whether it has ever been more
beautifully described than in the following passage:--

"Enough has been said, I think, to show that history contains
no mean treasures; that, as being the biography of a nation, it
partakes of the richness and variety of those elements which
make up a nation's life. Whatever there is of greatness in the
final cause of all human thought and action, God's glory and
man's perfection, that is the measure of the greatness of
history. Whatever there is of variety and intense interest in
human nature, in its elevation, whether proud as by nature, or
sanctified as by God's grace; in its suffering, whether blessed
or unblessed, a martyrdom or a judgment; in its strange
reverses, in its varied adventures, in its yet more varied
powers, its courage and its patience, its genius and its
wisdom, its justice and its love, that also is the measure of
the interest and variety of history. The treasures indeed are
ample, but we may more reasonably fear whether we may have
strength and skill to win them."

In passing we may observe, after Dr Arnold, that the most important
bearing of a particular institution upon the character of a nation is
not always limited to the effect which is most obvious; few who have
watched the proceedings in our courts of justice can doubt that, in
civil cases, the interference of a jury is often an obstacle, and
sometimes an insurmountable obstacle, to the attainment of justice. Dr
Arnold's remarks on this subject are entitled to great attention:--

"The effect," he says, "of any particular arrangement of the
judicial power, is seen directly in the greater or less purity
with which justice is administered; but there is a further
effect, and one of the highest importance, in its furnishing to
a greater or less portion of the nation one of the best means
of moral and intellectual culture--the opportunity, namely, of
exercising the functions of a judge. I mean, that to accustom a
number of persons to the intellectual exercise of attending to,
and weighing, and comparing evidence, and to the moral exercise
of being placed in a high and responsible situation, invested
with one of God's own attributes, that of judgment, and having
to determine with authority between truth and falsehood, right
and wrong, is to furnish them with very high mea