tion, as yet we know as nothing; in this department we have much to discover, and almost all to perform ; and almost all our attempts at civilization will fail which are not founded on this highest department of our nature. The youthfulness of our civilization is attested by the many millions of our race as yet uncivilized at all. Now, what boundless wastes and tracts of land are there without a temple or a throne, the region of the mighty forest and the inaccessible jungle, the haunt of the cobra and the tiger-now, while writing or reading, what clans, that we have never heard of, rush together in fight-what millions of lonely hunters pursue their way across the prairie and the mountain, wrapt only in the savage skin, with the rude weapon in their hand for a poor defence what myriads enter the temples of cruelty and lust, and shrink from the blaze that glitters along the marble with strange emotions, or transfix themselves in the agonistic posture of cruel devotion or superstition. Coming nearer home, what thousands lie confined in cells, where tyrants immerge the brave, waiting for the hour that shall bring the relief of death, yet leave behind them the memory of their sufferings, a gleam to lighten posterity-what thousands, slaves of cupidity, drive on the unheeding hour, and pray from the wretched cottage and the famished heart, "How long, oh Lord, how long." What thousands of those who would deem themselves affronted if their civilization were called in question, tread the unmeaning round of old opinions, wrap themselves warmly in the robe of thread-bare pre

judices, nor ever dare to cast a look at the benignant truth, for ever by their side, inviting them to better things and nobler attempts. These considerations, and innumerable others like these, will convince us that civilization is yet but young.

Perhaps, however, the most painful of all thoughts is that which reminds us of the fickleness and recklessness of those who might aid the progress and improvement of man. With what light and careless footsteps do we all walk amidst the ruins of time. The teachings of history and the voices of our race come to us, for the most part altogether in vain. If reflection ever comes upon us, for the most part it is like meditation amidst ruins, as transitory as intense; for there, too, the mind wears a sad unison with the scene; the broken and crumbling walls, the porch, the gallery, the prostrate tower, the long-resounding hall, the trampled court, the ivy-grown orchestra, the place where beauty trod along the dance, the spot where gallant cavaliers assembled, the resort of the witty, the learned, the brave, the profound-where gay idlers came to sport their little hour-where great statesmen retired to unbend from the toils and the cares of state-where kings laid aside the sceptre, and the ambitious became human-where the poet trolled his verses, and the orator recited his theme-where the future spread its plans for cogitation, and unavailing mournings for the past held the sanguine in check. All in ruins! There is nothing more eloquent in the universe than a wreathing ivy and a crumbling wall. But such ideas

and such scenery are very often only, like other eloquent discourses, impressive but for the moment: the most intense feeling does not rise to philosophic generalization—the most palpable fact does not often lead to the meditation on that of which the fact is, but the symbol and the ideal. What careless footsteps tread the most venerable aisles-what reckless hands turn aside the most ancient ioy-what vacant eyes linger over the most awful ruins-what inanimate forms move amidst scenes, thrilling by their own sublimity, and still more thrilling by the reminiscences they awaken and the consequences to which they lead. And such is history, such is humanity, such is the survey of our own position, and the great facts of our race; we read the sybil pages, we walk amidst ruins, the most memorable spots of departed renown, the most famous repositories of the valour and intelligence of other times. Of a hundred people who visit a ruin, probably ninety-nine will think it pretty, and will take some chaise, when the moon is at its height, to gaze in company upon it, it may be, participate in a feeling, but from which they derive no lesson; and a hundred who read history, ninety-nine read it as another novel, deriving nothing from it more than the pretty incident, the strange coincidence, the interesting character, the involuted plot. And is this all? Or what is history? What is the philosophy of society? Can any thing be derived from it? Great lessons for humanity. If any thing can be gained from history, it is this, that moral philosophy is an inductive science too, that it deals in causation and

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sequence, and that although it may be, from the subtlety of its facts, more intricate than other sciences, yet there is as sure a certainty about it as about any other. The great lesson of history is law, order, development; reading this in the solemn archives of past times, we are encouraged for the present and the future; not, indeed, that in the great actors of the globe we see only the puppets of necessity and fatalism; as little do we read this as that other lesson which some have learned from the aberrations of the human intellect that we are surrounded only by accident and chance. From all our knowledge of human consciousness; from all the thrones of past and present empire, this lesson is one of the most obvious, that, while man the king, and man the beggar, is left to the free exercise of his own will-will to which only the most intelligent reason and the strongest motive are legislators. There is a power that guides and disposes every event as it transpires, combines and arranges, so that in the end the most unlikely means become the very means best adapted to aid the progress of the human family, and to assist in the amelioration of the sorrows of the globe, and to make a social wrong-doing a stepping-stone to a wider and more positive right.

CHAPTER VI.

THE SINS OF THE PEOPLE.

PROLOGUES OF QUOTATIONS.

"On the other hand be this conceded: Where thou findest a lie that is oppressing thee, extinguish it. Lies exist there only to be extinguished; they wait and cry earnestly for extinction. Think well meanwhile in what spirit thou wilt do it: not with hatred, with headlong selfish violence, but in clearness of heart, with holy zeal, gently, almost with pity. Thou would'st not replace such extinct lie by a new lie, which a new injustice of thy own were; the parent of still other lies? Whereby the latter end of that business were worse than the beginning."

THOMAS CARLYLE.

"Though almost perishing with thirst, we should dash to the earth a goblet of wine in which we had seen a poison infused, though the poison were without taste or odour, or even added to the pleasures of both. Are not all our vices equally inapt to the universal end of human actions-the satisfaction of the agent? Are not their pleasures equally disproportionate to the after harm? Why are men the dupes of the present moment? Evidently because the conceptions are indistinct in the one case and vivid in the other; because all confused conceptions render us restless; and because restlessness can drive us to vices that promise no enjoyment, no, not even the cessation of that restlessness. This is indeed the dread punishment attached by nature to habitual vice, that its impulses wax as its motions wane."

COLERIDGE..