456 
Proceedings of the Royal Soeiety 
of the Society in Edinburgh to one of its Fellows in ^N'ew York, and 
bring back an answer before the meeting separated. 
In slightly alluding to this scientific revolution, my object has 
been partly to illustrate the surroundings of 1783, and also to re- 
mind my hearers that of all the changes the century has seen, far 
the most important, and the deepest, have been the work of science. 
Increased facilities for inter-communication carry with them a com- 
plete change in the economical and social condition of the communi- 
ties they affect. Hew wants, new customers, new ambitions, new 
possibilities, follow in their train by the operation of inevitable 
laws. YHiat was a luxury before becomes an ordinary necessity 
thereafter. What was in fashion is obsolete, and what seemed 
chimerical may be accomplished. By this talisman we have seen, 
perhaps sometimes without due appreciation, many a social problem 
solved which had before seemed hopeless ; and although in the pro- 
cess of transition some period of adaptation may be necessary, and 
some temporary hardship endured, the result in all cases must be 
beneficent, and is at all events beyond the power of lawgivers to 
control or to resist. 
These last remarks are not without an application to that circle 
of remarkable Scotsmen who constituted the Founders of the Koyal 
Society, They were not only prominent by intellect and cultiva- 
tion, but they were each characteristic and distinctive. It would 
be as impossible to reproduce that circle now, as to restore the 
ancient lineaments, and Continental aspect, and Continental usages 
of the ancestral city where they flourished. Although the exodus 
to the North had already commenced, we do not associate the 
Founders of the Eoyal Society of Edinburgh with the Edinburgh 
of toEay, but with the tall tenements, the wynds and closes, the 
densely packed hive of educated and learned Scotsmen, as Gold- 
smith or Johnson found it ; as it was in the early days of Karnes 
and Monboddo, with its afternoon tea-drinkings and club suppers. 
The century which has changed so much has changed these things 
also. As far as external conditions go, no revolution could be more 
complete. It has been a change from cultivated homeliness to 
splendour, from frugal although dignified economy to as much 
domestic luxury as any community in Europe enjoys. While in 
1801 the whole population of Edinburgh was little over 60,000, it 
