to hatch her eggs by gazing on them his regard alone would discover and bring forth the latent resources of knowledge, and quicken to vigour. and productiveness all its dormant energies. His organum would be refitted and perfected; and, as the art of inventing grows with the inventions themselves, all its powers would be amplified and exalted, and the veil would be raised from nature as far as a mortal hand could withdraw it. Yet such men, however eminent, could be aiding but for a time; and the impulse that they gave, like themselves, would pass away. The greatest individual is every way circumscribed, and the limi tations of his narrow and brief existence pursue him in whatever he attempts. Numbers and succession can alone enable men to attain that which is great and perpetual; and an association of feebler minds transmitting their purposes to everrenewed successors, would at length be able to accomplish what Alfred, or Aristotle, or Bacon, in the height of fortune, and in the maturity of genius, would have failed to effect.

Limited as the mind of man is, the sciences are still more imperfect and incomplete than might have been expected, even from his imperfect intelligence. With two or three exceptions, none

of his discoveries have been reduced into their simplest and most certain form. The light is eve-. ry where broken in upon by darkness, owing to the unfinished state in which the different branches of knowledge have been left, and to the want of cooperation, and of a corresponding and harmonious method of investigation, and to that despair of ar-. riving at truth, which is only partially shaken off when some new discovery promises at last a revelation of nature. But science is not only incomplete, even as it exists, it has been very imperfectly adapted to practice; numbers of truths have remained unfruitful from want of application, which might have added new comforts and embellishments to life, and the populace and the sages of the same country seem to belong to dif ferent periods of the human mind, while the theories of the one are derived from the knowledge of the present day, and the practices of the other are regulated by the ignorance of long past years. Undoubtedly, in the present age, there is a strong tendency to improvement, and science is receiving accessions, minute but many, which are ever enlarging the extent of her dominions, and this, not from the intentions or device of any combined number of men, but from individuals being

borne forward by the general stream. Yet it is not less desirable that means should be pointed out for accelerating this tendency, for exempting it from occasional hindrances, and for combining all favouring aids into one steadily and regularly pro pelling power.

II. A new influence is arising, which is sufficiently able to supply the deficiencies of governments in attaining ends which they cannot reach, and in affording aids over which they have no control-the power of voluntary association. There is no object to which this power cannot adapt itself; no resources which it may not ultimately command; and a few individuals, if the public mind is gradually prepared to favour them, can lay the foundations of undertakings which would have baffled the might of those who reared the py ramids; and the few who can divine the tendency of the age before it is obvious to others, and per ceive in which direction the tide of public opin ion is setting in, may avail themselves of the cur rent, and concentrate every breath that is favourable to their course. The exertions of a scanty number of individuals may swell into the resources of a large party, which, collecting at last all the national energies into its aid, and availing itself

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of the human sympathies that are in its favour, may make the field of its labour and its triumph as wide as humanity itself. The elements being favourably disposed, a speck of cloud collects vapours from the four winds, which overshadow the heavens; and all the varying and conflicting events of life, and the no less jarring and discordant passions of the human breast, when once the channel is sufficiently deepened, will rush into one accelerating torrent, and be borne towards their destined end. The power of voluntary associa tion, though scarcely tried as yet, is of largest pro mise for the future; and when extended upon a great scale, is the influence most removed from the shock of accidents and the decay of earthly things, renewing its youth with renewed generations, and becoming immortal through the perpetuity of the kind. These societies of free consent are peculiarly of Gothic growth, and flou→ rished most in the Anglo-Saxon times. There, amid the weakness of government, the evils of anarchy, or the disasters of adverse events, individuals formed themselves into new alliances, and made themselves powerful by union for purposes of aggression or defence; and the German chief with his band of military clients, and the Saxon

sodalities formed to ward off disorder and rapine, supplied the loosened bands of government, and made up for the weakness or the want of political organization. When, however, governments were knit together, and had grown into strength, and were able to shield those that sought their protection, those societies, instituted for personal security or private adventure, gave way to, and respected the regular action of established law. But though the two main objects of political society, the preservation of property and of persons, are admirably compassed by modern institutions, yet there are many objects conducive to the well-being of civil life, and perfective of human nature, which are of too airy and volatile an essence to be over taken by the fixed and cumbrous movement of society at large, but which may be secured and ap propriated by voluntary association.

The favourable result of all undertakings depends upon the previous state and preparation of the world, no less than the vegetation of the seed does upon the soil into which it is cast; those who have proceeded farthest in their attempts, and gained the point at which they aimed, had the stream in their favour, and were more indebted to the strength of the current than to their own indi