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•I 72 Y,7

Printed by Duckworth and Ireland, 76, Fleet-street.

PREFACE

ΤΟ

VOLUME THE SEVENTH.

WHAT mankind have gained by the diffusion of knowledge, may best be illustrated by asking, what would have been now their condition, if the knowledge of each generation had perished with it? What the state of all those arts, which contribute, even more than Nature herself, to our power and happiness?

Mankind would still have been in a state of barbarism-the arts either wholly unknown, or still in their first and rudest stages,-human existence would have been as wretched, as its means would bave been scanty and precarious. There would have been neither flocks nor harvests-neither manufactures nor commerce-neither ships nor markets-neither science nor learning; no towns or cities-no "cloud capp'd towers” or “ gorgeous palaces"-no great and wealthy nations-no monuments whatever of human grandeur or power.

"Many a long lingering year, in lonely isle,
Stunn'd with the eternal turbulence of waves,
Lo, with dim eyes that never learn'd to smile,

And trembling hands, the famish'd native craves
Of Heaven his wretched fare: shivering in caves,
Or scorch'd on rocks, he pines from day to day;
But SCIENCE gives the word, and lo, he braves
The surge and tempest, lighted by her ray,
And to a happier land wafts merrily away."

Beattie's Minstrel.

Yet by how little, comparatively speaking, of transmitted knowledge, have we been saved from this state of utter destitution! Of what generation can it be said, that one-half of all they were the first to know has been handed down to succeeding times? The means of recording and disseminating a knowledge of new inventions and discoveries, were long few and imperfect; and have never yet been made use of to more than a very limited extent. The art of printing has existed but a few centuries;

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