pride itself.

Distant wars too have contributed in no small measure to the progress
of science. To the victorious march of the French army we owe the
discovery of new facts relative to the ancient history of Algeria;
it was the advance of the English and Russian forces that revealed
the secret of the mysterious lands in the heart of Asia, whence many
scholars believe the European races to have first issued, and of this
ever open book the French expedition to Tonquin may be considered at
present one of the last pages.

Geographical knowledge does much to promote the progress of the
kindred sciences. The work of Champollion, so brilliantly supplemented
by the Vicomte de Rouge and Mariette Bey, has led to the accurate
classification of the monuments of Egypt. The deciphering of the
cuneiform inscriptions has given us the dates of the palaces of Nineveh
and Babylon; the interpretation by savants of other inscriptions has
made known to us those Hittites whose formidable power at one time
extended as far as the Mediterranean, but whose name had until quite
recently fallen into complete oblivion. The rock-hewn temples and
the yet more strange dagobas of India now belong to science. Like
the sacred monuments of Burmah and Cambodia they have been brought
down to comparatively recent dates; and though the palaces of Yucatan
and Peru still maintain their reserve, we are able to fix their dates
approximately, and to show that long before their construction North
America was inhabited by races, one of which, known as the Mound
Builders, left behind them gigantic earthworks of many kinds, whilst
another, known as the Cliff Dwellers, built for themselves houses on
the face of all but inaccessible rocks.