PERIOD OF INTELLECT. 467 



not sent upon the earth to prepare himself for existence 

 in another world ; he was sent upon earth that he 

 might beautify it as a dwelling, and subdue it to his 

 use ; that he might exalt his intellectual and moral 

 powers until he had attained perfection, and had raised 

 himself to that ideal which he now expresses by the 

 name of God, but which, however sublime it may ap- 

 pear to our weak and imperfect minds, is far below 

 the splendour and majesty of that Power by whom the 

 universe was made. 



We shall now leave the darkness of the primeval 

 times, and enter the theatre of history. The Old 

 World is a huge body, with its head buried in eternal 

 snows ; with the Atlantic on its left, the Pacific on 

 its right, the Indian Ocean between its legs. The left 

 limb is sound and whole ; its foot is the Cape of Good 

 Hope. The right limb has been broken and scattered 

 by the sea ; Australia and the Archipelago are de- 

 tached ; Asia has been amputated at the thigh. The 

 lower extremities of this Old World are covered for the 

 most part with thorny thickets aud with fiery plains. 

 The original natives were miserable creatures, living 

 chiefly on insects and shells, berries and roots ; cast- 

 ing the boomerang and the bone-pointed dart ; abject, 

 naked, brutish; and forlorn. We pass up the body in 

 its ancient state ; through the marsh of central 

 Africa, with its woolly-haired blacks upon the left, 

 and through the jungles of India, with its straight- 

 haired blacks upon the right ; through the sandy 

 wastes of the Sahara, and the broad Asiatic table- 

 lands ; through the forest of Central Europe, the 

 Russian steppes, and the Siberian plains, until we 

 arrive at the frozen shores of the open Polar Sea. 

 The land is covered with fields of snow, on which 



