32 GEOGRAPHIC DEVELOPMENT OF CIVILIZATION 



of this city is more commanding tlian that of any otlier city. Seated on 

 two continents, the connecting); link between tlie Orient and Europe, 

 mistress of the seas, glorious in situation, the desired of many nations, 

 we behold environments which caused its rise and continued existence. 

 We are not surprised that this city has been the seat of a government 

 longer than any other that ever existed, and lias enjoyed a continuity and 

 concentration of imperial rule in an imperial city without parallel in the 

 history of mankind. By Prof Edwin A. Grosvenor, of Amherst College, 

 Amherst, Massachusetts, formerly of Roberts College, Constantinople. 



Eighth lecture— Venice and Genoa. When the rule of Constantinople 

 passed from the Christians to the Mohammedans, on the ruins of the old 

 woi'ld rose these two cities, fitted by their geographic environment to 

 take up the civilization of the old world and to develop that of modern 

 Europe— two cities unlike any other cities of Europe, each supreme 

 ■within its small territory, owing no fealty to any sovereign outside its 

 own district, each deriving power and wealth from the control of the sea. 

 In their conditions of environment on the Mediterranean, with colonies 

 in the Crimea and in Asia Minor, with easy access to the interior of 

 Europe, we find the causes which led to the increase of their population 

 and wealth, to the expansion of their commerce and their territorial 

 possessions. When these are known we understand the part they bore 

 in the awakening of the world from the torpor of the Dark Ages, opening 

 the way to the new world, and to the renaissance of commerce, literature, 

 arts, and science. By Prof. William H. Goodyear, of the Brooklyn Insti- 

 tute of Ai'ts and Sciences. 



Ninth lecture — America. From the Old World we pass to the New, 

 America, where the Puritans of Plymouth and Massachusetts bay, the 

 Knickerbockers of New Amsterdam, the Quakers of Pennsylvania, the 

 Catholics of Baltimore, and the Royalists of Virginia all unconsciously 

 laid the foundation of a unique empire. Their descendants have spread 

 over the whole land and mingled with the best class of emigrants from 

 every country of Europe, and are the progenitors of a new race. All 

 geographic environments have become subservient to the will of the 

 people, from ocean to ocean, from the waters of the Hudson to the waters 

 of the gulf of Mexico, one people and one language, an American race, 

 an empire vaster than that of Rome, home of all the nations of the world, 

 welded into one great and free people. 



The lectures will be neither historical nor scholastic treatises, but 

 general accounts of the several nations and cities in popular language, so 

 arranged as to show how largely their development depended on natural 

 causes, including their geographic environment, until we come to the 

 New World, where the environments become subservient to man and not 

 man to his environments. 



AVith this exception, it suffices to indicate onl}^ the general scope of the 

 lectures, leaving to each lecturer perfect freedom to treat his subject in 

 his own manner, ever bearing in mind the effect of geographic environ- 

 ment on the continuous development of civilization from one nation to 

 another through the centuries. 



, Gardiner G. Hubbard. 



