XXVIII.

There are strange forces constantly at work: civilizations spring up, disappear, and sometimes, but rarely, return again after a sleep of ages: it seems as though genius laid fallow for a period, like the golden grains.

The Greek mind teaches the Arabs under the Caliphs of Bagdad and Cordova, and in turn the Arabian influence instructs the reviving European mind after the dark ages. The fall of Constantinople crushed the Greek mind completely. The genius and the "godlike men" of Rome vanished under the influence of the strong blood of the Goths, and the flourishing nations of the African shore have yielded so completely to physical and moral causes, that we justly doubt the story of their magnificence, their power, their intelligence.

We see the effete races infused with the fresh blood; the vigorous juices of the Scandinavians march forward with unparalleled pace to the triumphs of reason and philosophy. The pure, warm, healthy vitality of the North recalls to life the exact sciences, the laws of reasoning, and philosophy, and aesthetics, which, arising from Grecian genius, had slumbered for a thousand years.