The myth of Jason is one of the prettiest in antiquity, and it is more than pretty. We are beginning to see what an important bearing a fairy tale may have on sober knowledge. The myth has always somewhere some foundation of truth; and that hidden truth may be of enduring value. To study history, indeed, without paying any attention to the related myths, is to shut off a precious side light. Human progress, in almost every phase, has been influenced by this quaint but potent factor. Where do you fancy chemistry would be if the philosopher's stone and other myths had not lured the old alchemists to pry into mysteries where they found never what they sought, but truths of utmost value to mankind? Geography in particular has owed almost more of its growth into a science to myths than to scholarly invention; and the gold myth, throughout the world, has been the prophet and inspiration of discovery, and a moulder of history. We have been rather too much in the habit of classing the Spaniards as _the_ gold-hunters, with an intimation that gold-hunting is a sort of sin, and that they were monumentally prone to it. But it is not a Spanish copyright,--the trait is common to all mankind. The only difference was that the Spaniards found gold; and that is offence enough to "historians" too narrow to consider "what would the English have done had they found gold in America at the outset." I believe it is not denied that when gold was discovered in the uttermost parts of his land the Saxon found legs to get to it,--and even adopted measures not altogether handsome in clutching it; but nobody is so silly as to speak of "the days of '49" as a disgrace to us. Some lamentable pages there were; but when California suddenly tipped up the continent till the strength of the east ran down to her, she opened one of the bravest and most important and most significant chapters in our national story. For gold is not a sin. It is a very necessary thing, and a very worthy one, as long as we remember that it is a means and not an end, a tool and not an accomplishment,--which point of business common-sense we are quite as apt to forget in Wall Street as in the mines. We have largely to thank this universal and perfectly proper fondness for gold for giving us America,--as, in fact, for civilizing most other countries.