ridiculously
inartistic monstrosity that the imagination of a great mind ever framed
out of chaos; but, after we have thoroughly enjoyed the play of his wit,
there the Paradise Lost remains, an undisturbed object in the
intellectual heavens, disdaining to justify its right to exist on any
other grounds than the mere fact of its existence; and, certainly, not
more ridiculous than Saturn himself, as we look at him through a great
equatorial telescope, swinging through space encumbered with his clumsy
ring, and his wrangling family of satellites, but still, in spite of
peculiarities on which M. Taine might exercise his wit until doomsday,
one of the most beautiful and sublime objects which the astronomer can
behold in the whole phenomena of the heavens.

Indeed, in reading criticisms on such durable poetic creations and
organizations as we have named, one is reminded of Sydney Smith's
delicious chaffing of his friend Jeffrey, on account of Jeffrey's
sensitiveness of literary taste, and his inward rage that events, men,
and books, outside of him, do not correspond to the exacting rules which
are the products of his own subjective and somewhat peevish
intelligence. "I like," says Sydney, "to tell you these things, because
you never do so well as when you are humbled and frightened, and, if
_you could be alarmed into the semblance of modesty_, you would charm
everybody; but remember my joke against you about the moon: 'D--n the
solar system! bad light--planets too distant--pestered with
comets--feeble contrivance; could make a better with great ease.'"

Now when a man, in whatever department or direction of thought his
activity is engaged, succeeds in organizing, or even welding together,
the materials on which he works, so that the product, as a whole, is
_visible_ to the mental eye, as a new creation or construction, he has
an immense advantage over all critics of his performance. Refined
reasonings are impotent to overthrow it; epigrams glance off from it, as
rifle-bullets rebound when aimed at a granite wall; and it stands erect
long after the reasonings and the epigrams are forgotten. Even when its
symmetry is destroyed by a long and destructive siege, a pile of stones
still remains, as at Fort Sumter, to attest what power of resistance it
opposed to all the resources of modern artillery.

If we look at Webster's greatest speeches, as, for instance, "The Reply
to Hayne," "The Constitution not a Compact between Sovereig