the consequences are widely different. The whirlwind that passes through a city, demolishes dwellings; the storm that sweeps over the moor, only purifies the air. As the ragings of the unchecked sea still have their law, and the blast of the volleying tempest moves through its appointed path, so there is there a reasoning method in the wildest madness of popular freedom. The unbridled license of democracy will work out a conservatism of its own; and with all their tossings, the waters will still pursue their channel. There is a notion abroad that the extension of the stern and severe habitudes of the age will banish the gentleness of sentiment, and the delicate interest of poetry. Nothing is more false: they will only give them vigour and robustness; as, of old, from the foaming sea sprang beauty, so from the dashing tumult of politics and trade there will be flashed forth a splendid energy of poetic interest. Those who have been accustomed to see a principle embodied in one form, may not easily remember it when it appears in others. They who have seen poetry dreaming along the still and crystal-misted valleys, may not recognise her in the gray-robed spirit of the storm. She can gird a sword upon her thigh, as well as slumber in the waving shade. In the trumpet's roar, and in the rush of armies, and in the dust and din of bare and iron effort, there is poetry. Force, and life, and action are the home of her dwelling."

"Doubtless, the throes of republican excitement will produce men who will rank with the mighty statesmen of times past. Almost the only specimen that we have yet had of the great men of democracy, is Napoleon. I mean, that, while the qualities by which the old race of politicians succeeded were such as could not have been triumphant except in a monarchy, the elements of Napoleon's power were such as a democracy-best furnishes. This much we may foresee, that the great men of our country must be something more than diplomatists; for the great men of our land must appear at the head of the government, and that is not the proper post for a diplomatist, as that station requires respect-producing

energy and dignity, rather than sagacity; he should be the second man, controlling the first. His place, then,

is in a monarchy, and not a republic; he should be prime minister, and not president. Hence, if the diplomatist of a ruling party ever be seen at the head of the administration, his failure may be confidently predicted."

"The source of the popularity of Napoleon," said Tyler," and of all those who have been the demigods of a multitude, lies in their activity; their restlessness; in their always doing something; in their always exciting and interesting the people; and constantly affording them something to talk, and think, and dream about. Such high and stimulating scenes as these men unfold to the nation, produce a mental intoxication. You may observe that vices and passions enslave mankind in proportion to the degree in which they fill the imagination."

"There is something," said I, "extremely interesting in the characters of those churchmen who mingled in the politics of Europe from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries, and showed to what intense force the human spirit may attain when it throws aside all the distractions of petty passions and interests, and consecrates its energies to one great purpose. Never has the power of the human intellect, or the might of the human will, been more augustly eminent."

"The history of those men should teach us that power is the offspring of purpose, and that success attends on resolution. The contemplation of these men placing themselves at the summit of greatness by the might of a stern determination, and carving their way to influence by the resistless force of firm intention, stirs us to the strength of great designs, and nerves our energies with strenuous vigour. We realise in their history the picture which has been drawn of one of those fixed and self-reliant men, whose purposes 'ne'er feel retiring ebb,' but the 'compulsive course' of whose unslackening efforts keeps due on till it attains success. He willed it, and became it. He must have

worked hard; and with tools, moreover, of his own invention and fashioning. He waved and whistled off ten thousand strong and importunate temptations; he dashed the dice-box from the jewelled hand of Chance, the cup from Pleasure's, and trod under foot the sorceries of each he ascended steadily the precipices of Danger, and looked down with intrepidity from the summit; he overawed Arrogance with sedateness; he seized by the horn and overleaped low Violence; and he fairly swung Fortune round.' It is in the power of all men to accomplish the same great end; for there is nothing in the universe of mind or matter that does not obey the talisman of a strenuous will. To be, we have only to resolve. Determination creates ability."

'I cannot but think," said I, "that there are natural differences in the intelligence of different persons. You shall see two brothers going hand in hand through the same circumstances of education and experience, and turning out very differently. There must be a variety in the substances, when the same light makes the ruby red and the sapphire blue."

66

Sir, you are deceiving yourself by a material simile. The brothers are not exposed to the same circumstances. Upon the mind of one of them there has fallen perhaps, in early youth, some pregnant seed of thought, gathered from some casual discourse of graybeards, or caught from some greeting in the streets, and that has dwelt there silently, and taken root and grown into a branching tree of principles and purposes, to which the other is wholly a stranger. If there be any native distinctions in the minds of men, they consist in the different dispositions to be great, and spirits to dare great things, which they bring with them into life; for I am convinced that there is none in the degrees of their understanding. Byron wrote, at twenty, no better than you or I could have written; but if he had been naturally gifted with genius, the proportion of his eminence during his minority and after it, must have been the same. To say that his genius was not developed during his boyhood, is idle; for if the power was there it must

have shown itself. Suffering, passion, and an intense desire to be great, generated in him the 'faculty divine.' Chatterton had fathomed the source of his own ability when he said, that man is equal to any thing, and that every thing might be accomplished by diligence and abstinence, and that God had sent his creatures into the world with arms long enough to reach any thing if they would bear the trouble of extending them. That the human character may be transformed, as well as the human intellect advanced, by the force of ardent resolution, may be attested by the history of the Great Frederick, qui, né facile, se rendit severe;' by the life of the greater Mirabeau, who passed from extreme susceptibility to rude insensibility."

66

6

If so much is within the scope of personal effort to accomplish, there must be some grievous error in the popular systems of education," said I; "for such results are but rarely elicited."

"In modern schools, there is too much instruction, and too little education. We should educate the intellect, not load the memory. We should inure the mind to exertion, to steadiness of observation and quickness of action; we should make it 'Prompt, intrépide á l'attaque;' send it forth, not with the cumbrous armour of knowledge, but with the stygian dye of inward strength. Boys are recommended to cultivate a taste for reading, and many respectable writers have extolled its benefits: I think nothing is more hurtful. Of reading which is read for the pleasure which it affords, but little is remembered; and the time is wasted, the judgment enfeebled, the passions stirred without any action upon the intellect, and the fancy filled with idle, and therefore harmful visions and aspirations. The tone of the mind thus habituated to receive the chewed food of another's thinkings, is weakened; and the intellectual and moral energies are spent in the unreal regions of memorising fancy. Men, so educated, drone away their days over their books, and sit soaking their intellects with the moist conclusions which others have distilled. The mind, instead of being made strong and agile, is laden

till it staggers under the weight; and on that field where the nimble spirit of a war-horse is required, it appears baggage-burdened with the panniers of a mule. If reading were accompanied by that keen and ever-flashing scrutiny of criticism necessary to make it profitable, but few would be eager to cultivate it. Book-threading is, I grant, a delicious amusement; but all serviceable exercises are laborious, and most easy ones injurious. As the matter now goes, I regard reading and revery as the opium of the mind."

"Your system," said I, "agrees pretty closely with the advice of Lord Bolingbroke, that men should not be taught what to think, but how to think. By-the-by, I am amazed at the neglect into which the writings of that great philosopher have fallen. If there be life in wisdom, or a soul in wit, or in sentences of magic beauty a force that makes itself to be remembered, his fame should never have passed away from the earth. There was that, both in his character and in his genius which addressed posterity, rather than the present, and yet his distinction died before him."

"It is indeed lamentable to see," said Mr. Tyler, "to how mean an influence of priestly prejudice his renown has been succumbed. His reputation, like his person, has been devoured by worms. But I cordially unite with you in yielding the profoundest homage to his greatness. Of all the lords of mind, none hath a larger state or loftier pace than he. The whole frame of his intellectual exhibition is marked by a grandness of conception, a majesty of mind, that is as rare as it is delightful; the natural high utterances of one that breathes a superior atmosphere of thought to that of ordinary men."

"He is the only infidel derider of man," said I, “from whose writings you come exalted, ennobled, and with added vigour in the cause of virtue. The most generous believer might read Bolingbroke, and in the spirit of his sentiments find nothing alien to the high hopings of the Christian heart. He looked on man with the scowl of a demon, and on truth with the smile of a