" There have been myriads upon myriads of human
creatures who have obeyed this law--who have put every breath and
nerve of their being into its toil--who have devoted every hour, and
exhausted every faculty--who have bequeathed their unaccomplished
thoughts at death--who, being dead, have yet spoken,[240] by majesty of
memory, and strength of example. And, at last, what has all this
"Might" of humanity accomplished, in six thousand years of labour and
sorrow? What has it _done_? Take the three chief occupations and arts
of men, one by one, and count their achievements. Begin with the
first--the lord of them all--Agriculture. Six thousand years have
passed since we were sent to till the ground, from which we were
taken. How much of it is tilled? How much of that which is, wisely or
well? In the very centre and chief garden of Europe--where the two
forms of parent Christianity have had their fortresses--where the
noble Catholics of the Forest Cantons, and the noble Protestants of
the Vaudois valleys, have maintained, for dateless ages, their faiths
and liberties--there the unchecked Alpine rivers yet run wild in
devastation; and the marshes, which a few hundred men could redeem
with a year's labour, still blast their helpless inhabitants into
fevered idiotism. That is so, in the centre of Europe! While, on the
near coast of Africa, once the Garden of the Hesperides, an Arab
woman, but a few sunsets since, ate her child, for famine.
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