piness, much more important, and which should naturally precede them, had been profoundly investigated. The moral and political sciences, those which have for their object men and nations, had long been studied in their most general principles. The Parliaments which sat under the two first of the Stuarts, were the schools in which these great themes were discussed; and our Revolution was a practical essay of their justness; an experiment, the most awful that can be imagined; and which, if it did not prove the speculations of our forefathers to be always mature, never failed to show in what their error consisted. But, in France, ethical inquiries were in their infancy when the exact sciences began to be cultivated; and many astronomers and geometricians had made themselves celebrated, while but one single political writer of permanent note could be counted. We can assert, upon the very first authority of this age, Mr Dugald Stewart, that, in questions connected with the philosophy of the human mind, the French are at least half a century behind the writers of this Island; and what would this illustrious philosopher not have added, if a residence in France had shown him, how much further still behind us is the general population of the country, in acquaintance with mental philosophy! It was not till long after the Academy of Sciences had been established, that the Encyclopedists, shallow, visionary, and impious as they mostly were, began to call the attention of the French toward the nature of man and of society. One of the most eminent of these, d'Alembert, complains that, however alert and versatile his countrymen may be in matters of taste, they always lag in the pursuit of mental philosophy; and Mr de Geraudo, in his heavy pages, allows that the French philosophers of this age owe all their knowledge to Locke. Among the last things which a despot would recommend to his subjects, is the study of their own rights and nature; and, if the people do not feel the necessity of political and moral researches, it certainly does not behove such a Government as that which fourteen centuries had naturalized in France, to point out the advantages to be derived from them. When the thirst after knowledge becomes uncontrolable, absolute monarchs are too fortunate if they can find means still to divert the minds of men from political speculations into some less dangerous channels, and give other employment to that curiosity which can no longer be repressed. The fine arts have more than once been prostituted to such debasing ends; and the exact sciences are still more deceitful means of duping nations into a belief that they are free and enlightened, though liberty and knowledge be denied them. Louis XIV. well knew this artifice, and most insidiously practised it; and if ever despot

made a more pernicious and successful use of it, Bonaparte was that despot. It would be a great error, indeed, to suppose, that the average of scientific acquirements, throughout France, bears the same proportion to the labours of the French Academy, as the average of scientific acquirements, in Britain, bears to our Royal Society; but it would be a still greater error to conclude, that the ratio between the sciences moral and political, and the exact sciences, was ever the same in both countries.

The contrast which the Institute forms to the general state of knowledge in France, is however not greater than the disproportion between the ostensible means of public instruction, in the higher branches of learning, and the effects produced. When the reign, commonly called of terror, but which we should rather characterize as the reign of blood, was over, some attempts were made to reinstate science; and, under the succeeding Governments, many public institutions were disseminated over France with this intent. Under the dominion of Bonaparte, these establishments were apparently much favoured; but his object was to create gunners, engineers, officers, scavants; marks to shoot or stare at, food for powder or for wonder:but he knew his trade of tyrant too well, to instruct his vassals generally. He found that, next to arms, and with the same view to glory, science was admired; and as, by the former, he had risen to power, so, by the latter, he aspired at consideration. He went accordingly to the Institute; took part in its discussions; mingled with the wise men of the capital; had himself well stuffed by his Imperial crammers; and, forming a kind of geometrical staircase of their heads, scrambled up like great Isosceles into his throne; or, tickling the lungs of his complaisant chemists, rose upon the wings of sublimation, like the philosophers' wool of Dioscorides, or the white eagle of Crollius. But he soon kicked away the lowly ladder of his young ambition; which, suddenly falling upon the noses of his deserted colleagues, led them to suspect they had been his dupes; and then, sticking a little piece of red riband in their button-holes, be sent them to dose in the Senate, or dream in the Council of State, the sleeping partners of his usurpation.

In all he did, there was nothing which could make science general in France. Though even in the abuse he made of it, when he converted many ingenious scavants into very indifferent statesmen, there was every thing to induce a belief, among persons who saw the thing but cursorily, that the French were the greatest respecters of learning in Europe. The schools of France, however, at the head of which we place l'Ecole Polytechnique, be the fault in them, or in the people, or in both, have not produced effects at all proportioned to their means, or to the fuss that has been

made about them. The exact sciences are principally taught in them; yet it is impossible to know France, and not to be struck with the excessive rarity of scientific information, even in the branches which have been the most profoundly studied by the learned. The dearth of general mathematical instruction, for instance, is quite astonishing. In the Parisian world at large, and in the provinces, the slightest knowledge of Geometry is hardly ever to be found; and it seems as if the quintessence of the differential calculus, and analytic functions, had been coerced into a few heads, whence it never has vent again, except upon the most solemn occasions. But, in Britain, some knowledge of Euclid is essential to the education of every gentleman; and an acquaintance with such algebraical calculation as can find its daily application, is beyond comparison more common than in France. The average of our upper classes of workmen, overseers, builders, carpenters, millwrights, are infinitely better versed in the mathematics of their various trades, than the analogous classes in France; and, while in that country a profounder, but a rarer study of infinites, is confined to the very highest order of the learned, in this, a more general and more applicable acquaintance with the mathematics, is diffused throughout the popula

tion.

The state of mechanical science is nearly the same.

Of all

the works which have been written upon that subject, the most profound, that which considers it in its greatest generalities, and in which the most powerful methods of analysis have been applied to it, is the Méchanique Analytique' of the Piedmontese philosopher, La Grange; and which, as he was long resident in France, that country claims as its own. To him, as a mechanical philosopher, may be added Prony, and one or two of minor note. But the rarity of mechanical instruction, in whatever branch, is quite deplorable through every class of society. Nothing can be more miserable, too, than the general state of machinery; and, at the very gates of their luxurious metropolis, may be found most pitiful examples of ignorance, in the use of machines, which, in this country, have been superseded a century since, by instruments more powerful and grand. The state of hydrostatics, hydraulics, is nothing better; and, in every science, the most remarkable thing is the excessively small number of those who are acquainted with it. Even when the rage for chemistry was highest; when rivality with England was the ruling passion; when Bonaparte was pushing on his scavants to discover, still no knowledge of it was diffused by its many lecturers, as in England; and, except among the schoolmen of the science, one might live for ever in society of all descriptions, and, among a thousand educated individuals, not meet

with one who could converse upon the subject, even as the topic of the day. As to Classical instruction in France, not being a region of discovery, or a source of glory, its ratio of depth and of diffusion, compared with what it is in England, is even lower. We are pretty confident, that twice the number of good Latinists could not be found in France, as of equally good Grecians in England; and as to Greek in France, it may be as general as Hebrew in Britain. Bonaparte wished the memory of all conquerors but himself to be lost. The exclusives among the revolutionists profess, that the knowledge of all events preceding 1792 is useless. We have heard much of the rising literary generation of France; that which was formed under the Directory, and Bonaparte. We stand prepared to give credit to its promise, as soon as it is performed; and, in the mean time, we hail the auspicious novelty of genius, planted by anarchy, and matured by despotism.

But this scantiness of knowledge is perceptible, not merely in the public at large. It pervades the professedly learned classes of society; and it is much more common to find, in France than in England, men deeply versed in one single branch of science, and possessing little knowledge of any other. Generally speaking, it is after an Englishman has gone through the common process of a liberal education, and even made himself acquainted with the various themes of higher acquirements, that he fixes his thoughts, more especially, upon that branch of science which he finds the most attractive; and profound knowledge upon one subject, is rarely coupled with profound ignorance upon another. At least, whatever be his other learned pursuits, the moral and political sciences, the public affairs of his country, fill some portion of the daily thoughts of an Englishman; and, however scientific an assembly of French philosophers may be, an assembly of British philosophers is much more generally enlightened. A source of many misfortunes, during the Revolution of France, was, that her scavants imagined they could master human passions, as they could rake out the ashes of their Athanor; or govern the loosened wind of the cavern of Eolus, as easily as they could calculate their velocity.

It is an old practice, in France, for Government to consuit the scavants upon great occasions; and the practice has been held as wondrous wise. In England, we do not so much bow to their opinions; and this custom we conceive to be a still greater proof of wisdom. The fact is, that, in France, if the scavants are not consulted, those who want to obtain information VOL. XXXIV. NO. 68.

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have none other to whom they can apply. A large middle class, an extensive tiers état, in knowledge, does not exist there; and for this reason, there is no union of theory with practice, and none of the happy effects which only such an union can produce. But England is a country of practitioners; and, with the necessity we feel of always keeping the lead in industry and forethought, as the means of national supremacy, we cannot fail to be enlightened practitioners. In all that is useful we have many persons in many places, from whom Government may learn, and who can give more applicable information than the Institute of France; yet who are not clad in half its brilliancy, because they stand upon a less contrasting ground. In the various shades and stages of wisdom, science has been differently esteemed among nations: In none, since the first expansion of reason, has it been wholly despised: In none, perhaps, has it been entirely honoured as it should be. The French have reached precisely that degree of knowledge, that mixture of physical and moral improvement, of luxury and civilization, which makes men bow, in prostrate admiration, before the science which they keep enshrined. The English, more en-, lightened, pay it a more rational homage; they reverence and diffuse it, and hold it as abortive as long as it is not conducive to human happiness. We are very far from denying that there are many in France who feel the advantage of diffusing science; but we maintain, and shall presently demonstrate, that science is not near so much a national demand in that country as in Britain.

In France, too, Government is the great protector and promoter of science; and not merely urges on, but even directs the pursuits of the learned. This likewise has been much extolled. There, indeed, where the stimulus of enlightened liberty is wanting, and where admiration is so precious to the nation, it may be necessary to urge men on, even in their studies: In England, the Government does less, because the subject does more. In free governments, it is not so much the function of the rulers to enlighten the governed, as of the governed to enlighten them. In order that the people may be wise, wisdom must be a demand of the people. The only knowledge which men truly appreciate, is that of which they feel the value; not that which they are told is excellent, or which is pointed to as glorious. The enlightened state of the wealthy British population, and the efforts of those who would become both enlightened and wealthy, spare our Government from all solicitude upon science.