"Crimes
and Punishments," and at length abolished torture; while the French
advocates drew their principles from that book, rather than from their
national code, and our Blackstone quoted it with admiration! LOCKE and
VOLTAIRE, having written on "Toleration," have long made us tolerant. In
all such cases the authors were themselves entirely unconnected with their
subjects, except as speculative writers.

Such are the authors who become universal in public opinion; and it then
happens that the work itself meets with the singular fate which that great
genius SMEATON said happened to his stupendous "Pharos:" "The novelty
having yearly worn off, and the greatest real praise of the edifice being
that nothing has happened to it--nothing has occurred to keep the
talk of it alive." The fundamental principles of such works, after
having long entered into our earliest instruction, become unquestionable
as self-evident propositions; yet no one, perhaps, at this day can rightly
conceive the great merits of Locke's Treatises on "Education," and on
"Toleration;" or the philosophical spirit of Montesquieu, and works of
this high order, which first diffused a tone of thinking over Europe. The
principles have become so incorporated with our judgment, and so
interwoven with our feelings, that we can hardly now imagine the fervour
they excited at the time, or the magnanimity of their authors in the
decision of their opinions. Every first great monument of genius raises a
new standard to our knowledge, from which the human mind takes its impulse
and measures its advancement. The march of human thought through ages
might be indicated by every great work as it is progressively succeeded by
others. It stands like the golden milliary column in the midst of Rome,
from which all others reckoned their distances.

But a scene of less grandeur, yet more beautiful, is the view of the
solitary author himself in his own study--so deeply occupied, that
whatever passes before him never reaches his observation, while, working
more than twelve hours every day, he still murmurs as the hour strikes;
the volume still lies open, the page still importunes--"And whence all
this business?" He has made a discovery for us! that never has there been
anything important in the active world but what is reflected in the
literary--books contain everything, even the falsehoods and the crimes
which have been only projected by men! This solitary man of genius is
arrangin