ain, as before, rapidly
put in motion, and I seemed again resistless to be hurried upon a stream
of air, and again in perfect darkness. In a moment, an indistinct light
again appeared before my eyes and a country opened upon my view which
appeared partly wild and partly cultivated; there were fewer woods and
morasses than in the scene which I had just before seen; I beheld men who
were covered with the skins of animals, and who were driving cattle to
enclosed pastures; I saw others who were reaping and collecting corn,
others who were making it into bread; I saw cottages furnished with many
of the conveniences of life, and a people in that state of agricultural
and pastoral improvement which has been imagined by the poets as
belonging to the golden age. The same voice, which I shall call that of
the Genius, said, "Look at these groups of men who are escaped from the
state of infancy: they owe their improvement to a few superior minds
still amongst them. That aged man whom you see with a crowd around him
taught them to build cottages; from that other they learnt to domesticate
cattle; from others to collect and sow corn and seeds of fruit. And
these arts will never be lost; another generation will see them more
perfect; the houses, in a century more, will be larger and more
convenient; the flocks of cattle more numerous; the corn-fields more
extensive; the morasses will be drained, the number of fruit-trees
increased. You shall be shown other visions of the passages of time, but
as you are carried along the stream which flows from the period of
creation to the present moment, I shall only arrest your transit to make
you observe some circumstances which will demonstrate the truths I wish
you to know, and which will explain to you the little it is permitted me
to understand of the scheme of the universe." I again found myself in
darkness and in motion, and I was again arrested by the opening of a new
scene upon my eyes. I shall describe this scene and the others in the
succession in which they appeared before me, and the observations by
which they were accompanied in the voice of the wonderful being who
appeared as my intellectual guide. In the scene which followed that of
the agricultural or pastoral people, I saw a great extent of cultivated
plains, large cities on the sea-shore, palaces--forums and temples
ornamenting them; men associated in groups, mounted on horses, and
performing military exercises; galleys mov