untains,
he beheld the race that breathe the lurid air of the volcanoes, and hide
from the light of heaven; on every leaf in the numberless forests, in
every drop of the unmeasured seas, he surveyed its separate and swarming
world; far up, in the farthest blue, he saw orb upon orb ripening into
shape, and planets starting from the central fire, to run their day
of ten thousand years. For everywhere in creation is the breath of the
Creator, and in every spot where the breath breathes is life! And alone,
in the distance, the lonely man beheld his Magian brother. There,
at work with his numbers and his Cabala, amidst the wrecks of Rome,
passionless and calm, sat in his cell the mystic Mejnour,--living on,
living ever while the world lasts, indifferent whether his knowledge
produces weal or woe; a mechanical agent of a more tender and a wiser
will, that guides every spring to its inscrutable designs. Living
on,--living ever,--as science that cares alone for knowledge, and halts
not to consider how knowledge advances happiness; how Human Improvement,
rushing through civilisation, crushes in its march all who cannot
grapple to its wheels ("You colonise the lands of the savage with the
Anglo-Saxon,--you civilise that portion of THE EARTH; but is the SAVAGE
civilised? He is exterminated! You accumulate machinery,--you increase
the total of wealth; but what becomes of the labour you displace? One
generation is sacrificed to the next. You diffuse knowledge,--and
the world seems to grow brighter; but Discontent at Poverty replaces
Ignorance, happy with its crust. Every improvement, every advancement in
civilisation, injures some, to benefit others, and either cherishes
the want of to-day, or prepares the revolution of to-morrow."--Stephen
Montague.); ever, with its Cabala and its number, lives on to change, in
its bloodless movements, the face of the habitable world!

And, "Oh, farewell to life!" murmured the glorious dreamer. "Sweet, O
life! hast thou been to me. How fathomless thy joys,--how rapturously
has my soul bounded forth upon the upward paths! To him who forever
renews his youth in the clear fount of Nature, how exquisite is the mere
happiness TO BE! Farewell, ye lamps of heaven, and ye million tribes,
the Populace of Air. Not a mote in the beam, not an herb on the
mountain, not a pebble on the shore, not a seed far-blown into the
wilderness, but contributed to the lore that sought in all the true
principle of life, the