But this work is not so much the defense of a theory as it is the display of facts, and the deduction of a general principle consequent thereupon. The travels of men, and the trade-currents of God, move spontaneously and perpetually toward the West. The opposite direction is always "down East," while all healthful expansion and improvement is "out West." The great eastern turnpike, canal, or railway, was never built, nor has a great eastern ship yet been launched on the deep. If the unnatural name has of late been given to a colossal craft, the misnomer is indicated by the fact, that her first trip is appointed to be a western one, and to terminate in our most eastern harbor, where the most stupendous development of western commerce just begins. All great enterprises by land and by sea have ever commenced in the East, and augmented both their efficiency and worth through a continuous unfolding toward the setting sun. The latest race is evermore the best, the last half of each great age is most prolific in progressive elements, and the west end of every great town throughout Europe and America is the growing end. An introduction ought to stimulate rational curiosity, while it justifies the labors of the author, by furnishing his reader with a succinct programme of the conditions of the subject. We consider the age of Pericles to have terminated four centuries before, and that of Augustus five centuries after, the birth of Christ. The age of Leo X. began in the fifth century, with the fall of the Western Empire, and ended in the sixteenth, soon after the final downfall of the East. The seventeenth century was the great era of colonial empire, and then began the age of Washington. It is not man but God who has thrown these clear lines of demarcation over the entire mass of humanity, as innumerable dates, names, and events, alluded to in the following work will show. Copious references to authorities are purposely omitted, as we wish to render the pages as compact as possible with unbroken thought, but the facts themselves can easily be verified by the enlightened reader, or confuted if they are incorrect.