43S Recapitulation. 



more unsparing distribution of honours of *this 

 kind ; so that literary and scientific associations, at 

 the close of the period which is the subject of this 

 retrospect, consisted of a larger number of members 

 than ever before, and more particularly of members 

 of an unqualified and inefficient character. 



15. The eighteenth century was pre-eminently 



THE AGE OF LITERARY ANDSCIENTIFIC INTERCOURSE. 



It has been repeatedly remarked in the foregoing 

 sheets, that the extension of Commerce, the dis- 

 coveries in Geography, and the improvements in 

 Navigation, in the Mechanic Arts, and in the 

 modes of travelling, have led to a more general 

 intercourse among mankind than in any former 

 period. This remark may be extended to the re- 

 public of letters. In all preceding ages, learned 

 men were in a great measure insulated. Those of 

 one country knew little of those of another; and 

 if any one wished to obtain more particular infor- 

 mation concerning the treasures of knowledge 

 possessed by an individual, or a nation, he was 

 under the necessity of travelling into the country 

 with which he sought to be acquainted, and of 

 making personal inquiry for this purpose. And 

 even after the art of printing was discovered, the 

 intercourse between dirTerent parts of the learned 

 world was so small, for more than two centuries, 

 that some of the greatest benefactors to the cause 

 of knowledge were little known out of their own 

 country, and some but imperfectly even within 

 these limits. 



In the eighteenth century it was remarkably 

 otherwise. The great extension of the art of 

 printing in this period, joined with the circumstan- 

 ces above stated, have brought ail classes of men 

 in the literary world better acquainted with each 

 other, and especially those who are devoted to the 

 improvement of letters and science. The number 



