t ability--
character is as if it had no existence.

In the midst of this loud talk of progress, therefore,
in which so many of us at present are agreed to believe,
which is, indeed, the common meeting point of
all the thousand sects into which we are split, it is
with saddened feelings that we see so little of it in
so large a matter. Progress there is in knowledge;
and science has enabled the number of human
beings capable of existing upon this earth to be indefinitely
multiplied. But this is but a small triumph
if the ratio of the good and bad, the wise and the
foolish, the full and the hungry remains unaffected.
And we cheat ourselves with words when we conclude
out of our material splendour an advance of the race.
One fruit only our mother earth offers up with pride
to her maker--her human children made noble by their
life upon her; and how wildly on such matters we now
are wandering let this one instance serve to show. At
the moment at which we write, a series of letters are
appearing in the Times newspaper, letters evidently of
a man of ability, and endorsed in large type by the
authorities of Printing House Square, advocating the
establishment of a free Greek state with its centre at
Constantinople, on the ground that the Greek character
has at last achieved the qualities essential for the
formation of a great people, and that endued as it is with
the practical commercial spirit, and taking everywhere
rational views of life, there is no fear of a repetition
from it of the follies of the age of Pericles. We should
rather think there was not: and yet the writer speaks
without any appearance of irony, and is saying what
he obviously means.

In two things there is progress--progress in knowledge
of the outward world, and progress in material
wealth. This last, for the present, creates, perhaps,
more evils than it relieves; but suppose this difficulty
solved, suppose the wealth distributed, and every
peasant living like a peer--what then? If this is all,
one noble soul outweighs the whole of it. Let us follow
knowledge to the outer circle of the universe, the eye
will not be satisfied with seeing, nor the ear with hearing.
Let us build our streets of gold, and they will hide as
many aching hearts as hovels of straw. The well-being
of mankind is not advanced a single step. Knowledge
is power, and wealth is power; and harnessed, as in
Plato's fable, to the chariot of the soul, and guided
by wisdom, they may