Consolations in Travel | Page 8

reaping and collecting corn, others who were
making it into bread; I saw cottages furnished with many of the
conveniences of life, and a people in that state of agricultural and
pastoral improvement which has been imagined by the poets as
belonging to the golden age. The same voice, which I shall call that of
the Genius, said, "Look at these groups of men who are escaped from
the state of infancy: they owe their improvement to a few superior
minds still amongst them. That aged man whom you see with a crowd
around him taught them to build cottages; from that other they learnt to

domesticate cattle; from others to collect and sow corn and seeds of
fruit. And these arts will never be lost; another generation will see them
more perfect; the houses, in a century more, will be larger and more
convenient; the flocks of cattle more numerous; the corn-fields more
extensive; the morasses will be drained, the number of fruit-trees
increased. You shall be shown other visions of the passages of time, but
as you are carried along the stream which flows from the period of
creation to the present moment, I shall only arrest your transit to make
you observe some circumstances which will demonstrate the truths I
wish you to know, and which will explain to you the little it is
permitted me to understand of the scheme of the universe." I again
found myself in darkness and in motion, and I was again arrested by the
opening of a new scene upon my eyes. I shall describe this scene and
the others in the succession in which they appeared before me, and the
observations by which they were accompanied in the voice of the
wonderful being who appeared as my intellectual guide. In the scene
which followed that of the agricultural or pastoral people, I saw a great
extent of cultivated plains, large cities on the sea-shore,
palaces--forums and temples ornamenting them; men associated in
groups, mounted on horses, and performing military exercises; galleys
moved by oars on the ocean; roads intersecting the country covered
with travellers and containing carriages moved by men or horses. The
Genius now said, "You see the early state of civilisation of man; the
cottages of the last race you beheld have become improved into stately
dwellings, palaces, and temples, in which use is combined with
ornament. The few men to whom, as I said before, the foundations of
these improvements were owing, have had divine honours paid to their
memory. But look at the instruments belonging to this generation, and
you will find that they are only of brass. You see men who are talking
to crowds around them, and others who are apparently amusing
listening groups by a kind of song or recitation; these are the earliest
bards and orators; but all their signs of thought are oral, for written
language does not yet exist." The next scene which appeared was one
of varied business and imagery. I saw a man, who bore in his hands the
same instruments as our modern smiths, presenting a vase, which
appeared to be made of iron, amidst the acclamations of an assembled
multitude engaged in triumphal procession before the altars dignified

by the name of Apollo at Delphi; and I saw in the same place men who
carried rolls of papyrus in their hands and wrote upon them with reeds
containing ink made from the soot of wood mixed with a solution of
glue. "See," the Genius said, "an immense change produced in the
condition of society by the two arts of which you here see the origin;
the one, that of rendering iron malleable, which is owing to a single
individual, an obscure Greek; the other, that of making thought
permanent in written characters, an art which has gradually arisen from
the hieroglyphics which you may observe on yonder pyramids. You
will now see human life more replete with power and activity." Again,
another scene broke upon my vision. I saw the bronze instruments,
which had belonged to the former state of society, thrown away;
malleable iron converted into hard steel, this steel applied to a thousand
purposes of civilised life; I saw bands of men who made use of it for
defensive armour and for offensive weapons; I saw these iron- clad
men, in small numbers subduing thousands of savages, and establishing
amongst them their arts and institutions; I saw a few men on the eastern
shores of Europe, resisting, with the same materials, the united forces
of Asia; I saw a chosen band die in defence of their country, destroyed
by an army a thousand times as numerous; and I saw this same army, in
its turn, caused to disappear, and destroyed or driven from the shores of