member of the legislature at Westminster or at Washington,
speaks and votes for thousands. Show us the constituency, and the now
invisible channels by which the senator is made aware of their wishes,
the crowd of practical and knowing men, who, by correspondence or
conversation, are feeding him with evidence, anecdotes, and estimates,
and it will bereave his fine attitude and resistance of something of
their impressiveness. As Sir Robert Peel and Mr. Webster vote, so
Locke and Rousseau think for thousands; and so there were fountains
all around Homer, Menu, Saadi, or Milton, from which they drew;
friends, lovers, books, traditions, proverbs,--all perished,--which,
if seen, would go to reduce the wonder. Did the bard speak with
authority? Did he feel himself overmatched by any companion? The
appeal is to the consciousness of the writer. Is there at last in his
breast a Delphi whereof to ask concerning any thought or thing,
whether it be verily so, yea or nay? and to have answer, and to rely
on that? All the debts which such a man could contract to other wit,
would never disturb his consciousness of originality: for the
ministrations of books, and of other minds, are a whiff of smoke to
that most private reality with which he has conversed.

It is easy to see that what is best written or done by genius, in the
world, was no man's work, but came by wide social labour, when a
thousand wrought like one, sharing the same impulse. Our English Bible
is a wonderful specimen of the strength and music of the English
language. But it was not made by one man, or at one time; but
centuries and churches brought it to perfection; There never was a
time when there was not some translation existing. The Liturgy,
admired for its energy and pathos, is an anthology of the piety of
ages and nations, a translation of the prayers and forms of the
Catholic church,--these collected, too, in long periods, from the
prayers and meditations of every saint and sacred writer, all over the
world. Grotius makes the like remark in respect to the Lord's Prayer,
that the single clauses of which it is composed were already in use,
in the time of Christ, in the rabbinical forms. He picked out the
grains of gold. The nervous language of the Common Law, the impressive
forms of our courts, and the precision and substantial truth of the
legal distinctions, are the contribution of all the sharp-sighted,
strong-minded men who have lived in the countries where thes