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It is also true, that, to imaginative persons in this country, there is somewhat bare and bald in our short history, and unsettled wilderness. They ask, who would live in a new country, that can live in an old? Europe is to our boys and girls, what novels and romances are; and it is not strange they should burn to see the picturesque extremes of an antiquated country. But it is one thing to visit the pyramids, and another to wish to live there. Would they like tithes to the clergy, and sevenths to the government, and horse-guards, and licensed press, and grief when a child is born, and threatening, starved weavers, and a pauperism now constituting one-thirteenth of the population? Instead of the opening future expanding here before the eye of every boy to vastness, would they like the closing in of the future to a narrow slit of sky, and that fast contracting to be no future? One thing, for instance, the beauties of aristocracy, we commend to the study of the travelling American. The English, the most conservative people this side of India, are not sensible of the restraint, but an American would seriously resent it. The aristocracy, incorporated by law and education, degrades life for the unprivileged classes. It is a questionable compensation to the embittered feeling of a

proud commoner, the reflection that the worthless lord who, by the magic of title, paralyzes his arm, and plucks from him half the graces and rights of a man, is himself also an aspirant excluded with the same ruthlessness from higher circles, since there is no end to the wheels within wheels of this spiral heaven. Something may be pardoned to the spirit of loyalty when it becomes fantastic; and something to the imagination, for the baldest life is symbolic. Philip II. of Spain rated his ambassador for neglecting business of great importance in Italy, whilst he debated some point of honour with the French ambassador: "You have left a business of importance for a ceremony." The ambassador replied, "How? for a ceremony? your majesty's self is but a ceremony." In the East, where the religious sentiment comes in to the support of the aristocracy, and in the Romish church also, there is a grain of sweetness in the tyranny; but, in England, the fact seems to me intolerable, what is commonly affirmed, that such is the transcendent honour accorded to wealth and birth, that no man of letters, be his eminence what it may, is received into the best society, except as a lion and a show. It seems to me, that with the lights which are now gleaming in

the eyes of all men, residence in that country becomes degradation to any man not employed to revolutionize it. The English have many virtues, many advantages, and the proudest history of the world; but they need all, and more than all the resources of the past to indemnify a heroic gentleman in that country for the mortifications prepared for him by the system of society, and which seem to impose the alternative to resist or to avoid it. That there are mitigations and practical alleviations to this rigour, is not an excuse for the rule. Commanding worth, and personal power must sit crowned in all companies; nor will extraordinary persons be slighted or affronted in any company of civilized men. But the system is an invasion of the sentiment of justice and the native rights of men, which, however decorated, must lessen the value of English citizenship. It is for Englishmen to consider, not for us: we only say, let us live in America, too thankful for our want of feudal institutions. Our houses and towns are like mosses and lichens, so slight and new; but youth is a fault of which we shall daily mend. And really at Ours, too, is as old as

last all lands are alike.

the Flood, and wants no ornament or privilege which nature could bestow. Here stars, here

woods, here hills, here animals, here men abound, and the vast tendencies concur of a new order. If only the men are well employed in conspiring with the designs of the Spirit who led us hither, and is leading us still, we shall quickly enough advance out of all hearing of other's censures, out of all regrets of our own, into a new and more excellent social state than history has recorded.

THE END.

Dunn & Wright, Printers, Glasgow.

WORKS BY

Rev. Frederick Denison Maurice, M.A.

Fourth Edition. Crown 8vo, 5s, cloth.

ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY,

Comprising the Hebrew, Egyptian, Hindoo, Chinese, Persian, Grecian, Roman, and Alexandrian Systems of Philosophy.

Second Edition. Crown 8vo, 3s 6d, cloth.

PHILOSOPHY OF THE FIRST SIX CENTURIES,

Comprising Seneca-Plutarch-Trajan-Ignatius-Justin-Tertullian -Plotinus-Phorphyry-Athanasius - Julian-Augustin-Proclus -Boethius-Justinian-Gregory I., &c.

Second Edition. Crown 8vo, 5s.

MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY,

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MODERN PHILOSOPHY,

Comprising William of Occam-Huss - Reuchlin-More-LutherParacelsus - Montaigne-Hooker-Bacon -Hobbes-DescartesMalebranche-Bossuet-Spinoza-Locke-Shaftesbury-VoltaireMontesquieu-Leibnitz-Wolff-Swedenborg-Rousseau-Hume

Smith -Reid-Paley-Bentham -Kant-Jacobi-MendelssohnCousin-Stewart-Comte-Hamilton, &c.

"This great book is one of the most characteristic fruits of Mr Maurice's genius, and is of a kind to exercise, if not directly, a very wide influence on the history of English Philosophy. It is evidently the result of many years' labour, and of much learning-the fruits of great reading being often condensed to a mere hint; and it is a book which of all others ought to be read as a whole, and not to be consulted like a philosophical dictionary under its various heads." -Spectator.

"It abounds in passages of great richness and truth."-Westminster Review.

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