INTRODUCTION.

BY THE EDITOR OF THE “TEXTILE MERCURY."

The student of industrial, political, and social matters, comingto the investigation of the developments of the 19th century, willfind in these subjects ample materia! to engage the services ofschoolsful of colleagues. In no preceding period was the fer-ment of material science, mechanical invention, industrial change,political revolution, and social progress so active as during thecentury now nearing its close. No time in the past can comparewith it, and, so far as we can see, though the future centuriesmay have much in store, they are not likely to eclipse it in anysimilar period of time. It seems to us that it will be much moreaccordant with the natural sequence of events, if the past affordsgrounds for any safe inferences regarding the future, that a longperiod of comparative repose should follow’ one of such unpre-cedented activity. Such periods succeeded the collapse of theRoman Empire, the Crusades, and the Reformation, and inter-vened between the English Revolution of 1688 and the Frenchuprising of a century later. In these intervals there was littleof intellectual activity, and less of social and industrial progress,whilst science in its best sense had hardly been born. These factsform a basis for the above reasonable and natural conclusion. Shouldit be realised, the students will be able to work at their investigationsof 19th century life und progress undisturbed by the noise of