The absence in France, during this period, not only of great discoveries, but also of mere practical ingenuity, is certainly very striking. In investigations requiring minute accuracy, the necessary tools, if at all complicated, were made by foreigners, the native workmen being too unskilled to construct them; and Dr. Lister, who was a very competent judge,458 and who was in Paris at the end of the seventeenth century, supplies evidence that the best mathematical instruments sold in that city were made, not by a Frenchman, but by Butterfield, an Englishman residing there.459 Nor did they succeed better in matters of immediate and obvious utility. The improvements effected in manufactures were few and insignificant, and were calculated, not for the comfort of the people, but for the luxury of the idle classes.460 What was really valuable was neglected; no great invention was made; and by the end of the reign of Louis XIV. scarcely anything had been done in machinery, or in those other contrivances which, by economising national labour, increase national wealth.461
While such was the state, not only of mathematical and astronomical science, but also of mechanical and inventive arts, corresponding symptoms of declining power were seen in other departments. In physiology, in anatomy and in medicine, we look in vain for any men equal to those by whom France had once been honoured. The greatest discovery of this kind ever made by a Frenchman, was that of the receptacle of the chyle; a discovery which, in the opinion of a high authority, is not inferior to that of the circulation of the blood by Harvey.462 This important step in our knowledge is constantly assigned to the age of Louis XIV., as if it were one of the results of his gracious bounty; but it would be difficult to tell what Louis had to do with it, since the discovery was made by Pecquet in 1647,463 when the great king was nine years old. After Pecquet, the most eminent of the French anatomists in the seventeenth century was Riolan; and his name we also find among the illustrious men who adorned the reign of Louis XIV. But the principal works of Riolan were written before Louis XIV. was born; his last work was published in 1652; and he himself died in 1657.464 Then there came a pause, and, during three generations, the French did nothing for these great subjects: they wrote no work upon them which is now read, they made no discoveries, and they seemed to have lost all heart, until that revival of knowledge, which, as we shall presently see, took place in France about the middle of the eighteenth century. In the practical parts of medicine, in its speculative parts, and in the arts connected with surgery, the same law prevails. The French, in these, as in other matters, had formerly produced men of great eminence, who had won for themselves an European reputation, and whose works are still remembered. Thus, only to mention two or three instances, they had a long line of illustrious physicians, among whom Fernel and Joubert were the earliest;465 they had, in surgery, Ambroise Paré, who not only introduced important practical improvements,466 but who has the still rarer merit of being one of the founders of comparative osteology;467 and they had Baillou, who late in the sixteenth and early in the seventeenth century, advanced pathology, by connecting it with the study of morbid anatomy.468 Under Louis XIV. all this was changed. Under him, surgery was neglected, though in other countries its progress was rapid.469 The English, by the middle of the seventeenth century, had taken considerable steps in medicine: its therapeutical branch being reformed chiefly by Sydenham, its physiological branch by Glisson.470 But the age of Louis XIV. cannot boast of a single medical writer who can be compared to these; not even one whose name is now known as having made any specific addition to our knowledge. In Paris, the practice of medicine was notoriously inferior to that in the capitals of Germany, Italy, and England; while in the French provinces, the ignorance, even of the best physicians, was scandalous.471 Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that, during the whole of this long period, the French in these matters effected comparatively nothing; they made no contributions to clinical literature,472 and scarcely any to therapeutics, to pathology, to physiology, or to anatomy.473
In what are called the natural sciences, we also find the French now brought to a stand. In zoology, they had formerly possessed remarkable men, among whom Belon and Rondelet were the most conspicuous:474 but, under Louis XIV., they did not produce one original observer in this great field of inquiry.475 In chemistry, again, Rey had, in the reign of Louis XIII., struck out views of such vast importance, that he anticipated some of those generalizations which formed the glory of the French intellect in the eighteenth century.476 During the corrupt and frivolous age of Louis XIV., all this was forgotten; the labours of Rey were neglected; and so complete was the indifference, that even the celebrated experiments of Boyle remained unknown in France for more than forty years after they were published.477
Connected with zoology, and, to a philosophic mind, inseparable from it, is botany: which, occupying a middle place between the animal and mineral world, indicates their relation to each other, and at different points touches the confines of both. It also throws great light on the functions of nutrition,478 and on the laws of development; while, from the marked analogy between animals and vegetables, we have every reason to hope that its further progress, assisted by that of electricity, will prepare the way for a comprehensive theory of life, to which the resources of our knowledge are still unequal, but towards which the movements of modern science are manifestly tending. On these grounds, far more than for the sake of practical advantages, botany will always attract the attention of thinking men; who, neglecting views of immediate utility, look to large and ultimate results, and only value particular facts in so far as they facilitate the discovery of general truths. The first step in this noble study was taken towards the middle of the sixteenth century, when authors, instead of copying what previous writers had said, began to observe nature for themselves.479 The next step was, to add experiment to observation: but it required another hundred years before this could be done with accuracy; because the microscope, which is essential to such inquiries, was only invented about 1620, and the labour of a whole generation was needed to make it available for minute investigations.480 So soon, however, as this resource was sufficiently matured to be applied to plants, the march of botany became rapid, at least as far as details are concerned; for it was not until the eighteenth century that the facts were actually generalized. But, in the preliminary work of accumulating the facts, great energy was shown; and, for reasons stated in an earlier part of the Introduction, this, like other studies relating to the external world, advanced with peculiar speed during the reign of Charles II. The tracheæ of plants were discovered by Henshaw in 1661;481 and their cellular tissue by Hooke in 1667.482 These were considerable approaches towards establishing the analogy between plants and animals; and, within a few years, Grew effected still more of the same kind. He made such minute and extensive dissections, as to raise the anatomy of vegetables to a separate study, and prove that their organization is scarcely less complicated than that possessed by animals.483 His first work was written in 1670;484 and, in 1676, another Englishman,