I imagine that the United States of America is but a transient intruder between the incurious planet beneath me and yonder incurious heavens. I think that by-and-by all our America must pass away, perhaps as Assyria faded into nothingness, or that perhaps it will be changed as Athens was changed into a polity which kept only the name of its earlier self.

– Branch Cabell, These Restless Heads (1932)