Arizona miner., 1868-02-22
New and Old Countries.

We confess that everything in America looks new and recent. Our towns are still rude-thc make shifts of cmigrants-a and the whole architecture tent-likc, when com pared with the monumental solidity Of med igval and primcyal remains in Europe and Asia But geology has eiFaced these distinc- tions. Geology, science of forty or fifty Summers, has had the effect Co throw an air of novelty and mushroom speed over entire history. The oldest ompres-what we call ! ed venerable antiqUity-n0w that we have true measures of duration, show like creations 0i '. yesterday; and our nillcnniuns, and stones, and bones of Copts and kelts, are the first experimental publications and transitional ameliorations of the chimpanzce. 'Tis yet quite too carly to draw sound conclusions. The old six thousand years of chronology be- come a kitchen clock-no more a measure Of time than an hour-glass or an egg glnss-since the duration of geological periods has come into view Geology itself is only chemistry with the element of time added; and the rocks Of Nahant or the dikes of the White Hills disclose hat the world is a crystal, and the soil of the valleys and plains continual decomposition and recompusilion. Nothing is old but the mind
 But find not only this equality between old and new countries, as seen by the eye of scien-c but also a certain equivalence Of the ages of history; and as the infant child is in his playthngs, working inccssant- ly at his studies of natural philosophy hy-work- ing as hard and as successfully as NEWTON SO it were ignorance not Co see that each na- ton and period has done its full part to make up the result of existing ciyility. We are all agreed that wc have not on the instant better men to show than Plutarch's heroes. The world is always equal to itself We cannot vet afford to drop. Homer, uor Eschylus, nor Plato, nor Aristotle, uor Archimedcs
 Later, each European nation, after the breaking up of the Roman Empire, had its romantic era, and the productions of that era in each rose to about the same height
 Take for an example in literature the "Ro- nance of Arthur" in Brittany the Chan sons de Roland, in France: the "Chronicle of the Cid, in Spain; the "Aihelungen Lied, {" in Germany the "NOre Sagas," in Scaudin- avia and may add the Arabian Nights, ,N on the African coast But if these works still survive and multiply, what shall we say of names more distant or hidden through their very superiority to their cocyals-namcs ol men who have left remains that certify 8 height of genius in their several directions | not since surpassed, and which men in pro. portion to their wisdom still cherjsh-as For
 caster, Contucius and the grand scriptures
 only recently known to Western nations, O
 the Indian Ncdas, the Institutions of Menu
 the Puranas, the poems of the MahabaEat anC
 Ramayana
 In modern Europe, the Middle Ages wer,
 called the Dark Ages. Who dares to cal
 them so nowl They are seen to be the fee
 on which we walk, the eyes with which VI
 see. 'Tis one of our triumphs to have rein
 stated them. Their Dante, and Alfred. an,
 Wicklifse and Abelard, and Bacon; thei
 Magma Charta decimal numbers, mariner compass, gunpowder. glass, paper and clocks , chemistry, Algebra, astronomy; their Gothi , architecture, their painting-are the deligh . and tuition of ours. Six hundred years ago , Roger Bacon explained the precision of tn equinoxcs, and the necessity of reform in thr calendar; looking over how many horizons a , far as into Liverpool and New York, an
 nounced that machines can be constructed [
 drive ships more rapidly than whole galle , of rowers could do, nor would they need any thing but pilot to steer; carriages to nov : with incredible speed, without aid of animals and machines to fly into the air like birdi : Even the races that we still call savage. c
 semi-savage, and which preserve their art
 from immemoral traditions, yindicate thei 2 faculty by the skill with which they mak $ their yam-clOths, pipes, bows, boats an - carved war-clubs. The war-proa of the Nh lays in the Japanese waters struck CommC
 dore Perry by its close resemblance to th
 yacht Amerioa-AsPec's of Culture, tl he fl ! iaRtie for JaHuaTy.