cooked accounts are issued. But in either process there is the machinery of exactness by the method long in use in book-keeping—the accurate balancing and carrying over. In the statistics of a court of justice, for instance, if we have so many cases to table at the beginning of the year, we add to these the litigations arising within the year, and deduct those concluded, carrying the balance over to the ensuing year. The taking of the census would be accomplished in this manner by taking the numbers as shown by the immediately preceding sentence, adding the births and immigrations of the intervening period, and deducting the deaths and migrations; but such an operation is so hopelessly complicated that we adopt the simple method of counting heads. With these narrow exceptions, political economy is disturbed by violent contact, either in attachment or contest, with human passions, especially with that absorbing self-interest that convinces people of the entire beneficence of whatever brings gain to themselves; while the statesman who sees clearly the economic law, is often hindered by humanity from pursuing the cruel remedy that can only enhance the prosperity of the world by the sacrifice of certain victims. So it happens, that while the doctrines promulgated by William Paterson, as they have been already cited, are more in harmony with the prevailing doctrines of political and commercial economy than any other teachings of that period, his projects came to ruin through the self-interested passions of others; and even in the present age the French statesman is hampered when the peasant says, "It is my fate to cultivate beetroot; I can do nothing else; and if you withdraw protection, I perish, with millions of my fellow peasants." In the province of exact science the age was rendered illustrious by the potent genius-it might be almost said by the inspirations of one man, Sir Isaac Newton, in his fluxions, decomposition of light, and laws of gravitation and acceleration of motion. But it was chiefly after the period of this reign, that the significance of the revelations in astronomy, to which the simple principles announced by the discoverer are a key, taught the world the real nature of the vast planetary system that appeared to surround it. It is due to the It is due to the memory of Prince George of Denmark, that he fostered the efficient influence of Newton's discoveries by undertaking the cost of publishing the Greenwich observations. It was the fortune of his discoveries, in their absolute rule over the world, as contributions to exact science, that the more amply they were tested by real facts, and the more closely they were criticised or disputed, the more supremely did they come forth as the unvarying and indissoluble laws that hold rule throughout the universe. All who worked out his discoveries attested the absoluteness of the laws revealed in them. And here we have an example that the discoverer of latent laws is happier in the continued fame and influence of his discovery than the clever inventor who applies the powers of nature to some new mechanical end. It is the fate of him to be ever superseded by the new inventor, who, taking possession of all that he has done, carries it on into new devices that hide it out of sight. Watt was a great inventor, but his noisy singlestroke engine is barbarous beside the subtle, silent, and potent steam machinery of the day; while every discovery of new worlds and systems is ever trumpeting the glory of the researches that opened up the vast heavens to the examination of the dwellers in this small obscure planet. The science of geology is one of the triumphs of our own age, and future generations may perhaps say that its existence even among us was in its giant infancy. A naturalist of Queen Anne's period had, however, suggested a leading idea that served as a guiding star to investigators and classifiers. John Woodward, in his 'Natural History of the Earth,' published in 1695, and republished in 1702, noted the fact of stratification. How the suggestion was received by the generation to whom it was announced, may be expressed in the definition of the leading scientific dictionary or encyclopædia of the day "STRATA. Dr Woodward in his 'Natural History of the Earth' observes-and that very truly-that the far greatest part of the terrestrial globe consists, from its surface downwards to the greatest depth we ever dig or mine, of several layers or strata of different kinds of earthy matter, lying one over another, without any regular order. This disposition of the earth into these strata had been before observed by Steno; but the observations and deductions that Dr Woodward made from them are wholly new, very numerous, and of great importance." The sys 1 1 Lexicum Technicum; or an universal English Dictionary of Arts and Sciences, explaining not only the terms of art, but the arts them tematic diversification of the crust of the earth thus announced, involved its division into three prominent groups-the primitive unstratified rock of the great mountain ranges, the strata, and the subsidiary eruptive rocks that had burst through the strata; and these fundamental evidence have, ever since Woodward's suggestions, been subjected to busy and fruitful investigation. The weakness of the science is lax induction—a propensity to find simple and potent phenomena for the inequalities of the surface of the earth in an upheaval or eruption in one part, or a subsidence or depression in another. Its strength is in its inexhaustible resource for investigation and discovery. Within the boundary of geology is the science of paleozoic entomology, or the teaching of the stone matter within the several rocks that had once been alive either as animal or vegetable. The conjoint influence of the evolutions in organic life, and the varieties in the structure of the several strata where the specimens are found, here afford access to conclusions of great interest and importance to our knowledge of the structure of the earth. selves. By John Harris, D.D., Secretary to the Royal Society. 2 vols. folio, 1710, voce "Strata." INDEX. ABJURATION ACT, passing of, i. 4-its title, &c., 10. Act for a treaty with England passed, i. 168. Act of Security, the, i. 153, 154-correspondence regarding, 156 Acts of Parliament, condition of the preparation of, iii. 216-218. Admiralty, the complaints against, by traders, ii. 22-inquiry African Company and monopoly of the Slave Trade, iii. 218, 226 et seq. Aikman, William, a painter of the period, iii. 298. Alasco, John, ii. 334. Alcantara, Lord Galway's exploit at, ii. 164. Alicant, account of the siege and capture of, by General Görge, ii. 159 et seq. Alliance, Grand, the, i. 183. Almanza, battle of, ii. 168. reference to defeat of the allies at, iii. 139. Anderson, James, archæologist, iii. 295. Anglesey, Earl of, invidious remark by, in Parliament, regarding Annandale, the, seizure of, in the Thames, by the East India Anne, Queen, her accession, i. 2-her speech to the Privy Coun- her coronation, i. 38 et seq.-and its cost, 52, note- |