PART FIRST. 



ON THE REVOLUTIONS AND IMPROVEMENTS IN 

 SCIENCE, ARTS, AND LITERATURE, DURING THE 

 EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 



It is justly remarked, by an acute modern writer*, 

 that the history of learning and science is much 

 less uniform than that of civil affairs ; that the wars, 

 negotiations, and politics of one age more resemble 

 those of another, than the literary and scientific 

 taste. He explains this obvious fact by observing, 

 that, in public and polftical transactions, ambition, 

 honour, malice, revenge, and the various turbulent 

 passions of man, are the prime movers ; and that 

 these passions are not only the same in every age, 

 but are also stubborn, intractable, and by no means 

 susceptible of the. same variety of modification, 

 which frequently takes place in the literary taste 

 and habits of different times. The former we can 

 scarcely expect any thing human to control ; but 

 the latter may be and are every day affected by 

 education, by example, and by a thousand circum- 

 stances which it would be difficult to enumerate. 



It has often been made a question, whether 

 mankind have effected any real progress in know- 

 ledge during the eighteenth century. There are 

 not a few who maintain tlie negative; who con- 



. * Hume's Essaysy vol. i. p. 110, 



