THE UNIVERSE. OCEANIC DISCOVERIES. 299 



the Torso, the Belvedere Apollo, and the Medicean Terms 

 had been disclosed. Michael Angelo, Leonardo da Yinci, 

 Titian, and Eaphael flourished in Italy, and Holbein and 

 Albert Durer in our German country. In the year in which 

 Columbus died, fourteen years after the discovery of the 

 new continent, the order of the universe was discovered, 

 though not publicly announced, by Copernicus. 



The consideration of the importance of the discovery of 

 America, and of the first European settlements therein, 

 touches on other fields of thought besides those to which these 

 pages are especially devoted ; it would include all those intel- 

 lectual and moral influences, which the sudden enlargement 

 of the entire mass of ideas exercised on the improvement of 

 the social state. We recal only by a passing allusion, how, 

 since that great era, a new activity of thought and feeling, 

 courageous wishes, and hopes hard to relinquish, have gra- 

 dually pervaded all classes of civil society ; how the scanti- 

 ness of the population of one hemisphere of the globe, 

 especially on the coasts opposite to Europe, favoured the 

 settlement of colonies, which by their extent and position have 

 been transformed into independent states, unrestricted in 

 the choice of free forms of government, and how, lastly, the 

 religious Eeformation, the precursor of great political revo- 

 lutions, passed through the different phases of its develop- 

 ment in a region which became the refuge of all religious 

 opinions, and of the most different views in Divine things. 

 The boldness of the Genoese navigator is the first link in 

 the immeasurable chain of these fate-fraught events ; and it 

 was accident, and not fraud or strife, ( 45 ?) which deprived 

 the continent of America of his name. The new world, 

 VOL. n. x 



