h, as our Humorist expresses it,--

'By geometric scale
Doth take the size of pots of ale;'

still more, of that altogether misdirected industry, which is seen
vigorously thrashing mere straw, there can nothing defensive be said.
In so far as the Germans are chargeable with such, let them take the
consequence. Nevertheless, be it remarked, that even a Russian steppe
has tumuli and gold ornaments; also many a scene that looks desert and
rock-bound from the distance, will unfold itself, when visited, into
rare valleys. Nay, in any case, would Criticism erect not only
finger-posts and turnpikes, but spiked gates and impassable barriers,
for the mind of man? It is written, 'Many shall run to and fro, and
knowledge shall be increased.' Surely the plain rule is, Let each
considerate person have his way, and see what it will lead to. For not
this man and that man, but all men make up mankind, and their united
tasks the task of mankind. How often have we seen some such
adventurous, and perhaps much-censured wanderer light on some
out-lying, neglected, yet vitally-momentous province; the hidden
treasures of which he first discovered, and kept proclaiming till the
general eye and effort were directed thither, and the conquest was
completed;--thereby, in these his seemingly so aimless rambles,
planting new standards, founding new habitable colonies, in the
immeasurable circumambient realm of Nothingness and Night! Wise man
was he who counselled that Speculation should have free course, and
look fearlessly towards all the thirty-two points of the compass,
whithersoever and howsoever it listed.

Perhaps it is proof of the stunted condition in which pure Science,
especially pure moral Science, languishes among us English; and how
our mercantile greatness, and invaluable Constitution, impressing a
political or other immediately practical tendency on all English
culture and endeavour, cramps the free flight of Thought,--that this,
not Philosophy of Clothes, but recognition even that we have no such
Philosophy, stands here for the first time published in our language.
What English intellect could have chosen such a topic, or by chance
stumbled on it? But for that same unshackled, and even sequestered
condition of the German Learned, which permits and induces them to
fish in all manner of waters, with all manner of nets, it seems
probable enough, this abstruse Inquiry might, in spite of the results
it leads to, have