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Thus it is that nation first sets fire to a neighbouring nation; then catches fire and burns backward.

Statesmen should know that a learned class is an essential element of a state-at least of a Christian state. But you wish for general illumination! You begin with the attempt to popularize learning and philosophy; but you will end in the plebification of knowledge. A true philosophy in the learned class is essential to a true religious feeling in all classes.

In fine, religion, true or false, is and ever has been the moral centre of gravity in Christendom, to which all other things must and will accommodate themselves.

ESSAY IV.

Ο δὲ δίκαιον ἐτι ποιεῖν, ἄκουε πῶς χρὴ ἔχειν ἐμὲ και σὲ πρὸς ἀλληλους. Ει μὲν ὅλως φιλοσοφίας καταπεφρόνηκας, ἐᾷν καίρειν· ἐι δὲ παρ ̓ ἑτέρου ακήκοας ἢ αὐτὸς βελτίονα ἕυρηκας τῶν παρ' ἐμὸι, ἐκεῖνα τίμα· ἐι δ' ἄρα τὰ παρ ̓ ἡμῶν σοὶ ἀρέσκει, τιμητέον καὶ ἐμὲ μάλισα.

ΠΛΑΤΩΝ· ΔΙΩΝ: επις• δευτερα.

(Translation.)—Hear then what are the terms on which you and I ought to stand toward each other. If you hold philosophy altogether in contempt, bid it farewell. Or if you have heard from any other person, or have yourself found out a better than mine, then give honor to that, which ever it be. But if the doctrine taught in these our works please you, then it is but just that you should honor me too in the same proportion. Plato's 2d Letter to Dion.

WHAT is that which first strikes us, and strikes us at once, in a man of education? And which, among educated men, so instantly distinguishes the man of superior mind, that (as was observed with eminent propriety of the

late Edmund Burke) 66 we cannot stand under the same arch-way during a shower of rain, without finding him out?" Not the weight or novelty of his remarks; not any unusual interest of facts communicated by him; for we may suppose both the one and the other precluded by the shortness of our intercourse, and the triviality of the subjects. The difference will be impressed and felt, though the conversation should be confined to the state of the weather or the pavement. Still less will it arise from any peculiarity in his words and phrases. For if he be, as we now assume, a well-educated man as well as a man of superior powers, he will not fail to follow the golden rule of Julius Cæsar, Insolens verbum, tanquam scopulum, evitare. Unless where new things necessitate new terms, he will avoid an unusal word as a rock. It must have been among the earliest lessons of his youth, that the breach of this precept, at all times hazardous, becomes ridiculous in the topics of ordinary conversation. There remains but one other point of distinction possible; and this must be, and in fact is, the true cause of the impression made on us. It is the unpremeditated and

evidently habitual arrangement of his words, grounded on the habit of foreseeing, in each integral part, or (more plainly) in every sentence, the whole that he then intends to communicate. However irregular and desultory his talk, there is method in the fragments.

Listen, on the other hand, to an ignorant man, though perhaps shrewd and able in his particular calling; whether he be describing or relating. We immediately perceive, that his memory alone is called into action; and that the objects and events recur in the narration in the same order, and with the same accompaniments, however accidental or impertinent, as they had first occurred to the narrator. The necessity of taking breath, the efforts of recollection, and the abrupt rectification of its failures, produce all his pauses; and with exception of the " and then," the " and there," and the still less significant, "and so," they constitute likewise all his connections.

Our discussion, however, is confined to Method as employed in the formation of the understanding, and in the constructions of science and literature. It would indeed be superfluous to attempt a proof of its importance in the bu

siness and economy of active or domestic life. From the cotter's hearth or the workshop of the artisan, to the palace of the arsenal, the first merit, that which admits neither substitute nor equivalent, is, that every thing is in its place. Where this charm is wanting, every other merit either loses its name, or becomes an additional ground of accusation and regret. Of one, by whom it is eminently possessed, we say proverbially, he is like clock-work. The resemblance extends beyond the point of regularity, and yet falls short of the truth. Both do, indeed, at once divide and announce the silent and otherwise indistinguishable lapse of time. But the man of methodical industry and honorable pursuits, does more he realizes its ideal divisions, and gives a character and individuality to its moments. If the idle are described as killing time, he may be justly said to call it into life and moral being, while he makes it the distinct object not only of the consciousness, but of the conscience. He organizes the hours, and gives them a soul: and that, the very essence of which is to fleet away, and evermore to have been, he takes up into his own permanence, and communicates to it the imperishableness of a spiritual

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