see those fortunate days. Will not my ashes long ere then be mouldering
in the tomb?

Here, sunk in sorrow, my oppressed heart no longer found utterance. The
Genius answered not, but I heard him whisper to himself:

Let us revive the hope of this man; for if he who loves his fellow
creatures be suffered to despair, what will become of nations? The past
is perhaps too discouraging; I must anticipate futurity, and disclose to
the eye of virtue the astonishing age that is ready to begin; that, on
viewing the object she desires, she may be animated with new ardor, and
redouble her efforts to attain it.



CHAPTER XV.

THE NEW AGE.


Scarcely had he finished these words, when a great tumult arose in the
west; and turning to that quarter, I perceived, at the extremity of
the Mediterranean, in one of the nations of Europe, a prodigious
movement--such as when a violent sedition arises in a vast city--a
numberless people, rushing in all directions, pour through the streets
and fluctuate like waves in the public places. My ear, struck with the
cries which resounded to the heavens, distinguished these words:

What is this new prodigy? What cruel and mysterious scourge is this? We
are a numerous people and we want hands! We have an excellent soil, and