by a rapid diminution of disease. Science
in its medicinal form, made seven-league
strides, in the discovery of the circulation of
the blood by Harvey, and the active system
of treatment adopted by Sydenham. That
deadly foe to beauty as well as to life, the
small-pox, which was fatal to Queen Mary
in sixteen hundred and ninety-five, first
attacked in its outworks by inoculation, was
finally compelled to capitulate to the discovery
of vaccination by Jenner. The plague
at Marseilles in seventeen hundred and
nineteen made England cautious; and, good
coming out of evil, led to a work of lasting
importance by the illustrious Doctor Mead.
The army from seventeen hundred and forty-three
to forty-six was followed to the Low
Countries by Sir John Pringle, who successfully
investigated the circumstances that affected
the health of large bodies of troops on
land; although it must be owned that these
investigations do not seem to have been of
much service to the fighting troops of eighteen
hundred and fifty-four; the commissariat
and surgical arrangements in the Crimea being
disgracefully deficient. Captain Cook, in his
great voyages of circumnavigation, showed
how sailors, who could not formerly be kept
two months alive or in good health in the
Channel, might, by proper provisions and
judicious management, be carried round the globe
in safety. Science, which had reduced the
small-pox almost to impotence, now began to
diminish the terrors of the scurvy; and
science combined with philanthropy, by
amending the sanitary state of prisons and
public institutions, rooted out the horrible
jail-fevers, and " assize-sicknesses," which
before had carried off judges on the bench,
criminals in the dock, and jurymen in the
box, year after year.

Science next began to act, and vigorously,
upon industry; and industry, beneath its
ripening protection, increased with amazing
celerity. Coal was employed in the smelting
of iron instead of the old-fangled charcoal;
and two millions five hundred thousand tons
were produced in eighteen hundred and fifty-one,
against seventeen thousand three hundred
and fifty in seventeen hundred and forty.
Science became wedded to agriculture. Lord
Townshend, withdrawing from Walpole's
ministry, became a new Cincinnatus, and
devoted himself with ardour to agriculture—
introducing the new system of turnip-growing
from Germany. The landed proprietors
left off (at least the majority of them did)
being ignorant Jacobites or guzzling, brutal
Squire Westerns, wasting their time in
intrigues, drowning their senses in drink, or
squandering their estates in gambling; and
instead of these disreputable diversions,
devoted their capital and intelligence to the
improvement of their lands. Agricultural
societies were encouraged; new processes
were tried; commons enclosed; marshes
drained; the breed of sheep and cattle
improved, and machinery introduced. The
aristocratic genius of sixteen hundred and
seventy was the Duke of Buckingham—the
painter, fiddler, chemist, and buffoon; who
wrote scandalous poetry, intrigued, gambled,
and fought duels. The aristocratic genius
of seventeen hundred and seventy was the
Duke of Bridgewater; who, to accomplish his
great engineering plans, allowed himself for
personal expenses, out of his princely fortune,
no more than four hundred pounds a year,
and whose greatest glory is that he was the
patron and the friend of James Brindley the
engineer.

Lastly, and pre-eminently, science gave us
steam. The spinning-machines first put forth
by Arkwright, Hargreaves, and Crompton,
were all adapted to steam power by James
Watt. And the unconquered arm of steam
began, as good Doctor Darwin predicted, to

Drag the slow barge and drive the rapid car.

Though the latter part of the Doctor's prophecy,

And on wide waving wings expanded bear
The flying chariot thro' the realms of air,

has yet to be fulfilled. Science by steam produced
a thousand different wares; the wealth of
the country, its stock and produce, increased
in even a faster ratio than the people. Lastly
came steam-vessels and railroads, and electric
telegraphs, and the population were placed
not only in easy, but direct communication
with one another.

One cause of the increase of the population
is the diminution of mortality; another and
more important one is to be found in the
increase of the births. And this increase is
owing to good manners and marriage. From
sixteen hundred and fifty-one to seventeen
hundred and fifty-one the morals of Great
Britain were of the loosest description.
Profligacy was fashionable; irreligion was
fashionable; gambling was fashionable;
drunkenness was fashionable; duelling was
fashionable; debt was very fashionable
indeed. What could the common people do
but imitate their betters? On the scandalously
merry reign of Charles the Second we
need not dwell, save to remark that Dryden,
the poet-laureate, in a poem supposed to be
written under the direct inspiration of his
sacred majesty (Absalom and Achitophel),
directly advocated polygamy. The court of
William and Mary was frigidly decorous; and
Queen Anne was chaste, formal, and devout
(Chesterfield called her so by way of reproach):
but the state of society during the reigns of
the two first Georges was as grossly immoral
as it was tastelessly stupid. In the first reign
we have the last instance of a worthless
woman being raised to the British peerage—
the Countess of Yarmouth. The law of
marriage was slight, involved, in bad odour,
and so perplexing that it was often resorted
to as a means of seduction. The institution
of marriage itself was rapidly falling into
disuse and contempt. You could be married