Passing from the great event which gave a new world not only to Spain, but to civilized man, it may not be uninteresting to collect some of the prophetic voices concerning the future of America and the vast unfolding of our continent. They will have a lesson also. Seeing what has been fulfilled, we may better judge what to expect. I shall set them forth in the order of time, prefacing each prediction with an account of the author sufficient to explain its origin and character. If some are already familiar, others are little known. Brought together in one body, on the principle of our National Union, E pluribus unum, they must give new confidence in the destinies of the Republic.
Only what has been said sincerely by those whose words are important deserves place in such a collection. Oracles had ceased before our history began; so that we meet no responses paltering in a double sense, like the deceptive replies to Crœsus and to Pyrrhus, nor any sayings which, according to the quaint language of Sir Thomas Browne, “seem quodlibetically constituted, and, like a Delphian blade, will cut on both sides.”[254] In Bacon’s Essay on Prophecies there is a latitude not to be followed. Not fable or romance, but history, is the true authority; and here experience and genius are the lights by which our prophets have walked. Doubtless there is a difference in human faculties. Men who have lived much and felt strongly see further than others. Their vision penetrates the future. Second-sight is little more than clearness of sight. Milton tells us that
“Old experience doth attain
To something like prophetic strain.”
Sometimes this strain is attained even in youth. But here Genius with divine power lifts the curtain and sweeps the scene.
The elder Disraeli, in his “Curiosities of Literature,” has a chapter on “Prediction,” giving curious instances, among which is that of Rousseau, toward the end of the third book of “Émile,” where he says, “We approach a condition of crisis and the age of revolutions.”[255] Our own Revolution was then at hand, soon followed by that of France. The settlement of America was not without auguries even at the beginning.
A PROPHETIC GROUP.
Before passing to the more serious examples, I bring into group a few marking at least a poet’s appreciation of the newly discovered country, if not a prophetic spirit. The Muse was not silent at the various reports. As early as 1595, Chapman, famous as the translator of Homer, in a poem on Guiana, thus celebrates and commends the unknown land:—
“Guiana, whose rich feet are mines of gold,