stratagem, of complicated intrigue, of systematic falsehood, of
ruthless, but secret violence; a policy which actuated the fell
statecraft of Louis XI.; which darkened, whenever he paused to think
and to scheme, the gaudy and jovial character of Edward IV.; which
appeared in its fullest combination of profound guile and resolute
will in Richard III.; and, softened down into more plausible and
specious purpose by the unimpassioned sagacity of Henry VII., finally
attained the object which justified all its villanies to the princes
of its native land,--namely, the tranquillity of a settled State, and
the establishment of a civilized but imperious despotism.

Again, in that twilight time, upon which was dawning the great
invention that gave to Letters and to Science the precision and
durability of the printed page, it is interesting to conjecture what
would have been the fate of any scientific achievement for which the
world was less prepared. The reception of printing into England
chanced just at the happy period when Scholarship and Literature were
favoured by the great. The princes of York, with the exception of
Edward IV. himself, who had, however, the grace to lament his own want
of learning, and the taste to appreciate it in others, were highly
educated. The Lords Rivers and Hastings [The erudite Lord Worcester
had been one of Caxton's warmest patrons, but that nobleman was no
more at the time in which printing is said to have been actually
introduced into England.] were accomplished in all the "witte and
lere" of their age. Princes and peers vied with each other in their
patronage of Caxton, and Richard III., during his brief reign, spared
no pains to circulate to the utmost the invention destined to transmit
his own memory to the hatred and the horror of all succeeding time.
But when we look around us, we see, in contrast to the gracious and
fostering reception of the mere mechanism by which science is made