keep pure and 

 undefilcd. 



