(One of the Free Evening Lectures delivered in connection with the PAGE (An Address to the Owens College Chemical Society, at the Opening (Memorial Lecture delivered to the Fellows of the Chemical Society, ONE OF THE FREE EVENING LECTURES DELIVERED IN CONNECTION WITH THE LOAN COLLECTION OF SCIENTIFIC APPARATUS AT SOUTH KENSINGTON IN 1876. FROM whatever point of view we may regard it, the period which began with the restoration of the House of Stuart and ended with its downfall is one of the most extraordinary in our history. It is a period of paradoxes. The reign of Charles II. is at once one of the worst and one of the brightest epochs in our annals. Never were the resources of this country so recklessly wasted; never was it more wretchedly governed. At home, public morality and political virtue were at their lowest ebb. Abroad, the foreign policy of Oliver had made to be of the power which the firmness everywhere respected was the subject of derision in even the smallest of German courts. The boys of Amsterdam, who, as Macaulay tells us, ran along the canals, when the great Protector was no more, shouting for joy that the Devil was dead, had as men the gratification of helping De Winter to burn our arsenals, and of insulting Tilbury, sacred to the memory of Elizabeth, and of one of the proudest moments of our national existence. On the other hand, at no former period were such mighty legislative reforms enacted; blow after blow was aimed at and made its mark upon spiritual B |