aks of its progress in art and science and literature with
satisfaction. There are the Records of the Philosophical Societies, and
the public Eulogies of Great Men! It is the good Adam contemplating his
own virtue. "Yes, we have done great deeds, and sung divine songs, which
shall never die"--that is, as long as we can remember them. The learned
societies and great men of Assyria--where are they? What youthful
philosophers and experimentalists we are! There is not one of my readers
who has yet lived a whole human life. These may be but the spring months
in the life of the race. If we have had the seven-years' itch, we have
not seen the seventeen-year locust yet in Concord. We are acquainted
with a mere pellicle of the globe on which we live. Most have not delved
six feet beneath the surface, nor leaped as many above it. We know not
where we are. Beside, we are sound asleep nearly half our time. Yet we
esteem ourselves wise, and have an established order on the surface.
Truly, we are deep thinkers, we are ambitious spirits! As I stand over
the insect crawling amid the pine needles on the forest floor, and
endeavoring to conceal itself from my sight, and ask myself why it will
cherish those humble thoughts, and bide its head from me who might,
perhaps, be its benefactor, and impart to its race some cheering
information, I am reminded of the greater Benefactor and Intelligence
that stands over me the human insect.

There is an incessant influx of novelty into the world, and yet we
tolerate incredible dulness. I need only suggest what kind of sermons
are still listened to in the most enlightened countries. There are such
words as joy and sorrow, but they are only the burden of a psalm, sung
with a nasal twang, while we believe in the ordinary and mean. We think
that we can change our clothes only. It is said that the British
Empire is very large and respectable, and that the United States are a
first-rate power. We do not believe that a tide rises and falls behind
every man which can float the British Empire like a chip, if he should
ever harbor it in his mind. Who knows what sort of seventeen-year locust
will next come out of the ground? The government of the world I live in
was not framed, like that of Britain, in after-dinner conversations over
the wine.

The life in us is like the water in the river. It may rise this year
higher than man has ever known it, and flood the parched uplands; even
this may be the eventful ye