That a period of equal, perhaps greater activity, than that which followed the discoveries of Columbus, would succeed the outbreak of the social passions that occasioned the French Revolution, has long been familiar to the thinking part of men, and unequivocal proofs of the reality of the change may be seen in every direction around us. But sufficient attention has not hitherto been paid to the extraordinary encouragement which this increased mental energy has received, from the facilities which have been placed at its disposal by the _mechanical_ discoveries of the last half century. Yet are they such as to throw all past discoveries into the shade, and give an impulse to human affairs which has scarcely been exceeded since the first separation of the dwellers in cities and the sojourners in the fields. The steam-engine has wrought these prodigies. Applied to mechanical invention, and the moving of machinery, it has multiplied tenfold the powers of urban industry, elevated the districts possessing the necessary fuel to the clouds, cast down places once the seats of commercial greatness, but destitute of that essential element in modern manufacturing energy, to the dust. Applied to the propelling of vessels, it has more than halved the breadth of the ocean, rendered navigable against the current the greatest rivers, sent the colonists of Europe in countless multitudes _up_ the streams of the New World, and provided an entrance for civilised man into the greatest continents by the very magnitude of the waters which flow down from their inaccessible mountains, or are fed in their marshy plains. Applied to travelling by land, it has diminished distance to a third--brought the capital of every civilised state into close proximity to its most distant provinces; while the simultaneous discovery of the electric telegraph has rendered the communication of intelligence all but instantaneous, and made the circulation of ideas and, it is to be feared, also of passions, as rapid over a mighty empire as heretofore it was in the streets of a crowded capital.