12 CO. BURGE. 



In gas engineering, both as regards light, heat, and power, 

 the Welsbach and Mond systems have shewn what may be 

 done by healthy rivalry. 



The improved treatment of sewage of late years, in con- 

 junction with bacteriology, has no doubt saved an enormous 

 number of lives, valuable, and otherwise. Then the analyst 

 has rendered incalculable service to the engineer, in investi- 

 gating the properties of materials, and in the adjustment 

 of them to the requirements of his art — quite a modern 

 combination. 



In this summary, and it would be the same, if treating 

 of literature, one thing strikes us, that is when we consider 

 the slight foundations on which they had to build, that the 

 great men of old stand high in the background of the mental 

 landscape of the past, while the foreground of the present 

 is comparatively paltry and insignificant. It would seem 

 as if nature had furnished a constant average amount of 

 original intellect, in equal periods of time, and that, though 

 population increases largely, that great gift does not increase 

 with it, but is, through education, spread over a larger 

 number of individuals, tending, in the far future, to a hope- 

 less and uninteresting universal mediocrity. In this future 

 democracy of brains, one man will, intellectually, be no 

 better than another. Plato is said to have made havoc 

 among our originalities, but without going so far as this, 

 we may allow that the subtle fluid of original genius is 

 gradually becoming rarified into a sort of cerebral hydrogen, 

 so to say, in its enormous distribution. To this is due, that, 

 in the later sciences, electricity for example, we can point 

 to few great outstanding figures. Invention has been 

 piecemeal. 



So much for the past. Now for the future. Oarlyle truly 

 says: — "The man who cannot wonder, were he President 

 of innumerable Royal Societies, and carried the whole 



