winged word, winged as the thunderbolt is, of | never sinned, we should have had no con a Luther, a Napoleon, a Goethe, shall we see science." Were defeat unknown, neither the difficulty split asunder, and its secret laid would victory be celebrated by songs of bare; while the Irrefragable, with all his logi- triumph. cal tools, hews at it, and hovers round it, and finds it on all hands too hard for him.

This, true enough, is an ideal, impossible state of being; yet ever the goa towards which our actual state of being strives; which it is the more perfect the nearer it can approach. Nor, in our actual world, where Labour must often prove ineffectual, and thus in all senses Light alternate with Darkness, and the nature of an ideal Morality be much modified, is the case, thus far, materially different. It is a fact, which escapes no one, that, generally speaking, whoso is acquainted with his worth has but a little stock to cultivate acquaintance with. Above all, the public acknowledgment of such acquaintance, indicating that it has reached quite an intimate footing, bodes ill Already, to the popular judgment, he whc talks much about Virtue in the abstract, begins to be suspicious; it is shrewdly guessed that where there is great preaching, there will be little almsgiving. Or again, on a wider scale, we can remark that ages of Heroism are not

Again in the difference between Oratory and Rhetoric, as indeed everywhere in that superiority of what is called the Natural over the Artificial, we find a similar illustration. The Orator persuades and carries all with him, he knows not how; the Rhetorician can prove that he ought to have persuaded and carried all with him; the one is in a state of healthy unconsciousness, as if he "had no system;" the other, in virtue of regimen and dietetic punctuality, feels at best that his system is in high order." So stands it, in short, with all forms of Intellect, whether as directed to the finding of Truth, or to the fit imparting thereof; to Poetry, to Eloquence, to depth of Insight, which is the basis of both these; always the characteristic of right performance is a certain spontaneity, an unconsciousness; "the healthy know not of their health, but only the sick." So that the old pre-ages of Moral Philosophy; Virtue, when it cept of the critic, as crabbed as it looked to his ambitious disciple, might contain in it a most fundamental truth, applicable to us all, and in much else than Literature: "Whenever you have written any sentence that looks particularly excellent, be sure to blot it out." In like manner, under milder phraseology, and with a meaning purposely much wider, a living Thinker has taught us: "Of the Wrong we are always conscious, of the Right never." But if such is the law with regard to Specu-peal to Precept, and seek strength from Sanc lation and the Intellectual power of man, much more is it with regard to Conduct, and the power, manifested chiefly therein, which we name Moral. Let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth" whisper not to thy own heart, How worthy is this action; for then it is already becoming worthless. The good mau is he who works continually in welldoing; to whom well-doing is as his natural existence, awakening no astonishment, requiring no commentary; but there, like a thing of course, and as if it could not but be so. Self-contemplation, on the other hand, is infallibly the symptom of disease, be it or be it not the sign of cure: an unhealthy Virtue is one that consumes itself to leanness in repenting and anxiety; or, still worse, that inflates itself into dropsical boastfulness and vain glory: either way, it is a self-seeking; an unprofitable looking behind us to measure the way we have made: whereas the sole concern is to walk continually forward, and make more way. If in any sphere of Man's Life, then in the moral sphere, as the inmost and most vital of all, it is good that there be wholeness; that taere be unconsciousness, which is the evidence of this. Let the free, reasonable Will, which dwells in us, as in our Holy of Holies, be indeed free, and obeyed like a Divinity, as is its right and its effort: the perfect obe lience will be the silent one. Such perhaps were the sense of that maxim, enunciating, as is usual, but the half of a truth: “To say that we have a clear conscience is to utter a solecism; had we

can be philosophized of, has become aware of itself, is sickly, and beginning to decline. A spontaneous habitual all-pervading spirit of Chivalrous Valour shrinks together, and perks itself up into shrivelled Points of Honour; humane Courtesy and Nobleness of mind dwindles into punctilious Politeness, "“ avoid. › ing meats;" "paying tithe of mint and anise, neglecting the weightier matters of the law." Goodness, which was a rule to itself, must ap

tions; the Freewill no longer reigns unquestioned and by divine right, but like a mere earthly sovereign, by expediency, by Rewards and Punishments: or rather, let us say, the Freewill, so far as may be, has abdicated and withdrawn into the dark, and a spectral nightmare of a Necessity usurps its throne; for now that mysterious Self-impulse of the whole man, heaven-inspired, and in all senses partaking of the Infinite, being captiously questioned in a finite dialect, and answering, as it needs must, by silence,-is conceived as non-extant, and only the outward Mechanism of it remains acknowledged: of Volition, except as the synonym of Desire, we hear nothing; of "Motives," without any Mover, more than enough.

So, too, when the generous Affections have become well-nigh paralytic, we have the reign of Sentimentality. The greatness, the profitableness, at any rate the extremely ornamental nature of high feeling, and the luxury of doing good; charity, love, self-forgetfulness, devotedness, and all manner of godlike magnanimity are everywhere insisted on, and pressingly inculcated in speech and writing, in prose and verse; Socinian Preachers proclaim" Benevolence" to all the four winds, and have TRUTH engraved on their watchseals: unhappily with little or no effect. Were the Limbs in right Walking order, why so much demonstrating of Motion? The barrenest of all mortals is the Sentimentalist. Granting even that he were sincere, and did not wilfully deceive us or without first deceiving himself, what good

Thus is true Moral genius, like true intellectual, which indeed is but a lower phasis thereof, "ever a secret to itself." The healthy moral nature loves Goodness, and without wonder wholly lives in it; the unhealthy makes love to it, and would fain get to live in it; or, finding such courtship fruitless, turns round, and not without contempt, abandons it. These curious relations of the Voluntary and Conscious to the Involuntary and Unconscious, and the small proportion which, in all departments of our life, the former bears to the latter,-might lead us into deep questions of Psychology and Physiology: such, however, belong not to our present object. Enough, if the fact itself become apparent, that Nature so meant it with us; that in this wise we are made. We may now say, that view man's individual Existence under what aspect we will, under the highest Spiritual, as under the merely Animal aspect, everywhere the grand vital energy, while in its sound state, is an unseen, unconscious one; or, in the words of our old Aphorism, "the healthy know not of their health, but only the sick."

is in him? Does he not lie there as a perpetual Man to himself, to what is Highest in himself, lesson of despair, and type of bedrid valetudina- make but the First Table of the Law: to the rian impotence? His is emphatically a Virtue First Table is now superadded a Second, with that has become, through every fibre, conscious the duties of Man to his Neighbour; whereby of itself; it is all sick, and feels as if it were also the significance of the first now assumes made of glass and durst not touch or be its true importance. Man has joined himself touched in the shape of work, it can do with man; soul acts and reacts on soul; a nothing; at the utmost, by incessant nursing mystic miraculous unfathomable Union estaband caudling, keep itself alive. As the last lishes itself; Life, in all its elements, has bestage of all, when Virtue, properly so called, come intensated, consecrated. The lightninghas ceased to be practised, and become extinct, spark of Thought, generated, or say rather and a mere remembrance, we have the era of heaven-kindled, in the solitary mind, awakens Sophists, descanting of its existence, proving its express likeness in and ther mind, in a it, denying it, mechanically "accounting" for thousand other minds, and all blaze up together it; as dissectors and demonstrators cannot in combined fire; reverberated from mind to operate till once the body be dead. mind, fed also with fresh fuel in each, it acquires incalculable new Light as Thought, in calculable new Heat as converted into Action. By and by, a common store of Thought can accumulate, and be transmitted as an everlasting possession: Literature, whether as preserved in the memory of Bards, in Runes and Hieroglyphs engraved on stone, or in Books of written or printed paper, comes into existence, and begins to play its wondrous part. Politics are formed; the weak submitting to the strong; with a willing loyalty, giving obedience that he may receive guidance: or say rather, in honour of our nature, the ignorant submitting to the wise; for so it is in all even the rudest communities, man never yields himself wholly to brute Force, but always to moral Greatness; thus the universal title of respect, from the Oriental Scheik, from the Sachem of the red Indians, down to our English Sir, implies only that he whom we mean to honour is our senior. Last, as the crown and all-supporting keystone of the fabric, Religion arises. The devout meditation of the isolated man, which flitted through his soul, like a transient tone of Love and Awe from unknown lands, acquires certainty, continuance, when it is shared in by his brother-men. "Where two or three are gathered ( together" in the name of the Highest, then first( does the Highest, as it is written, “appear among them to bless them;" then first does an Altar and act of united Worship open a way from Earth to Heaven; whereon, were it but a simple Jacob's-ladder, the heavenly Messengers will travel, with glad tidings, and unspeakable gifts for men. Such is SOCIETY, the vital articulation of many individuals into a new collective individual: greatly the most impor tant of man's attainments on this earth; that in which, and by virtue of which, all his other attainments and attempts find their arena, and have their value. Considered well, Society is the standing wonder of our existence; a true region of the Supernatural; as it were, a second all-embracing Life, wherein our first individual Life becomes doubly and trebly alive, and whatever of infinitude was in us bodies itself forth, and becomes visible and active.

To understand man, however, we must look beyond the individual man and his actions or interests, and view him in combination with his fellows. It is in Society that man first feels what he is; first becomes what he can be. In Society an altogether new set of spiritual activities are evolved in him, and the old immeasurably quickened and strengthened. Society is the genial element wherein his nature first lives and grows; the solitary man were but a small portion of himself, and must continue for ever folded in, stunted, and only half alive. "Already," says a deep Thinker, with more meaning than will disclose itself at once, "my opinion, my conviction, gains infinitely in strength and sureness, the moment a second mind has adopted it." Such, even in its simplest form, is association; so wondrous the communion of soul with soul as directed to the mere act of Knowing! In other higher acts, the wonder is still more manifest; as in that portion of our being which we name the Moral: for properly, indeed, all communion is of a moral sort, whereof such intellectual communion, (in the act of knowing,) is itself an example. But with regard to Morals strictly so called, it is in Society, we might almost say, that Morality begins; here at least it takes an altogether new form, and on every side, as in living growth, expands itself. The Duties of

To figure society as endowed with Life is scarcely a metaphor; but rather the statement of a fact by such imperfect methods as language affords. Look at it closely, that mystic Union, Nature's highest work with man, wherein man's volition plays an indispensable yet so subordi nate a part, and the small Mechanical grows so mysteriously and indissolubly out of the infinite

Dynamical, like body out of Spirit,—is truly mies of Rome, what need of preaching Patri enough vital, what we can call vital, and bears otism? The virtue of Patriotism has already the distinguishing character of life. In the sunk from its pristine, all-transcendant condi same style also, we can say that Society has tion, before it has received a name. So long as its periods of sickness and vigour, of youth, the Commonwealth continues rightly athletic, it manhood, decrepitude, dissolution, and new-cares not to dabble in anatomy. Why teach birth; in one or other of which stages, we may, Obedience to the sovereign; why so much as adin all times and all places where men inhabit, mire it, or separately recognise it, while a divine discern it; and do ourselves in this time and idea of Obedience perennially inspires all men? place, whether as co-operating or as contending, Loyalty, like Patriotism, of which it is a form, as healthy members or as diseased ones, to our was not praised until it had begun to decline; joy and sorrow, form part of it. The question, the Preux Chevaliers first became rightly admirwhat is the actual condition of Society? has able, when "dying for their king" had ceased to in these days unhappily become important be a habit with chevaliers. For if the mystic sig enough. No one of us is unconcerned in that nificance of the State, let this be what it may, question; but for the majority of thinking men dwells vitally in every heart, encircles every life a true answer to it, such is the state of matters, as with a second higher life, how should it stand appears almost as the one thing needful. Mean- self-questioning? It must rush outward, and while as the true answer, that is to say, the express itself by works. Besides, if perfect, complete and fundamental answer and settle- it is there as by necessity, and does not exment, often as it has been demanded, is no- cite inquiry: it is also by nature, infinite, has where forthcoming, and indeed by its nature is no limits; therefore can be circumscribed by impossible, any honest approximation towards no conditions and definitions; cannot be reasuch is not without value. The feeblest light, soned of; except musically, or in the language or even so much as a more precise recognition of Poetry, cannot yet so much as be spoken of. of the darkness, which is the first step to attainment of light, will be welcome.

edifice he was building of it. If society, in such ages, had its difficulty, it had also its strength; if sorrowful masses of rubbish so encumbered it, the tough sinews to hurl them aside, with indomitable heart, were not wanting. Society went along without complaint; did not stop to scrutinize itself, to say, How well I perform, or, Alas, how ill! Men did not yet feel themselves to be "the envy of surrounding nations;" and were enviable on that very account. Society was what we can call whole, in both senses of the word. The individual man was in himself a whole, or complete union; and

In those days, Society was what we name healthy, sound at heart. Not, indeed, without This once understood, let it not seem idle if suffering enough; not without perplexities, we remark that here too our old Aphorism difficulty on every side: for such is the ap holds; that again in the Body Politic, as in the pointment of man; his highest and sole blessanimal body, the sign of right performance is edness is, that he toil, and know what to toil at: Unconsciousness. Such, indeed, is virtually the not in ease, but in united victorious labour, meaning of that phrase "artificial state of so- which is at once evil and the victory over evil, ciety," as contrasted with the natural state, and does his Freedom lie. Nay, often, looking no indicating something so inferior to it. For, in deeper than such superficial perplexities of the all vital things, men distinguish an Artificial early Time, historians have taught us that it and a Natural; founding on some dim percep- was all one mass of contradiction and disease; tion or sentiment of the very truth we here and in the antique Republic, or feudal Moinsist on; the Artificial is the conscious, me-narchy, have seen only the confused chaotic chanical; the Natural is the unconscious, dy- quarry, not the robust labourer, or the stately namical. Thus as we have an artificial Poetry, and prize only the natural; so likewise we have an artificial Morality, an artificial Wisdom, an artificial Society. The artificial Society is precisely one that knows its own structure, its own internal functions; not in watching, not in knowing which, but in working outwardly to the fulfilment of its aim, does the well-being of a Society consist. Every Society, every Polity, has a spiritual principle; is the imbodiment, tentative, and more or less complete, of an Idea: all its tendencies of endeavour, specialities of custom, its laws, politics, and whole procedure, (as the glance of some Montesquieu could combine with his fellows as the living across innumerable superficial entanglements member of a greater whole. For all men, can partly decipher,) are prescribed by an Idea, through their life, were animated by one great and flow naturally from it, as movements from Idea; thus all efforts pointed one way, .erythe living source of motion. This idea, be it where there was wholeness. Opinion and Action of devotion to a Man or class of Men, to a had not yet become disunited; but the former Creed, to an institution, or even, as in more could still produce the latter, or attempt to ancient times, to a piece of land, is ever a true produce it, as the stamp does its impression Loyalty; has in it something of a religious, while the wax is not hardened. Thought, and paramount, quite infinite character; it is pro- the Voice of thought, were also a unison; thus, perly the Soul of the State, its Life: mysterious instead of Speculation we had Poetry; Liteas other forms of Life, and like these working rature, in its rude utterance, was as yet a secretly, and in a depth beyond that of con- heroic Song, perhaps too a devotional Anthem. sciousness. Religion was everywhere; Philosophy lay hid Accordingly, it is not in the vigorous ages under it, peacefully included in it. Herein, as of a Roman Republic that Treatises of the in the life-centre of all, lay the true health and Commonwealth are written: while the Decii oneness. Only at a later era must Religion are rushing with devoted bodies on the ene-split itself into Philosophies; and thereby the

certain contempt of what is altogether selfconscious and mechanical? As nothing that is wholly seen through has other than a trivial character; so any thing professing to be great, and yet wholly to see through itself, is already known to be false, and a failure. The evil re

vital union of thought being lost, disunion and mutual collision in all provinces of Speech and of Action more and more prevail. For if the Poet, or Priest, or by whatever title the inspired thinker may be named, is the sign of vigour and wellbeing; so likewise is the Logician, or uninspired thinker, the sign of disease, proba-pute your "theoretical men" stand in, the acbly of decrepitude and decay. Thus, not to mention other instances, one of them much nearer hand,—so soon as Prophecy among the Hebrews had ceased, then did the reign of Argumentation begin; and the ancient Theocracy, in its Sadduceeisms and Phariseeisms, and vain jangling of sects and doctors, give token that the soul of it had fled, and that the body itself by natural dissolution, "with the old forces still at work, but working in reverse order," was on the road to final disappearance.

knowledged inefficiency of "Paper Constitutions," and all that class of objects, are instances of this. Experience often repeated, and perhaps a certain instinct of something far deeper that lies under such experiences, has taught men so much. They know, beforehand, that the loud is generally the insignificant, the empty. Whatsoever can proclaim itself from the house-tops may be fit for the hawker, and for those multitudes that must needs buy of him; but for any deeper use, might as well continue unproclaimed. Observe, too, how the converse We might pursue this question into innu- of the proposition holds; how the insignificant, merable other ramifications; and everywhere, the empty, is usually the loud; and, after the under new shapes, find the same truth, which manner of a drum, is loud even because of its we here so imperfectly enunciate, disclosed: emptiness. The uses of some Patent Dinner that throughout the whole world of man, in all Calefactor can be bruited abroad over the manifestations and performances of his nature, whole world in the course of the first winter; outward and inward, personal and social, the those of the Printing Press are not so well seen Perfect, the Great is a mystery to itself, knows into for the first three centuries: the passing not itself; whatsoever does know itself is al- of the Select Vestries Bill raises more noise ready little, and more or less imperfect. Or other- and hopeful expectancy among mankind, than wise, we may say, Unconsciousness belongs to did the promulgation of the Christian Religion. pure unmixed Life; Consciousness to a diseased Again, and again, we say, the great, the creamixture and conflict of Life and Death: Uncon- tive, and enduring, is ever a secret to itself; sciousness is the sign of Creation; Conscious-only the small, the barren, and transient, is ness at best, that of Manufacture. So deep, in this existence of ours, is the significance of Mystery. Well might the Ancients make silence a god; for it is the element of all godhood, infinitude, or transcendental greatness; at once the source and the ocean wherein all such begins and ends. In the same sense, too, have Poets sung "Hymns to the Night;" as if "Night" were nobler than day; as if Day were but a small motley-coloured veil spread transiently over the infinite bosom of Night, and did but deform and hide from us its purely transparent, eter-cupy the whole domain of thought. What, fo nal deeps. So likewise have they spoken and sung as if Silence were the grand epitome and complete sum-total of all Harmony; and Death, what mortals call Death, properly the beginning of Life. Under such figures, since except in figures there is no speaking of the Invisible, have men endeavoured to express a great Truth;-a Truth, in our times, as nearly as is perhaps possible, forgotten by the most; which nevertheless continues for ever true, forever allimportant, and will one day, under new figures, be again brought home to the bosoms of all.

But, indeed, in a far lower sense, the rudest mind has still some intimation of the greatness there is in Mystery. If Silence was made a god of by the Ancients, he still continues a government clerk among us Moderns. To all Quacks, moreover, of what sort soever, the effect of Mystery is well known: here and there some Cagliostro, even in latter days, turns it to notable account: the Blockhead also, who is ambitious, and has no talent, finds sometimes in "the talent of silence," a kind of succedaneum. Or again, looking on the opposite side of the matter, do we not see, in the common understar ling of mankind, a certain distrust, a

otherwise.

If we now, with a practical medical view, examine, by this same test of Unconsciousness, the Condition of our own Era, and of man's Life therein, the diagnosis we arrive at is nowise of a flattering sort. The state of Society in our days is of all possible states the least an unconscious one: this is especially the Er when all manner of Inquiries into what was once the unfelt, involuntary sphere of man' existence, find their place, and as it were oc

example, is all this that we hear, for the las
generation or two, about the Improvement o
the Age, the Spirit of the Age, Destruction of
Prejudice, Progress of the Species, and the
March of Intellect, but an unhealthy state of
self-sentience, self-survey: the precursor and
prognostic of still worse health? That Intel-
lect do march, if possible at double-quick time,
is very desirable; nevertheless why should
she turn round at every stride, and cry: See
you what a stride I have taken!
Such a
marching of Intellect is distinctly of the spa-
vined kind; what the Jockeys call "all action
and no go." Or at best, if we examine well, it
is the marching of that gouty Patient, whom
his Doctors had clapt on a metal floor artifi
cially heated to the searing point, so that he
was obliged to march, and marched with
a vengeance--nowhither.
Intellect did not
awaken for the first time yesterday; but has
been under way from Noah's Flood down-
wards: greatly her best progress, moreover,
was in the old times, when she said nothing
about it. In those same dark "ages," Intellect
(metaphorically as well as literally) could in
vent glass, which now she has enough ado o

grind into spectacles. Intellect built not only Churches, but a Church, the Church, based on this firm Earth, yet reaching up, and leading up, as high as Heaven; and now it is all she can do to keep its doors bolted, that there be no tearing of the Surplices, no robbery of the Alms-box. She built a Senate-house likewise, glorious in its kind; and now it costs her a wellnigh mortal effort to sweep it clear of vermin, and get the roof made rain-tight.

and with half his limbs blown to pieces: Vous vous écoutez trop!

On the outward, or as it were Physical diseases of Society, it were beside our purpose to insist here. These are diseases which he who runs may read; and sorrow over, with or without hope. Wealth has accumulated itself into masses; and Poverty, also in accumulation enough, lies impassably separated from it; opposed, uncommunicating, like forces in posi tive and negative poles. The gods of this lower world sit aloft on glittering thrones, less happy than Epicurus' gods, but as indolent, as impotent; while the boundless living chaos of Ignorance and Hunger welters terrific, in its dark fury, under their feet. How much among us might be likened to a whited sepulchre; outwardly all Pomp and Strength; but inwardly full of horror and despair and dead men's bones! Iron highways, with their wains

But the truth is, with Intellect, as with most other things, we are now passing from that first or boastful stage of Self-sentience into the second or painful one: out of these often asseverated declarations that "our system is in high order," we come now, by natural sequence, to the melancholy conviction that it is altogether the reverse. Thus, for instance, in the matter of Government, the period of the "Invaluable Constitution" must be followed by a Reform Bill; to laudatory De Lolmes suc-fire-winged, are uniting all ends of the firm ceed objurgatory Benthams. At any rate, Land; quays and moles, with their innumerawhat Treatises on the Social Contract, on the ble stately fleets, tame the Ocean into our pliElective Franchise, the Rights of Man, the ant bearer of burdens; Labour's thousand arms, Rights of Property, Codifications, Institutions, of sinew and of metal, all-conquering, everyConstitutions, have we not, for long years, where, from the tops of the mountain down to groaned under! Or again, with a wider sur- the depths of the mine and the caverns of the vey, consider those Essays on Man, Thoughts sea, ply unweariedly for the service of man: on Man, Inquiries concerning Man; not to Yet man remains unserved. He has subdued mention Evidences of the Christian Faith, this Planet, his habitation and inheritance, yet Theories of Poetry, Consideration on the Ori- reaps no profit from the victory. Sad to look gin of Evil, which during the last century upon, in the highest stage of civilization, ninehave accumulated on us to a frightful extent. tenths of mankind must struggle in the lowest Never since the beginning of Time was there, battle of savage or even animal man, the batthat we hear or read of, so intensely self-con- tle against Famine. Countries are rich, prosscious a Society. Our whole relations to the perous in all manner of increase, beyond exUniverse and to our fellow man have become ample: but the Men of those countries are an Inquiry, a Doubt: nothing will go on of its poor, needier than ever of all sustenance outown accord, and do its functions quietly; but ward and inward; of Belief, of Knowledge, all things must be probed into, the whole work- of Money, of Food. The rule, Sic vos non vobis, ing of man's world be anatomically studied. never altogether to be got rid of in men's InAlas, anatomically studied, that it may be me-dustry, now presses with such incubus weight, dically aided! Till at length, indeed, we have that Industry must shake it off, or utterly be come to such a pass, that except in this same strangled under it; and, alas, can as yet but Medicine, with its artifices and appliances, gasp and rave, and aimlessly struggle, like one few can so much as imagine any strength or in the final deliration. Thus Change, or the hope to remain for us. The whole Life of inevitable approach of Change, is manifest Society must now be carried on by drugs: everywhere. In one Country we have seen doctor after doctor appears with his nostrum, lava-torrents of fever-frenzy envelope all of Co-operative Societies, Universal Suffrage, things; Government succeed Government, like Cottage-and-Cow systems, Repression of Popu- the phantasms of a dying brain: in another lation, Vote by Ballot. To such height has Country, we can even now see, in maddest althe dyspepsia of Society reached; as indeed ternation, the Peasant governed by such guid the constant grinding internal pain, or from ance as this: To labour earnestly one month time to time the mad spasmodic throes, of all in raising wheat, and the next month labour Society do otherwise too mournfully indicate. earnestly in burning it. So that Society, were Far be it from us to attribute, as some un- it not by nature immortal, and its death ever a wise persons do, the disease itself to this un-new-birth, might appear, as it does in the eyes happy sensation that there is a disease! The of some, to be sick to dissolution, and even Encyclopedists did not produce the troubles of France; but the troubles of France produced the Encyclopedists, and much else. The Selfconsciousness is the symptom merely; nay, it 's also the attempt towards cure. We record the fact, without special censure; not wondering that Society should feel itself, and in all ways complain of aches and twinges, for it has suffered enough. Napoleon was but a Job's comforter, when he told his wounded Staff-officer, twice unhorsed by cannon balls,

now writhing in its last agony. Sick enough we must admit it to be, with disease enough, a whole nosology of diseases; wherein he perhaps is happiest that is not called to prescribe as physician;-wherein, ho vever, one small piece of policy, that of summoning the Wisest in the Commonwealth, by the sole method yet known or thought of, to come together and with their whole soul consult for it, might, but for late tedious experiences, have seemed unquestionable enough.