Out of this pernicious prejudice have proceeded that persecution and neglect which are the too frequent lot of the world's pioneers. Among the ancient Greeks, the wisdom which first assigned the natural cause of thunder and storm was condemned by conservative savages as impiety to the gods. In the eighth century, an ignorant conservative Pope persecuted a priest who declared that the world was round. At a later day, to the everlasting scandal of mankind, the book of Copernicus, unfolding the true system of the universe, was branded by a conservative Papal bull as heretical and false, and Galileo, after announcing the annual and diurnal motions of the earth, was sentenced to the dungeons of the conservative Inquisition. This was in Italy; but in England--and here we come nearer home--Harvey was accustomed to say, that, after the publication of his book on the circulation of the blood,--one of the epochs of modern discovery,--"he fell mightily in his practice, and it was believed by the vulgar that he was crack-brained, and all the physicians were against his opinion."[267] According to him, nobody older than forty, at the time of his discovery, received it as true. The age of forty was the dividing line of life,--a Mason and Dixon's line,--determining the capacity to receive that discovery. This little story may admonish all who have passed that conservative line to be careful how they are inhospitable to any new truth. [267] Aubrey's Letters and Lives, Vol. II. p. 383. This same undue tenacity to existing things and repugnance to what is new threw impediments in the way of successive improvements by which travel and intercourse among men are promoted. Surely stage-coaches, when first introduced into England, must have been welcome, though novel, as contributing to the comfort of men. But this was not the case universally. An early writer calls for their suppression, breaking forth against them in this wise. "These coaches," he says, "are one of the greatest mischiefs that hath happened of late years to the kingdom,--mischievous to the public, destructive to trade, and prejudicial to lands. First, by destroying the breed of good horses, the strength of the nation, and making men careless of attaining to good horsemanship, a thing so useful and commendable in a gentleman: for, hereby they become weary and listless, when they ride a few miles, and unwilling to get on horseback, not able to endure frost, snow, or rain, or to lodge in the fields; and what reason, save only their using themselves so tenderly, and their riding in these stage-coaches, can be given for this their inability? Secondly, by hindering the breed of watermen, who are the nursery for seamen, and they the bulwark of the kingdom: for, if these coaches were down, watermen, as formerly, would have work, and be encouraged to take apprentices, whereby their number would every year greatly increase. Thirdly, by lessening of his