Nor can we suppose that this improvement of the human condition is destined only to affect particular departments of society, and to have no perceptible influence on the entire state of the species. For, take only the improved methods of navigation—and the art of printing into consideration—and we shall see in these powerful instruments, the means at once of spreading any discoveries that may be made in one quarter of the globe, or among particular nations, over the whole face of the earth-and, at the same time, of communicating information on a gradually advancing scale, to all the varied ranks and orders of the community. Indeed, when we think of the vast powers that are inherent in the latter of these-and of the improved modes of communication to which it may be expected to give rise, it is almost impossible to avoid the conclusion, that the past attainments of the human race are as nothing to the progress they are yet destined to make, and that human society and human happiness may be considered as but yet starting from the infancy which is to precede their mature and lengthened existence.

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Not that we would give any countenance to the opinion, that the human race are ever destined to be brought to one level of attainment,—or that man, as we are apt to speak of him, in the mere genera

lity of his nature, will ever exhibit the same pitch of either physical-or moral-or intellectual vigour. This, indeed, is one of those errors into which speculative minds-who deal with man chiefly in the abstract-have always been prone to fall-and which evinces the very limited view they have been accustomed to take of the essential peculiarities which distinguish his nature, as it is found in the various countries of the world. For who can doubt that the adaptation of the races of men to the peculiarities of climate and of country in which they are found, is as strict and well arranged, as in the case of any of the other productions-animal or vegetable, which vary the surface of our world; or that the African is a produc tion as much adapted to the burning clime which he inhabits, as either the European-or the American-or the Hindoo, to the various regions in which they are respectively found. Nor would even an amalgamation of all the various tribes-though this is a fancy which philosophy has sometimes indulged-at all lessen the difficulty which this subject involves ;--for such a mixed race would be unsuited to the physical peculiarities of the different regions--and nature, whose fundamental arrangements are never violated with impunity-and part of whose plan it obviously is, to give to the different.

members of the human family the same variety that is characteristic of all her other productions, would prove the futility of all such speculations, by the inaptitude of such an amalgamated breed to the varied purposes which, by her present arrangement of the surface of the globe, she has evidently destined the human race, in its different portions, to subserve to each other.

But, although there are no grounds for entertaining the idea that mankind will ever be brought to an equality of the kind now alluded to —yet when we think of the boundless ages that seem to be opened to their progress-of the improvements that have already been made in their condition, and in the facilities for the increase of knowledge and of all useful and scientific arts, it is impossible to resist the conclusion that there is a vast tide in human affairs which is destined to flow onwards through innumerable ages-and which will carry the entire condition of our world to degrees of improvement to which our imaginations are not capable of setting any precise limits.

But, admitting all this,-and it is one of the noblest and most pleasing views which can open itself on the philosophic mind-still this is a very different consideration from the precise character of any partial and temporary change, which,

at particular periods of their course, mankind may perceive to be going on around them. For, in the onward flow of human events, there are all sorts of side eddies-and occasional irregularities inseparable from the very nature of the beings by means of whom the great progress is to be conducted; and it is quite possible that an impartial spectator, looking over the entire face of our world, and over its successive generations, may be delighted with the view which their obvious tendencies to indefinite progression open upon his mind—and yet when he narrows his consideration to any particular movement, may see only an aberration of human folly—and one of those side currents, which seem rather to retard than to forward the general progress of the stream.

It is then an obvious error, though, in the va garies of the human mind, it is one of no unfrequent occurrence-to confound any partial and temporary change with the grand and progressive movement to which all human things are supposed to be subject--and the contemplation of which affords one of the most delightful subjects of thought in which an enlightened friend of his species can busy himself.

2. There is a second error, however, which is at least of as general occurrence as the preceding

--and which identifies any change that is observed to be going forward, not so much, it may be, with the grand course of human affairs, as with an obvious tendency to a great amelioration which is about to take place in some important department of the human family.

It will easily be understood, that there are times, when such "shadows" of great coming alterations become perceptible to the enlightened mind—times when existing things seem to have attained to old age-when opinions that have long been embraced have been partially broken up by improved modes of thought-and when the notions which mankind have previously entertained of their position in the universe-of their own nature-of the duties incumbent on them from their actual place in life, and of the prospects which futurity opens up to them as moral and accountable creatures, are replaced by other views more accordant with nature-and founded on a wider, and simpler, and juster view of the arrangements of Providence.

Now, a philosopher, stationing himself apart from the tumults of the world, and calmly conducting his own meditations on what he has observed, may be satisfied that such a period, in the progressive condition of a great portion of the