is much less controversy about them. Now suppose them to attain to such a pitch of mastery, that every arrow shall go straight to the bull's eye: they will all coincide. This may help us to understand how the differences of the wise and good, which are often so perplexing and distracting now, will be reconciled hereafter; when the film of mortality is drawn away from their eyes, and their faculties are strengthened to see truth, and to strive after it, and to reach it.

a.

Only if we would hit the truth, we must indeed aim at it. Else the more we improve in handling the bow, the further away from it shall we send our arrows. As for that numerous class, who, instead of aiming at truth, have merely aimed at glorifying themselves, their arrows will be found to have recoiled, like that of Adrastus in Statius, and to be sticking their deadly barbed points into their own souls. Alas! there are many such pseudo-Sebastians walking about, bristled with suicidal darts, living martyrs to their own vainglory.

U.

Heroism is active genius; genius, contemplative heroism. Heroism is the self-devotion of genius manifesting itself in action ; ἡ θείας τινος φύσεως évépyela, as a Greek would more closely have defined it.

These are the men to employ, in peace as well

as in war, the men who are afraid of no fire, except hell-fire.

How few, how easily to be counted up, are the cardinal names in the history of the human mind! Thousands and tens of thousands spend their days in the preparations which are to speed the predestined change, in gathering and amassing the materials which are to kindle and give light and warmth, when the fire from heaven has descended on them. But when that flame has once blazed up, its very intensity too often shortens its duration. Many, yea without number, are the sutlers and pioneers, the engineers and artisans, who attend the march of intellect. Many are busied in building and fitting up and painting and emblazoning the chariot; others in lessening the friction. of the wheels: others move forward in detachments, and level the way it is to pass over, and cut down the obstacles which would impede its progress. And these too have their reward. If so be they labour diligently in their calling, not only will they enjoy that calm contentment which diligence in the lowliest task never fails to win; not only will the sweat of their brows be sweet, and the sweetener of the rest that follows; but, when the victory is at last achieved, they come in for a share in the glory: even as the meanest soldier who fought at Marathon or at Leipsic became a sharer in the glory of those saving days; and within his own household circle, the

approbation of which approaches the nearest to that of an approving conscience, was lookt upon as the representative of all his brother heroes, and could tell such tales as made the tear glisten on the cheek of his wife, and lit up his boy's eyes with an unwonted sparkling eagerness.

At length however, when the appointed hour is arrived, and everything is ready, the master-mind leaps into the seat that is awaiting him, and fixes his eye on heaven; and the selfmoving wheels roll onward; and the road prepared for them is soon past over; and the pioneers and sutlers are left behind; and the chariot advances further and further, until it has reacht its goal, and stands as an inviting beacon on the top of some distant mountain.

Hereupon the same labours recur. Thousands after thousands must toil to attain on foot to the spot, to which genius had been borne in an instant; and much time is spent in clearing and paving the road, so that the multitude may be able to go along it,-in securing for all by reflexion and analysis, what the prophetic glance of intuition had descried at once. And then again the like preparations are to be made for the advent of a second seer, of another epoch-making mastermind. Thus, when standing on the beach, you may see the Tрikvμía, as the Greeks called it, outrunning, not only the waves that went before, but those that come after it: and you may sometimes have to wait long, ere any reaches the mark, which

some mighty over-arching onrushing billow, some fluctus decumanus has left.

That there have been such third and tenth waves among men, will be apparent to those who call to mind how far the main herd of metaphysicans are still lagging behind Plato; and how, for near two thousand years, they were almost all content to feed on the crumbs dropt from Aristotle's table. It is proved by the fact, that even in physical science, the progress of which, it is now thought, nothing can check or retard,—and in which, more than in any other province of human activity, whatever knowledge is once gained forms a lasting fund for afterages to inherit and trade with, not a single step was taken, not a single discovery made, as Whewell observes, either in mechanics or hydrostatics, between the time of Archimedes and of Galileo. Indeed the whole of Whewell's History of Science so strikingly illustrates the foregoing remarks, that, had they not been written long before, they might be supposed to be drawn immediately from it. The very plan of his work, which his subject forces upon him, divides itself in like manner into preludes, or periods of preparation, inductive epochs, when the great discoveries are made, and sequels, during which those discoveries are more fully establisht and developt, and more generally diffused.

Or, if we look to poetry,--to which the law of progression no way applies, any more than to beauty, but which, like beauty, is mostly in its

prime during the youth of a nation, and then is wont to decline, so entirely do great poets soar beyond the reach, and almost beyond the ken of their own age, that we have only lately begun to have a right understanding of Shakspeare, or of the masters of the Greek drama,-to discern the principles which actuated them, the purposes they had in view, the laws they acknowledged, and the ideas they wisht to impersonate.

And is the case different in the arts? What do we see in architecture, but two ideas shining upon us out of the depth of bygone ages, that of the Greek temple, and that of the Gothic minster? Each of these was a living idea, and, as such, capable of manifold development, expansion, and modification. Nor were they unwilling to descend from their sacred throne, and to adapt themselves to the various wants of civil life. But what architectural idea has sprung up since? These are both the offspring of dark ages: what have we given birth to, since we dreamt we had a sun within us? One might almost suppose that, as Dryden says, in his stupid epigram on Milton, "The force of Nature could no further go;" so that, "To make a third, we joined the other two." If of late years there has been any improvement, it consists solely in this, that we have separated the incongruous elements, and have tried to imitate each style in a manner more in accord with its original principle: although both of them are ill suited for divers