But we must travel more rapidly onward. In the noon of the Roman empire, Spain and Gaul were the West, the _terra occidentalis_. Soon Britain and Ireland take the place and name. It was to the same quarters, too, on the breaking up of this immense Roman mass, that the main element of its strength moved onward, although the mere shadow of empire remained in the slow decaying East. And now for centuries the march seemed impeded by the great ocean barrier, until the same original impulse, gathering strength by long delay, at length achieved the discovery of what, more emphatically than all other lands, has been called _The Western World_. Every one knows how rapid has been the same movement since. Scarcely had the eastern shores been visited, when hardy adventurers brought news of a _western_ coast, and of a _Western Ocean_, still beyond. This remoter sea becomes the mythical terminus in the grants and charters of the first English settlements, as though in anticipation of the future greatness of the empire of which they were to form the constituent parts. Since then how swift has been the same march across the new discovered continent! Rapid as must be our sketch, it is hardly more so than the reality it represents. Even within the memory of persons not yet past the meridian of life, a portion of our own State was called the _West_. The name was given to the land of the Mohawks and the Six Nations; but like Hesperia of old, it was always flying in the van of advancing cultivation. Soon Ohio becomes the _West_, along with Indiana, Illinois, and Kentucky. Then Michigan is the _West_. In a few years Wisconsin assumes the appellation; then Iowa; then Minnesota; while, in another quarter, Missouri and Arkansas successively carry on the steady march toward the setting sun. It is true, there seemed to be a pause in sight of the obstacles presented by the barren plains of Texas and New Mexico, but it was only to burst over them with a more powerful impetus. And California is now the _West_--the land of gold and golden hope. It is now, to the present age, what Canaan was to the Hebrews (we mean, of course, geographically), or as the isles of the sea to the sons of Javan and Tarshish, or as Italy to the Trojan exiles. But is the movement there to find its termination? The next step mingles it with the remains of the old Eastern civilization. China and India must yet feel its revivifying power, and then the rotation will have been complete. Ophir has been already reached, and soon the long journeying of restless humanity will come round again to the plain of Shinar, or the region in which commenced the original dispersion of the race.