{194} Across the Adriatic, Greece took encouragement from the energy of her neighbors to assert the liberty of which Turkish oppression defrauded her. Helped by Europe, she succeeded. [Image: The City of Athens.] Athens, once the seat of learning and philosophy, the home of poets, painters and sculptors, the city that once led the world in civilization and art, became the capital of the modern kingdom of Greece. {195} The influence continued to spread until it effected all the states of western Europe. It turned men's minds everywhere to political thought and discussion. It quickened the hardy mountaineers of Switzerland to reorganize their republican institutions, on the basis of equal rights. The little republic of the mountains founded so long ago, in the days of William Tell, started on a new era of prosperity. France, in 1830, once more attempted to throw off the yoke of her ancient kings. [Image: Scene in Switzerland.] These events may be said to mark the complete political awakening of Europe. Western Europe was now free and {196} self-governing. The long and painful transition from despotism to responsible government was at length accomplished. One hundred and eighty millions of Europeans had risen from a degraded vassalage to the rank and condition of freemen. CHAPTER XX. FORCES OF CIVILIZATION IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. THE GENIUS OF THE AGE--EUROPEAN WARS--AMERICA TRANQUIL--DECLARATION OF WAR--DIVISIONS OF NORTH AMERICA--UNITED STATES--CANADA--MEXICO--AMERICAN COMMON SCHOOLS--THEIR INFLUENCE--PROGRESS OF INVENTION--FIRST STEAMBOAT--FIRST LOCOMOTIVE--ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH--IMPROVEMENTS IN PRINTING--SPIRITUAL DARKNESS--THE KINGDOM OF GOD--WANTS OF THE PRESENT AGE--JOSEPH SMITH--HIS TRAGIC DEATH--CONCLUSION. Human history should be a record of progress--a record of accumulating knowledge and increasing wisdom, of continual advancement from a lower to a higher platform of intelligence and well-being. Each generation should pass on to the next the treasures which it has inherited, beneficially modified by its own experience, and enlarged by the acquisitions which itself has gained. Sometimes the stream of human development seems to pause and the years seem to roll on without change. Yet this is only apparent. All the while there is a silent accumulation of forces, which at length burst forth in the violent overthrow of evils, which had been endured for generations. The nineteenth century, has witnessed progress beyond all precedent, for it has beheld the overthrow of the barriers that prevented progress. It has vindicated for all succeeding ages, {197} the right of man to his own unimpeded development. The genius of the age has tended to the abolition of serfdom and slavery, and the up-lifting of the poor, the down-trodden and oppressed. More than at all previous times it has seen the removal of artificial obstacles placed in the path of human progress by the selfishness and ignorance of the strong.