We have found these people after all not so very different from ourselves—more loyal than we, but more ignorant; more religious, but more superstitious; more daring, but more reckless; more enthusiastic, but more chimerical. They were endowed with the virtues and vices of their age, as we are with the virtues and vices of ours. They were sincere in their opinions, and honest in their efforts; but we have the advantage of them by four centuries of recorded experiences. Our knowledge, our advantages, are superior to theirs; do we make superior use of them? Spain lighted a hemisphere of dark waters, brought forth hidden islands and continents, and presented half a world to the other half. With all our boasted improvement, have we done more? It is the custom of historical commentators to praise and to blame _ad libitum_. This is right if it be done judiciously. We should praise discreetly, and blame with steadiness. But there is really little to praise or to blame in history, and most of it that is done is simply praising or blaming the providence of progress. Would you blame the Spanish people for being ignorant, submissive, and cruel? They were as God and circumstances made them. Would you blame their king and princes for domineering them? They were as the people and circumstances made them. The people were indignant if their rulers did not impose upon them. Says Grenville, writing in his memoirs so late as 1818: "The Regent drives in the park every day in a tilbury, with his groom sitting by his side; grave men are shocked at this undignified practice." Meanwhile, amidst the many so-called spirits which in this epoch hovered over man, the spirit of discovery was not the least potent. Curiosity, the mother of science, became the mother of new worlds; gave birth to continents, islands, and seas; gave form and boundary to earth. Over the sea, the mists of the Dark Age had rested with greater density even than on land. The aurora of progress now illumined the western horizon as of old it did the eastern. Hitherto the great ocean, beyond a few leagues from shore, was a mystery. As may be seen depicted on ancient charts, it was filled, in the imaginations of navigators, with formidable water-beasts and monsters, scarcely less terrible than those that Æneas saw as he entered the mouth of Hades: "Multaque præterea variarum monstra ferarum: Centauri in foribus stabulant, Scyllæque biformes, et centumgeminus Briareus, ac belua Lernæ horrendum stridens, flammisque armata Chimæra, Gorgones Harpyiæque et forma tricorporis umbræ." Ancient geographers affirmed that the heat of the torrid zone was intolerable, that men and ships entering it would shrivel. This belt of consuming heat presented an impenetrable barrier between the known and the unknown.