In its own books also, our age celebrates its wants,
achievements, and hopes. A wide superficial cultivation, often a
mere clearing and whitewashing, indicate the new taste in the
hitherto neglected savage, whether of the cities or the fields, to
know the arts and share the spiritual efforts of the refined. The
time is marked by the multitude of writers. Soldiers, sailors,
servants, nobles, princes, women, write books. The progress of trade
and the facilities for locomotion have made the world nomadic again.
Of course it is well informed. All facts are exposed. The age is
not to be trifled with: it wishes to know who is who, and what is
what. Let there be no ghost stories more. Send Humboldt and
Bonpland to explore Mexico, Guiana, and the Cordilleras. Let Captain
Parry learn if there be a northwest passage to America, and Mr.
Lander learn the true course of the Niger. Puckler Muskau will go to
Algiers, and Sir Francis Head to the Pampas, to the Brunnens of
Nassau, and to Canada. Then let us have charts true and Gazeteers
correct. We will know where Babylon stood, and settle the topography
of the Roman Forum.
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