following a mistress who has never yet conferred aught but benefits on the human race.

What physical science may do hereafter I know not; but as yet she has done this:

She has enormously increased the wealth of the human race; and has therefore given employment, food, existence, to millions who, without science, would either have starved or have never been born. She has shown that the dictum of the early political economists, that population has a tendency to increase faster than the means of subsistence, is no law of humanity, but merely a tendency of the barbaric and ignorant man, which can be counteracted by increasing manifold by scientific means his powers of producing food. She has taught men, during the last few years, to foresee and elude the most destructive storms; and there is no reason for doubting, and many reasons for hoping, that she will gradually teach men to elude other terrific forces of nature, too powerful and too seemingly capricious for them to conquer. She has discovered innumerable remedies and alleviations for pains and disease. She has thrown such light on the causes of epidemics, that we are able to say now that the presence of cholera-and probably of all zymotic diseases-in any place, is usually a sin and a shame, for which the owners and authorities of that place ought to be punishable by law, as destroyers of their fellow-men;

while for the weak, for those who, in the barbarous and semi-barbarous state-and out of that last we are only just emerging-how much has she done; an earnest of much more which she will do ? She has delivered the insane-I may say by the scientific insight of one man, more worthy of titles and pensions than nine-tenths of those who earn them-I mean the great and good Pinel -from hopeless misery and torture into comparative peace and comfort, and at least the possibility of cure. For children, she has done much, or rather might do, would parents read and perpend such books as Andrew Combe's and those of other writers on physical education. We should not then see the children, even of the rich, done to death piecemeal by improper food, improper clothes, neglect of ventilation and the commonest measures for preserving health. We should not see their intellects stunted by Procrustean attempts to teach them all the same accomplishments, to the neglect, most often, of any sound practical training of their faculties. We should not see slight indigestion, or temporary rushes of blood to the head, condemned and punished as sins against Him who took up little children in His arms and blessed them.

But we may have hope. When we compare education now with what it was even forty years ago, much more with the stupid brutality of the monastic system, we may hail for children, as well as for

grown people, the advent of the reign of common

sense.

And for woman-What might I not say on that point? But most of it would be fitly discussed only among physicians and biologists: here I will say only this-Science has exterminated, at least among civilised nations, witch-manias. Women—at least white women -are no longer tortured or burnt alive from man's blind fear of the unknown. If science had done no more than that, she would deserve the perpetual thanks and the perpetual trust, not only of the women whom she has preserved from agony, but the men whom she has preserved from crime.

These benefits have already accrued to civilised men, because they have lately allowed a very few of their number peaceably to imitate Mr. Rarey, and find out what nature or rather, to speak at once reverently and accurately, He who made nature-is thinking of ; and obey the "voluntatem Dei in rebus revelatam." This science has done, while yet in her infancy. What she will do in her maturity, who dare predict? At least, in the face of such facts as these, those who bid us fear, or restrain, or mutilate science, bid us commit an act of folly, as well as of ingratitude, which can only harm ourselves. For science has as yet done nothing but good. Will any one tell me what harm it has ever done? When any one will show me a single result of

science, of the knowledge of and use of physical facts, which has not tended directly to the benefit of mankind, moral and spiritual, as well as physical and economicthen I shall be tempted to believe that Solomon was wrong when he said that the one thing to be sought after on earth, more precious than all treasure, she who has length of days in her right hand, and in her left hand riches and honour, whose ways are ways of pleasantness and all her paths are peace, who is a tree of life to all who lay hold on her, and makes happy every one who retains her, is-as you will see if you will yourselves consult the passage-that very Wisdom -by which God has founded the earth; and that very Understanding-by which He has established the

heavens.

GROTS AND GROVES.

I WISH this lecture to be suggestive, rather than didactic; to set you thinking and inquiring for yourselves, rather than learning at second-hand from me. Some among my audience, I doubt not, will neither need to be taught by me, nor to be stirred up to inquiry for themselves. They are already, probably, antiquarians; already better acquainted with the subject than I am. They come hither, therefore, as critics; I trust not as unkindly critics. They will, I hope, remember that I am trying to excite a general interest in that very architecture in which they delight, and so to make the public do justice to their labours. They will therefore, I trust, "Be to my faults a little blind,

Be to my virtues very kind;"

and if my architectural theories do not seem to them correct in all details-well-founded I believe them myself to be-remember that it is a slight matter to me, or to the audience, whether any special and pet