me rocky channel which will
control it; or it may meet with some ineffectual mud embankment which it
will overthrow with devastation.

* * * * *

Putting aside then such phrases as "course of events," and the like, let
us look to men. And whom shall we look to first but the Masters of
Thought? Surely the true poet will do something to lift the burden of
his own age. What is the use of wondrous gifts of language, if they are
employed to enervate, and not to ennoble, their hearers? What avails it
to trim the lights of history, if they are made to throw no brightness on
the present, or open no track into the future? And to employ Imagination
only in the service of Vanity, or Gain, is as if an astronomer were to
use his telescope to magnify the potherbs in his kitchen garden.

Think what a glorious power is that of expression: and what
responsibility follows the man who possesses it. That grace of language
which can make even commonplace things beautiful, throwing robes of the
poorest texture into forms of all-attractive loveliness: why does it not
expend its genius on materials that would be worthy of the artist? The
great interests of Man are before it, are crying for it, can absorb all
its endeavour, are, indeed, the noblest field for it. Think of
this--then think what a waste of high intellectual endowments there has
been in all ages from the meanest of motives. But what wise man would
not rather have the harmless fame, which youths, on a holiday, scratch
for themselves upon the leaden roof of some cathedral tower, than enjoy
the undeniable renown of those who, with whatever power, have written
from slight or unworthy motives what may prove a hindrance, rather than
an aid, to the well-being of their fellow-men?

* * * * *

But, passing from those who are often the real, though unrecognized,
rulers of their own age, and the despots of the succeeding generation,
let us turn to the ostensible and immediate ruling powers. Assuredly the
government may do something towards removing part of the evils we have
been considering as connected with the system of labour. It seems as if
there were a want of more departments; and certainly of many more able
men. The progress of any social improvement appears to depend too much
on chance and clamour. I do not suppose, for a moment, that we can have
the cut-and-dried executive, or legislative, arrangements t