rower or a wider circle. The
endless, and inexpressibly interesting, roll of history relies for its
meaning and its spirit upon the reality and substance of the subjects of
which it treats. Poetry, and all the wonders and endless varieties that
imagination creates, have this for their solution and their soul.

Sympathy is the only reality of which we are susceptible; it is our
heart of hearts: and, if the world had been "one entire and perfect
chrysolite," without this it would have been no more than one heap of
rubbish.

Observe the difference between what we know of the material world, and
what of the intellectual. The material goes on for ever according to
certain laws that admit of no discrimination. They proceed upon a first
principle, an impulse given them from the beginning of things. Their
effects are regulated by something that we call their nature: fire
burns; water suffocates; the substances around us that we call solid,
depend for their effects, when put in motion, upon momentum and gravity.

The principle that regulates the dead universe, "acts by general, not by
partial laws."

When the loose mountain trembles from on high,
Shall gravitation cease, if you go by?

No: the chain of antecedents and consequents proceeds in this respect
for ever the same. The laws of what we call the material world continue
unvaried. And, when the vast system of things was first set in motion,
every thing, so far as depends on inert matter, was determined to the
minutest particle, even to the end of time.

The material world, or that train of antecedents and consequents which
we understand by that term, goes on for ever in a train agreeably to the
impulse previously given. It is deaf and inexorable. It is unmoved by
the consideration of any accidents and miseries that may result, and
unalterable. But man is a source of events of a very different nature.
He looks to results, and is governed by views growing out of the
contemplation of them. He acts in a way diametrically opposite to the
action of inert matter, and "turns, and turns, and turns again," at the
impulse of the thought that strikes him, the appetite that prompts, the
passions that move, and the effects that he anticipates. It is therefore
in a high degree unreasonable, to make that train of inferences which
may satisfy us on the subject of material phenomena, a standard of what
we ought to think respecting the phenomena of mind.

It is further worth