SteSens said, '^ The religious opinions of men rest
on their views of nature." Great strides have been
made within the present century. Geology, as-
tronomy, chemistry, optics, have yielded grand
results. The correlation of forces and the polariza-
tion of light have carried us to sublime generaliza-
tions, — have affected an imaginative race like
poetic inspirations. We have been taught to tread
familiarly on giddy heights of thought, and to wont
ourselves to daring conjectures. The narrow sec-
tarian cannot read astronomy with impimity. The
creeds of his church shrivel like dried leaves at the
door of the observatory, and a new and healthful
air regenerates the human mind, and imparts a
sympathetic enlargement to its inventions and
method. That cosmical west-wind which, meteo-
rologists tell us, constitutes, by the revolution of the
globe, the upper current, is alone broad enough to
carry to every city and suburb, to the farmer's
house, the miner's shanty, and the fisher's boat, the
inspirations of this new hope of mankind. Now, if
any one say we have had enough of these boastful



202 PROGRESS OF CULTURE.
recitals, then I say, Happy is the land wherein ben-
efits like these have grown trite and common-
place.
We confess that in America everything looks
new and recent. Our towns are still rude, the
make-shifts of emigrants, and the whole archi-
tecture tent-like when compared with the monu-
mental solidity of medieval and primeval remains
in Europe and Asia. But geology has effaced these
distinctions. Geology, a science of forty or fifty
summers, has had the effect to throw an air of
noveliy and mushroom speed over entire history.
