The ambition is everywhere,—­in every breast; the power is everywhere,—­in every brain.  The giant and the pigmy are alike active in seeking out and finding out many inventions.  And in this very universality of effort and result we discover another guaranty of the great future.  The river of Progress multiplies its tributaries the farther it flows, and even now, unknown ages from its mouth, we already see that magnificent widening of its channel, in which, like the Amazon, it long anticipates the sea.

Man, the great achiever! the marvellous magician!  Look at him!  A head hardly six feet above the ground out of which he was taken.  His “dome of thought and palace of the soul” scarce twenty-two inches in circumference; and within it, a little, gray, oval mass of “convoluted albumen and fibre, of some four pounds’ weight,” and there sits the intelligence which has worked all these wonders!  An intelligence, say, six thousand years old next century.  How many thousand years more will it think, and think, and wave the wand, and raise new spirits out of Nature, open her sealed-up mysteries, scale the stars, and uncover a universe at home?  How long will it be before this inherent power, laid in it at the beginning by the Almighty, shall be exhausted, and reach its limit?  Yes, how long?  We cannot begin to know.  We cannot imagine where the stopping-place could be.  Perhaps there is none.

To take up the nautical figure which has furnished our title,—­we are in the midst of an infinite sea, sailing on to a destination we know not of, but of which the vague and splendid fancies we have formed hang before our prow like illusions in the sky.  We are meeting on every hand great opportunities which must not be lost, new achievements which must be wrought, and strange adventures which must be undertaken:  every day wondering more to what our commission shall bring us at last, full of magnificent hopes and a growing faith,—­the inscrutable bundle of orders not nearly exhausted:  whole continents of knowledge yet to be discovered and explored; the gates of yet distant sciences to be sought and unlocked; the fortresses of yet undreamed necessities to be taken; Arcadias of beauty to be visited and their treasures garnered by the imagination; an intricate course to be followed amid all future nations and governments, and their winding histories, as if threading the devious channels of endless archipelagoes; the spoils of all ages to be gathered, and treaties of commerce with all generations to be made, before the mysterious voyage is done.

And now, before we leave this fascinating theme, or suffer another dream, let us stop where we are, in order to see where we are.  Let us take our bearings.  What says our chart?  What do we find in the horizon of the present, which may give us the wherewithal to hope, to doubt, or to fear?