THE VICTORIAN ERA 175 
was one during which in science, trade, and political 
ascendancy the United Kingdom became and remained 
greater than any other nation of the world. Towards 
the end other great Powers, and particularly the United 
States and Germany, have come to the front by strides 
so gigantic as to make it practically impossible that 
any one Power can ever again be so far ahead of the 
rest as Britain was in the zenith of the Victorian Era. 
This is not the place to discuss the causes of that pre- 
eminence or to speculate as to its duration, nor can 
we claim the special field of the present volume as that 
in which the preeminence was most strikingly displayed. 
Still without claiming for British explorers greater dar- 
ing or a stronger sense of duty or a more fervid 
patriotism than animated the explorers of other nations, 
we cannot shut our eyes to the fact that in the British 
subject the elements are so kindly mixed as to have 
made success a tradition of the flag. 
The term Victorian Era is not used in any narrow or 
merely national sense. It is intended to cover the period 
following the scientific renascence of the nineteenth cen- 
tury, which was restricted to no country, but in which 
one nation profited by and improved upon the thought 
and work of another. Partly by rivalry, partly by co- 
operation they made of modern science not so much a 
finished statue as a working engine, always being im- 
proved in one part or another. 
New learned bodies which expanded and multiplied 
with the specialisation of science were everywhere 
springing into existence before Queen Victoria ascended 
the British throne, and spurring the august Academies 
and Royal Societies out of their ancient calm. The 
Paris Geographical Society was founded in 1821, that 
