“Venient annis sæcula seris,
Quibus Oceanus vincula rerum
Laxet, et ingens pateat tellus,
Tethysque novos detegat orbes,
Nec sit terris ultima Thule.”[247]
This sympathetic and authoritative commentator, who has illustrated
the enterprise with all that classical or mediæval literature affords,
declares his conviction that the discovery of a new continent was more
completely foreshadowed in the simple geographical statement of the
Greek Strabo,[248] who, after a long life of travel, sat down in his
old age, during the reign of Augustus, to write the geography of the
world, including its cosmography. In this work, where are gathered the
results of ancient study and experience, the venerable author, after
alluding to the possibility of passing direct from Spain to India, and
explaining that the inhabited world is that which we inhabit and know,
thus lifts the curtain: “There may be in the same temperate zone _two
and indeed more inhabited lands_, especially near the parallel of Thinæ
or Athens, prolonged into the Atlantic Ocean.”[249] This was the voice
of ancient Science.
Before the voyage of Columbus two Italian poets seem to have beheld
the unknown world. The first was Petrarca; nor was it unnatural that
his exquisite genius should reach behind the veil of Time, as where he
pictures
“The daylight hastening with wingèd steps,
Perchance to gladden the expectant eyes
_Of far-off nations in a world remote_.”[250]
The other was Pulci, who, in his “Morgante Maggiore,” sometimes called
the last of the romances and the earliest of Italian epics, reveals an
undiscovered world beyond the Pillars of Hercules:--
“Know that this theory is false; his bark
The daring mariner shall urge far o’er
The western wave, a smooth and level plain,
Albeit the earth is fashioned like a wheel.
Man was in ancient days of grosser mould,
And Hercules might blush to learn how far
Beyond the limits he had vainly set
The dullest sea-boat soon shall wing her way.
“_Men shall descry another hemisphere_,
Since to one common centre all things tend;
So earth, by curious mystery divine
Well balanced, hangs amid the starry spheres.
_At our Antipodes are cities, states,_
_And throngèd empires, ne’er divined of yore._
But see, the sun speeds on his western path
To glad the nations with expected light.”[251]
This translation is by our own eminent historian, Prescott, who first
called attention to the testimony,[252] which is not mentioned even by
Humboldt. Leigh Hunt referred to it at a later day.[253] Pulci was
born in 1431, and died about 1487, five years before Columbus sailed;
so that he was not aided by any rumor of the discovery he so distinctly
predicts.
* * * * *
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.