rpetuating the curse from
which she has been once redeemed; but a blessing lies in her heart for
him who has but the courage to grasp it.

What analogies have they to prop their conclusions withal, who maintain
the necessary degradation of the soil? Fire, air, and water bow down and
do obeisance to man. They are analyzed and recombined. They are studied
with insatiable curiosity. They receive the absorbed attention of a
lifetime. Daily their secrets are wrested from them. Their likings and
their dislikings are forced into man's service; they are coupled in
strange unions and harnessed to his chariot. Whithersoever he will, they
bear him. They minister to his lowliest needs, they bend to his loftiest
dreams. They have lifted him from the earth whereon he crept, and have
given him the wings of the wind. Swifter than the eagle flies, swift as
the lightnings flash, they run to and fro at his command. Nor has the
limit of their capacities been reached. Nor has man ceased to pry into
the mysteries which lie hidden in their depths. He was once their abject
slave. He is now their crowned king. He will one day be their absolute
monarch.

But while the three ancient elements are thus wrought into glory and
honor, the fourth sister, Earth, remains a clod. They give gifts to men,
but she only sears him with the brand of servitude. Every bold seeker,
adventuring into their arcana, bears back his treasure-trove; but the
earth only mocks her wooer, and robs him of his strength who sleeps upon
her knees!

It is easy to point to occurrences which seem to prove this,--to
experiments which seemed fruitless,--to plans adopted only to be laid
aside,--to new modes that were heralded with great flourish of trumpets,
and shuffled ignominiously out through the pantry-door. But every
science and every art has had its empirical age, and every age has its
empiricists. Astrology spoke its great swelling words, made its
cabalistic signs, and passed away to its burial; but astronomy remains
eternal as the heavens. The stars cannot tell a man when he shall die,
and they shine upon the shepherd as brightly as on the sage; but they
have marvellous secrets to whisper to him who watches the long night
through to behold their coming and mark the magic of their ways; and by
so much knowledge unfolded Earth takes her place in the skies. There was
no El Dorado beyond the western sea to bestow eternal youth upon the
Spanish dreamer; but there was a land fai