"It moves notwithstanding," said Galileo after he had been: forced
to recant the doctrine that the world tarns round. So our social machine continues to move, although the statesmen to whom has been delegated the task of regulating and guiding its move- ment are scattered to all points of the compass, in search of repose or pleasure. Though the President of the Council is embowered in the shades of Bowood, the question of National Education is kept alive. The partisans of "voluntary," that is of desultory, makeshift educa- tion, have had their field-day this week, as those of the Manches- ter scheme No. II. had theirs a week or two back : and while the amateur promoters of education are thus ostensibly busy, the sub- ordinate agents of the Educational Committee of the Privy Coun- cil hold on the noiseless tenour of their way, doing as much good as their limited sphere and means permit.
The President of the Board of Trade is supposed to be wander- ing amid Andalusian bowers, or threading the defiles of the Sierra Morena in the footsteps of Don Quixote ; and the Board has in- termitted its rigid surveillance of railways and electric telegraphs ; yet the trading agents of improved and accelerated communi- cation advance. Another attempt is in progress to complete the line of electric telegraph between Paris and London by a subma- rine wire. That English perseverance will in this, as in so many other enterprises, be ultimately crowned with success, there should be no doubt ; but perhaps the day of final achievement might have been accelerated had the ingenious invention for securing the wires from abrasion, now exhibited at the Crystal Palace, and explained in last week's Spectator, been turned to account.
A seemingly successful experiment in steam-ploughing, follow- ing close upon the recent trials of the American reaping-machine, opens an interesting field of speculation. While a new sect of eco- nomists, preaching up more minute subdivision of the soil and reverting from the plough to the spade, are exerting themselves to bring their theories into practice, the economists of the old school are seeking to improve upon the simple machinery of the plough, and dispense to a still greater extent than at present with the arms of men in the toils of agriculture. A change of one kind or other seems to be impending over the rural population : either their condition is to be still more closely assimilated to that of the ma- nufacturing districts, whn-e mammoth capitals wield the sinews of thousands of proletaires as mere accessories to machinery, or the times are to be brought back which Goldsmith remembered,. when, in England, "every rood of ground maintained its ma'!
