THE CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD 451 



And now let me ask your attention to two or three closing 

 remarks. 



If you look back upon that period of about 100 years 

 which commences with Harvey's birth I mean from the 

 year 1578 to 1680 or thereabouts I think you will agree 

 with me, that it constitutes one of the most remarkable 

 epochs in the whole of that thousand years which we may 

 roughly reckon as constituting the history of Britain. In 

 the commencement of that period, we may see, if not the 

 setting, at any rate the declension of that system of personal 

 rule which had existed under previous sovereigns, and which, 

 after a brief and spasmodic revival in the time of George 

 the Third, has now sunk, let us hope, into the limbo of for- 

 gotten things. The latter part of that 100 years saw the 

 dawn of that system of free government which has grown 

 and flourished, and which, if the men of the present day be 

 the worthy descendants of Eliott and Pym, and Hampden 

 and Milton, will go on growing as long as this realm lasts. 

 Within that time, one of the strangest phenomena which 

 I think I may say any nation has ever manifested arose 

 to its height and fell I mean that strange and altogether 

 marvellous phenomenon, English Puritanism. Within that 

 time, England had to show statesmen HkeBurleigh, Strafford, 

 and Cromwell I mean men who were real statesmen, and 

 not intriguers, seeking to make a reputation at the expense 

 of the nation. In the course of that time, the nation had 

 begun to throw off those swarms of hardy colonists which, 

 to the benefit of the world and as I fancy, in the long run, 

 to the benefit of England herself have now become the 

 United States of America ; and, during the same epoch, the 

 first foundations were laid of that Indian Empire which, it 

 may be, future generations will not look upon as so happy 

 a product of English enterprise and ingenuity. In that 

 time we had poets such as Spenser, Shakspere, and Milton ; 

 we had a great philosopher, in Hobbes ; and we had a clever 

 talker about philosophy, in Bacon. In the beginning of the 

 period, Harvey revolutionized the biological sciences, and 

 at the end of it, Newton was preparing the revolution of the 

 physical sciences. I know not any period of our history 

 I doubt if there be any period of the history of any nation 

 which has precisely such a record as this to show for a 

 hundred years. But I do not recall these facts to your 

 recollection for a mere vainglorious purpose. I myself am 

 of opinion that the memory of the great men of a nation is 



