But whatever we may think, either of the poetry or the philosophy, there can be no denying the historical fact. _Westward_, _ever westward_, has been the course of emigration, of civilization, of learning, and of religion. It was so in the days of the Patriarchs, and the process is still going on in the middle of the nineteenth century. The first express mention of such a tendency we find in one of the earliest notices of Holy Writ. "_And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, they came to the land of Shinar, and they settled there_"--Gen. xi. 2. The language would imply that the process had been going on for some time before. The east there mentioned was the country beyond the great river Euphrates, whence, as those learned in the sacred language would inform us, came the name _Hebrews_, the _Trans-Euphratean_ colonists, or those who had come over the great bounding stream that separated the "old countries," or the "cradle of the race," from the then new and unexplored western world. The next migration of which we have a particular account is that of Abraham who journeyed from Ur of the Chaldees to the promised land. Previous to this, however, the most extensive movements had taken place. Egypt was already settled by the stream, which, taking a southwest deflection, was destined to fill the vast continent of Africa. It was after the dispersion at Babel that the main current of humanity moved rapidly and steadily onward in the direction of the original impulse. There was indeed a tendency toward the east, but it never had the same impetus from the start; and its movement resembled more the flow of a sluggish backwater, than the natural progress. It sooner came to a stand, such as we find it represented in the civilization of India, Thibet, and China, dead and stagnant as it has been for centuries. But the western flood was ever onward, onward--a stream of living water, carrying with it the best life of humanity, and the ultimate destinies of the race. A bare glance at the map of the world will show what were the original courses of emigration. Asia must have poured into Europe through three principal channels--through Asia Minor and the isles of Greece, across the Hellespont by the way of Thrace and the lower part of Central Europe, or between the Black and Caspian seas, through the regions afterward occupied by Gog and Magog, and Meshek, or the Scythian, the Gothic, and the Muscovite hordes. But light and civilization ever went mainly by the way of the sea. The intercourse from coast to coast, and from isle to isle, was more favorable to cultivation of manners, and elevation of thought, than the laborious passages through the dark forests of the north, or the torrid deserts of the south; and hence the early superiority of the sons of Javan, and Kittim, and Tarshish, or in short, of all whose advance was ever along that great high way of civilization, the Mediterranean Sea. "By these," to use the language of Scripture,