At one period of history the whole known world seemed to be one vast field of carnage and commotion. The Huns, Vandals, and other Northern barbarians were ravaging France, Germany, and Spain; the Goths were plundering and murdering in Italy, and the Saxons and Angles were overrunning Great Britain. The Roman armies under Justinian, together with the Vandals and Huns, were desolating Africa; the barbarians of Scythia were pouring down upon the Roman empire; the Persian armies were pillaging and laying waste the countries of Asia; the Arabians, under Mohammed, were beginning to extend their conquests over Syria, Palestine, Egypt, Barbary, and Spain. Every nation and kingdom on earth was shaking to its centre. The smoke and the spirits of the bottomless pit seemed coming up to darken, and torment, and affright mankind. The most fertile countries were converted to deserts, and covered with ruins of once flourishing cities and villages; the most fiendish cruelty was practiced; famine raged to such a degree that the living fed upon the dead; prisoners were tortured by the most refined systems of cruelty; public edifices were destroyed; the monuments of science and the arts perished; cruelty, fraud, avarice, murder, and every crime that disgraces humanity, were let loose upon a wretched world. Historians seem to shudder in attempting to picture these horrid scenes, and would draw a veil over transactions that disgrace mankind. If from ancient times we look at the present state of the world, at its present most refined and enlightened period, the same mournful evidence is discovered. Cruelty and tyranny have changed some of the fairest provinces of Persia to deserts. The Turk long ago turned the land of the patriarchs and prophets to a wilderness, and drenched the shores of Greece with the blood of slaughtered victims, while Syria, Kurdistan, and Armenia for ages have been ravaged with injustice and rapine. China and Japan have been shut out from the world by a cold and jealous selfishness. In Tartary, Arabia, and Siberia, the barbarous tribes are prowling about for plunder, or engaged in murderous conflicts. In Africa, the Barbary States are in perpetual commotion; the petty tyrants of Benin, Ashantee, and other interior states are waging ceaseless wars, murdering their prisoners, and adorning their houses with their skulls; and on its ravaged coast the white man-stealer, for hundreds of years, has been prowling, and bearing off thousands of wretches as a yearly offering to the avarice of the most refined and Christian nations on earth. In North America, we have seen the native tribes employed in war, and practicing the most fiendish barbarities, while in South America, its more civilized inhabitants are engaged in constant political and bloody commotions. In the islands of the ocean thousands of human beings have been fighting each other, throwing darts and stones at strangers, offering human sacrifices, and feasting on the flesh of their enemies.