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 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