mind became animated with hopes that all had not been exhausted by antiquity, and that, as nature had reserved a new world to reward the attempts of the moderns, so, in like manner, new revelations of the moral world might await the intellectual discoverer, who should be daring enough to force his way to them.

While the earth was enlarged by the addition of a new continent, the universe was amplified, and its bounds were made to recede by the invention of the telescope; and the philosophy of the ancients, with their theories about their narrow system of existence, seemed at once puerile, and immature when compared with that path into immensity which Galileo had opened, and that host of starry worlds which were described by the Columbus of the heavens.

Printing, and the use of fire arms, the discovery of the passage to India by the Cape of Good Hope, which accompanied that of America, and the subsequent circumnavigation of the globe, the invention of the telescope, united with that of the microscope, all these acquisitions and discoveries, crowded together into the space of a few fleeting generations, hurried mankind, before they were aware of it, into a new career, by an impetus

which we still feel, and which is still carrying the world forward without our being able to indicate the point in futurity where its motion will cease. A variety of hindrances have retarded these causes from producing that full and transforming change which they are destined in the end to effect. It is at particular periods that their influence has been most felt, and that a force has been exerted which allows us to calculate how great the measure of their concentrated. power will be, when, having wasted the obstacles which oppose its progress, as the shore is gradually worn away by the tide, it can burst through all restraints, and pour itself abroad without a struggle or a limit. The reformation was a period of that kind, though the mind was scarcely then conscious of its newly discovered resources; yet the change which took place in Society, without any force but that of opinion, showed that new energies had sprung up, and that the moral world was about to be subjected to new laws. Never had the human faculties been so deeply and universally stirred as by the disputes between Luther and the church of Rome. Unlike other questions, confined to a single country, and to a few speculative men, it shook Europe from one extremity

to the other, and every individual was interested in an issue which concerned his own conduct and happiness. Wide was the passage from the stu por and servile acquiescence of the dark ages to the unlimited freedom of inquiry, and the fearless assertion of the right of private judgment, by which were subjected to understandings of every degree of strength and weakness, disputations more important and sublime than had of old exercised the philosophers of Athens, and baffled the penetration of the acutest geniuses of antiquity. After this the sleep of the human mind was thoroughly broken. Long established authority held a very precarious sway if it had neither force nor reason to uphold it; and, if the kings of Europe had not lent their swords in defence of error, the doctrines of the reformers would have made their way, and would have gained the ascendency, in countries the most deeply degraded by the yoke of the church of Rome. Partial, however, as the reformation was, both in its spirit and in its extent, it has sufficiently evidenced the strength of opinion, when, combined with intimate persuasion, urged by the voice of conscience, and diffused by the new facilities which the press afforded; and

error and traditional authority have avowed themselves unequal to the contest, by taking refuge under the protection of brutal force.

That spirit which had produced the reformation, and revival of religion, was thenceforward easily, and naturally extended to other inquiries, and speedily produced a reform in philosophy. The struggle in throwing off the iron bands of superstition gave new vigour to the human faculties, and minds of the old giant breed again appeared among men. The confidence of such minds was equal to their strength; every thing that passed through their hands assumed a new form; and out of the ruins of ancient magnificence, they shaped to themselves a new model of creation, more enduring as more deeply grounded in nature.

The greatest of these great minds at length obtained the clue of nature's labyrinth, and was enabled to dig deep enough to lay a solid foundation for science. The ancient philosophers, before they could erect a system of their own, had to demolish the theories of their predecessors, as the kings of the east, when they build their shifting capitals, often construct them out of the materials of some former metropolis. But the

discoveries of the inductive philosophers unite together with the continuity which belongs to real existence; and support and nourish each other as parts of one harmonious whole. Being rooted in nature, inductive philosophy has the principle of growth in it, and has no other barrier to its increase than the limits of creation and of the fa culties of the mind. Its instruments and its materials are always ready and at hand, in phenomena and in observation; and it rests upon two unfailing supporters, truth and time. The efforts of former searchers after truth were blows at random, and truth and error were alike the result of their inquiries; but the method of Bacon not only leads to conclusion, where truth alone is the produce, and where error is excluded, but contains within it a self-perpetuating power, by which attention and combination supply the want of a concurrence of favourable circumstances, and the transient divinations of genius. Yet one defect it has; and that partly foreseen and guarded against by Bacon; not founded on any imperfection of method, but on the sluggishness natural to man. Whatever facilitates, weakens ; and the mind derives its strength from labour, and its activity from variety. The multiplicity and