ayer of soldiers; over that, a layer of lords; and a king on
the top; with clamps and hoops of castles, garrisons, and police. But,
sometimes, the religious principle would get in, and burst the hoops, and
rive every mountain laid on top of it. The Fultons and Watts of politics,
believing in unity, saw that it was a power, and, by satisfying it (as
justice satisfies everybody), through a different disposition of
society,--grouping it on a level, instead of piling it into a
mountain,--they have contrived to make of this terror the most harmless
and energetic form of a State.

Very odious, I confess, are the lessons of Fate. Who likes to have a
dapper phrenologist pronouncing on his fortunes? Who likes to believe that
he has hidden in his skull, spine, and pelvis, all the vices of a Saxon or
Celtic race, which will be sure to pull him down--with what grandeur of
hope and resolve he is fired--into a selfish, huckstering, servile,
dodging animal? A learned physician tells us, the fact is invariable with
the Neapolitan that, when mature, he assumes the forms of the unmistakable
scoundrel. That is a little overstated--but may pass.

But these are magazines and arsenals. A man must thank his defects, and
stand in some terror of his talents. A transcendent talent draws so
largely on his forces, as to lame him; a defect pays him revenues on the
other side. The sufferance, which is the badge of the Jew, has made him,
in these days, the ruler of the rulers of the earth. If Fate is ore and
quarry, if evil is good in the making, if limitation is power that shall
be, if calamities, oppositions, and weights are wings and means--we are
reconciled.

Fate involves the melioration. No statement of the universe can have any
soundness, which does not admit its ascending effort. The direction of the
whole, and of the parts, is toward benefit, and in proportion to the
health. Behind every individual closes organization: before him opens
liberty--the better, the best. The first and worst races are dead. The
second and imperfect races are dying out, or remain for the maturing of
higher. In the latest race, in man, every generosity, every new
perception, the love and praise he extorts from his fellows, are
certificates of advance out of fate into freedom. Liberation of the will
from the sheaths and clogs of organization which he has outgrown, is the
end and aim of this world. Every calamity is a spur and valuable hint; and
where his endeavors