A careful study of the land surface of the globe suggests interesting comparisons with what we know of the heavenly bodies, Jupiter, for example, and our moon. Unquestionably, the entirely different grouping of what seem to be the great features of that luminary must have had an influence on the whole course of history there. We will not enter into speculations regarding this, however, referring the reader rather to the thorough investigations of Beer and Mädler. Situation of the Continents in their Relation to Each Other and to their Collective Whole. The relation which the continents bear to each other arises, primarily, from their position in reference to the cardinal points of the compass. This has been a principle from the earliest times, and the great laws of population may, in their working, be referred to this simple law of grouping. Asia was known as the Orient, or, in the apt and beautiful German phrase, the Morgenland, or Land of the morning; Europe and the northern rim of Africa, as the Occident, or, in the German, the Abendland, or Land of the evening. In the south lay the torrid regions of the Ethiopians, in the chill north the country of the Hyperboreans. This fourfold division of the earth was for many centuries the only one known; the division into continents being made, according to Herodotus, by the Phenicians. And in very truth, a great principle lay in that rude and primitive division; it was in entire harmony with nature, and, up to the latest times and the opening of a new world, in entire harmony with history also. With Asia, the Orient, is connected indissolubly the development of the ancient world; with Europe, that of the modern. The contrast between these two great divisions is wonderfully analogous to that of morning and evening. The whole culture of the West had its root, its beginnings at the East. The East is not merely the place where the sun begins his daily course; it is the cradle of man, of nations, of dynasties of every sort, in politics, religion, and science. All the old royal houses came into Europe from the East; they are all “children of the sun,” no less than the princely families of India and Persia. The West merely witnesses the progress of what was begun in the East. From the most ancient times onward through the Middle Ages,—from Homer to Dante’s “Purgatorio,”—the West is associated with the kingdom of the dead, with “Hades,” and the “islands of the blest.” And within these two great divisions of Orient and Occident are comprised smaller ones, adapted to more limited conceptions of the extent of the earth, but growing out of the same root with the larger division. Bactriana and India constituted the Orient to the inhabitants of Western Asia, Syria their Occident; Asia Minor was the Orient of the Greeks, Italy and Sicily their Hesperia; while the Romans called Spain theirs.