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allotment,-inventing arts,-fixing laws,-founding empires. From earliest to latest time he watches and follows his progress in this astonishing career. To the moral contemplator of the universe, the same story shews a being endowed for virtue or for crime :-in the various development of his powers,-in his everchanging course,-in his most daring and gigantic achievements, carrying with him throughout the impress of his moral nature. In all the troubled motion and confounding vicissitudes of the world,—in the pomp of its dazzling triumphs,-in the consternation of its fierce reverses, this essential and characteristic constitution of the human soul-its moral being is never hid from the eye of wise observation, for it is interwoven with all his fortunes. states rise up by power in the mind itself of a people, decaying as that mind decays. In prosperous—in adverse estate,-this moral essence shews itself as the paramount agent of good and ill,—either raising up or consoling,-either casting down or punishing in the midst of prosperity,-him who is never weak while this spirit is maintained,-never strong when it is violated. What can be more suited to the speculations of the highest philosophy than to follow the unfolding of the destinies of the world by the agency of causes which lie buried in the human soul? What can more solemnly affect the moral heart than to see man, a creature of good and evil, strong in his virtue, though wicked power smite him from the earth, weak and miserable in his guilt, while he sits upon throne ?

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In strong principles then of our nature are laid the grounds of our interest in the records of human his

tory. If, in ourselves, we find no experience of such an interest, we have reason to argue, either that these principles have not, in our minds, attained their due strength, or that, from some cause, those records have never been presented to us in the manner suited to affect those feelings. Something may perhaps be ascribed to our own fault, and something to that of our writers. It may be doubted if the memory of the past can ever have its full interest, except to those who read with something of a productive imagination, and a mind either stored from ample observation of human nature, or rich, at least, in the capacity of feelings that must be supplied to animate the actions which are read; for the facts that are told have not their own passion expressed,-they were results of passion. But that, to understand them, the mind must now re-produce to itself, vivifying by imparted emotion the simple narrative of the historian. But it must also be acknowledged, that many, perhaps the greater part of historical writers, have assisted to divest this part of literature of its natural attraction. They have not written under the force of those simple, great, primary feelings, which give their proper and strong interest to related events,— they have written as partisans, as philosophers, as rhetoricians ;-few with great and manly feeling, desiring simply to present a faithful record of what men have done and suffered, and of what they have been. The mere truth of high events, the story of men's actions, and the recital of their words, is all that is necessary to engage us; then we can find our own interest. We wish only to have its object set

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OBSERVATIONS ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY.

before us. If this is not done, no genius of speculation or of eloquence can compensate to us the essential defect of composition; and the splendour of the fairest passage of historic writing is without value, in comparison with the simplest fragment of reality which it preserves.

INFLUENCE OF LUXURY ON RELIGION.

ONE powerful cause of all the evil we at present behold is, without doubt, the want of religion. How this has arisen is another question; but the manner in which it marks itself speaks intelligibly to all. A living writer has not ill characterized the world of our day as a world without souls.

I do not now speak of open offence against the laws of religion, but of the absolute state of men's minds. The capacity for religion is an inherent principle of the human mind, which has discovered itself whereever nature was simple and strong, although truth might not be given to satisfy that capacity. The power of the principle shows itself in the other affections. In those great primary affections, which are like first laws of our nature, this principle manifests itself very strongly, imparting to those affections a religious character, and making most solemn, to the apprehensions of men, the duties which are annexed to them. We now see kindness and tenderness in these relations; but the idea of awe and sanctity is almost altogether departed from them. In the remoter relations by which men are held the change is yet greater. The obligations under which every man is born to human society, and to his country, which, in all earlier times, are felt and acknow

ledged with a solemnity perfectly religious, can now be scarcely stated intelligibly to common apprehension. That every man is bound to kindness and service to others,-that there is, or ought to be, a natural bond of union, by sympathy and good offices, among the whole human race, is indeed felt and acknowledged; and that is all. But if we should begin to speak of an obligation which arises to each man to govern his own actions by reverence for the moral being of his species, of a law to which he is born in subjection, as exact as that of the visible necessities of life, and far more imperative, which he bears within himself, which, while it binds him to others, they cannot absolve,—we should seem to be departing from the grounds of plain reason, and wandering into fanciful and illusory speculation.

Selfishness has often been called the characteristic of the philosophy of this age; and although the temper of the age is not, we think, selfish, but generous, yet the term may not improperly be applied to the spirit of argument and speculation by which the moral tenets of the age must be supported; and still more certainly their tendency is to selfishness.

In most ages of the world men have risen up in society under the absolute conviction that they did not belong to themselves. What the claim might be that was held over them may have been very differently imagined; but among the singular variety of human institutions, and the various aspects of human society, we may trace distinct and strong this principle in the belief of men, that they held their life, with its enjoyments, but in part for themselves: in greater part for some service, under obedience to some author

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