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"Fragments Of The Lofty Strain
Float Down The Tide Of Years,
As Buoyant On The Stormy Main
A Parted Wreck Appears."
These are the materials and hints for a history of the rise and
progress of the race; how, from the condition of ants, it arrived
at the condition of men, and arts were gradually invented.
Let a
thousand surmises shed some light on this story. We will not be
confined by historical, even geological periods which would allow
us to doubt of a progress in human affairs. If we rise above
this wisdom for the day, we shall expect that this morning of the
race, in which it has been supplied with the simplest necessaries,
with corn, and wine, and honey, and oil, and fire, and articulate
speech, and agricultural and other arts, reared up by degrees
from the condition of ants to men, will be succeeded by a day of
equally progressive splendor; that, in the lapse of the divine
periods, other divine agents and godlike men will assist to
elevate the race as much above its present condition.
But we do not know much about it.
Thus did one voyageur waking dream, while his companion slumbered
on the bank. Suddenly a boatman's horn was heard echoing from
shore to shore, to give notice of his approach to the farmer's
wife with whom he was to take his dinner, though in that place
only muskrats and kingfishers seemed to hear. The current of our
reflections and our slumbers being thus disturbed, we weighed
anchor once more.
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