ement of that period, we may see, if not the setting, at any rate
the declension of that system of personal rule which had existed under
previous sovereigns, and which, after a brief and spasmodic revival in
the time of George the Third, has now sunk, let us hope, into the limbo
of forgotten things. The latter part of that 100 years saw the dawn
of that system of free government which has grown and flourished, and
which, if the men of the present day be the worthy descendants of Eliott
and Pym, and Hampden and Milton, will go on growing as long as this
realm lasts. Within that time, one of the strangest phenomena which I
think I may say any nation has ever manifested arose to its height and
fell--I mean that strange and altogether marvellous phenomenon, English
Puritanism. Within that time, England had to show statesmen like
Burleigh, Strafford, and Cromwell--I mean men who were real statesmen,
and not intriguers, seeking to make a reputation at the expense of the
nation. In the course of that time, the nation had begun to throw off
those swarms of hardy colonists which, to the benefit of the world--and
as I fancy, in the long run, to the benefit of England herself--have
now become the United States of America; and, during the same epoch,
the first foundations were laid of that Indian Empire which, it may be,
future generations will not look upon as so happy a product of English
enterprise and ingenuity. In that time we had poets such as Spenser,
Shakespere, and Milton; we had a great philosopher, in Hobbes; and we
had a clever talker about philosophy, in Bacon. In the beginning of the
period, Harvey revolutionized the biological sciences, and at the end of
it, Newton was preparing the revolution of the physical sciences. I know
not any period of our history--I doubt if there be any period of the
history of any nation--which has precisely such a record as this to
show for a hundred years. But I do not recall these facts to your
recollection for a mere vainglorious purpose. I myself am of opinion
that the memory of the great men of a nation is one of its most precious
possessions--not because we have any right to plume ourselves upon their
having existed as a matter of national vanity, but because we have a
just and rational ground of expectation that the race which has brought
forth such products as these may, in good time and under fortunate
circumstances, produce the like again. I am one of those people who
do not belie