Recapitulation. 439 



of literary Journals in every part of Europe has 

 greatly increased within the last fifty years, their 

 plans have been much improved, and their circula- 

 tion prodigiously extended; learned individuals 

 and societies now maintain a more free and friendly 

 correspondence than formerly; the great improve- 

 ments in Post-office establishments, within this pe- 

 riod, have facilitated, to an unparalleled degree, the 

 intercourse between distant parts of the earth; 8 

 foreigners of distinction are more frequently elected 

 members of academies and other associations of a 

 similar kind; Commerce, as its channels became 

 multiplied and enlarged, furnished, at once, a con- 

 venient medium, and strong incentives to literary 

 intercourse; the great increase in the practice of 

 translating respectable w T orks into all polished lan- 

 guages, has also served to render books of value, 

 and their authors, more generally known: — to all 

 which maybe added, that the increased frequency 

 and extent of modern travels, have been decidedly 

 favourable to the correspondence of learned men, 

 and to a knowledge of the works and characters of 

 one another. 



Such is an imperfect outline of the literary and 

 scientific character of the century to which we have 

 just bidden adieu. The picture is necessarily exten- 

 sive and various; and the features, however unskil- 

 fully sketched, are presented with sufficient accuracy 



o To illustrate this remark, two or three facts will be stated with re- 

 gard to a single post-office establishment. In 1728 the London post ar- 

 rived one day at Edinburgh with only one six-penny London letter, and 

 that was addressed to the Post-Master-General on office business. The 

 arrival of the post was then only once a fortnight ; now it is six times 

 a week. The post then employed ten days in travelling from London to 

 Edinburgh; now it employs only three. Then the mail produced no re- 

 venue or nett profit to government, but was rather a continual charge ; 

 but the revenue of the post-office in Scotland, for the year ending in 

 April, 1802, was £85,791 lis. 3d. sterling, or about 500,000 dollars/ A 

 corresponding increase in commercial and literary intercourse has taken 

 place in the same period, in almost every cultivated part of the world. 



