106 
E T T A I A H. 
Modern authors, both the travelled and the merely 
speculative, who have written to illustrate the Oriental 
world, have shown us that, marked as is the dissimili- 
tude between the nations of Europe and of Asia in 
their habits of life, their customs, their religions, 
forms, complexion, and costume, they are still more 
strikingly contrasted in their mental peculiarities and 
distinct habits of thought. It is indeed wonderful to 
note the unequal estimation with which the minds of 
millions collectively, in one and the other quarters of 
the globe, will mutually regard the same object : and 
perhaps under no circumstances is this more obviously 
displayed than in the importance which each respec- 
tively attaches to events of the past and of the future. 
To the European in youth, or in the prime of life, 
there is no pleasure in retrospection, however sweet, 
that can equal those bright and glorious heart-stirring 
visions of the future which are the offspring of a san- 
