new world of inventions--of railways and of telegraphs--has grown up
around us which we cannot help seeing; a new world of ideas is in
the air and affects us, though we do not see it. A full estimate of
these effects would require a great book, and I am sure I could not
write it; but I think I may usefully, in a few papers, show how,
upon one or two great points, the new ideas are modifying two old
sciences--politics and political economy. Even upon these points my
ideas must be incomplete, for the subject is novel; but, at any
rate, I may suggest some conclusions, and so show what is requisite
even if I do not supply it.

If we wanted to describe one of the most marked results, perhaps the
most marked result, of late thought, we should say that by it
everything is made 'an antiquity.' When, in former times; our
ancestors thought of an antiquarian, they described him as occupied
with coins, and medals, and Druids' stones; these were then the
characteristic records of the decipherable past, and it was with
these that decipherers busied themselves. But now there are other
relics; indeed, all matter is become such. Science tries to find in
each bit of earth the record of the causes which made it precisely
what it is; those forces have left their trace, she knows, as much
as the tact and hand of the artist left their mark on a classical
gem. It would be tedious (and it is not in my way) to reckon up the
ingenious questionings by which geology has made part of the earth,
at least, tell part of its tale; and the answers would have been
meaningless if physiology and conchology and a hundred similar
sciences had not brought their aid. Such subsidiary sciences are to
the decipherer of the present day what old languages were to the
antiquary of other days; they construe for him the words which he
discovers, they give a richness and a truth-like complexity to the