THE NEW ATLANTIS: OR, IDEALS OLD AND NEW, EMANATINg from the Masters of man BELONGING TO COURSE OF the civilISATION, CULTURE AND EDUCATION OF HUMANITY. A Dialogue. BY A DISCIPLE OF BUCKLE. 'To find in the Events of the Past a Key to the proceedings of the WILLIAMS AND NORGATE, 14, HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, LONDON: PROLOGUE. (Scene.-Eastern Gate of 'Solomon's House.) STRANGER! Did you ever stand on the summit of the 'Great Divide,'-not Sherman in the Rocky Mountains, the pinnacle of European Culture and Civilisation, I mean, at the period of the Reformation and Revival of Learning; watch the stream of Time and Tendency, rushing in all its channels and conduits from Old and New Rome, Constantinople, Athens, Antioch, Jerusalem, and Alexandria: diverted in its new course over Europe and Britain, carried by Columbus to the New World in 1492, and scattered over the vast Continents of North and South America, during the lapse of the last four centuries? That's a Literary feat accomplished in Draper's Intellectual Development of Europe. But, Stranger! Did you ever step into 'Solomon's House,' reared by Lord Bacon in his 'New Atlantis,' on the summit of British Culture, honoured with 'the Statue of Columbus,' and all the 'Grand Discoverers and Inventors' of mankind, and read the Programme of Future Culture, and the Progress of Science and Practical Experiment, under the patronage of the popular Interpreters of Nature,' and Merchants of Light'-'the growth of all parts of the World'? You have not? Step in, then, to 'the long and fair Galleries ' and Museum, projected by the Fathers of Modern Science, which have been crowded with their Literary Products, from all parts of the World,' and listen to the Conversations of Polyhistor and his Pupil,—from Concord and Cambridge, the homes of Emerson and Longfellow,-one of the Baconian 'Fellows' of Solomon's House, appointed to furnish the clue to the culture of all the centuries, and the stream of time and tendency to Human Ideals, from China to California. Au revoir! I shall meet you again, at the Western Gate. |