justice, that the quarterlies are not as good as they were.”  From year to year they have less the appearance of being the production of men who looked to any thing beyond mere pecuniary compensation for their labor.  In reading them we find ourselves compelled to agree with the reviewer who regrets to see that the centralization which is hastening the decline of the Scottish universities is tending to cause the mind of the whole youth of Scotland to be

“Cast in the mould of English universities, institutions which, from their very completeness, exercise on second-rate minds an influence unfavorable to originality and power of thought.”—­North British Review, May 1853.

Their pupils are, as he says, struck “with one mental die,” than which nothing can be less favorable to literary or scientific development.

Thirty years since, Sir Humphrey Davy spoke with his countrymen as follows:—­

  “There are very few persons who pursue science with true dignity; it is
  followed more as connected with objects of profit than fame.”—­
  Consolation in Travel.

Since then, Sir John Herschel has said to them:—­

  “Here whole branches of continental study are unstudied, and indeed
  almost unknown by name.  It is in vain to conceal the melancholy truth. 
  We are fast dropping behind.”—­Treatise on Sound.

A late writer, already quoted, says that learning is in disrepute.  The English people, as he informs us, have

  “No longer time or patience for the luxury of a learned treatment of
  their interests; and a learned lawyer or statesmen, instead of being
  eagerly sought for, is shunned as an impediment to public business.”
—­North British Review.

The reviewer is, as he informs us, “far from regarding this tendency, unfavorable as it is to present progress, as a sign of social retrogression.”  He thinks that

“Reference to general principles for rules of immediate action on the part of those actually engaged in the dispatch of business, must, from the delay which it necessarily occasions, come to be regarded as a worse evil than action which is at variance with principle altogether.”

Demand tends to procure supply.  Destroy the demand, and the supply will cease.  Science, whether natural or social, is not in demand in Great Britain, and hence the diminution of supply.  We have here the secret of literary and scientific decline, so obvious to all who study English books or journals, or read the speeches of English statesmen.  Empiricism prevails everywhere, and there is a universal disposition to avoid the study of principles.  The “cheap labor” system, which it is the object of the whole British policy to establish, cannot be defended on principle, and therefore principles are avoided.  Centralization, cheap labor, and enslavement of the body and the mind, travel always in company, and with