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 mediæval
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
privileged to see; and seeing, to recognise as that which it behoved
them above all things to keep pure and undefiled.

It may not be too great a flight of imagination to conceive our noble
_revenant_ not forgetful of the great troubles of his own day, and
anxious to know how often London had been burned down since his time,
and how often the plague had carried off its thousands. He would have to