aculty and not simply acquired, _must_
have attracted very positive attention on the part of the teachers;
but it was certain, that, with the tendencies of those days, they
would have thought it discreet to say as little as possible about the
slender mutineer. It is equally well known, that, notwithstanding his
youth, religious opinions caused his expulsion from college; and when
we turn to the earliest of his writings which assumed anything like a
complete shape, we discover at once the nature of those powers
which could not have been overlooked,--we detect the genius, the
revolutionary ideas, and the extraordinary command which he had
acquired over the subject-matter of much that is taught in schools
and colleges. Amid the orthodox reaction that followed upon the French
Revolution, he was struck with the excesses to which despotic power
could be carried. He read history with sympathies for the natural
impulses and aspirations of the race, as opposed to the small circles
which comprise established authorities. He looked upon knowledge as
the means of serving, not enslaving the race. And therefore, while he
excused the crimes of the Revolution, on the score of the ignorance
in which the people had been kept, their sufferings, and the natural
revulsion against such painful down-treading, he regarded the counter
acts of authority as a treachery to wisdom itself. He says,--

"Hath Nature's soul,
That formed this world so beautiful....
And filled the meanest worm that crawls in dust
With spirit, thought, and love, on Man alone,
Partial in causeless malice, wantonly
Heaped ruin, vice, and slavery?
Nature?--no!
Kings, priests, and statesmen blast the human flower
Even in its tender bud; their influence darts
Like subtle poison through the bloodless veins
Of desolate society."

The pretension of authority to speak with a supernatural warrant
provoked him to deny the warrant itself, or the sources from which it
was said to emanate.

"Is there a God?--ay, an almighty God,
And vengeful as almighty? Once his voice
Was heard on earth; earth shuddered at the sound,
The fiery-visaged firmament expressed
Abhorrence, and the grave of Nature yawned
To swallow all the dauntless and the good
That dared to hurl defiance at his throne,
Girt as it was with power. None but slaves
Survived,--cold-blooded slaves, who did the work
Of tyrranous omnipotence.