n be supposed to lurk, there are not
perhaps very many in whom it is developed. He whose talk is of oxen, will
probably dream of oxen: and the condition of human life, which yokes so
vast a majority to a daily experience incompatible with much elevation of
thought, oftentimes neutralizes the tone of grandeur in the reproductive
faculty of dreaming, even for those whose minds are populous with solemn
imagery. Habitually to dream magnificently, a man must have a
constitutional determination to reverie. This in the first place; and even
this, where it exists strongly, is too much liable to disturbance from the
gathering agitation of our present English life. Already, in this year
1845, what by the procession through fifty years of mighty revolutions
amongst the kingdoms of the earth, what by the continual development of
vast physical agencies--steam in all its applications, light getting under
harness as a slave for man,[1] powers from heaven descending upon
education and accelerations of the press, powers from hell (as it might
seem, but these also celestial) coming round upon artillery and the forces
of destruction--the eye of the calmest observer is troubled; the brain is
haunted as if by some jealousy of ghostly beings moving amongst us; and it
becomes too evident that, unless this colossal pace of advance can be
retarded, (a thing not to be expected,) or, which is happily more
probable, can be met by counter-forces of corresponding magnitude, forces
in the direction of religion or profound philosophy, that shall radiate
centrifugally against this storm of life so perilously centripetal towards
the vortex of the merely human, left to itself the natural tendency of so
chaotic a tumult must be to evil; for some minds to lunacy, for others to
a reagency of fleshly torpor. How much this fierce condition of eternal
hurry, upon an arena too exclusively human in its interests, is likely to
defeat the grandeur which is latent in all men, may be seen in the
ordinary effect from living too constantly in varied company. The word
_dissipation_, in one of its uses, expresses that effect; the action of
thought and feeling is too much dissipated and squandered. To
reconcentrate them into meditative habits, a necessity is felt by all
observing persons for sometimes retiring from crowds. No man ever will
unfold the capacities of his own intellect who does not at least chequer
his life with solitude. How much solitude, so much power. Or, i