CONTRARY CURRENTS IN THE GREAT STREAM OF SOCIETY AT THE SAME MOMENT.

MANKIND naturally understand and feel that when a great movement is to be impressed on the social body, that movement ought to be in a forward direction—and accordingly the professed aim of all revolutionary movements is to accelerate the progress of the political or social machine in the course which nature and providence have assigned as her proper path.

But then, when the movement has once been impressed, the body moved loses its character as a uniform and simply progressive object and assumes the character rather of a stream which has been suddenly and powerfully thrown into disorder-and in which, accordingly, every sort of current may be observed at the same moment, many of them being directly opposite to the rest---and quite away from the course which, it is confessed on all hands, the moving body ought to pursue. There are thus three leading currents which may be considered as comprising at such times the great mass of subordinate motions.

In the first place, there is one strong current hurrying the body forward, but only too precipitate in its course---and retaining little of that quiet and calmly progressive character which ought to be the leading characteristic of the movement.

On the other hand, there is an almost equally powerful current setting in precisely an opposite direction-for the waters have been dashed against rocks—and the motion produced, and which was meant to have been progressive, becomes in fact revolutionary -and has a more manifest and powerful tendency—or at least as evident and plain a tendency---to turn backwards as to hurry onwards in the natural direction of the stream. In plain language, and without a metaphor, in times of social commotion, when the idea of change has taken possession of men's minds,

there is always a powerful party in the community who strive to bring things back to what they once were---and to what is thus conceived to have been their best and purest, because primitive state, rather than to hurry them forward into altogether new and untried forms of existence. Often, however, it happens that the ancient forms of things, which are thus sought to be brought back again, were suited only to a less advanced state of public taste and opinion---and though they did excellently for that, are altogether unsuited to the more matured condition in which the public mind is found at the time when the change is proposed to be made ---and as we have thus two parties---two leading factions, in the state---one striving to carry things in an onward course faster and with less regard to circumstances and established customs than ought to be attempted, and the other striving with all its force to carry the institutions and opinions and tastes of the age to the state in which they were, it may be, some centuries before-the struggle between the two of necessity produces a scene of great commotion, and which affords many subjects of curious study to those who are in a condition to look calmly at the contention.

But then, in the third place, there are not only these two leading but opposite currents at the same moment in the stream---but there are also all sorts of side currents, each breaking over its own bank---and making the intermediate space between the leading movements, as perturbed and perplexed a scene as the most broken and precipitous portions of the more general currents. In plain words, every folly and eccentricity of opinion comes up in this tumult of the social state---and notions which, in times of quiet and when men's minds are in a more natural condition, would either never have been conceived, or would at least have been put in abeyance by the general feeling opposed to them, are fearlessly brought forward---and for a time gain, perhaps, somewhat of the applause that is considered as due only to original and ingenious, and highly important discoveries. In a word, it is not only true, that

"The scum comes upmost when the nation boils,"

but that such states of commotion in the body politic and social are those in which men of eccentric thoughts---or men of unsettled

modes of thinking find, for a time, a place of distinction, and are in a condition to give currency to their most obvious fooleries. It is probable that there is at all times some proportion of such characters existing in the social state---but it is only when the minds as well as the institutions of men are thrown into one vast state of uproar and uncertainty and confusion, that such men often rise for a time to the very summit of things, and that their most extravagant or obviously foolish notions are hailed with as much enthusiasm as if they were the offspring of the truest genius, or had at any rate, nothing whatever of the evident folly in their composition, which in better and calmer times would have prevented them from making even a momentary appearance on the scene of public life.

NATURE TO BE IMITATED IN THE PRODUCTION OF CHANGES.

THE following beautiful passage to this purpose is from an author who flourished about the middle of the sixteenth century---and whose works are in some instances characterized by a wisdom and liberality which we should scarcely have expected in a writer of his age. We often, however, are called to wonder, in perusing the works of old writers, at the strain of good sense into which they occasionally rise, even when their prevailing modes of thought are characterized by the illiberality and prejudices of the times in which they flourished. Such authors needed only to have existed in more advanced times to have taken their place among the most enlightened of their species---their errors being those of their age--whilst their occasional gleams of free thought and of pure sentiment indicate the native tendencies of the minds from which they proceeded---and which only required the advantages of a more matured culture to have brought forth in abundance the most valuable and enduring fruits.

The passage I am about to quote is from the work of Bodinus, entitled, De la Republique, which was printed about the year 1567---and which contains one chapter, the purpose of which is to shew, that" it is a most dangerous thing, at one and the same time, to change the form, laws, and customs of a commonwealth." The scope of the author's reasonings, says Mr. Stewart, to whose Preliminary Dissertation to the Encyclopedia Britannica I am indebted for the substance of this note, may be judged of from the concluding paragraph.

"We ought then, in the government of a well-ordered state and commonwealth, to imitate and follow the great God of Nature, who in all things proceedeth easily and by little and little ; who of a little seed causeth to grow a tree, for height and greatness, right admirable, and yet for all that insensibly; and still by means conjoining the extremities of nature, as by putting the

spring between winter and summer, and autumn betwixt summer and winter, moderating the extremities of the times and seasons, with the self-same wisdom which it useth in all other things also, and that in such sort, as that no violent force or course therein appeareth."

It is justly remarked by Mr. Stewart, that the substance of the above reflection has been compressed by Bacon into the following well-known aphorisms--.“ Time is the greatest innovator; shall we not then imitate Time ?---What innovator imitates Time, which innovates so silently as to mock the sense?"

On these passages from Bodinus and Bacon, however, we may be allowed to remark, that valuable as they unquestionably are as practical rules of conduct, both for individuals and communities, there still remains a question to be considered, namely, how far, and in what sense it is true that the changes produced by nature are always slow and gradual.

And, in answer to this question, we by no means wish to dispute the fact, when it is properly stated, and when the operations to which the passages refer are viewed in the just extension of their occurrence. It is more than probable that the operations, considered on this wide scale, are in all cases slow and gradual, and such as to mock the sense---as it is also indisputable as a practical rule, that the safest mode of conducting changes which men can follow is that suggested by this quiet alteration of the circumstances in which they gradually find themselves. But then, on the other hand, even in the operations of nature, so far as they are cognizable by man, there are what we call transition times---that is to say, times of disruption and violent alteration--by which times of apparent and lasting quiet have been succeeded, and which are destined to issue in the production of appearances considerably different from those which had existed before the connecting disorder took place. This, in fact, seems to be the law observed by nature, both in the case of individuals and of communities-though we are far from saying that if men understood the gradual alterations that are actually going forward, even in the most apparently quiet times, they would not be in a condition to render the transition less violent-and the subsequent alteration more accordant with preceding circumstances, than it is usually found to be.

But even in the works of material nature the same rule of pro