440 Recapitulation. 



to show that they are striking, arid worthy of more 

 minute examination. They are not, indeed, all cal-^ 

 culated to give pleasure to the benevolent mind : 

 some are distorted and disgusting, and a few heavy 

 and uninteresting; but a much greater number are 

 at once strong, highly illuminated, and pre-emi- 

 nently engaging. If these be mingled, as in most 

 pictures that are drawn true to nature, it is presumed 

 that, in the present instance, the agreeable features 

 predominate in a greater degree than in any deli- 

 neation of a former period of similar extent. 



Those, therefore, who have witnessed the close 

 of the century under review, have indeed reason 

 to congratulate themselves as an highly favoured 

 generation. Though they have been pained with 

 the sight of some degrading retrocessions in human 

 knowledge, and almost stunned with the noisy 

 pretensions of false philosophy, they have seen, at 

 the same time, improvements in science, which 

 their fathers, a century ago, would have antici-^ 

 pated with astonishment, or pronounced altoge- 

 ther impossible. They have seen a larger por-^ 

 tion of human society enlightened, polished, and 

 comfortable, than ever before greeted the eye 

 of benevolence. They have, in a word, witnes- 

 sed, on the one hand, the accession of honours 

 to science, which it could boast in no former pe- 

 riod ; and, on the other, a degree of usefulness 

 reflected from science to economy and art, no less 

 conspicuous and unrivalled. The lapse of another 

 century such as the eighteenth — -a century that 

 should bring with it an equal amount of discoveries 

 and improvements, and present an equally rapid 

 increase in the means, and in the diffusion of know- 

 ledge, would confer an aspect on systems of sci- 

 ence, of which we, at present, are little qualified 

 to judge. Such a century the nineteenth is likely 

 to prove. 



