nce ceased to reason _a priori_, and began to investigate and
classify facts. Human liberty began to be conscious of thews and sinews,
soon to be tested in the struggle of the Netherlands against Philip II.
of Spain, and, later, in that of the people of England against their own
Charles Stuart. Religion was heard to mutter something about the rights
of private conscience, and anon the muttering took form in the heroic
protest of the man of Eisleben. It was like the awakening in the palace
of the Sleeping Beauty, in the fairy-tale. Columbus had kissed the lips
of the Princess America, and at once the long-pent stream of old-world
life dashed onward like a cataract.

A new world! Four hundred years have passed, and the New World is less a
novelty than it was. We have begun to suspect that no given number of
square miles of land, no eloquence and sagacity of paper preambles and
declarations, no swiftness of travel nor instantaneousness of
communication, no invincibility of ironclads nor refinement of society,
no logic in religion, no gospel of political economy,--none of these and
a hundred other things will read us the Riddle of the Sphinx. _Non tali
auxilio, nec defensoribus istis!_ The elements of true life lie deeper
and are simpler. Once more, it seems, we have reached the limits of a
dispensation, and are halted by a blank wall. There is no visible way
over it, nor around it. We cannot stand still; still less can we turn
back. What is to happen? What happens when an irresistible force
encounters an impenetrable barrier?

That was the question asked in Columbus' day; and he found an answer to
it. Are we to expect the appearance of a new Columbus to answer it
again? To unimaginative minds it looks as if there were no career for a
new Columbus. In the first place, population is increasing so fast that
soon even the steppes of Russia and the western American plains will be
overcrowded. Again, land, and the control of industries, are falling
into the possession of a comparative handful of persons, to whom the
rest of the population must inevitably become subject; or, should the
latter rebel, the ensuing period of chaos would be followed, at best, by
a return of the old conditions. Religion is a lifeless letter, a school
of good-breeding, a philosophical amusement; the old unreasoning faith
that moved mountains can never revive. Science advances with ever more
and yet more caution, but each new step only confirms the convi