The present age is, in many respects, better prepared to undertake the examination of the question. The time which has passed away since Columbus dropped anchor at the island of Guanahani, has rendered distant nations on the globe far better acquainted with each other. This has, indeed, been the most remarkable period for its influence on all the true elements of civilization, which the world has ever known. The advance of general knowledge, the comity of national intercourse, and the policy and friendship of nations, has certainly never before reached its present state. China is no longer a sealed nation. British arms have carried the influence of arts and letters, through Hindostan, Abyssinia, Persia, and the valley of the Euphrates, have been visited and explored. The deserts of the Holy Land have been trod by learned men of Europe and America. The mouth of the Niger and the sources of the Nile, are revealed. Even Arabia, the land where Abraham and his descendants once trod, has sent an embassy of peace, to a government 18,000 miles distant, which has not had a national existence over seventy years. Not only the rulers of Arabia and America have been thus brought into the bonds of intercourse; but the age has exchanged the arts, the science and the philosophy of the utmost parts of the earth. Scientific discovery has reached its highest acme. The sites of many ancient and long unknown, though not forgotten cities, are recovered. Monuments and ruins have been disinterred in the ancient seats of human power, in the oriental world, and inscriptions deciphered, which give vitality to ancient history. Ethnology has arisen to hold up the light of her resplendent lamp, amid these ruins, to guide the footsteps of letters, science and piety.