322 Recapitulation. 



that should bring with it an equal amount of 

 discoveries and improvements, and present an 

 equally rapid increase in the means and in the 

 diilusion of knowledge, would confer an aspect 

 on systems of science of which we at present are 

 little qualified to judge. Such a century the 

 nineteenth is likely to prove. 



But let none indulge the vain dream that all 

 darkness is about to be banished from the Earth, 

 and that human nature is rapidly hastening to 

 perfection. " When the philosophers of the se- 

 i^enteenth century were first congregated into the 

 Koyal Society, we are told that great expecta- 

 tions Avere raised of the sudden progress of useful 

 arts. The time was supposed to be near when 

 engines should turn by a perpetual motion, and 

 health be secured by the universal medicine ; 

 when learning should be facilitated by a real cha- 

 racter, and commerce extended by ships which 

 could reach their ports in defiance of the tempest. 

 But that time never came. The society met and 

 parted without any visible diminution of the mi- 

 series of life. The gout and stone w^ere still 

 painful ; the ground that was not ploughed 

 brought forth no harvest ; and neither oranges nor 

 grapes could grow upon the hawthorn*." The 

 same result, it may be confidently predicted, will 

 appear at the close of the century on which we 

 have now entered. The advocates of the supre- 

 7nacy of reason and the perfectibility of man, at 

 every successive retrospect of human affairs will 



* Ukr, vol. ii. No. 83. 



