THE STAGE OF CIVILIZATION.
Here the means of subsistence are obtained as largely through com merce as through agriculture ; the influence of woman is felt and acknow ledged as almost equal to that of man ; education is general, and the growth of polite literature has established the canons of good taste and enriched the capacities of the language ; iron has taken the place of other metals for tools and weapons ; an established currency and widely-recog nized system of weights and measures facilitate the exchange of com modities ; the civil law is digested, and is clearly separated from religious edicts ; the rights of property are secured by an equitable administration of justice ; the reins of government are in the hands of one or a few families in the state, who are held to a more or less strict accountability by the remainder of the community ; religion is recognized as of universal application, both geographical and with reference to classes, but is still bound down to certain formulas, creeds, or dogmas, the acceptance of which is deemed imperative.
This, it will readily be seen, was in its main features the condition of Greece and Rome in their best days, and is now of a great part of modern Europe. Modern civilization began with the revival of learning in the fifteenth century—an epoch marked by the discovery of the New World, by the invention of printing, by the application of gunpowder to war and engineering, and by an unparalleled activity in the fine arts. It extended to the last quarter of the eighteenth century, when the estab lishment of the republican governments of the United States and France, followed shortly by the rise of the natural sciences and the application of steam to transportation by sea and laud, marked the beginning of