History has made parallel discoveries in the depths of time; the sacred languages have allowed us to read their lost vocabulary; on the very granite-blocks of Mezraim, Champollion[452] has deciphered those hieroglyphics which seemed to be a seal set upon the lips of the desert that answered for their eternal discretion[453]. If new revolutions have struck off the map Poland, Holland[454], Genoa and Venice, other republics occupy a part of the shores of the Pacific and Atlantic. In those countries, a perfected civilization would be able to lend assistance to a vigorous nature: steam-boats would ascend those rivers destined to become easy means of communication after having been invincible obstacles; the banks of those rivers would become covered with towns and villages, even as we have seen new American States spring from the deserts of Kentucky. Through those forests once reputed impenetrable would fly horseless chariots, transporting enormous weights and thousands of travellers. Along those rivers, along those roads, would descend, together with the trees for the construction of the ships, the wealth of the mines which would serve to pay for them; and the Isthmus of Panama would burst its barrier to give passage to those ships from one sea to the other. The shipping which borrows movement from fire is not restricted to the navigation of rivers: it crosses the Ocean; distances are shortening: no more currents, monsoons, contrary winds, blockades, close-ports. It is a far cry from this romance of industry to the hamlet of Plancoët[455]: in those days, the ladies used to play at old-time games by their fireside; the peasant-women spun the hemp for their clothes; the meagre resin-torch lit up the village evenings; chemistry had not worked its wonders; machinery had not set all the waters and all the irons in motion to weave the wools or embroider the silks; gas, left to the fire-balls, did not yet supply the lighting for our theatres and streets. Those transformations are not confined to our abodes: obeying the instinct of his immortality, man has sent his intellect on high; at each step that he has taken in the firmament, he has recognised miracles of the Unspeakable Power. That star, which seemed single to our fathers, is double and treble to our eyes; suns interposed before suns eclipse one another and lack space for their multitude. In the centre of the Infinite, God sees passing around Him those magnificent theories, proofs added to the proofs of the Supreme Being.