National Progress page 3

Of a different kind, but perhaps still more wonderful, are the calculating machines of Babbage. A few years after leaving college, he originated the plan of a machine for calculating tables, by means of successive orders of differences, and having received for it, in 1822 and the following year, the support of the Astronomical and Royal Societies, and a grant of money from Government, he proceeded to its execution. He also in 1834 contrived a machine called the " analytical engine," extending the plan so as to develop algebraic quantities, and to tabulate the numerical value of complicated functions, when one or more of the variables which they contain are made to alter their values; but the difficulties of carrying out this plan became insurmountable. In 1839 Babbage resigned the professorship of mathematics in the University of Cambridge. He died at the end of 1871, having devoted his life to the study and advancement of science.

The most memorable event connected with the progress of science in the present age, is the establishment of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, which held its first annual meeting at York, in 1831. It is an institution of the most comprehensive character, including every department of human knowledge of a scientific nature, and which can be advanced by scientific investigation. It contemplates no interference with the ground occupied by other institutions. Its objects are to give a stronger impulse and a mort systematic direction to scientific inquiry - to promote the intercourse of those who cultivate science in different parts of the British Empire with one another, and with foreign philosophers - to obtain a more general attention to the objects of science, and a removal of any disadvantages of a public kind which impede its progress. The association was composed originally of all persons who attended its first meeting, of the fellows and members of chartered, literary, and philosophical societies publishing transactions in the British Empire, of the office-bearers, members of councils, or managing committees of philosophical institutions, or such of their members as they recommended. Persons not belonging to such institutions are elected by the general committee or council. All members pay an annual subscription of £1 in advance, or a life subscription of £5. The association is managed by a general committee, and committees of science for the different sections, aided by local committees, who assist in promoting its objects where the annual meetings are held. So popular did this institution become with the friends of science throughout the United Kingdom, that at the fourth meeting in Edinburgh, in 1834, 1,298 tickets were issued to members. All the public accommodations which that fine capital possessed were opened to it, and its visit constituted a sort of festal season, as it does wherever it holds its meetings. On that occasion, one of the secretaries, Professor Forbes, delivered an address, in which he gave an account of its objects and its progress up to that time. The Lord Chancellor Brougham was present at the meeting, and in seconding a motion for a vote of thanks to M. Arago and other distinguished foreigners who honoured it with their presence, he said that he looked upon this as one of the most important and unquestionable of all the benefits it was calculated to bestow, that it brought together men of science from every quarter of the world. As there is no duty more sacred and imperative on the part of governments than to promote by every means that peace which ought to bind the great family of mankind together in all its departments and institutions, so he held that whatever brings men into contact on such neutral ground as science, tends to facilitate the task of rulers, and makes it easy to keep at peace with neighbouring states. The first eight meetings of the association (1831-38) were held at York, Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh, Dublin, Bristol, Liverpool, and Newcastle.

It would not be right to conclude this brief review of the progress of science without noticing the laudable efforts made during this period to diffuse it among the people, and we cannot do better than avail ourselves of the address of Lord Brougham, as President of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science, in 1858: - " It is quite as great a delusion under which those labour who figure to themselves the promoters of popular literature as indifferent to the encouragement of more severe studies and the cultivation of profounder science. We of the Useful Knowledge Society can well recollect that exactly the same prejudice prevailed - or if it did not, was sought to be raised - against the preparation of scientific works in a cheap form, and designed to give information of the most solid and even profound description. Some of the very persons who were remunerated, and amply remunerated, for their writings, derided what they called sixpenny science, because a treatise once a fortnight for several years was published at that price. But by whom composed? By such mathematicians as Professor De Morgan; such natural philosophers as Sir D. Brewster, a discoverer as well as a teacher; and such botanists as Professor Lindley. It was plain enough that some of those who thus complained of the treatises as not profound could not have read one line of them, from their own profound ignorance of the subject. Contemporary with the Penny Magazine was the Penny Cyclopedia, of which it is enough to say that so accomplished a scholar as Professor Long being the conductor, no less a mathematician than the Astronomer-Royal has published in a separate form his valuable contributions to the work - papers, too, composed in so plain and popular a manner as to bring the most sublime truths of the Newtonian philosophy within the comprehension of readers very moderately acquainted with the mathematics. At the bottom of the clamour against the Useful Knowledge Society's proceedings, possibly not unconnected with the present attacks upon popular literature, was the notion that the gains of authors are lessened, the wages of literary labour reduced - an error not less glaring than that of the common workman who should object to the capital by which his labour is employed and paid being invested at low profits and quick returns. In truth, the fund out of which literary labour is paid has been very greatly increased by the cheap publications. Independently of the Cyclopaedia, the society did not expend less than £100,000 in this way, the whole arising from the profits of its cheap works, which, by their charter of incorporation, they were bound thus to expend. When Admiral Beaufort (late hydrographer of the Admiralty) was consulted on the price of its maps, one shilling being proposed, he refused to undertake the superintendence of that department if the price were fixed higher than sixpence, because he saw that this must secure circulation and profit. But the duty on paper is a heavy burden, and goes almost altogether in diminution of the fund destined for authors and artists. It amounted to above £7,000 yearly on the Penny Magazine, when it was threepence a pound. Had it not been reduced to three-halfpence, the Cyclopaedia must have been given up; and even since the reduction, one of the greatest publishers pays Government between £7,000 and £8,000 a year, the greatest part of which would be employed in paying for literary labour and plates, were the duty repealed. The exaction of this duty is among the greatest anomalies of our political administration, though it is not the only one; for while endeavouring by every resource of negotiation and of force, not a little costly, to put down the foreign slave-trade, we give it direct encouragement by opening our markets to slave- grown sugar, and thus also lowering the price of our own free-grown produce. So while we profess to promote education, and, indeed, the improvement of people in every way, and expend large sums yearly to further this great work, we raise, on the other hand, a powerful obstruction to all our operations by laying a tax upon knowledge in each one of its various departments."

There is not very much to be said of the progress of the fine arts during the twenty years that comprised the last two reigns. It was a time of transition; the lights of the past age were gradually setting, and those which were to illumine the reign of Victoria, with a few exceptions, had not risen far above the horizon. We shall best describe the progress made during the period under review by brief notices of the most distinguished artists who have adorned it, and of their principal works.

When the Prince Regent ascended the throne, the fine arts were still in a languishing condition, and dilettanteism characterised the patrons of painters. The court and the nobles, and men of princely fortunes, showered wealth upon their favourites, so that many of our painters and sculptors amassed considerable wealth. The great patrons had, at enormous cost, gathered together collections, which included pictures not to be found elsewhere out of national or royal galleries. The cognoscenti had obtained a standing as genuine critics, and had acquired great skill in discerning the productions of the old masters, from the habit of attending sales, and making selections; self- interest and vanity tending to render their judgments quick and keen in these matters. The consequence was that these connoisseurs could lay claim to a degree ot critical acumen which we now expect only from a superior artist, whose business it is to understand everything about such matters. Of course, there was much of the empirical spirit about many, who prided themselves on their attainments in this department. Young men who rode posthaste through the Continent, and took a hurried glance at the national galleries, assumed airs of transcendent knowledge, cried up everything foreign, and looked with contempt upon the productions of native artists. But artists began to travel too, and study abroad, and were rewarded by having their ateliers crowded with sitters. The fruit of travel soon told upon the rising generation of artists, and revived a spirit which led, in 1823, to the formation of the National Gallery, to which we have already referred as one of the few claims of George IV. to the gratitude of his country. The Elgin marbles, too, which had become national property in 1816, had given a stimulus to art, and extended the taste for its cultivation. They were chiefly derived from the Parthenon, a temple of Minerva, on the Acropolis at Athens, of which they formed part of the frieze and pediment, built by Phidias, about 450 years b.c. Thomas, Lord Elgin, began the collection of these marbles during his mission to the Ottoman Porte in 1802. They were purchased by the British Government for £35,000, and placed in the British Museum.

Turner has been pronounced as " essentially the great founder of English landscape painting, the greatest poet- artist our nation has yet produced. He excelled in everything - from the mere diagram and topographic map to the most consummate truth and the most refined idealism. In every touch of his there was profound thought and meaning." He was unrivalled in storms; as Napoleon said of Kleber, "He wakes on the day of battle." The remark of Admiral Bowles, when looking at Turner's " Wreck of the Minotaur," conveyed the highest compliment to his art - "No ship could live in such a sea." His "Man Overboard " is a still higher effort of genius, in conveying an expression of horror and utter despair. He was the best illustrator of our national poets. He made known to Englishmen the beauties of their native land, and made them acquainted with the picturesque on the Continent. He gave our young artists love for colour, and made us the Venetians of the modern school. From "Towing an Old War-ship to her last Moorings," to " Wilkie's Burial," and the " Burning of the Houses of Parliament," he let no event of his age pass without record or comment. In the words of one of his enthusiastic biographers, " He exhausted ancient mythology; he illustrated sacred and profane history; and when he had exhausted sun and sea, and earth and air, he made for himself a new world with new elements, and there, alone in that sublime solitude, this great enchanter disported himself, like the mammoth in the world before man came." Born a barber's son, in Covent Garden, before the dawn of English art, he laboured long at the inglorious work of colouring architectural drawings, at very poor remuneration. But his fame increased by degrees, till at last he rivalled the old masters, and could command enormous prices. But wealth made no change in his domestic habits. He remained in sordid obscurity; his habits were penurious; he was branded as a miser, but only by his enemies. He lived the life of a bachelor, and was never known to have any relations. But he was wedded to his art, to which he was a most munificent benefactor. He left the bulk of his property to found almshouses for the benefit of unfortunate and meritorious artists. When he died, in 1851, it was found that he had bequeathed sixty pictures - one of which was worth £5,000 - £30,000 worth of sketches and drawings, a matchless store of engravings, and £120,000 in money, to found an asylum for this benevolent purpose; and he left all the rest of his pictures to the nation, on the express condition that a suitable place should be provided for their deposit and exhibition.

The fame of Sir Thomas Lawrence had attained its meridian in this period. In portrait painting, which he made his profession, he was one of the most distinguished artists of the day, and he attained proficiency in it without having gone to Italy or studied the old masters. It has been said of him, as well as of Sir Joshua Reynolds, that he painted three generations of beauties. He went to Aix- la-Chapelle in 1818, by invitation, to take the likenesses of the most distinguished statesmen who were there assembled for diplomatic purposes. During his residence on the Continent he was received by the sovereigns of the different countries he visited, and entertained with marked distinction; and the propriety and elegance of his deportment, we are told, made an impression highly favourable to his character. On his return, he found that he had been unanimously elected to succeed West as the president of the Royal Academy, and this office he continued to hold till his death, which took place on the 7th of January, 1830. The distinguishing characteristic of his style was the power of conveying a faithful resemblance, with a singularly delicate sense of beauty and dignity. It was said of him that "no painter who had ever lived seemed to have dived more deeply into individual character, as conveyed by the conformation of the visage and the expression of the features." And Turner himself has been heard to say of him, "He paints eyes better than Titian." Sir R. Westmacott stated that his illustrations of Cato, Coriolanus, and Hamlet may be considered historical works, and examples of his creative genius, possessing a vigour of imagination, a propriety of sentiment, a breadth and chasteness of composition worthy to be ranked with the classical and distinguished efforts of the sixteenth century; while his more comprehensive powers were displayed in the admirable picture of " Satan;" all eminent proofs that he possessed talents equal to the accomplishment of the highest designs in art.