ould we obtain a complete and comprehensive view of that most
interesting Period of Transition, unless we saw something of the
influence which the sombre and sinister wisdom of Italian policy
began to exercise over the councils of the great,--a policy of refined
stratagem, of complicated intrigue, of systematic falsehood, of
ruthless, but secret violence; a policy which actuated the fell
statecraft of Louis XI.; which darkened, whenever he paused to think and
to scheme, the gaudy and jovial character of Edward IV.; which appeared
in its fullest combination of profound guile and resolute will in
Richard III.; and, softened down into more plausible and specious
purpose by the unimpassioned sagacity of Henry VII., finally attained
the object which justified all its villanies to the princes of its
native land,--namely, the tranquillity of a settled State, and the
establishment of a civilized but imperious despotism.

Again, in that twilight time, upon which was dawning the great invention
that gave to Letters and to Science the precision and durability of the
printed page, it is interesting to conjecture what would have been
the fate of any scientific achievement for which the world was less
prepared. The reception of printing into England chanced just at the
happy period when Scholarship and Literature were favoured by the great.
The princes of York, with the exception of Edward IV. himself, who had,
however, the grace to lament his own want of learning, and the taste
to appreciate it in others, were highly educated. The Lords Rivers and
Hastings [The erudite Lord Worcester had been one of Caxton's warmest
patrons, but that nobleman was no more at the time in which printing is
said to have been actually introduced into England.] were accomplished
in all the "witte and lere" of their age. Princes and peers vied with
each other in their patronage of Caxton, and Richard III., during his
brief reign, spared no pains to circulate to the utmost the invention
destined to transmit his own memory to the hatred and the horror of all
succeeding time. But when we look around us, we see, in contrast to the
gracious and fostering reception of the mere mechanism by which
science is made manifest, the utmost intolerance to science itself. The
mathematics in especial are deemed the very cabala of the black art.
Accusations of witchcraft were never more abundant; and yet, strange
to say, those who openly professed to practise the unhallowed