highest acme. The sites of many
ancient and long unknown, though not forgotten cities, are recovered.
Monuments and ruins have been disinterred in the ancient seats of human
power, in the oriental world, and inscriptions deciphered, which give
vitality to ancient history. Ethnology has arisen to hold up the light
of her resplendent lamp, amid these ruins, to guide the footsteps of
letters, science and piety.

To these evidences of the inquisitive energy of the age, it has added
new and important means of study and investigation. The principles of
interpretation which originated in the study of Egyptian monuments,
have guided inquiries in other quarters of the globe, and the discovery
of a key to the hieroglyphics of the Nile has thus reflected light on
the progress of monumental researches throughout the world. The science
of philology, so important in considering the affinities of nations,
has been almost wholly created within fifty years. Franklin lived and
died without a knowledge of it. Astronomy has been employed to some
extent to detect the chronology of architectural ruins, and even the
antique history of America has been illustrated by the record of an
eclipse among the ancient Mexican picture-writings.[7] Geology, in her
labors to determine the character of the exhumed bones and shells of
extinct classes of the animal creation of former eras, has not failed
to impart the most important knowledge of the physical history of the
planet we occupy. Electricity and magnetism have also enlarged their
boundaries. Chemistry is in the process of fulfilling the highest
expectations. All these sources of knowledge have been poured into the
lap of geography and ethnography, and given us a far better and truer
knowledge of the character, resources, and position of the nations of
the world. And after making every allowance for the literary
complacency of the age, we are yet unable to point to a prior epoch of
the world when man had so fully recovered his position in the scale of
civilization, and in the knowledge of the various phenomena in science,
letters and arts, on which his true advance depends.

[7] Vide Gallatin's paper--Trans. Am. Eth. Society, vol. I.

With these evidences of intellectual progress and the increased power
of modern inquiry, there are redoubled incentives to investigate the
obscure period of American history. It has been said, prematurely, in
the arrogance of European criticism, that America