LONG before the discovery of the New World, it was believed that 

 new lands in the far West might be seen from the shores of the 

 Canaries and the Azores. These illusive images were owing not 

 to any extraordinary refraction of the rays of light, but produced 

 by an eager longing for the distant and the unattained. The 

 philosophy of the Greeks, the physical views of the Middle Ages, 

 and even those of a more recent period have been eminently 

 imbued with the charm springing from similar illusive phantoms 

 of the imagination. At the limits of circumscribed knowledge, 

 as from some lofty island shore, the eye endeavours to penetrate 

 to distant regions. The belief in the uncommon and the wonderful 

 lends a definite outline to every manifestation of ideal creation ; 

 and the realm of fancy a fairyland of cosmological, geological 

 and magnetic visions becomes thus involuntarily blended with 

 the domain of reality. 



HUMBOLDT, Cosmos. 



