, cheapness, and rapidity
of both: diffusing, with them, information and intelligence almost as
quickly and as freely as if borne by the winds; while the electrical wires
outstrip them in velocity, rivaling in rapidity even thought itself.

The joint effect of all this has been a great increase and diffusion of
knowledge; and, with this, an impulse to progress and civilization
heretofore unexampled in the history of the world, accompanied by a mental
energy and activity unprecedented.

To all these causes, public opinion, and its organ, the press, owe their
origin and great influence. Already they have attained a force in the more
civilized portions of the globe sufficient to be felt by all governments,
even the most absolute and despotic. But, as great as they now are, they
have, as yet, attained nothing like their maximum force. It is probable
that not one of the causes which have contributed to their formation and
influence, has yet produced its full effect; while several of the most
powerful have just begun to operate; and many others, probably of equal or
even greater force, yet remain to be brought to light.

When the causes now in operation have produced their full effect, and
inventions and discoveries shall have been exhausted--if that may ever
be--they will give a force to public opinion, and cause changes, political
and social, difficult to be anticipated. What will be their final bearing,
time only can decide with any certainty.

That they will, however, greatly improve the condition of man ultimately,
it would be impious to doubt; it would be to suppose that the all-wise and
beneficent Being, the Creator of all, had so constituted man as that the
employment of the high intellectual faculties with which He has been
pleased to endow him, in order that he might develop the laws that control
the great agents of the material world, and make them subservient to his
use, would prove to him the cause of permanent evil, and not of permanent
good.

NOTE.--This selection is an extract from "A Disquisition on Government."
Mr. Calhoun expected to revise his manuscript before it was printed, but
death interrupted his plans.

XCVII. ENOCH ARDEN AT THE WINDOW. (347)

Alfred Tennyson, 1809-1892, was born in Somerby, Lincolnshire, England;
his father was a clergyman noted for his energy and physical stature.
Alfred, with his two older brothers, graduated at Trinity College,
Cambridge. His first volume of poems a