ABERDEEN: A. BROWN & CO. EDINBURGH AND GLASGOW : JOHN MENZIES & CO. LONDON: SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, & CO. 1 PREFACE. WHEN preparing this volume, so many subjects demanded admission that I had some difficulty in finding space for them, but I proceeded on the method of apportioning the various subjects according to their relative value and interest. I have endeavoured to classify the great departments and their dependent branches as consecutively as possible, so that their bearing on each other may be easily perceived, and the whole movement of the period distinctly comprehended. The period of our history covered in this volume had not been written before. There was a revolution both in thought and industry to explain, and how far I have succeeded in unfolding it, posterity will determine. In this volume, where so many sciences, literature, manufactures, and arts, political and religious movements, had to be treated, some trivial mistakes may be detected which may have escaped my attention; still the general accuracy of the whole may be implicitly relied on. In the preparation of this volume it became necessary to make personal inquiries in many quarters for information, touching various matters of which no reliable written records exist in an accessible form, and I am glad to state that in every instance I found the |