giant sinews combat and conquer. in him.

He lives for us, and we live

Men such as they are, very naturally seek money or power; and power because it is as good as money,- the "spoils," so called, "of office." And why not? for they aspire to the highest, and this, in their sleep-walking, they dream is highest. Wake them, and they shall quit the false good, and leap to the true, and leave governments to clerks and desks. This revolution is to be wrought by the gradual domestication of the idea of Culture. The main enterprise of the world for splendor, for extent, is the upbuilding of a man. Here are the materials strown1 along the ground. The private life of one man shall be a more illustrious monarchy,—more formidable to its enemy, more sweet and serene in its influence to its friend, than any kingdom in history. For a man, rightly viewed, comprehendeth the particular natures of all men. Each philosopher, each bard, each actor, has only done for me, as by a delegate, what one day I can do for myself. The books which once we valued more than the apple of the eye, we have quite exhausted. What is that but saying, that we have come up with the point of view which the universal mind took through the eyes of one scribe; we have been that man, and have passed on. First, one; then another; we drain all cisterns, and, waxing greater by all these supplies, we crave a better and more abundant food. The man has never lived that can feed us ever. The human mind cannot be enshrined in a person, who shall set a barrier on any one side to this unbounded, unboundable empire. It is one central fire, which, flaming now out of the lips of Etna,2 lightens the capes of Sicily; and, now out of the throat of Vesuvius,3 illuminates the towers and vineyards of Naples. It is one light which

1 Strewn.

2 A celebrated volcanic mountain of Sicily, the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea.

3 A famous volcano, the most active in Europe, situated near Naples, the largest town in Italy.

beams out of a thousand stars. It is one soul which animates all men.

But I have dwelt perhaps tediously upon this abstraction of the Scholar. I ought not to delay longer to add what I have to

say, of nearer reference to the time and to this country.

Historically, there is thought to be a difference in the ideas which predominate over successive epochs, and there are data for marking the genius of the Classic, of the Romantic, and now of the Reflective or Philosophical age. With the views I have intimated of the oneness or the identity of the mind through all individuals, I do not much dwell on these differences. In fact,

I believe each individual passes through all three. The boy is a Greek; the youth, romantic; the adult, reflective. I deny not, however, that a revolution in the leading idea may be distinctly enough traced.

Our age is bewailed as the age of Introversion.1 Must that needs be evil? We, it seems, are critical; we are embarrassed with second thoughts; we cannot enjoy anything for hankering to know whereof the pleasure consists; we are lined with eyes; we see with our feet; the time is infected with Hamlet's unhappiness,

"Sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought."2

Is it so bad then? Sight is the last thing to be pitied. Would we be blind? Do we fear lest we should outsee nature and God, and drink truth dry? I look upon the discontent of the literary class, as a mere announcement of the fact, that they find themselves not in the state of mind of their fathers, and regret the coming state as untried; as a boy dreads the water before he has learned that he can swim. If there is any period one would desire to be born in, is it not the age of Revolution; when the old and the new stand side by side, and admit of being compared ;

1 Literally, turning inward; hence, reflection.

2 Shakespeare's Hamlet, act iii., sc. I.

when the energies of all men are searched by fear and by hope; when the historic glories of the old, can be compensated by the rich possibilities of the new era? This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.

I read with joy some of the auspicious signs of the coming days, as they glimmer already through poetry and art, through philosophy and science, through church and state.

One of these signs is the fact, that the same movement which effected the elevation of what was called the lowest class in the state, assumed in literature a very marked and as benign an aspect. Instead of the sublime and beautiful; the near, the low, the common, was explored and poetized. That, which had been negligently trodden under foot by those who were harnessing and provisioning themselves for long journeys into far countries, is suddenly found to be richer than all foreign parts. The literature of the poor, the feelings of the child, the philosophy of the street, the meaning of household life, are the topics of the time. It is a great stride. It is a sign, is it not? of new vigor, when the extremities are made active, when currents of warm life run into the hands and the feet. I ask not for the great, the remote, the romantic; what is doing in Italy or Arabia; what is Greek art, or Provençal minstrelsy; I embrace the common, I explore and sit at the feet of the familiar, the low. Give me insight into to-day, and you may have the antique and future worlds. What would we really know the meaning of? The meal in the firkin; the milk in the pan; the ballad in the street; the news of the boat; the glance of the eye; the form and the gait of the body; - show me the ultimate reason of these matters; show me the sublime presence of the highest spiritual cause lurking, as always it does lurk, in these suburbs and extremities of nature; let me see every trifle bristling with the polarity that ranges it instantly on an eternal law; and the shop, the plow, and the leger, referred to the like cause by which light undulates and poets sing; and the world lies no longer a dull miscellany and

1

1 Old form of "ledger."

lumber room, but has form and order; there is no trifle; there is no puzzle; but one design unites and animates the farthest pinnacle and the lowest trench.

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This idea has inspired the genius of Goldsmith,1 Burns,2 Cowper,3 and, in a newer time, of Goethe, Wordsworth,5 and Carlyle. This idea they have differently followed and with various success. In contrast with their writing, the style of Pope,7 of Johnson, of Gibbon, looks cold and pedantic. This writing is blood-warm. Man is surprised to find that things near are not less beautiful and wondrous than things remote. The near explains the far. The drop is a small ocean. A man is related to all nature. This perception of the worth of the vulgar is fruitful

1 Oliver Goldsmith (1728-74), Irish poet, historian, and novelist. The charm of his poetry lies in the fact that he enlists simple and universal feelings in behalf of the moral principle he seeks to establish. His best known poem is The Deserted Village, and his famous and only novel, The Vicar of Wakefield.

2 Robert Burns (1759-96), Scottish poet, the poet of the people and of homely human nature. Tam O'Shanter, and The Cotter's Saturday Night

are his most noted poems.

3 William Cowper (1731-1800), English poet of simple human affections. He is best known by The Task, and Table Talk.

4 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), Germany's greatest philosophical poet. His masterpieces are Faust, and Wilhelm Meister.

5 William Wordsworth (1770-1850), English poet of nature and of man.

His most popular works are The Prelude, and The Excursion.

6 Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881), British essayist and historian, noted for his deep insight into the nature of things. His most famous works are History of the French Revolution, and Sartor Resartus.

7 Alexander Pope (1688–1744), English poet. Pope was a critical poet of no great originality. He cast other men's thoughts into finished verse. His most noted works are the Essay on Man, and the Dunciad.

8 Samuel Johnson (1709–84), English miscellaneous writer, author of the didactic novel Rasselas and of the Dictionary of the English Language. He was a man of wonderful conversational powers, and his language is condensed and well-balanced like Pope's.

9 Edward Gibbon (1737-94), English historian. His language is elaborate but he displays little sympathy with humanity. His great work is The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

in discoveries. Goethe, in this very thing the most modern of the moderns, has shown us, as none ever did, the genius of the ancients.

There is one man of genius, who has done much for this philosophy of life, whose literary value has never yet been rightly estimated; I mean Emanuel Swedenborg.1 The most imaginative of men, yet writing with the precision of a mathematician, he endeavored to ingraft a purely philosophical Ethics on the popular Christianity of his time. Such an attempt, of course, must have difficulty, which no genius could surmount. But he saw and showed the connection between nature and the affections of the soul. He pierced the emblematic or spiritual character of the visible, audible, tangible world. Especially did his shade-loving muse2 hover over and interpret the lower parts of nature; he showed the mysterious bond that allies moral evil to the foul material forms, and has given in epical parables3 a theory of insanity, of beasts, of unclean and fearful things.

Another sign of our times, also marked by an analogous political movement, is the new importance given to the single person. Everything that tends to insulate the individual,—to surround him with barriers of natural respect, so that each man shall feel the world is his, and man shall treat with man as a sovereign state with a sovereign state; tends to true union as well as greatness. "I learned," said the melancholy Pestalozzi, "that no man in God's wide earth is either willing or able to help any

4

1 Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772), founder of the New Jerusalem Church. He first applied himself to the problem of discovering the nature of the soul and spirit by anatomical studies, but a change came over him which made of the scientific inquirer a supernatural prophet.

2 An inspiring power.

3 An epic is a poem about heroic or great events; a parable is a moral fable or an allegory; hence, allegorical relations of great events or things.

4 Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi (1746-1827), Swiss educational reformer, and author of Leonard and Gertrude. He was deeply in earnest in his work and spent his life with his pupils, sharing in their sufferings as well as in their play.