d study. In his splendid library he
consulted the sages of antiquity, and conferred with them on the
nature of existence and of the social duties; while in his laboratory
or his dissecting-room he occasionally flattered himself he might
discover the great secret which had perplexed generations. The
consequence of a year passed in this severe discipline was
unfortunately a complete recurrence to those opinions that he had
early imbibed, and which now seemed fixed in his conviction beyond the
hope or chance of again faltering. In politics a violent republican,
and an advocate, certainly a disinterested one, of a complete equality
of property and conditions, utterly objecting to the very foundation
of our moral system, and especially a strenuous antagonist of
marriage, which he taught himself to esteem not only as an unnatural
tie, but as eminently unjust towards that softer sex, who had been
so long the victims of man; discarding as a mockery the received
revelation of the divine will; and, if no longer an atheist,
substituting merely for such an outrageous dogma a subtle and shadowy
Platonism; doctrines, however, which Herbert at least had acquired by
a profound study of the works of their great founder; the pupil of
Doctor Masham at length deemed himself qualified to enter that world
which he was resolved to regenerate; prepared for persecution, and
steeled even to martyrdom.

But while the doctrines of the philosopher had been forming, the
spirit of the poet had not been inactive. Loneliness, after all, the
best of Muses, had stimulated the creative faculty of his being.
Wandering amid his solitary woods and glades at all hours and seasons,
the wild and beautiful apparitions of nature had appealed to a
sympathetic soul. The stars and winds, the pensive sunset and the
sanguine break of morn, the sweet solemnity of night, the ancient
trees and the light and evanescent flowers, all signs and sights and
sounds of loveliness and power, fell on a ready eye and a responsive
ear. Gazing on the beautiful, he longed to create it. Then it was that
the two passions which seemed to share the being of Herbert appeared
simultaneously to assert their sway, and he resolved to call in his
Muse to the assistance of his Philosophy.

Herbert celebrated that fond world of his imagination, which he wished
to teach men to love. In stanzas glittering with refined images, and
resonant with subtle symphony, he called into creation that society