olly exempt from its operation--to be more clearly and more fearfully
represented. The South Sea scheme, the invasion of Scotland, the
disgraceful expeditions on the coast of France; the conduct of Lord
George Sackville at Minden, the miserable attempt on Carthagena, the
loss of Minorca, the convention of Closterseven, the insecurity of the
high-roads, nay, of the public streets in the metropolis itself, all
serve to show the deplorable condition into which the nation was fast
sinking, abroad and at home, when the "Great Commoner" once more aroused
its energies, concentrated its strength, and carried it to a higher
pinnacle of glory than it has ever been the lot even of Great Britain to
attain. Yet this effect was transient--the progress of corruption was
checked, but the disease still lurked in the heart, and tainted the
life-blood of the community. The orgies of Medmenham Abbey, the triumphs
of Wilkes, and the loss of America, bear fatal testimony to the want of
decency and disregard of merit in private as well as public life which
infected Great Britain, polluting the sources of her domestic virtues,
and bringing disgrace upon her arms and councils during the greater part
of the eighteenth century. It is with a masterly review of this period
of our history that Dr Arnold closes his analysis of the three last
centuries. His remaining lecture is dedicated to the examination of
historical evidence--a subject on which it is not our present intention
to offer any commentary.

To trace effects to their causes, is the object of all science; and by
this object, as it is accomplished or incomplete, the progress of any
particular science must be determined. The order of the moral is in
reality as immutable as the laws of the physical world; and human
actions are linked to their consequences by a necessity as inexorable as
that which controls the growth of plants or the motion of the earth,
though the connexion between cause and effect is not equally
discernible. The depression of the nobles and the rise of the commons in
England, after the statutes of alienation, were the result of causes as
infallible in their operation as those which regulate the seasons and
the tides. Repeated experiments have proved beyond dispute, that gold is
heavier than iron. Is the superior value of gold to iron a fact more
questionable? Yet is value a quality purely moral, and absolutely
dependent on the will of man. The events of to-day are bound to