If we think of the scientific knowledge possessed by the most intelligent men when the Queen ascended the throne, we can hardly refrain from smiling, for it seems as though we were studying the mental endowment of a race of children. The science of electricity was in its infancy; the laws of force were misunderstood; men did not know what heat really was. They knew next to nothing of the history of the globe, and they accounted for the existence of varying species of plants and animals by means of the most infantine hypotheses. A complete revolution--vital and all-embracing--has altered our modes of thought, so that the man of 1887 can scarcely bring himself to conceive the state of mind which contented the man of 1837. We have dark doubts now, perplexing misgivings, weary uncertainties, painful consciousness of limited powers; but along with these weaknesses we have our share of certainties. Are we happier? Nay, not in mind. A quiet melancholy marks the words of all the men who have thought most deeply and learned most. The wise no longer cry out or complain--they accept life and fate with calm sadness, and perhaps with prayerful resignation. We have learned to know how little we can know, and we see with composure that even the miracles already achieved by the restless mind of man are as nothing. * * * * * There is a far better reason than this for the sadness of thinking men. It is that, with all the progress of science, art, and education, poverty, misery, disease, and crime still afflict society as they did in ruder ages, and our progress is _onward_, but not _upward_. It is _upward_ progress to which the JOURNAL OF MAN is devoted. In the foregoing sketch very little is said of the real progress of the age--the increase of education, the uprising of the people into greater political power and liberty, the prostration of the power of the church, which is destined to disestablishment, and the uprising of spiritual science. What is there in the reign of Victoria to be celebrated? Was there ever a more perfect specimen of barely respectable commonplace than the reign of Victoria? What generous impulse, or what notable wisdom has she ever shown? What has she done for the relief of Ireland, for the improvement of a society full of pauperism, crime and suffering, or for the prevention of unjust foreign wars? When has she ever given even a respectable gift to any good object from her enormous income? But virtue is not expected in sovereigns; they are expected only to enjoy themselves hugely, to make an ostentatious display, and consume all their benighted subjects give them. Mrs. Stanton says:--"The two great questions now agitating Great Britain are 'Coercion for Ireland,' and the 'Queen's Jubilee,' a tragedy and a comedy in the same hour." Speaking of the Queen's Jubilee she says: