"I conceive it to be the duty of every educated person closely to study and watch the time in which he lives...
Nobody, however, who has paid any attention to the features of our present era, will doubt for a moment that we are living at a period of most wonderful transition which tends rapidly to the accomplishment of that great end to which indeed, all history points -- the realization of the unity of mankind."
- H.R.H. Prince Albert, Duke in Saxony, proclaiming
the Great Exhibition, October 1849
