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 Europe by the brethren of that band of martyred
patriots; I saw bodies of these men traversing the sea, founding
colonies, building cities, and wherever they established themselves,
carrying with them their peculiar arts. Towns and temples arose
containing schools, and libraries filled with the rolls of the papyrus.
The same steel, such a tremendous instrument of power in the hands of the
warrior, I saw applied, by the genius of the artist, to strike forms even
more perfect than those of life out of the rude marble; and I saw the
walls of the palaces and temples covered with pictures, in which
historical events were portrayed with the truth of nature and the poetry
of mind. The voice now awakened my attention by saying, "You have now
before you the vision of that state of society which is an object of
admiration to the youth of modern times, and the recollections of which,
and the precepts founded on these recollections, constitute an important
part of your education. Your maxims of war and policy, your taste in
letters and the arts, are derived from models left by that people, or by
their immediate imitators, whom you shall now see." I opened my eyes,
and recognised the very spot in which I was sitting when the vision
commenced. I was on the top of an arcade under a silken canopy, looking