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PROGRESS OF SCIENCE.

It may be considered as sufficiently proved, that the sciences had not acquired any degree of improvement until the eighth century before the Christian era; notwithstanding great nations had been formed in several parts of the earth some centuries earlier.  Fifteen hundred years before Christ there were already four—­the Indians, the Chinese, the Babylonians, and the Egyptians.—­Cuvier.

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SELECT BIOGRAPHY.

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THOMAS HOPE, ESQ.

(For the Mirror.)

We regret to record the death of this distinguished scholar and munificent patron of literature and the fine arts.  For some weeks past we have been awaiting the publication of his last work, entitled, “An Essay on the Origin and Prospects of Man;” and after looking with this expectation in the Times of Friday, the 4th, we there read the information of Mr. Hope’s death, on the 2nd instant, at his house in Duchess-street.

Mr. Hope was a nephew of the opulent Amsterdam merchant of the same name.  We are not aware of his precise age, but should judge it must have verged on sixty.  In early life he travelled much, especially in the East; and few Englishmen have acquired better knowledge of the manners and customs of that division of the world than had the subject of this memoir.  His visits to the European continent are of much more recent date.  In its various academies of fine art his name will long be cherished with grateful remembrance, since few men distributed their patronage with so much munificence and judgment.

Possessing an ample fortune and exquisite taste, Mr. Hope judiciously applied his knowledge of the fine arts to the internal decoration of houses:  thus producing, in numberless instances, the rare combination of splendour and convenience.  On this subject, Mr. Hope published, in 1805, an illustrative folio work, entitled “Household Furniture and Internal Decorations.”  He also published two very superb works on costume, entitled, “The Costumes of the Ancients,” two vols. 8vo. 1809; and “Designs of Modern Costume,” folio, 1812:  in which he displayed high classical attainments and love of the picturesque.

Mr. Hope, however, subsequently appeared before the literary world in a work which at once places him in the highest list of eloquent writers and superior men—­viz. Anastasius; or, the Memoirs of a Modern Greek:  published in the year 1819.  There are, indeed, few books in the English language which contain passages of greater power, feeling, and eloquence than this work, which delineate frailty and vice with more energy and acuteness, or describe historical scenes with such bold imagery and such glowing language.  We remember the opinion of