Page:A thousand years hence. Being personal experiences (IA thousandyearshen00gree).djvu/129



Having briefly sketched, in the preceding chapter, some chief causes of that remarkable pace of advance which set in upon our country after the nineteenth century, it was to have been my plan to have next adduced various illustrative instances through each successive century. But before entering upon that systematic detail, I propose first to devote one more chapter to a view of some of the more interesting points of the general history and progress, more especially regarding the earlier centuries of my retrospect. The events of these earlier times—as, for instance, those connected with our national political developments, or those again which had relation to the cessation of international war, and to the new world thus opened to international commerce and socialities—had no small bearing upon our after history. Let us begin then by a glance backward at the—