purgis Night of Goethe's Faust, the picture of life without law-there if any where the real human history and power fades into the intangible; human destiny becomes than ever still more inscrutable; the restless spirit demands in the midst of excitement yet more; there every thing deceives us, and each object is beheld partly in glare and partly in gloom. Who has ever walked through a city and not experienced the feeling of profound mystery and awe; the walk through the excavated chambers of Nineveh, the presence of winged lions and colossal kings looking haughtily from the rock, what impression do they produce compared with the buildings filled with the stern and awful life of the present. And what is that life, and whither tends it?-these meetings so tumultuous and wild-these theories of human nature and destiny-this gaunt and famished poverty, and this overlaying of magnificence—this restless life that will not, cannot be silent-that demands to do and to be looked at while doing -this life reckless of all except itself, yet perpetually theorising and speculating this mighty woof, what robe is it weaving; for even while passing down among the hurrying crowds, each careless or care-worn passer-by must be regarded as throwing his shuttle across the loom of time. A terrific soul is indeed sleeping or ⚫waking in every vast collection of people; the only mode of disarming and redeeming that terrific spirit is an universal education, a moral soul education. We hear frequent mention of the spirit of the age; alas! without christian influence it is a terrific spirit. Power without conscience is ever and always terrible, but pitiable indeed is the condition of the man or men who in our own time behold the newlyawakened strength of humanity, and have yet no faith in the purpose of God with the human family; to such the spirit of the age is indeed a very Sioux or Pawnee, the decorated humanized incarnation of frenzy and change; only the man who has confidence in the presence of a Father overlooking the world and the tendencies of humanity as beneath his guidance, can with a cheerful congratulation hail the changes that wait upon the rolling year, and walk calm and unperturbed amidst the fearful and multiplying prophecies of the mighty city-to such an one the age will be fraught with no terror; nay it sees the spirit of the age with joy, in the expanding soul of humanity, in lightnings striking down the throne of tyranny or altar of priestcraft; in fertilizing showers, wakening arts and sciences, and bidding them move to bless the people, see it in the distance erecting the home of man on deserts where the panther roamed, on heights where the wild bird built its nest or nearer home with indignation repelling the claims of the most ancient antiquity, revising the laws of property, the creeds of religion, the rights of the senator; making the whole land a temple, an university, a lectureroom, a parliament; giving birth to opinion and making it free and prevalent as the national atmosphere; cancelling the indentures of hereditary monarchs, governors, and teachers, learning all languages, and translating their stores, exploring every ocean and cave, analysing all substances, ransacking all libraries, tearing the parchments and melting the seal, pushing aside, as if but of yesterday, the most haughty ancients of the earth, yet making every discovery conducive to the health, the comfort, the freedom of man. Conservative guilds and corporations stand fearful and shuddering, praying for protection from the fearful spirit of the age; but the faithful soul beholds in it, occasionally erratic or grotesque though it be, no destructive terrorist, but the health-giving, freedom-bringing spirit of the universe and of the times, performing a strange work, but a good one, erecting its marvellous and mighty creations in mystery, yet not the less obeying the finger of the great good Father. To such the language of one who saw further down into the following centuries than most, yet who seems to have been sublimely touched by the shadows on the mist of the present, will not seem an inappropriate apostrophe : "The limits of the sphere of dream, To the wide the desert waste. *Goethe's Faust, Shelley's Translation. CHAPTER IV. THE ARCADIAS OF ENGLAND. PROLOGUES OF QUOTATIONS. "A step of improvement in manufactures alone can give rise to an onward step in agriculture, and just because a method has been devised for the fabrication of as many yards of cloth by fewer hands, soils of poorer out-field than any that had yet been reached may now be profitably entered upon. An improvement in the form of the stocking machine may, as well as an improvement in the form of the plough, bring many an else unreclaimed acre within the reach of cultivation. The actual and historical process that has taken place, we believe to be as follows:-The labourers of our day work harder than before, but live better than before-they at once toil more strenuously and live more plentifully-putting forth more strength, but withal drawing the remuneration of a larger and more liberal sustenance." DR. CHALMERS. "When the poets of the last century were pleased to describe our village scenes as so many regions of Arcadia, and our village groups as so many models of pastoral simplicity and innocence, they could not have been insensible that they were giving a false character to the country, that they might minister to the false taste of the town. The natural had no place either in the descriptions which were thus published, or in the society to which they were addressed. It was a kind of poetry in which art and elaboration were in the place of truth and nature. It imputed to rustics the puling sentiments which had become naturalised at St. James's. It consisted for the most part, of a paltry compliment offered by the pensioned poet to the conventional follies of his courtly patrons." DR. VAUGHAN, "AGE OF GREAT CITIES." |