drudgery, turning the wheels and executing the labour, while the operatives above-men, women, and children were engaged in those things which the engine could not accomplish things requiring observation and intelligent action. Under such a state it was not possible but that a social change should ensue, for relief from corporeal labour is always followed by a disposition for mental activity; and it was not without a certain degree of plausibility that the philanthropist, whose attention was directed to this subject, asserted that the lot of the labouring man was no better than it had been before: he had changed the tyrant, but had not got rid of the tyranny; for the demands of the insatiate, inexorable, untiring steam-engine must be without delay satisfied; the broken thread must be instantly pieced; the iron fingers must receive their new supply; the finished work must be forthwith taken away.

What was thus going on in the mill was a miniature picture of what was going on in the state. Intellectual Labour was comparatively diminishing, mental activity. activity increasing. Throughout the last century the intellectual advance is most significantly marked, and surprising is the contrast between the beginning and the close. Ideas that once had a living force altogether died away, the whole community offering an exemplification of the fact that the more opportunity men have for reflection the more they will think. Well, then, might those whose interests lay in the perpetuation of former ideas and the ancient order of things look with intolerable apprehension on what was taking place. They saw plainly that this intellectual activity would at last find a political expression, and that a power, daily increasing in intensity, would not fail to make itself felt in the end.

Difference be

In such things are manifested the essential differences between the Age of Faith and the Age of Reason. In the former, if life was enjoyed in tween past and calmness it was enjoyed in stagnation, in unproductiveness, and in a worthless way.

present ages. But how dif

So

ferent in the latter! Every thing is in movement. many are the changes we witness, even in the course of a very brief period, that no one, though of the largest

Scientific contributions of various nations,

Italy.

intellect, or in the most favourable position, can predict the future of only a few years hence. We see that ideas which yesterday served us as a guide die to-day, and will be replaced by others, we know not what, to-morrow. In this scientific advancement, among the triumphs of which we are living, all the nations of Europe have been engaged. Some, with a venial pride, claim for themselves the glory of having taken the lead. But perhaps each of them, if it might designate the country-alas! not yet a nation—that should occupy the succeeding post of honour, would inscribe Italy on its ballot. It was in Italy that Columbus was born; in Venice, destined one day to be restored to especially of Italy, newspapers were first issued. It was in Italy that the laws of the descent of bodies to the earth and of the equilibrium of fluids were first determined by Galileo. In the Cathedral of Pisa that illustrious philosopher watched the swinging of the chandelier, and, observing that its vibrations, large and small, were made in equal times, left the house of God, his prayers unsaid, but the pendulum clock invented. To the Venetian senators he first showed the satellites of Jupiter, the crescent form of Venus, and, in the garden of Cardinal Bandini, the spots upon the sun. It was in Italy that Sanctorio invented the thermometer; that Torricelli constructed the barometer and demonstrated the pressure of the air. It was there that Castelli laid the foundation of hydraulics and discovered the laws of the flowing of water. There, too, the first Christian astronomical observatory was established, and there Stancari counted the number of vibrations of a string emitting musical notes. There Grimaldi discovered the diffraction of light, and the Florentine academicians showed that dark heat may be

reflected by mirrors across space. In our >wn times Melloni furnished the means of proving that it may be polarized. The first philosophical societies were the Italian; the first botanical garden was established at Pisa; the first classification of plants given by Casalpinus. The first geological museum was founded at Verona; the first who cultivated the study of fossil remains were Leonardo da Vinci and Fracasta. The great chemical discoveries

of this century were made by instruments which bear the names of Galvani and Volta. Why need I speak of science alone? Who will dispute with that illustrious people the palm of music and painting, of statuary and architecture? The dark cloud which for a thousand years has hung over that beautiful peninsula is fringed with irradiations of light. There is not a department of human knowledge from which Italy has not extracted glory, no art that she has not adorned.

Notwithstanding the adverse circumstances in which she has been placed, Italy has thus taken no Causes of her insignificant part in the advancement of science. depression. I may at the close of a work of which so large a portion has been devoted to the relation of her influences, political and religious, on the rest of Europe, be perhaps excused the expression of a hope that the day is approaching in which she will, with Rome as her capital, take that place in the modern system to which she is entitled. The course of centuries has proved that her ecclesiastical relation with foreign countries is incompatible with her national life. It is that, and that alone, which has been the cause of all her ills. She has asserted a jurisdiction in every other government; the price she has paid is her own unity. The first, the all-important step in her restitution is the reduction of the papacy to a purely religious element. Her great bishop must no longer be an earthly prince. Rome, in her outcry for the preservation of her temporal possessions, forgets that Christian Europe has made a far greater sacrifice. It has yielded Bethlehem, Gethsemane, Calvary, the Sepulchre, the Mount of the Ascension. That is a sacrifice to which the surrender of the fictitious donations of barbarian kings is not to be compared.

The foregoing paragraphs were written in 1859. Since that time Italy has become a nation, Rome is its capital, Venice belongs to it. In 1870-71 I was an eye-witness of the presence of Italian troops in the Eternal City.

CHAPTER XII.

CONCLUSION.—THE FUTURE OF EUROPE,

Summary of the Argument presented in this Book respecting the mental Progress of Europe.

Intellectual Development is the Object of Individual Life.—It is also the Result of social Progress.

Nations arriving at Maturity instinctively attempt their own intellectual Organization.-Example of the Manner in which this has been done in China.-Its Imperfection.--What it has accomplished.

The Organization of public Intellect is the End to which European Civilization is tending.

A PHILOSOPHICAL principle becomes valuable if it can be used as a guide in the practical purposes of life.

General summary of the work.

Individual

and social life

have been considered;

The object of this book is to impress upon its reader a conviction that civilization does not proceed in an arbitrary manner or by chance, but that it passes through a determinate succession of stages, and is a development according to law. For this purpose, we considered the relations between individual and social life, and showed that they are physiologically inseparable, and that the course of communities bears an unmistakable resemblance to the progress of an individual, and that man is the archetype or exemplar of society. We then examined the intellectual history of Greecea nation offering the best and most complete lectual history illustration of the life of humanity. From the of Greece: beginnings of its mythology in old Indian legends and of its philosophy in Ionia, we saw that it passed through phases like those of the individual to its decrepitude and death in Alexandria.

in the intel

Then, addressing ourselves to the history of Europe, we found that, if suitably divided into groups of and the ages, these groups, compared with each other history of Europe. in chronological succession, present a striking resemblance to the successive phases of Greek life, and therefore to that which Greek life resembles-that is to say, individual life.

For the sake of convenience in these descriptions we have assumed arbitrary epochs, answering to the periods from infancy to maturity. History justifies the assumption of such periods. There is a well-marked difference between the aspect of Europe during its savage The contrasts and mythologic ages; its changing, and grow- its ages dising, and doubting condition during the Roman play. republic and the Cæsars; its submissive contentment under the Byzantine and Italian control; the assertion of its manhood, and right of thought, and freedom of action which characterize its present state-a state adorned by great discoveries in science, great inventions in art, additions to the comforts of life, improvements in locomotion, and the communication of intelligence. Science, capital, and machinery conjoined are producing industrial miracles. Colossal projects are undertaken and executed, and the whole globe is literally made the theatre of action of every individual.

Nations, like individuals, are born, pass through a predestined growth, and die. One comes to its end at an early period and in an untimely way; another, not until it has gained maturity. One is cut off by feebleness in its infancy, another is destroyed by civil disease, another commits political suicide, another lingers in old age. But for every one there is an orderly way of progress to its final term, whatever that term may be.

Now, when we look at the successive phases of individual life, what is it that we find to be their chief The object of characteristic? Intellectual advancement. And development we consider that maturity is reached when intellect is at its maximum.

is intellect.

The earlier stages are pre

paratory; they are wholly subordinate to this.

If the anatomist be asked how the human form advances to its highest perfection, he at once disregards all the