84 KANSAS AND THE COUNTRY BEYOND.

LETTER XXII.— The March of Empire.
WueEn Bishop Berkeley penned the oft-quoted line —

‘‘ Westward the Star of Empire takes its way,”—

the idea expressed by the phrase was hardly understood. “ What is
empire?” asks a recent writer, and then he goes on to remark: “ We
have suffered our understandings to be warped by past and existing
abuses on this point, until the word suggests to the mind the over-
grown dominions of the Cesars, or the huge and beastly realm of the
Czar. But God himself gave us the true idea of empire when he
said, ‘ Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, AND sUBDUE
iv.’ This is what Bishop Berkeley means by the ‘Star of Empire ;’
and this is what the people of our country are now doing. This is
Empire in its true sense —the dominion of Man over Nature, not of
man Over man.”

For ages warriors have striven to hew out empire with the sword,
and kings have labored and crushed their people to the dust, in build-
ing huge piles, in the vain hope of rendering those empires immortal.
Human toil beyond calculation has been expended in erecting things
which, when erected, were of less value than the ground upon which
they stood, and oceans of blood have been spilt in subduing regions
which a little well-directed and beneficent enterprise would have sub-
dued a thousand-fold better. This day the pyramids of Egypt stand
in their hugeness, immobility and silence, the emblems of a false, dead,
unprofitable and non-progressive civilization ; while the railroad, with
its rushing train, following the sun in his western course, marks and
represents a Civilization of the opposite type.

Actuated by old and false ideas, the Emperor of France tried to
push empire westward by sending his armies into Mexico; and we
have just witnessed the tragical end of that attempt to rule the world
of the present day by the enforcement of obsolete ideas. Now let
Joun D. Perry, of St. Louis, a modest American citizen, send his
army of peaceful laborers and track-layers across the border of that
unhappy country, and order, peace, and true empire will result at once.

The railroad is the great agent and pioneer of civilization. Let
any one go away beyond the Missouri, as we did, and behold a mighty
tide of civilization — comfortable and well-furnished dwellings occu-
pied by intelligent, refined and happy people, all the useful industries
of life, with schools, colleges, churches, and every institution of an
advanced social condition — following closely behind the track-layers,
and, in some instances, going ahead of them, causing the music of
busy life to be heard on those beautiful prairies, where only yester-
day silence and solitude reigned, save only as they were broken by