delicate, poetic, and self-sacrificing, breeds courtesy and
learning, conversation and wit, in her rough mate; so that I have thought
a sufficient measure of civilization is the influence of good women.

Another measure of culture is the diffusion of knowledge, overrunning all
the old barriers of caste, and, by the cheap press, bringing the
university to every poor man's door in the newsboy's basket. Scraps of
science, of thought, of poetry, are in the coarsest sheet, so that in
every house we hesitate to burn a newspaper until we have looked it
through.

The ship, in its latest complete equipment, is an abridgment and compend
of a nation's arts: the ship steered by compass and chart,--longitude
reckoned by lunar observation and by chronometer,--driven by steam; and
in wildest sea-mountains, at vast distances from home,--

The pulses of her iron heart
Go beating through the storm.

No use can lessen the wonder of this control, by so weak a creature, of
forces so prodigious. I remember I watched, in crossing the sea, the
beautiful skill whereby the engine in its constant working was made to
produce two hundred gallons of fresh water out of salt water every
hour--thereby supplying all the ship's wants.

The skill that pervades complex details; the man that maintains himself;
the chimney taught to burn its own smoke; the farm made to produce all
that is consumed on it; the very prison compelled to maintain itself and
yield a revenue, and, better still, made a reform school, and a
manufactory of honest men out of rogues, as the steamer made fresh water
out of salt--all these are examples of that tendency to combine
antagonisms, and utilize evil, which is the index of high civilization.

Civilization is the result of highly complex organization. In the snake,
all the organs are sheathed: no hands, no feet, no fins, no wings. In bird
and beast, the organs are released, and begin to play. In man, they are
all unbound, and full of joyful action. With this unswaddling he receives
the absolute illumination we call Reason, and thereby true liberty.

Climate has much to do with this melioration. The highest civility has
never loved the hot zones. Wherever snows falls, there is usually civil
freedom. Where the banana grows, the animal system is indolent and
pampered at the cost of higher qualities; the man is sensual and cruel.
But this scale is not invariable. High degrees of moral sentiment control
the unfavorable infl