Sir Isaac Newton was born the same year Galileo died; and while we do not forget that Florence was the great centre of science, as of literature and art during the age of Leo X., let us glance more particularly at this point to the results which so constantly tended toward the western extreme. We have already alluded to many of the developments which illuminated the night of ignorance, broke the yoke of superstition, gave to doubt a salutary force, and redoubled the acute delights of scientific investigation. The wonders of remote hemispheres were simultaneously unfolded, when Columbus and Vasco de Gama, at one stroke, overthrew the old geological and geographical systems. Before the close of the sixteenth century few of the mysteries of nature were left unvailed, and all that remained for posterity was the work of enlarged classification, and the perfection of each separate science. The progress made was, in fact, immense. As the botanic gardens, at that time planted in the new Italian universities, were fragrant with a thousand exotics, unknown to antiquity, so the softest fabrics, and most delicious fruits, recalled to memory the concurrent events of Providence, which for a long time made Venice and Genoa the emporia of mediæval traffic. Every luxury of the old world, which commerce converted into a comfort for the new, is a memento of the discoveries which guided navigation in the remotest seas, and carried European adventurers so far as to make the treasures of the entire globe our own. The science of political economy was also the offspring of that increased commercial activity which has so much affected the character of nations as to render new combinations of philosophy necessary for their direction. We only need allude to the fact that the free cities of Italy were compelled to yield the leadership in commerce to freer Holland, and that the sceptre of the seas was finally won by England; and that the first published theory of political economy was given to the world in Raleigh's essay, which Quesnoy long after attempted in vain to refute.