OCEANIC DISCOVERIES. 678 



pilots, when they have lost sight of land for several days 

 know not where they are. They would not be able to find 

 the countries again which I have discovered. To navigate 

 a ship requires the compass (compas y arte), and the know- 

 ledge or art of the astronomer." 



I have given these characteristic details in order more 

 clearly to show the manner in which nautical astronomy the 

 powerful instrument for rendering navigation more secure, 

 and thereby of facilitating access to all portions of the earth 

 was first developed in the period of time under consider- 

 ation, and how, in the general intellectual activity of the 

 age, men perceived the possibility of establishing methods 

 which could not be made practically applicable until im- 

 provements were effected in solar and lunar tables, and in the 

 construction of time-pieces and instruments for measuring 

 angles. If the character of an age be " the manifestation of 

 the human mind in any definite epoch," the age of Columbus 

 and of the great nautical discoveries must be regarded as 

 having given a new and higher impetus to the acquirements 

 of succeeding centuries, whilst it increased in an unexpected 

 manner the objects of science and contemplation. It is the 

 peculiar attribute of important discoveries at once to extend 

 the domain of our possessions, and the prospect into the new 

 territories which yet remain open to conquest. Weak minds 

 complacently believe that in their own age humanity has 

 reached the culminating point of intellectual progress ; for- 

 getting that by the internal connection existing among all 

 natural phenomena, in proportion as we advance, the field to 

 be traversed acquires additional extension, and that it is 

 bounded by an horizon which incessantly recedes before the 

 eyes of the enquirer. 



Where, in the history of nations, can we find an epoch 

 similar to that in which events so fraught with important 

 results as the discovery and first colonisation of America, the 

 passage to the East Indies round the Cape of Good Hope, and 

 Magellan's first circumnavigation, occurred simultaneously 

 with the highest perfection of art, with the attainment of 

 intellectual and religious freedom, and with the sudden 

 enlargement of the knowledge of the earth and the heavens ? 

 Such an age owes a very inconsiderable portion of its greatness 

 to the distance at which we contemplate it, or to the circura- 



