It was the conquests of Rome that first scattered the seeds of civilisation in Western Europe. There it has grown up into a stately and nearly perfect fabric on the shores of the Atlantic, gradually losing its perfection as it proceeds eastwards, until it reaches the semi-barbarism of Russia, and the still deeper barbarism of Upper Asia. Our limits hardly allow of our inquiring what influence this civilisation is calculated to exert in future upon the ethnological condition of the Continent, although it is a question of great importance, as foreshadowing the chief changes which may be expected to result from the state of chronic strife upon which Europe has now entered. We can only remark that the grand action of progress and civilisation is to develop _the mind_, and so convert the units of society from a mass of automatons into thinking and self-directing agents,—conscious of, and able to attain, alike their own rights and those of their nation. Hence follows the growth of liberty within; and, without, the gradual establishment of union between scattered sections of the same race. Supposing, then, that the progress of civilisation in Europe be unobstructed, we may calculate that wherever we now see internal despotism, there will be liberty,—wherever we see foreign domination, there will be national freedom,—and that, after a little more training in the stern school of suffering, the Continental nations, grown wiser, will make an end of the present arbitrary and unnatural territorial system of Europe, and arrange themselves in the more natural, grander, and permanent communities of race.