that the other great investigation of Harvey is not one
which can be dealt with to a general audience. It is very complex, and
therefore I must ask you to take my word for it that, although not so
fortunate an investigation, not so entirely accordant with later results
as the doctrine of the circulation; yet that still, this little treatise
of Harvey's has in many directions exerted an influence hardly less
remarkable than that exerted by the Essay upon the Circulation of the
Blood.

And now let me ask your attention to two or three closing remarks.

If you look back upon that period of about 100 years which commences
with Harvey's birth--I mean from the year 1578 to 1680 or thereabouts--I
think you will agree with me, that it constitutes one of the most
remarkable epochs in the whole of that thousand years which we
may roughly reckon as constituting the history of Britain. In the
commencement of that period, we may see, if not the setting, at any rate
the declension of that system of personal rule which had existed under
previous sovereigns, and which, after a brief and spasmodic revival in
the time of George the Third, has now sunk, let us hope, into the limbo
of forgotten things. The latter part of that 100 years saw the dawn
of that system of free government which has grown and flourished, and
which, if the men of the present day be the worthy descendants of Eliott
and Pym, and Hampden and Milton, will go on growing as long as this
realm lasts. Within that time, one of the strangest phenomena which I
think I may say any nation has ever manifested arose to its height and
fell--I mean that strange and altogether marvellous phenomenon, English
Puritanism. Within that time, England had to show statesmen like
Burleigh, Strafford, and Cromwell--I mean men who were real statesmen,
and not intriguers, seeking to make a reputation at the expense of the
nation. In the course of that time, the nation had begun to throw off
those swarms of hardy colonists which, to the benefit of the world--and
as I fancy, in the long run, to the benefit of England herself--have
now become the United States of America; and, during the same epoch,
the first foundations were laid of that Indian Empire which, it may be,
future generations will not look upon as so happy a product of English
enterprise and ingenuity. In that time we had poets such as Spenser,
Shakespere, and Milton; we had a great philosopher, in Hobbes; and we
had a clever talker