I ON IMPROVING NATURAL KNOWLEDGE 25 



but though such work engrossed the best intellects 

 of Europe for a longer time than has elapsed since 

 the great fire, its effects were " writ in water," so 

 far as our social state is concerned. 



On the other hand, if the noble first President 

 of the Royal Society could revisit the upper air 

 and once more gladden his eyes with a sight of 

 the familiar mace, he would find himself in the 

 midst of a material civilisation more different 

 from that of his day, than that of the seventeenth 

 was from that of the first century. And if Lord 

 Brouncker's native sagacity had not deserted his 

 ghost, he would need no long reflection to discover 

 that all these great ships, these railways, these 

 telegraphs, these factories, these printing-presses, 

 without which the whole fabric of modern 

 English society would collapse into a mass of 

 stagnant and starving pauperism, that all these 

 pillars of our State are but the ripples and the 

 bubbles upon the surface of that great spiritual 

 stream, the springs of which only, he and his 

 fellows were privileged to see ; and seeing, to 

 recognise as that which it behoved them above 

 all things to keep pure and undefiled. 



It may not be too great a flight of imagination 

 to conceive our noble remnant not forgetful of the 

 great troubles of his own day, and anxious to know 

 how often London had been burned down since 

 his time, and how often the plague had carried off 

 its thousands. He would have to learn that, 



