it is the truest part of your being. It is
even truer than your consciences. A man's conscience may be utterly
perverted and led astray; but so long as the feelings of romance endure
within us, they are unerring,--they are as true to what is right and
lovely as the needle to the north; and all that you have to do is to add
to the enthusiastic sentiment, the majestic judgment--to mingle prudence
and foresight with imagination and admiration, and you have the perfect
human soul. But the great evil of these days is that we try to destroy
the romantic feeling, instead of bridling and directing it. Mark what
Young says of the men of the world:--

"They, who think nought so strong of the romance,
So rank knight-errant, as a real friend."

And they are right. True friendship is romantic, to the men of the
world--true affection is romantic--true religion is romantic; and if you
were to ask me who of all powerful and popular writers in the cause of
error had wrought most harm to their race, I should hesitate in reply
whether to name Voltaire, or Byron, or the last most ingenious and most
venomous of the degraded philosophers of Germany, or rather Cervantes,
for he cast scorn upon the holiest principles of humanity--he, of all
men, most helped forward the terrible change in the soldiers of Europe,
from the spirit of Bayard to the spirit of Bonaparte,[15] helped to
change loyalty into license, protection into plunder, truth into
treachery, chivalry into selfishness; and, since his time, the purest
impulses and the noblest purposes have perhaps been oftener stayed by
the devil, under the name of Quixotism, than under any other base name
or false allegation.

[Footnote 15: I mean no scandal against the _present_ Emperor of the
French, whose truth has, I believe, been as conspicuous in the late
political negotiations, as his decision and prudence have been
throughout the whole course of his government.]

33. Quixotism, or Utopianism; that is another of the devil's pet words.
I believe the quiet admission which we are all of us so ready to make,
that, because things have long been wrong, it is impossible they should
ever be right, is one of the most fatal sources of misery and crime from
which this world suffers. Whenever you hear a man dissuading you from
attempting to do well, on the ground that perfection is "Utopian;"
beware of that man. Cast the word out of your dictionary altogether.
There is no need for it. Things