ity is night. Its actions are insane, like its whole
constitution. It persecutes a principle; it would whip a
right; it would tar and feather justice by inflicting fire and
outrage upon the houses and persons of those who have these.
It resembles the prank of boys who run with fire-engines to
put out the ruddy aurora streaming to the stars. The inviolate
spirit turns that spite against the wrong-doers. The martyr
cannot be dishonored. Every lash inflicted is a tongue of
fame; every prison a more illustrious abode; every burned book
or house enlightens the world; every suppressed or expunged
word reverberates through the earth from side to side. Hours
of sanity and consideration are always arriving to
communities, as to individuals, when the truth is seen, and
the martyrs are justified.--EMERSON.

I deny not but that it is of greatest concernment, in the
Church and Commonwealth, to have a vigilant eye how books
demean themselves, as well as men; and thereafter to confine,
imprison, and do sharpest justice on them as malefactors. For
books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency
of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny
they are; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the purest
efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred
them. I know they are as lively, and as vigorously productive,
as those fabulous dragon's teeth; and, being sown up and down,
may chance to spring up armed men. And yet, on the other hand,
unless wariness be used, as good almost kill a man as kill a
good book: who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's
image; but he who destroys a good book kills reason itself,
kills the image of God, as it were, in the eye. Many a man
lives a burden to the earth; but a good book is the precious
life-blood of a master-spirit, embalmed and treasured up on
purpose to a life beyond life.--MILTON.

Thus the Puritan was made up of two different men, the one all
self-abasement, penitence, gratitude, passion, the other
proud, calm, inflexible, sagacious. He prostrated himself in
the dust before his Maker; but he set his foot on the neck of
his king. In his devotional retirement, he prayed with
convulsions, and groans, and tears. He was half-maddened by
glorious or terrible illus