Epidemics. 275 



method of explaining this remarkable anthropological pheno- 

 menon has as yet been given, after the ordinary method of 

 explaining such incidents in other nations and races. 



On the threshold of its decay, and taking a wider area 

 from the centre, Acre, fallen and benighted Europe, great in 

 the pride of her petty strifes and interminable quarrels, 

 begins to shake off the dust of her slumber; and, as a 

 mighty giant, scarcely knew that she had lain down to be 

 shorn of her strength by treacherous Delilah, till her 

 opening eyes and the thongs of her feudal slavery warned 

 her that she was naked, and wretched, and poor. But, with a 

 slow and onward march, the intellect of Europe widens, 

 deepens, and expands, till in about 1580 to 1680 the bright- 

 ness of her glory and the strength of her majesty muster 

 around her memory intellects as great as the world ever 

 saw; and like Rome's first anthropological era, in 1817, when 

 her first era ended, she set in a halo of greater and more 

 commanding freedom and independent government, with 

 peoples more enlightened and laws more equal, and, since 

 1600, with further extension to the East, and the West, and 

 the South, of the principles of liberty and progress than 

 the world had ever seen at any period of its existence. 



This anthropological era, with its rich accumulations of 

 intellectual and material wealth, it has bequeathed to the 

 era in which we live; and, taking Acre as a centre, it 

 is easy to perceive that in the increase of area from that 

 centre there will be a greater, wider, and more minute and 

 exacting form of social intercourse, which will spread and 

 influence the entire globe more than man has yet seen, and 

 will unite all nations and families in one great social 

 compact. 



It being laid down as a principle of civilization, from a 

 geographical basis, that it spreads in successive increasing 

 curves of area from its centre, which is Acre ; that it 



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