274 PROGRESS OF SCIENCE. 



the grandest conceptions of our race. Such are the labours 

 of the beautiful XVII Ith century. We are able to see 

 the powerful CRESCENDO which science has exhibited since 

 the Revival : the three centuries just summed up may be 

 characterised each by one word FOUNDATION, CONSTI- 

 TUTION, EXPANSION. 



IV. Universality. i. UNIVERSALITY is the general and 

 striking character of the XlXth century. To whatever 

 point of the scientific compass we may direct our glance, 

 we see progress ; and the diversity of the progress is so 

 complex, its advance so rapid that it is quite impossible 

 to embrace it all, much less to generalise it in the same 

 manner as we have done in the case of the three previous 

 centuries. We must therefore be content to indicate its 

 most wonderful features. 2. The two marvels of the XlXth 

 century are steam and electricity. The application of steam 

 to machinery, introduced before, becomes a ubiquitous fact. 

 STEAM becomes the prevalent means of industry and of 

 transport by sea and by land. The steamer, so strange 

 and astonishing, is within less than twenty years succeeded 

 by a prodigy still more surprising and bewildering the 

 railway train. The age of steam has become stupendous. 

 Manufacture and trade are completely revolutionised, and 

 the same force at work, by gigantic strides, multiplies 

 wealth and diminishes misery in an equal degree. The 

 law that Boyle, Mariotte, and Black have elucidated has 

 become the spring of production and welfare. 3. ELECTRICITY, 

 by the side of steam, finds applications even more un- 

 expected and more fascinating. A force which is capable 

 of abolishing distances, of flashing thought round the world 

 seven times in a second, of carrying the voice 500 miles, 

 nay, of bringing the face of your interlocutor before your 

 eyes from that distance, is one thing; but another thing 

 is to devise means of mastering, controlling, directing that 

 force, and make it our servant. Yet the ingenuity, inven- 

 tiveness, the genius of the XlXth century man of science 

 found the means, after discovering the laws which govern 

 the force. 4. Apart from these two wondrous facts, which 

 will for ever give our time the title of "AGE OF STEAM 



