The orbit of civilization, so far as our perishing records enable us to trace it, seems preordained from East to West. China, India, Palestine, Egypt, Greece, Rome, are successively lighted up as the majestic orb of day moves over them; and as he advances still farther through his storied and mysterious zodiac, we behold the shadows of evening as surely falling on the lands which he leaves behind him. Man still reeled on, falling, rising again, staggering forward with hue and cry at his heels, a wounded felon daring to escape from the prison to which the grace of God had inexorably doomed him. And still there was progress. Besides the sword, two other instruments grew every day more potent, the and the purse. pen The power of the pen soon created a stupendous monopoly. Clerks obtained privilege of murder because of their learning; a Norman king gloried in the appellation of "fine clerk," because he could spell; the sons of serfs and washerwomen became high pontiffs, put their feet on the necks of emperors, through the might of education, and appalled the souls of tyrants with their weird anathemas. Naturally, the priests kept the talisman of learning to themselves. How should education help them to power and pelf, if the people could participate in the mystic spell? The icy Deadhand of the Church, ever extended, was filled to overflowing by trembling baron and superstitious hind.

But there was another power steadily augmenting, - the magic purse of Fortunatus, with its clink of perennial gold. Commerce changed clusters of hovels, cowering for protection under feudal castles, into powerful cities. Burghers wrested or purchased liberties from their lords and masters. And still man struggled on. An experimenting friar, fond of chemistry, in one corner of Europe, put niter, sulphur, and charcoal together; a sexton or doctor, in another obscure nook, carved letters on blocks of wood; 2 and lo! there were explosions shaking the solid earth, and causing the iron-clad man on horseback to reel in his saddle.

1 Roger Bacon, the English philosopher, born in 1214

1

2 Gutenberg, born in Germany about 1400, was the first to print from letters cut on blocks of wood and metal

It was no wonder that Dr. Faustus1 was supposed to have sold his soul to the fiend. Whence but from devilish alliance could he have derived such power to strike down the grace of God?

Speech, the alphabet, Mount Sinai, Egypt, Greece, Rome, Nazareth, the wandering of the nations, the feudal system, Magna Charta, gunpowder, printing, the Reformation, the mariner's compass, America, here are some of the great landmarks of human motion. As we pause for a moment's rest, after our rapid sweep through the eons and the centuries, have we not the right to record proof of man's progress since the days of the rhinoceros-eaters of Bedfordshire, of the man of Natchez?

8

2

And for details and detached scenes in the general phantasmagoria, which has been ever shifting before us, we may seek for illustration, instruction, or comfort in any age or land where authentic record can be found. We may take a calm survey of passionate, democratic Greece in her great civil war, through the terse, judicial narrative of Thucydides; we may learn to loathe despotism in that marvelous portrait-gallery of crime which the somber and terrible Tacitus has bequeathed; we may cross the yawning abysses and dreary deserts which lie between two civilizations over that stately viaduct of a thousand arches which the great hand of Gibbon has constructed; we may penetrate to the inmost political and social heart of England, during a period of nine years, by help of the magic wand of Macaulay; we may linger in the stately portico to the unbuilt dome which the daring genius of Buckle * consumed his life in devising; we may yield to the sweet fascinations which ever dwell in the picturesque pages of Prescott; we may investigate rules, apply and ponder examples: but the detail of history is essentially a blank, and nothing could be more dismal than its pursuit, unless the mind be filled by a broad view of its general scheme.

4

1 See WEBSTER for an account of " Dr. Faustus" and Johann Fust.

2 A Greek historian, born 471 B. C.

8 A Roman historian, born about 55 A. D.

His "Annals" cover the years

from the death of Augustus, A. D. 14, to that of Nero, A. D. 68.

4 Henry Thomas Buckle (1822–1862), author of an unfinished “ History of Civilization in England."

WHAT is called "natural law" is simply the general conception in which a series of processes that recur with invariable likeness may be embraced. Accordingly, every such law that we know has been discovered from the observation of facts. Two centuries ago the universality of natural law was not broadly comprehended; we now expect, as much as we expect to-morrow's sunrise, that natural phenomena will always and with exactness conform themselves to law. Not until we find out the law by which any set of phenomena is regulated can we fully understand the phenomena themselves, have scientific knowledge of them.

Science, in the full meaning of the term, includes every department of systematized knowledge of physical nature and its phenomena. It therefore embraces the whole of mathematics, chemistry, physics, as well as zoology and botany, which are commonly joined under the name of "natural history."

When Newton scattered the clouds which enveloped man's early ideas of the universe, by establishing the conception of continuous change as going on throughout the whole of Nature, then Science in the modern sense came into being. The greatest of the general laws that have been established since his time are these:

I. That matter is immutable; that is, that elementary substances are indestructible, unalterable in mass and in properties. From every condition into which they may have been converted they can invariably be isolated, and recover those qualities which they previously possessed in the free state.

II. That force is indestructible; that is, that the total energy of any material system is a quantity which can not be either increased or diminished in any action between the parts of the system.

III. That all forces are forces of motion, and are measurable by the same standard. Thus heat, light, electricity, magnetism, and chemical affinity are but modes of motion, and are convertible each into the others.

IV. That changes such as are now going on in the condition of the earth's crust would, if conceived to have operated throughout vast periods of time, afford a full solution of all the problems of geology.

V. That all living species have been derived, by gradual modifications in successive generations, from earlier and simpler organisms.

With the discovery of the second and third of these laws are associated the names of Grove and Joule. Eminent among British geologists are Lyell, Buckland, and Hugh Miller. In the same year (1858), and independently of each other, Darwin and Wallace published their theory of "natural selection" in its influence on the evolution of species.

Great names connected with the progress of Astronomy in the present century are, Sir David Brewster, Sir John. Herschel, Joseph N. Lockyer, and Thomas Young; of Chemistry, Sir Humphrey Davy and Michael Faraday; of Botany, John Lindley, Charles Darwin, and Sir William Hooker; and of Natural History, Darwin, Alfred Russel Wallace, Sir John Lubbock, and St. George Mivart.

Foremost among recent philosophers is Herbert Spencer. He has dealt with the whole doctrine of Evolution, showing that it is the central thought of modern biology, and that as such it has vastly and permanently influenced the progress of science.

LYELL

1797-1875

SIR CHARLES LYELL, the English geologist, was born in 1797, and died in 1875. He ranks among the foremost of scientific discoverers and writers of the present century. His best-known works, "The Principles of Geology," "The Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man," "Travels in North

America," and its sequel, "A Second Visit to the United States," have been widely read in this country, and valued for their candid views of American institutions, as well as for the vast fund of geological information which they contain. His style is well suited to scientific exposition, and invests his books with a charm which is rarely found in works of this character.

Miss Arabella B. Buckley, the distinguished naturalist, says of Lyell's influence on the development of modern science: "His early study of natural history gave him advantages possessed by few of his contemporaries,