The microscope is perfected up to a point which mechanicians think cannot be improved upon; so that those ultimate elements of physiology which depend upon the observation of minute structure are known to us. To put it crudely, we cannot discover any more germs, whose presence is hidden from us by mere minuteness, unless we can improve our machinery, and that, we are told, is an improbable event. I will not labour the point by applying it to botany, which is very obvious, or to chemistry, where it is not so clear. But it _is_ clear that owing to a feeling that not much more is to be got from minute observation with the tools at our disposal, the brightest intellects and most inventive clairvoyant work are shunted into more imaginative channels. There are no men who guess so brilliantly as men of science, so that science, in that respect, has attained the dignity of Theology. I suppose that the startling theories propounded by Sir Oliver Lodge and others will be taken as evidence of the decay of science. But the human intellect, especially if it is scientific, cannot, I imagine, like actors, go on repeating or feigning the same emotion. It must leave for the moment as apparently completed one branch of knowledge to which it may return again after developing some less mature branch on which the attention of the most learned investigators is for a time wholly concentrated. The tree of knowledge is an evergreen, and in science, no more than in arts, is there any decay. When Darwin published his great _Origin of Species_ which was hailed as a revelation, not only by scientific men, but by intelligent laymen, religious people became very much alarmed. They talked about the decay of faith, and ascribed any falling off in the offertories to the shillings spent on visiting the monkey-house at the Zoological Gardens. Younger sons and less gifted members of clever families were no longer destined for Holy Orders; as we were descended from apes it would have seemed impious. They were sent to Cambridge to pursue a so-called scientific career, which was crowned by the usual aegrotat in botany instead of a pass in history. The falling off in candidates for Holy Orders seriously alarmed some of our Bishops; and Darwin--the gentle, delightful Darwin--became what the Pope had been to our ancestors. I need not point out how groundless these fears happily proved to be. The younger intellects of the country simply became more interested for the moment in the cross-breeding of squirrels, than in the internecine difficulties of the Protestant church on Apostolic succession, the number of candles on the altar, and the legality of incense. Now, I rejoice to say, there is a healthy revival of interest and a healthy difference of opinion on all these important religious questions. We must never pay serious attention to the alarmists who tell us that the churches and sects are seeing their last days. Macaulay has warned us never to be too