Europe Jit IcO for Improvement of Man. 365 



broken up into peninsulas and islands ; Greece and its archipelago, 

 Italy a«id its isles, Spain and its ?ierras, are so many new individuals, 

 exciting each other i-eciprocally to animation. The ground is every- 

 where cut and crossed by chains of mountains, moulded in a thousand 

 fashions, in such a way as to present, within the smallest possible 

 space, the greatest number of districts physically independent. 



Add to all these advantages that of a temperate climate, rather 

 cold than hot, requiring of men more labour and etlbrt, and you 

 will be satisfied that nature is nowhere better suited to exalt man, 

 by the exertion of his powers, to the grandeur of his destination. 



Nevertheless, the earliest civilized societies do not spring up in 

 Europe ; she is too far removed from the cradle of the nations, and 

 the beginnings are less easy there. But these first difficulties once 

 overcome, civilization grows and prospers with a vigour unknown 

 to Asia. In Asia it is in the great plains, on the banks of the 

 rivers, that civilization first shews itself. In Europe, it is on the 

 peninsulas and the margin of the seas. 



Europe is thus the continent most favoured, considered with re- 

 spect to the education of man, and the wise discipline it exercises 

 upon him. More than any other it calls into full play his latent 

 forces, which cannot appear and display themselves except by their 

 own activity. Nowhere can man better learn to subdue nature, 

 and make her minister to his ends. No continent is more fitted, 

 by the multiplicity of the physical regions it presents, to bring into 

 being, and to raise up, so many different nations and peoples. 



But it is not alone for the individual education of each people 

 that Europe excels; it is still more admirably adapted than any 

 other continent to favour the mutual relations of the countries with 

 each other; to increase their reciprocal influence, to stimulate them 

 to mutual intercourse. The smallness of the areas, the near neigh- 

 bourhood, the midland seas thick strown with islands, the perme- 

 ability of the entire continent — pardon me the word — everything con- 

 spires to establish between the European nations that community 

 of life and of civilization which forms one of the most essential and 

 precious characteristics of their social state. 



America, finally, the third continent of the North, presents itself 

 to us under an aspect entirely different. We are already acquainted 

 with its structure, founded on a plan widely departing from that of 

 Asia-Europe ; we know that its characteristic is simplicity, unity. 

 Add to this feature, its vast extents, its fruitful plains, its number- 

 less rivers, the prodigious facility of comnmnication, nowhere im- 

 peded by serious obstacles, its oceanic position, finally, and wo shall 

 Bee that it is made, not to give birth and growth to a new civiliza- 

 tion, but to receive one ready made, and to furnish forth for man, 

 whose education the Old World has completed, the most magnificent 

 theatre, the scene most worthy of his activity. It is here that all 

 the peoples of Europe may meet together with room enough to move 



VOIi. XLVII. NO. XCIV. — (JCTOBEK 1849. 2 B 



