of mind, his want of knowledge, his hardships, temptations, and
discouragements.' If we turn to history, we are reminded of Thomas
Moore's lines--

By Tory Hume's seductive page beguiled,
We fancy Charles was just, and Stratford mild;
And Fox himself, with party pencil draws
Monmouth a hero 'for the good old cause!'
Then, rights are wrongs, and victories are defeats,
As French or English pride the tale repeats.

Thus, too, Macaulay remarks, that for many years every Whig historian
was anxious to prove that the old English government was all but
republican--every Tory, to prove it all but despotic. 'With such
feelings, both parties looked into the chronology of the middle ages.
Both readily found what they sought, and obstinately refused to see
anything but what they sought.' Accordingly, to see only one-half of
the evidence, you would conclude that the Plantagenets were as
absolute as the sultans of Turkey; to see only the other half, you
would conclude that they had as little real power as the Doges of
Venice: and both conclusions would be equally remote from the truth.

Carlyle justly affirms, that if that man is a benefactor to the world
who causes two ears of corn to grow where only one grew before, much
more is he a benefactor who causes two truths to grow up together in
harmony and mutual confirmation, where before only one stood solitary,
and, on that side at least, intolerant and hostile. Every genius rides
a winged horse; but all are apt to ride too fast. Plotinus, says
Emerson, 'believes only in philosophers; Fenelon, in saints; Pindar
and Byron, in poets. Read the haughty language in which Plato and the
Platonists speak of all men who are not devoted to their own shining
abstractions.' If genius is liable to such one-sidedness, the greater
the need of educational correctives to common-place minds. Hence the
overpursuit of any one subject may be hurtful, unless duly balanced by
countervailing forces. As the author of _Friends in Council_ says, a
human being, like a tree, if it is to attain to perfect symmetry, must
have light and air given to it from all quarters. This may be done
without making men superficial--without sanctioning the dissipation of
mere desultory reading. One or two great branches of science may be
systematically prosecuted, and others used in a more supplementary and
illustrative form. 'A number of one-sided men,' observes the same
writer, 'may make a great natio