THIS vast country, which, from the time of Peter the Great, rose to a position of great strength and influence in the eighteenth century, is, during the present century, one of the greatest European powers.

There are at the present time two great nations in the world, which started from different points, but seem to tend towards the same end. I allude to the Russians and the Americans. Both of them have grown up unnoticed; and whilst the attention of mankind was directed elsewhere, they have suddenly placed themselves in the front rank among the nations, and the world learned their existence and their greatness at almost the same time. All other nations seem to have nearly reached their natural limits, and they have only to maintain their power; but these are still in the act of growth. All the others have stopped, or continue to advance with extreme difficulty; these alone are proceeding with ease and celerity along a path to which no limit can be perceived. — DE TOCQUEVILLE.

If the courteous reader were to turn to some old map of the world, say of two hundred years ago, and compare it with the earth as we know it to-day, perhaps the change of all others which would strike

him as most marvellous would be the enormous development of the Russian Empire. The face of Europe has been metamorphosed. Powerful states have disappeared, and others whose names two centuries ago were scarcely known have risen into prominent rank among the Great Powers. The vast colonial empire of Britain was then only being founded, and England had yet barely a foothold in India. The great North American Republic had yet a century to wait before its time came to step forth on the stage of history. The coast of Australia had been merely sighted; the Mississippi still rolled its waters from their source to the sea through an almost unexplored wilderness; California was believed to be an island. But inconceivably great as have been the changes which these facts reveal, the most "portentous birth" of latter times, at least in its imposing magnitude, must be pronounced to be the Empire of the White Czar.-GEDDIE.

UNIFICATION OF EUROPEAN STATES.

THE marked feature of the political movements in Europe in the third quarter of the present century has been the tendency to consolidate the petty and weak states, into which a great part of the Continent had been broken up, into one strong central government. This tendency has shown itself specially in the confederation of the smaller German states under the leadership of Prussia, and the formation of the present German Empire. In Italy the same tendency has shown itself in the extinguishment of the petty principalities, the withdrawal of all foreign powers, and the establishment of the new kingdom of Italy, with Rome for its capital.

The undoubted tendency of the last three centuries has been to consolidate what were once separate states or kingdoms into one great nation. ARNOLD.

MATERIAL PROGRESS OF THE CENTURY.

An inventive Age

Has wrought, if not with speed of magic, yet

To most strange issues.

WORDSWORTH.

UNDER the impulse of the great discoveries and inventions of the eighteenth century, in particular the invention of the steam-engine and the discovery of the properties of electricity and galvanism, an immense momentum has been given to scientific investigation and to the application of new means and methods to the mechanic arts. With startling rapidity, one after another long-hidden secret has been wrested from nature, and fresh powers available for the use and benefit of man have been unlocked. In the number and serviceableness of its inventions and applied discoveries, the nineteenth century bids fair to exceed all its predecessors.

And like as the West Indies had never been discovered if the use of the mariner's needle had not been first discovered, though the one be vast regions and the other a small motion; so it cannot be found strange if sciences be no farther discovered if the art itself of invention and discovery hath been passed over. - BACON.

The introduction of noble inventions seems to hold by far the most excellent place among all human actions. And this was the judgment of antiquity, which attributed divine honors to inventors, but conferred only heroical honors upon those who deserved well in civil affairs, such as the founders of empires, legislators, and deliverers of their country. And whoever rightly considers it will find this a judicious custom in former ages, since the benefits of inventors may extend to all mankind, but civil benefits only to particular countries or seats of men; and these civil benefits seldom descend to more than a few ages, whereas inventions are perpetuated through the course of

time. Besides, a state is seldom amended in its civil affairs without force and perturbation, whilst inventions spread their advantage without doing injury or causing disturbance. — LORD Bacon.

Soon shall thy arm, unconquered Steam! afar
Drag the slow barge, and drive the rapid car.

DARWIN, Botanic Garden, 1791.

Were we required to characterize this age of ours by any single epithet, we should be tempted to call it, not an Heroical, Devotional, Philosophical, or Moral Age, but, above all others, the Mechanical Age. It is the Age of Machinery in every outward and inward sense of that word; the age which, with its whole undivided might, forwards, teaches, and practises the great art of adapting means to ends. CARLYLE.

INDEX.

ABBASSIDIAN CALIPHATE. Aix-la-Chapelle, Treaty of, 400.