The Nineteenth Century dawned upon a nation already glorious with the sublime promise of a prophetic infancy. The strong serpents of Tyranny and Superstition had been crushed in its powerful grasp. The songs of two oceans--the lullaby of its earlier days--had cheered it on to a youth whose dignity and beauty were bought with sword and rifle, with blood and death. Wrapped at last in the _toga_ of an undisputed manhood, it took its place among the empires of the earth, the son of a king, mightier than all; free to enact new laws, to promulgate new systems of economy, social and political, free to worship and to think. With what success a government grounded on a principle so faultless has been administered, may not now be written, but is not more doubtful than it was when the drum beat its _reveille_ only on our distant frontiers, and the booming of guns from ship or shore was but the nation's welcome to days made memorable by its great men. But before the new republic stretched a vast field for thought, and within its almost boundless limits, hidden beneath the husks of old theories, lay the seed ready for the ripening. Far back toward the east rolled, like a mighty desert, the history of the Progress of Mind. Here and there, on its arid surface, rose, stately and awe-inspiring, great pyramids which marked those eras of agitation when Humanity, awaking suddenly to her power, grappled with giant strength the mighty enigmas of Being, and endeavored to wrench from their mute souls the great secrets that Faith alone has expounded to the satisfaction of her devotees. It availed little that one by one, in the vaults of these temples, the axioms and deductions of their founders were laid away lifeless and powerless. Another generation, vigorous and persevering, laid stone after stone the foundations of another edifice that strove to reach, with its yearning apex of desire, the very heavens. Still high and unmoved curved the blue infinitude above, while below its mirror in the soul of man surged wildly against shores stern, rock-bound, immutable, unanswering.