be false. The circumstances which have most influence on the
happiness of mankind, the changes of manners and morals, the transition
of communities from poverty to wealth, from knowledge to ignorance,
from ferocity to humanity--these are, for the most part, noiseless
revolutions. Their progress is rarely indicated by what historians are
pleased to call important events. They are not achieved by armies, or
enacted by senates. They are sanctioned by no treaties, and recorded
in no archives. They are carried on in every school, in every church,
behind ten thousand counters, at ten thousand firesides. The upper
current of society presents no certain criterion by which we can judge
of the direction in which the under current flows. We read of defeats
and victories. But we know that nations may be miserable amidst
victories and prosperous amidst defeats. We read of the fall of wise
ministers and of the rise of profligate favourites. But we must remember
how small a proportion the good or evil effected by a single statesman
can bear to the good or evil of a great social system.

Bishop Watson compares a geologist to a gnat mounted on an elephant,
and laying down theories as to the whole internal structure of the vast
animal, from the phenomena of the hide. The comparison is unjust to the
geologists; but is very applicable to those historians who write as
if the body politic were homogeneous, who look only on the surface of
affairs, and never think of the mighty and various organisation which
lies deep below.

In the works of such writers as these, England, at the close of the
Seven Years' War, is in the highest state of prosperity: at the close of
the American war she is in a miserable and degraded condition; as if
the people were not on the whole as rich, as well governed, and as
well educated at the latter period as at the former. We have read books
called Histories of England, under the reign of George the Second, in
which the rise of Methodism is not even mentioned. A hundred years hence
this breed of authors will, we hope, be extinct. If it should still
exist, the late ministerial interregnum will be described in terms which
will seem to imply that all government was at an end; that the social
contract was annulled; and that the hand of every man was against his
neighbour, until the wisdom and virtue of the new cabinet educed order
out of the chaos of anarchy. We are quite certain that misconceptions
as gross prevail at