ese, "our business is, precluding theology and state affairs,
to discourse and consider of philosophical enquiries." But our
"Mathematick" is one which Newton would have to go to school to
learn; our "Staticks, Mechanicks, Magneticks, Chymicks, and Natural
Experiments" constitute a mass of physical and chemical knowledge, a
glimpse at which would compensate Galileo for the doings of a score of
inquisitorial cardinals; our "Physick" and "Anatomy" have embraced such
infinite varieties of being, have laid open such new worlds in time and
space, have grappled, not unsuccessfully, with such complex problems,
that the eyes of Vesalius and of Harvey might be dazzled by the sight of
the tree that has grown out of their grain of mustard seed.

The fact is perhaps rather too much, than too little, forced upon one's
notice, nowadays, that all this marvellous intellectual growth has a no
less wonderful expression in practical life; and that, in this respect,
if in no other, the movement symbolized by the progress of the Royal
Society stands without a parallel in the history of mankind.

A series of volumes as bulky as the 'Transactions of the Royal Society'
might possibly be filled with the subtle speculations of the Schoolmen;
not improbably, the obtaining a mastery over the products of mediaeval
thought might necessitate an even greater expenditure of time and of
energy than the acquirement of the "New Philosophy"; but though such
work engrossed the best intellects of Europe for a longer time than has
elapsed since the great fire, its effects were "writ in water," so far
as our social state is concerned.

On the other hand, if the noble first President of the Royal Society
could revisit the upper air and once more gladden his eyes with a sight
of the familiar mace, he would find himself in the midst of a material
civilization more different from that of his day, than that of the
seventeenth was from that of the first century. And if Lord Brouncker's
native sagacity had not deserted his ghost, he would need no long
reflection to discover that all these great ships, these railways, these
telegraphs, these factories, these printing-presses, without which the
whole fabric of modern English society would collapse into a mass of
stagnant and starving pauperism,--that all these pillars of our State
are but the ripples, and the bubbles upon the surface of that great
spiritual stream, the springs of which, only, he and his fellows were