culty, and without details: for details, even the moft fummary, would fade and efface the great lines, by means of which alone it is poffible to make a picture.

On a general recollection or review of the fate of fociety, or human nature, in the eighteenth century, the ideas that recur the ofteneft, and remain uppermofi on the mind, are the three following: the intercourses of men were more extenfive than at any former period with which we are acquainted; the progreflion of knowledge was more rapid; and the difcoveries of philofophy were applied more than they ever had been before to practical purposes.

The intercourfes of men and nations may be divided into perfonal and mental.-In the period under review both thefe kinds of commupication were more extended than they had ever before been. Navigation, tutored more and more by aftronomy, and farther and farther aided by the perfection of influments, for the menfuration of both fpace and time, explored the moft diftant feas and fhores, and commerce expanded itself in every direction. In the reigns of Lewis XV. and XVI. of France, but, above all, in the reign and under the aufpices of George III. of Great Britain and Ireland, the spirit of difcovery and exploration of the most remote and unknown regions of the globe took a wider, though not more daring courfe, than it ever had done, even under Ferdinand and fabella, and

their fucceffors on the Spanish throne, and our Elizabeth. Not only the north-western coafts of Africa were explored, but in fome meafure the interior of Africa. A new and nobler paffion than the thirft of either gold or conqueft, enlifted in the fervice of navigation and difcovery; travels and voyages of discovery were undertaken with no other view than that of afcertaining the real figure, and perfecting the knowledge of the globe; the ftudy and nature of man; and the alleviation of human miferies, and multiplication of human comforts and enjoyment, even among the most remote and barbarous tribes, often, not only ungrateful, but jealous and hoftile to their difinterefied benefactors.* Towards the clofe of the eighteenth century, the facilities of intercourfe, communication, and correfpondence, might be faid to approximate, not only the capitals of Europe, but different quarters of the world. A voyage to India was not thought a greater matter, at the end of the eighteenth, than one across the Atlantic-ocean was at the end of the feventeenth century.

The extenfion of navigation was accompanied with many and great improvements in marine aftronomy, the knowledge of diftances, and the bearings of coafts, and what may be called fubmarine geography. The knowledge of tides, winds, and currents, too, was proportionably aivanced: fo that the longeft vorages were performed not only with greater fafety than in former centu

vages.

ries, but with much more expedition. In the latt century the ave rage period of a voyage to and from the East Indies, even on this fide the Ganges, including the time neceffarily spent in the country, for laden. ing and taking on board stores, was three years: at prefent, it is no more than eighteen months. Voyages have been frequently made from Bombay, and Madras, to Falmouth, in the fpace of three months and a fortnight.

The intercourfe of minds, at first merely verbal, was facilitated, improved, and extended, by the art of writing, and fill more, in later times, by the art of printing; and collateral and fubfequent improvements, fuch as the establishment of pofts and packets, and we must now add telegraphs. There was no preceding period when fo great a portion of the human race converfed with one another, verbally or mentally, and with to much facility, as in the years 1799 and 1800.

There is a near connection between this extended intercourfe and collifion of minds and the accelerated progrefs of knowledge. It fufficiently appears from hiftory, literary, natural, and civil, that all ufeful arts, and all the hints that have chiefly contributed to the promotion of fcience, have been furnished more from accident than defign: not fo much from the innate vigour and celeftial fire of the foul, as from an

accumulation of particular facts, obtruded by chance, at different times, on different perions, by an interchange of ideas, a mutual fupply of mutual defects of information on fubjects of common investigation, and the correction of mutual errors. In times and regions, folitary and fequeftered, Hippocrates oblerved, with truth, that art was long and life fhort. In the age under review, and particularly towards its conclufion, the labour of art was fhortened more than it had ever been, in any former period, by its own progrefiion.

The minner in which extended intercourfe accelerates the progress of knowledge is two-fold:-it enlarges the fphere of facts; and, to our own experience and obfervations concerning thofe facts, it adds those of others.

Amafing difcoveries were made in the eighteenth century, not only of iflands and natural productions, but of mankind exifting in a state of fociety unknown before, and not even dreamt of.* Now, as every fact and well-founded conclufion is to be compared with every fact and every conclufion already known and formed, our knowledge is increafed, not merely as our knowledge of facts and clafies of facts increafes, but in a much higher, and, as it were, in geometrical proportion,

The converfion of the fpecula tive and learned world, chiefly by lord Baccon and Galileo, † from

vifionary

vifionary theories to rational inquiries, may be faid to have been an improvement, not in kind, but in degree. This degree, however, has been fo great as to render the conclufion of the eighteenth almost as remarkable an æra, in the hiftory of fociety and progreffion of improvement, as the commencement of the feventeenth century.This accelerated progreffion of knowJedge was not a little aided by an unufual boldnefs of inveftigation and freedom, from the reftraints of theory. This freedom of reftraint, from theory, was indeed, in not a few inftances, carried to the Jength of mere empiricifm on the one hand, and to a contempt, of the juft and legitimate laws of philofophy and inveftigation, on the other. Some philofophers, botanifts, chymifts, and mineralogifts, confined all inquiry to experiments, obfervations, and, defcriptions of individual fubftances or fubjects Other philofophers, of the metaphyfical clafs, impatient of the tedioufnefs prefcribed by the experimental philofophy, overleaped natural, and pushed forward to efficient caules. They talked much of fpiritual energy, attempted to fpeak, in the military phrafeology of France, to march in the road of inveftigation au pas de charge, and to ftorm the citadel of fcience with fixed bayonets.

That the rapid progrefs of fcience may be more clearly perceived, and certainly recognifed, it would be proper, did our limits admit, to glance at all the arts and fciences; all the different objects of human knowledge,

The firft who conceived and who dared to mark out a plan of all the

branches of learning, of which man is capable, was the immortal Bacon. This plan has been adopted with very little alteration, almost be every author fince his time, and of late, among other writers, by the French Encyclopædifts. Thefe learned gentlenen declared, however, that, in forming their genealogical tree of the arts and sciences, their embarraffment was great in proportion to the latitude that was prefented for arbitrary diftribution; in the option they had of referring the different branches of knowledge, either to the beings which they had for their objects, or to the different faculties of the foul. They leaned to this laft fide probably out of refpect to thofe philofophers, who treat of the origin of human knowledge, and particularly their own countryman Defcartes, and who argue, that, as we acquire our knowledge by thinking, we ought, in the first place, to inquire. how it is we think. But to others, who judge with proper freedom even of the French Encyclopædifts, and our Locke, and other great names, it appears that the mind does not ordinarily, in the acquifition of knowledge, follow that route. Our firft obfervations, they notice, are more naturally made on thofe fenfations which we receive from the objects that furround us, than upon the manner itfelf, in which we receive thofe fenfations, In making that our firft ftudy, which affects the fenfes, we proceed, with certainty, from that which we know, to that which we know not; whereas, if we begin with researches into the manner of our receiving our ideas, and the faculty of acquiring knowledge, we

find

find ourselves caft upon a fea of hypothefis, without rudder or compals to guide us. We think only through the medium of our fenfes. We fee that an acquaintance with our phyfical organization is neceffary to the knowledge of our intellectual faculties. We perceive that the impreffions made upon our organs, and their accompanying fenfations, cannot be confidered feparately from thofe exterior objects that produce them, and that, in order to our being able to judge how we come to have the notion of found, of colours, of taste, and fo on, we must first know how the air is put into vibration by fonorous bodies, what are the laws of reflection, and refraction, of what nature are the principles contained in the aliments of which we make ufe: and thus are we obliged, before we can proceed to any other tudy, to return to that of our phyfical organization; to the ftudy of phyfical beings, and the acts which concern them.

Other fpeculators, of the prefent day, we mean fince the times of the Encyclopædifts, and in the very twilight between the clofing and the fucceeding century, fteering, as it were, a middle courfe, in the arrangement of the arts and fciences, between lord Bacon and his followers, on the one hand, and thofe whom we shall call the fenfationifts, on the other, obferve, that as the mind, whether it be confidered as a spiritual and intellectual, or merely as a fentient being, is the mirror in which, by means of abtracted ideas, we attempt to furvey the external world; fo it is, by means of analogies drawn from the xternal world, that we endeavour VOL. XLII.

to analyfe the operations of our minds. As, on the one hand, we examine matter, by metaphyfical abftractions, fo, on the other, we have no ideas or names for the operations of the mind, than fuch as are taken from objects of fenfe. Every thing we perceive or think of feems to be of a mixed nature. It is difficult to fay what is mind and what matter, nor is it at all neceflary, in the eye of juft philofophy, that the difference fhould be afcertained. Yet, according to our conception of things, the difference between mind and matter is fufficiently clear. And the most comprehenfive and accurate arrangement of all the branches of knowledge, perhaps, is the following:

Firft, mind exercised on matter;
Secondly, matter;
Thirdly, mind.

The firft of thele claffes comprehends phyfics, or experimental philofophy, including optics, aftronomy, hydroftatics, pneumatics, mechanics, magnetifm, electricity, and chymifiry.

The fecond comprehends matters of fact, and hypothetical theories; the firft of thefe fubdivifions, comprehending the refults of particular obfervations and experiments, whe ther defigned or accidental; the fecond, that view of the operations of nature, which is formed by the imagination, according to habitual affociations; which is, indeed, loofe, popular, and only analogical; but which, however, is of ufe in dividing the labours of philofophy, and employing them in a courfe of well-directed experiments. This fecond fubdivifion of the fecond clafs refers principally to phyfiology, comprising the theory of the earth, [Q]. mineralogy,

mineralogy, and zoology. Under the head of zoology there are fome who take the liberty of claffing theories of phyfic: though they admit that medicine, in its juft extent, embraces the state of the mind as well as that of the body.

Electricity, magnetifm, and chymiftry, are arranged under the first head: although thefe ftudies, as far as they are collections of facts, belong to the fecond; and to the firft, only as far as they are theoretical. In different refpects, it is evident, they belong to both.

Out of the first and fecond claffes, particularly the heads of mechanics, botany, mineralogy, and chymiftry, fpring the three grand purfuits of the industrious or bufy world. 1. Agriculture, 2. Arts, 3. Com

merce.

The third clafs, mind, comprehends metaphyfics, logic, and ethics.

This divifion of the fciences will aid the mind in recollecting the great and manifold difcoveries of the century juft passed in each. Wonderful improvements in optical glafles, opened a vaft and unbounded theatre to our perceptions, and promised to carry our views ftill farther and farther into the universe. The difcovery of different kinds and properties of airs and gafes at once enlarged the power of man over nature to a prodigious extent, feemed to draw afide a veil, and to exhibit the whole material creation under a new afpect. The mott folid fubftances appeared to be fluids, not in an aeriform, but a fixed ftate. A conftant tranfition was difcovered from folidity to fluidity, and from faidity again to folidity. The

world feemed, in fome fort, to be an illufion. Electricity, by an acquaintance with which, miracles were wrought, began to be confidered as the great agent throughout all nature. There appeared to be a firiking affinity and analogy between this power and magnetilm, yet, as if to check our propenfity to fimplification, and draw in our net of investigation too foon, proofs were exhibited, that these two aftonifhing powers were very different. As the power of men was, by knowledge, extended over the material world, their enterprize and induftry were alfo increased. Steam-engines, looms wrought without bands, and other mechanical inventions performed the labour of hundreds of thoufands, and even millions of men. Yet thefe hands quickly found other employment in the multiplied projects of manufacturers and merchants. But there was no object on which the extended fway of fcience was fo vifible as on the most useful and neceffary of all human purfuits, agriculture. Agricultural machinery was greatly improved; the nature of the juices, defigned for the nourishment of vegetables, was explored; and the manner in which they were tranfmitted to their organs. It is not foreign to the prefent point, the application of fcience to practical purpofes, to obferve farther, that the genius of the age, was strongly exemplified in numberless improvements in cookery, both for men and cattle, and other branches of economy, domeftic, pastoral, and rural.

As the advancement of fcience influenced the arts of peace, fo it alfo influenced, in fome degree, the miferable art of war. It is fufficient, on this head, jutt