goaded and tormented man, in the silent darkness of ignorance as in the
broad light of learning.

So long as European society consisted in a great measure of war tempered
by agriculture, there could be but little progress towards a better
state of things. But the germ of industry sprouted and grew, though
slowly. Merchants bought social privileges for money; even law was
grudgingly sold them, and they continued to buy. Against the old
idealism, against bugbears and mythology, fairy tales and astrology,
dreams, spells, charms, muttered exorcisms, commandments to obey master,
ship and serfdom, _de jure divino_, clouds, mists, and lies infinite;
slowly rose that stupendous power of truth and of Nature which had
hitherto in humanity only visited the world in broken gleams. We may
assume different eras for this dividing point between immutability and
progress, between slavery and freedom. In religion, Christianity appears
as first offering future happiness for the people and for all. The
revival of letters and the Reformation were glorious storms, battering
down thousands of old barriers. But in a temporal and worldly point of
view the name of Bacon, perhaps, since a name is still necessary, best
distinguishes between the old and the new. From him--or his age--dates
that grappling with facts, that classifying of all knowledge so soon as
obtained, that _Wissenschaft_ or _Science_ which never goes backward; in
fine, that information which by its dissemination continually equalizes
men and renders rank futile. With science, labor and the laboring man
began at once to rise. Comfort and cleanliness and health for the many
took the place of ancient deprivation and dirt--whether of body or of
soul. Humanity began to improve--for, with all the legends of the
bravery of the Middle Ages, it is apparent enough that their heroes or
soldiers were not so strong or large as the men of the present day. And
through all, amid struggles and strivings and subtle drawbacks and
deceits, worked and won its way the great power of Republicanism or of
Progress, destroying, one by one, illusions, and building up in their
stead fair and enduring realities.

It is but a few decades since the greater portion of all intellectual or
inventive effort was devoted to setting off rank, to exalting the
exalted, and, by contrast, still further degrading the lowly. What were
the glorious works of those mediaeval artists in stone and canvas, in
orfevery and silv