l, graceful and pleasant as roses,
we must thank God that such things can be and are, and not turn sourly
on the angel and say 'Crump is a better man with his grunting resistance
to all his native devils.'

Not less conspicuous is the preponderance of nature over will in all
practical life. There is less intention in history than we ascribe to
it. We impute deep-laid far-sighted plans to Caesar and Napoleon;
but the best of their power was in nature, not in them. Men of an
extraordinary success, in their honest moments, have always sung, 'Not
unto us, not unto us.' According to the faith of their times they have
built altars to Fortune, or to Destiny, or to St. Julian. Their success
lay in their parallelism to the course of thought, which found in them
an unobstructed channel; and the wonders of which they were the visible
conductors seemed to the eye their deed. Did the wires generate the
galvanism? It is even true that there was less in them on which they
could reflect than in another; as the virtue of a pipe is to be smooth
and hollow. That which externally seemed will and immovableness was
willingness and self-annihilation. Could Shakspeare give a theory of
Shakspeare? Could ever a man of prodigious mathematical genius convey to
others any insight into his methods? If he could communicate that
secret it would instantly lose its exaggerated value, blending with the
daylight and the vital energy the power to stand and to go.

The lesson is forcibly taught by these observations that our life might
be much easier and simpler than we make it; that the world might be
a happier place than it is; that there is no need of struggles,
convulsions, and despairs, of the wringing of the hands and the gnashing
of the teeth; that we miscreate our own evils. We interfere with the
optimism of nature; for whenever we get this vantage-ground of the past,
or of a wiser mind in the present, we are able to discern that we are
begirt with laws which execute themselves.

The face of external nature teaches the same lesson. Nature will not
have us fret and fume. She does not like our benevolence or our learning
much better than she likes our frauds and wars. When we come out of
the caucus, or the bank, or the Abolition-convention, or the
Temperance-meeting, or the Transcendental club into the fields and
woods, she says to us, 'So hot? my little Sir.'

We are full of mechanical actions. We must needs intermeddle and have
things in our own