ENGLISH LITERATURE. 53 
tageous, they may have gradually disappeared, and the race have 
had time to differentiate itself into those very numerous species 
we now find dotted over several widely-separated islands of the 
Southern Hemisphere. 
ENGLISH LITERATURE FEOM THE ELIZABETHAN 
TO THE VICTORIAN ERA. 
ABSTRACT OP PAPER BY MR. T. A. CRAGOE, P.R.G.S. 
(Read November 14th, 1878.) 
The lecturer, after remarking upon the different schools of literature 
which distinguished the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, 
touching lightly upon the vexed questions of "Ossian," "Rowley," 
and the " Letters of Junius," and observing that Macaulay's spite- 
ful Essay made it fashionable for pitiful critics to shower down 
unmerited rebukes upon the memory of James Boswell, concluded 
by saying, " Does any one suppose that the capacity of man's mind 
expands with the ages — that the intellectual grasp is greater now 
than it was many generations ago 1 Rather, is there not more bark 
for the mind in some of those grand old authors who have long since 
become ' the mighty dead ' % What shall Ave say for ' words that 
wise Bacon or brave Raleigh spoke ' % The modern advance of art 
and science has depended mainly upon the fact that with the 
comparative peace of recent centuries we have a long unbroken 
roll of scientific record. Science is cumulative in its nature ; one 
man adds to another man's invention, till the many cogs of the 
wheel are all placed. Lord Bacon invented neither telegraph nor 
telephone ; but he did more — he taught the world how to philoso- 
phize, how to conduct all scientific enquiry. The present age is 
too much given to superficial reading. A pampered appetite 
blasphemes brown bread, and yet that is the true 'pabulum after all. 
So the emasculated mind, long accustomed to skimming the surface 
for the cramming of unlawful delights, flies off from salutary 
exercise, and becomes enfeebled and demoralized, so far as healthy 
