the aids and arts of education and favorable fortune. He is on his way to the Mecca of his ancestral and national faith, with a well-guarded and numerous procession of merchants and fellow-pilgrims, on the estab5 lished track. At the close of day the caravan has halted: the full moon rises on the desert: and he strays forth alone, out of sight but to no unsafe distance; and chance leads him, too, to the same oasis or islet of verdure on the sea of sand. He wanders at 10 leisure in its maze of beauty and sweetness, and thrids his way through the odorous and flowering thickets. into open spots of greenery, and discovers statues and memorial characters, grottos and refreshing caves. But the moonshine, the imaginative poesy of Nature, 15 spreads its soft shadowy charm over all, conceals distances, and magnifies heights and modifies relations, and fills up vacuities with its own whiteness, counterfeiting substance; and where the dense shadows lie, makes solidity imitate hollowness, and gives to all 20 objects a tender visionary hue and softening. Interpret the moonlight and the shadows as the peculiar genius and sensibility of the individual's own spirit; and here you have the other sort; a Mystic, an enthusiast of a nobler breed-a Fénelon. But the residen25 tiary, or the frequent visitor of the favored spot, who has scanned its beauties by steady daylight, and mastered its true proportions and lineaments, -he will discover that both pilgrims have indeed been there. He will know, that the delightful dream, which the 30 latter tells, is a dream of truth; and that even in the bewildered tale of the former there is truth mingled with the dream.-Aids to Reflection, i. 353.

It seems a paradox only to the unthinking, and it is a fact that none, but the unread in history, will deny, that in periods of popular tumult and innovation the more abstract a notion is, the more readily has it been found to combine, the closer has appeared its affinity, 5 with the feelings of a people and with all their immediate impulses to action. At the commencement of the French Revolution, in the remotest villages every tongue was employed in echoing and enforcing the almost geometrical abstractions of the physiocratic 10 politicians and economists. The public roads were crowded with armed enthusiasts disputing on the inalienable sovereignty of the people, the imprescriptible laws of the pure reason, and the universal constitution, which, as rising out of the nature and rights of man as 15 man, all nations alike were under the obligation of adopting. Turn over the fugitive writings, that are still extant, of the age of Luther; peruse the pamphlets and loose sheets that came out in flights during the reign of Charles I. and the Republic; and you 20 will find in these one continued comment on the aphorism of Lord Bacon (a man assuredly sufficiently acquainted with the extent of secret and personal influence), that the knowledge of the speculative principles of men in general between the age of twenty 25 and thirty, is the one great source of political prophecy. And Sir Philip Sidney regarded the adoption of one set of principles in the Netherlands, as a proof of the divine agency, and the fountain of all the events and successes of that Revolution.-Aids to Reflection, 30 i. 28.

Aphorisms, Sentences, and Sbort Sayings.

I HAVE never known a trader in philanthropy, who was not wrong in heart somewhere or other. Individuals so distinguished are usually unhappy in their family relations,-men not benevolent or beneficent 5 to individuals, but almost hostile to them, yet lavishing money, and labor, and time, on the race, the abstract notion. The cosmopolitism which does not spring out of, and blossom upon, the deep-rooted stem of nationality or patriotism, is a spurious and rotten. 10 growth.-Table Talk, vi. 474.

In wonder all philosophy began; in wonder it ends; and admiration fills up the interspace. But the first wonder is the off-spring of ignorance: the last is the parent of adoration. The first is the birth-throe of 15 our knowledge; the last is its euthanasy and apotheosis. -Aids to Reflection, i. 254.

To carry on the feelings of childhood into the powers of manhood, to combine the child's sense of wonder and novelty with the appearances which every 20 day for perhaps forty years has rendered familiar,

With sun and moon and stars throughout the year,

And man and woman

this is the character and privilege of genius, and one

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of the marks which distinguish genius from talent. And so to represent familiar objects as to awaken the minds of others to a like freshness of sensation concerning them that constant accompaniment of mental, no less than of bodily, health-to the same modest ques- 5 tioning of a self-discovered and intelligent ignorance, which, like the deep and massy foundations of a Roman bridge, forms half of the whole structure— (prudens interrogatio dimidium scientiæ, says Lord Bacon)—this is the prime merit of genius, and its 10 most unequivocal mode of manifestation.-The Friend, ii. 104.

In times of old, books were as religious oracles; as literature advanced, they next became venerable preceptors; they then descended to the rank of instruct- 15 ive friends; and, as their number increased, they sank still lower to that of entertaining companions; and at present they seem degraded into culprits to hold up their hands at the bar of every self-elected, yet not the less peremptory, judge, who chooses to write from 20 humor or interest, from enmity or arrogance, and to abide the decision "of him that reads in malice, or him that reads after dinner."-Biographia Literaria, iii. 183.

Until you understand a writer's ignorance, presume 25 yourself ignorant of his understanding.—Biographia Literaria, iii. 183.

The Earth, with its scarred face, is the symbol of the Past; the Air and Heaven, of Futurity.- Table Talk, vi. 277.

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The people of all other nations but the Jewish seem to look backward, and also to exist for the present; but in the Jewish scheme everything is prospective and preparatory; nothing, however trifling, is done for 5 itself alone, but all is typical of something yet to come. -Table Talk, vi. 280.

I wish our clever young poets would remember my homely definitions of prose and poetry; that is, prose= words in their best order;-poetry=the best words in Io the best order.-Table Talk, vi. 293.

15

Swift was anima Rabelaisii habitans in sicco,—the soul of Rabelais dwelling in a dry place.-Table Talk, vi. 334.

Every man is born an Aristotelian or a Platonist. I do not think it possible that anyone born an Aristotelian can become a Platonist; and I am sure no born Platonist can ever change into an Aristotelian. They are the two classes of men, beside which it is next to impossible to conceive a third. The one considers 20 reason a quality, or attribute; the other considers it a power. I believe that Aristotle never could get to understand what Plato meant by an idea. There is a passage, indeed, in the Eudemian Ethics which looks like an exception; but I doubt not of its being spuri25 ous, as that whole work is supposed by some to be. With Plato ideas are constitutive in themselves.

Aristotle was, and still is, the sovereign lord of the understanding, the faculty judging by the senses.