THE UNIVERSE. OCEANIC DISCOVERIES. 297 



be " the manifestation of the human mind in a definite 

 epoch of time," the age of Columbus and of the great nau- 

 tical discoveries, whilst augmenting in an unexpected man- 

 ner the objects of knowledge and contemplation, also opened 

 to succeeding centuries a new and higher range of attain- 

 ment. It is the peculiarity of great discoveries at once to 

 extend the field of our conquests, and our prospect into new 

 regions which yet rem'ain to be conquered. Weak spirits in 

 every age believe complacently that mankind have reached 

 the highest point of their intellectual progress; forgetful 

 that through the intimate mutual relation of all natural 

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

 travelled over obtains a wider extension, that it is bounded 

 by an horizon which recedes continually before the march 

 of the explorer. 



Where, in the history of nations, can we point to an 

 epoch similar to that in which events so fruitful in conse- 

 quences, as the discovery and first colonisation of America, 

 the navigation to India by the Cape of Good Hope, and 

 Magellan's first circumnavigation of the globe, coincided 

 with the highest and most flourishing period of art, with 

 the attainment of intellectual and religious liberty, and with 

 the sudden enlargement of the knowledge of the heavens 

 and of the earth ? Such an epoch owes but a very small 

 portion of its grandeur to the distance from which we re- 

 gard it, or to the circumstance that it comes before us only 

 in historical remembrance, unobscured by the disturbing 

 actuality of the present. But here too, as in all terrestrial 

 tilings, the period of greatest brilliancy is closely associated 

 with events which call forth emotions of the deepest sorrow. 

 The progress of cosmical knowledge was purchased by all 



