n will seem to discern a glory in the countenance of the
age, which is but the reflection of its own effulgence.

He will possess, therefore, in the creative power of generous hope, a
preparation for illusory and exaggerated admiration of the age in which
he lives: and this predisposition will meet with many favouring
circumstances, when he has grown up under a system of education like
ours, which (as perhaps all education must that is placed in the hands
of a distinct and embodied class, who therefore bring to it the peculiar
and hereditary prejudices of their order) has controlled his imagination
to a reverence of former times, with an unjust contempt of his own. For
no sooner does he break loose from this control, and begin to feel, as
he contemplates the world for himself, how much there is surrounding him
on all sides that gratifies his noblest desires, than there springs up
in him an indignant sense of injustice, both to the age and to his own
mind; and he is impelled warmly and eagerly to give loose to the
feelings that have been held in bondage, to seek out and to delight in
finding excellence that will vindicate the insulted world, while it
justifies, too, his resentment of his own undue subjection, and exalts
the value of his new found liberty.

Add to this, that secluded as he has been from knowledge, and, in the
imprisoning circle of one system of ideas, cut off from his share in the
thoughts and feelings that are stirring among men, he finds himself, at
the first steps of his liberty, in a new intellectual world. Passions
and powers which he knew not of start up in his soul. The human mind,
which he had seen but under one aspect, now presents to him a thousand
unknown and beautiful forms. He sees it, in its varying powers, glancing
over nature with restless curiosity, and with impetuous energy striving
for ever against the barriers which she has placed around it; sees it
with divine power creating from dark materials living beauty, and fixing
all its high and transported fancies in imperishable forms. In the world
of knowledge, and science, and art, and genius, he treads as a stranger:
in the confusion of new sensations, bewildered in delights, all seems
beautiful; all seems admirable. And therefore he engages eagerly in the
pursuit of false or insufficient philosophy; he is won by the
allurements of licentious art; he follows with wonder the irregular
transports of undisciplined imagination. Nor, where the