While this was going on within the Church, there was a great movement of thought going on in the country. It was the time when Bentham's utilitarianism had at length made its way into prominence and importance. It had gained a hold on a number of powerful minds in society and political life. It was threatening to become the dominant and popular philosophy. It began, in some ways beneficially, to affect and even control legislation. It made desperate attempts to take possession of the whole province of morals. It forced those who saw through its mischief, who hated and feared it, to seek a reason, and a solid and strong one, for the faith which was in them as to the reality of conscience and the mysterious distinction between right and wrong. And it entered into a close alliance with science, which was beginning to assert its claims, since then risen so high, to a new and undefined supremacy, not only in the general concerns of the world, but specially in education. It was the day of Holland House. It was the time when a Society of which Lord Brougham was the soul, and which comprised a great number of important political and important scientific names, was definitely formed for the _Diffusion of Useful Knowledge_. Their labours are hardly remembered now in the great changes for which they paved the way; but the Society was the means of getting written and of publishing at a cheap rate a number of original and excellent books on science, biography, and history. It was the time of the _Library of Useful Knowledge,_ and its companion, the _Library of Entertaining Knowledge;_ of the _Penny Magazine,_ and its Church rival, the _Saturday Magazine,_ of the _Penny Cyclopaedia,_ and _Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopaedia,_ and _Murray's Family Library_: popular series, which contained much of the work of the ablest men of the day, and which, though for the most part superseded now, were full of interest then. Another creation of this epoch, and an unmistakable indication of its tendencies, was the British Association for the Advancement of Science, which met for the first time at Oxford in June 1832, not without a good deal of jealousy and misgiving, partly unreasonable, partly not unfounded, among men in whose hearts the cause and fortunes of religion were supreme.