n existing abuses but the misuse or misapprehension
of elements intrinsically good; who knew that evils bear in themselves
the seeds of their own extirpation; and who believed that Providence,
far from having failed in its design to secure the ultimate happiness of
the human race, was bringing the old order of things to a close in order
to provide place for something new and higher.

But that obstacle in the way of improvement which was apparently the
most immovable, was the geographical one. The habitable earth was used
up. Outside of Europe there was nothing, save inaccessible wilderness,
and barren, boundless seas. There was nothing for the mass of men to do,
and yet their energy and desire were as great as ever; there was nowhere
for them to go, and yet they were steadily increasing in numbers. The
Crusades had amused them for a while, but they were done with; the
plague had thinned them out, and war had helped the plague; but the
birth-rate was more than a match for both. A new planet, with all the
fresh interests and possibilities which that would involve, seemed
absolutely necessary. But who should erect a ladder to the stars, or
draw them down from the sky within man's reach? The one indispensable
thing was also the one thing impossible.

If, next year, we were to learn that some miraculous Ericsson or Edison
had established a practicable route to the planet Mars, and that this
neighbor of ours in the solar system was found to be replete with all
the things that we most want and can least easily get,--were such news
to reach us, we might comprehend the sensation created in the Europe of
1492, four centuries ago, when it received the information that a
certain Christopher Columbus had discovered a brand new continent,
overflowing with gold and jewels, on the other side of the Atlantic. The
impossible had happened. Our globe was not the petty sphere that it had
been assumed to be. There was room in it for everybody, and a fortune
for the picking up. And all the world, with Spain in the van, prepared
to move on El Dorado. A whiff of the fresh Western air blew in all
nostrils, and re-animated the moribund body of civilization. The
stimulus of Columbus' achievement was felt in every condition of human
life and phase of human activity. Mankind once more saw a future, and
bound up its loins to take advantage of it. Literature felt the electric
touch, and blossomed in the unmatched geniuses of the Elizabethan age.
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