10 DR. DANIEL WILSON. 
, 
home in those fair lands of the West, whose idyllic bliss poets had sung, from which Chris- 
tian civilization might be made to radiate over this vast continent with its magnificent 
possibilities in the future history of the race of man.” It was while his mind was pre- 
oceupied with this fine ideal “of planting Arts and Learning in America” that he wrote 
the well known lines :— 
“There shall be sung another golden age, 
The rise of empire and of arts ; 
The good and great inspiring epic rage, 
The wisest heads and noblest hearts. 
Not such as Europe breeds in her decay : 
Such as she bred when fresh and young, 
When heavenly flame did animate her clay, 
By future poets shall be sung. 
Westward the course of empire takes its way ; 
The four first acts already past, 
A fifth shall close the drama with the day ; 
Time’s noblest offspring is the last.” 
The visionary philosopher followed up his project so far as to transport himself—not 
to the Summer Islands of which Waller had sung;—but to Rhode Island, where he 
sojourned for three years, in pleasant seclusion and meditative work. He rejoiced in the 
“still air of delightful studies ;” planned many perfect Utopias ; speculated on space and time, 
and objective idealism ; and then bade farewell to America, and to his romantic dream of 
regenerated savages and a renovated world. Yet the refined metaphysical idealist was by 
no means the latest dreamer of such dreams. In our own century, Southey, Coleridge, 
and the little band of Bristol enthusiasts who planned their grand pantisocratic scheme of 
intellectual communism, created for themselves, with like fertile fancy, a Utopia of their 
own “where Susquehana pours his untamed stream”; and many a later dreamer has 
striven after like ideal perfectibility in “peaceful Freedom’s undivided dale.” 
In truth, in all ways we are reminded that this is a new world, still young and san- 
guine ; familiar with the splendor of its own western suns; and seeing in them only the 
promises of a brighter morrow. The thoughtful student of history cannot look on the mar- 
vellous advantages and all the wondrous capacities of this young country without anticipat- 
ing for it a great future. And why should not young Canada indulge the amplest hopes 
of youthful fancy, on which no thought of the impossible intrudes ? 
“ May be wildest dreams 
Are but the needful preludes of the truth. 
This fine young world of ours is but a child 
Yet in the go-cart. Patience! give it time 
To learn its limbs: there is a hand that guides.” 
With all the impulsive eagerness of youth, as the leaders of thought and of action, alike in 
the neighbouring young Republic, and in our still more youthful Dominion, take each new 
step, it is with a consciousness that it is a first step, untrammelled by the traditions and 
the conventionalities inherited from an ancient past; “a happy clime,” as, with Bishop 
Berkely, we would fondly believe, 
