THE PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS. 371 



prevailed, the great philanthropic movements for the improvement of 

 the treatment of criminals, of the insane, of idiots, of the mute, and 

 of the blind, the attack upon the use of alcoholic beverages, and 

 various other great humanitarian enterprises. 



In literature, a new race of poets arose, untrammeled by received 

 traditions as to the form or the subjects of poetry. Germany produced 

 her first and only great poets, Schiller and Goethe ; in England the 

 poetical glory of many preceding ages was eclipsed by that which 

 produced Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Byron and Scott. The 

 modern philosophical method of writing history was developed by 

 Montesquieu, Yoltaire, Hume, Robertson and Gibbon. Contemporane- 

 ously with all these intellectual and spiritual movements arose a great 

 scientific one. The latter half of the eighteenth century is preemi- 

 nently an era of the promulgation of great scientific theories and the 

 discovery of great natural laws. In this work the intellect of France, 

 ' the country which was most powerfully affected by the great upheaval 

 was by far the most prominent. Lavoisier laid the foundation of 

 chemical science by propoundiug his oxygen theory. To Rome de 

 Lisle, we owe the science of crystallography, to the two Jussieus is 

 due the natural system of classification in botany ; in zoology, Cuvier 

 originated the idea of types, and the same thinker may claim the 

 merit of being one of the fathers of the science of geology. To 

 Fourier, another Frenchman, we owe the accepted theory of the con- 

 duction, to Prevost that of the radiation of heat. Coulomb, one of the 

 greatest names in electricity and magnetism, and Laplace, perhaps 

 the greatest advancer of mathematical astronomy since Newton, were 

 likewise Frenchmen of this age, and to these may be added a whole 

 host of lesser names. 



In English-speaking countries the spirit of scientific research was 

 only less active. The names of Black, Cavendish, Priestley, Erasmus 

 Darwin, Smith the geologist, Franklin, and the first Herschel at once 

 occur to every one. More eminent than any of these are Dal ton, the 

 propounder of the atomic theory in chemistry, and Thomas Young, 

 the establisher of the undulatory theory of light, both of whom 

 flourished about the commencement of this century. In Italy, the 

 foundations of galvanism were laid by Galvani ; in Germany, we have 

 Werner, the geologist, and Goethe, the poet, whose theories on the 

 morphology of animals and plants, show that his scientific was not 

 greatly inferior to his literary ability. From that time the number 



