LITERATURE AND SCIENCE OF ENGLAND. 43 



these our reverend fathers, and speak of what their 

 successors have been. 



The dissolution of the monasteries forms a grand 

 epoch in the political, religious, and literary history 

 of the country. From that event, rather than from 

 the invention of printing, I should be disposed tO date 

 v^^hat is called our modern history — I mean when 

 speaking of England. 



Hitherto we have contemplated the current of our 

 literature and science as running in one stream. We 

 must now look upon the current as divided in dif- 

 ferent branches ; for it vdll be found that there has 

 been a succession of persons in the various depart- 

 ments of literature — in natural philosophy, in morals, 

 in history, in criticism, poetry, and the lighter 

 literature — some of whom may be said to have been 

 of the higher order of mind, and many of them eminent 

 in their day and worthy a lasting remembrance. 

 That there are still among the inhabitants of this 

 city those who will be regarded as links in this beau- 

 tiful intellectual chain, when hereafter some one in 

 this place shall speak in a manner more worthy of 

 the subject of what Bath has been in time past, no 

 one who knows the place would ventm-e to deny. For 

 myself, I shall trespass as little as possible upon the 

 modesty of any one living. The task I have under- 



