ore and to Macaulay belongs the honour
of having given a new and powerful impulse to the study they adorned;
dissimilar in other respects, they are alike in their preference for
and insistent use of original sources of information, in their able
employment of minute detail, and in the graphic touch and artistic
power which made history very differently attractive in their hands
from what it had ever been previously. Mr. Froude and Mr. Green may
be ranked as their followers in this latter respect; hardly so Mr.
Freeman or the philosophic Buckle, Grote, and Lecky, who by their
style and method belong more to the school of Hallam, however widely
they may differ from him or from each other in opinion. But in
thoroughness of research and in resolute following of the very truth
through all mazes and veils that may obscure it, one group of
historians does not yield to the other.

[Illustration: William Whewell, D.D.]

[Illustration: Sir David Brewster.]

And the same zealous passion for accuracy that has distinguished
these and less famous historians and biographers has shown itself in
other fields of intellectual endeavour. Our Queen in her desire "to
get at the root and reality of things" is entirely in harmony with
the spirit of her age. In scientific men we look for the ardent
pursuit of difficult truth; and it would be thankless to forget how
numerous beyond precedent have been in the Victorian period faithful
workers in the field of science. Though some of our _savants_ in
later years have injured their renown by straying outside the sphere
in which they are honoured and useful and speaking unadvisedly on
matters theological, this ought not to deter us from acknowledging
the value of true service rendered. The Queen's reign can claim as
its own such men as John Herschel, worthy son of an illustrious
father, Airy, Adams, and Maxwell, Whewell and Brewster and Faraday,
Owen and Buckland and Lyell, Murchison and Miller, Darwin and Tyndall
and Huxley, with Wheatstone, one of the three independent inventors
of telegraphy, and the Stephensons, father and son, to whose ability
and energy we are indebted for the origination and perfection of our
method of steam locomotion; it can boast such masters in philosophy
as Hamilton and Whately and John Stuart Mill, each a leader of many.
It has also the rare distinction of possessing one lady writer on
science who has attained to real eminence--eminence not likely soon
to be surpasse