Epidemics. 271 



discovery of this art. The Reformation had set in about the 

 beginning of the fifteenth century. The great morning star 

 of that mighty revolution of thought and independent 

 reasoning made his appearance, under the name of Martin 

 Luther, 1417. 



The craving for tracts and works, by the great Reformer 

 and against him, created the necessity for the more rapid 

 multiplication of copies than writing could supply ; hence 

 came in the art divine, by human hands, of printing. 



This great impulse was no doubt aided by the fall of 

 Constantinople, and the flow of Greek literature into Europe 

 through that incident. 



From the reign of Henry VIII. till the close of the reign 

 of George III., the spread of knowledge and the expansion 

 and independence of the human mind, more like a god than 

 a created being, had flown as from a fountain of troubled 

 waters on a sea of never-ending conflict, with never-ceasing 

 rewards to those who, in their frail barks, cast themselves 

 upon its tempestuous waves ; but, strange to say, as the 

 journey ended, and the shore is sighted, the grand result of 

 culminating forces has been a good landing, and accumulating 

 security to man, with increasing wealth and prosperity to 

 all nations, through this fountain of knowledge, whose 

 waters are often bitter in the mouth, but in their effects 

 sweet, and give greater security to property, and add im- 

 mensely to the well-being of the human family, for the wide- 

 spread increase of knowledge has tended towards power and 

 independence. 



A few names may be here mentioned from Luther, as 

 Calvin, Erasmus, Galileo, Shakespeare, Bacon, Descartes, 

 Milton, Bunyan, Locke, Newton, Smith, on to Cuvier, 

 Napoleon, Pitt, Herschell, Davy, Berzelius, Franklin, 

 Jonathan Edwards, and Kant, Byron and Goethe. 



To give anything like a comprehensive view of the vast 



