IN THE LAST HALF-CENTUUY. 5 



tific method to the investigation of the 

 phenomena of the material world. Not 

 that the growth of physical science is an 

 exclusive prerogative of the Victorian 

 age. Its present strength and volume 

 merely indicate the highest level of a 

 stream which took its rise, alongside of 

 the primal founts of Philosophy, Litera- 

 ture, and Art, in ancieut Greece ; and, 

 after being dammed up for a thousand 

 years, once more began to flow three cent- 

 uries ago. 



It may be doubted if even-handed Greek 



and me- 



justice, as free from fulsome panegyric as diseval 



science 



from captious depreciation, has ever yet 

 been dealt out to the sages of antiquity 

 who, for eight centuries, from the time 

 of Thales to that of Galen, toiled at the 

 foundations of physical science. But, 

 without entering into the discussion of 

 that large question, it is certain that the 

 labors of these early workers in the field 

 of natural knowledge were brought to a 



