EPILOGUE. We have seen a numerous and powerful society, in the enjoyment of material splendor and a complete literature, develop from the ravaging tribes that issued from the German forests, crossed the intractable sea in their pirate boats, and settled in a land of marsh and fog; ill-housed, fierce, carnivorous, long buried in grossness and brutality, but importing, with their savage and transient manners, redeeming and persistent sentiments—their native fidelity and love of freedom, their instinct of the serious and sublime, their inclination for devotion, their worship of heroism, their tragi-heroic conception of the world and man. From the Saxon barbarian to the Englishman of to-day, what a transformation! From the Heptarchy to the 'Model Republic,' how vast the change! Yet in the child was the promise of the youth and adult, as a thousand forests are potentially in the acorn. The nomadic Scandinavian bore within him the germ of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Bacon, Carlyle, and Emerson. A perennial miracle- Causal Power creating forever -Providential Power conserving forever—the visible proceeding from the Unseen, like an odor of incense, like a strain of musicthe Over-soul in active and perpetual accomplishment. But is progress to stop here? Who knows where we are in the duration and development of the race? In the cradle still, or in opening manhood? By the same Divine law of evolution, we too, in turn, shall be outstripped. Our boundary is movable and elastic. Around any circle, another may be drawn. Each end is a beginning, and must be superseded by a better. The latest civilization will be a. suggestion of new and higher possibilities. The golden ages are before us. On, ever on, toward the flying Perfect! 'Profounder, profounder 543 The heavens that now draw him Once found, for new heavens He spurneth the old." At the centre of succession is the energizing mind. Beowulf and Paradise Lost, St. Peter's and the Pyramids, cities and institutions, have their roots there. History is the multiform representation of it. Other things are external and fugitive. The web of events is its flowing robe. Ever young, ever ripening, ever advancing into the illimitable. The needle has its dip, and its variation, But, though it trembles as it lowly lies, Points to that light which changes not in heaven.' For can we think of tendency without thinking of purpose? Are names and forces alone immortal, and not the souls which give them their immortality? O rich and various man, made of the dust of the earth, and living for the moment! in the majestic Past as a prophecy to the Future, in thy ceaseless discontent with the Present, in thine endless ascension of state, in thine unquenchable thirst for the Infinite, we find the blazing evidence of thine own eternity. Before the magnificent procession of History, forth-issuing from Cimmerian Night, and vanishing into Fathomless Silence, wonder and veneration are the true attitude: 'Like some wild-flaming, wild-thundering train of Heaven's Artillery, does this mysterious MANKIND thunder and flame, in long-drawn, quick-succeeding grandeur, through the unknown Deep.. Like a God-created, fire-breathing Spirit-host, we emerge from the Inane, haste stormfully across the astonished Earth, then plunge again into the Inane. . . . But whence?-O Heaven, whither? Sense knows not; Faith knows not; only that it is through Mystery to Mystery, from God to God.' INDEX. Absalom and Achitophel, quoted and Absolute, the Hamiltonian doctrine Account of the Kingdom of Absurd- Adam Bede, quoted and criticised, Addison, Joseph, 29; quoted, 73; Address to Dryden, 81. Agnosticism, barrenness of, 434. Alastor, quoted and criticised, 285. Alexander's Feast, quoted and criti- All for Love, quoted and criticised, Amber Gods, 419 (note). 266; their office-seeking, 266; gen- 545 eral view of their inherited and American Scholar, quoted, 525. Amusements in the eighteenth cen- Anabaptists, the, 10. Analogy, the argument from, illus- Analogy of Religion, 141. Anglo-Saxon Poetry, 270. Antiquary, quoted, 326. Antoninus Pius, quoted, 160. Arians, the, 10. Aristocracy, the modern, illustrated, Aristotle, intimations of the Devel- Arthur Bonnicastle, 419 (note). Astræa, quoted and criticised, 388. Aurora Leigh, quoted and criticised, Aurungzebe, quoted, 56. Austen, Jane, 307. Bacchus, quoted, 532. Bancroft, George, characterized, 421. Barbarity in the seventeenth cen- Barrow, Isaac, characterized, 24. Bastile, destruction of the, 257. Bayne, Peter, 414 (note). Beau, Addison's anatomy of the, 82. 529. Beauty, quoted, 529. Beaux Stratagem, quoted and criti- Beecher, H. W., 414 (note). Belief, Hume's philosophy of, 167. Bill and Joe, quoted and criticised, 389. Black-eyed Susan, 293. Blackstone, Sir William, 128. Blithedale Romance, quoted and Bolingbroke, Henry St. John, 29; Book of Snobs, quoted and criti- Booth, Lucius Junius, 398. Boswell's Life of Johnson, quoted, Boyd, A. K. H., 414 (note). Boyle, Robert, 29, 44, 76; quoted, 38. British Critic, 182. Bronté, Charlotte, 419 (note). Brown, J., 414 (note). Browne, Sir Thomas, quoted, 180. Browning, Robert, quoted and criti- Buckle, Henry Thomas, criticised, Building of the Ship, 521. Bulwer, Edward Lytton. See Lord Bunyan, John, quoted, 3; allusion to, Burnet, Bishop, criticised, 28. Burns, Robert, biography and criti- Butler, Samuel, quoted and criticised, By the North Sea, quoted, 375. 293; biography and criticism, 339- Cain, quoted and criticised, 343. Capital and Labor, 358. Carlyle, Thomas, 313; quoted, 336; Causation, Locke's theory of, 42; Cenci, quoted and criticised, 289. Challenge of Thor, quoted, 521. Character, contradictions in, 120; in- Charles II, 1; quoted, 53. Charon, the Stygian ferryman, 159. Chatterton, Thomas, 270. Child's First Impressions of a Star, Chillingworth, William, 28. Christ, J. S. Mill concerning, 424. Christabel, quoted and criticised, 278. Chronicle, the Saxon, quoted, 139. Circles, quoted, 528. Civilization, unprecedented advance- Civilization in England, 420 (note). Clarendon, Lord, criticised, 28. Clergy, decline of political influence, Cloud, quoted and criticised, 291. Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 313; Collins, William Wilkie, 419 (note). Confessions of an Opium Eater, 300 Constitutional History of England, Contentment, a picture of, 24, 25. Conversation, Dryden's, 66. Cooper, James Fennimore, quoted Cooper's Hill, quoted and criticised, Corn Law, the, 356. Corsair, quoted and criticised, 343. Country Parson, 414 (note). 16. Cousin, Victor, 318. Cowley, Abraham, 14, 23. Cowper, William, quoted, 45, 64; Craik, G. L., quoted, 146. Criticism, 10, 118, 182, 296, 301, 313, Cromwell, Oliver, 28. Crowded Street, quoted and criti- Cudworth, Ralph, 29, 35, 44. Curse of Kehama, quoted and criti- Custom, influence of, 457. Daily Thoughts, 414 (note). Dana, R. H., quoted and criticised, Daniel Deronda, quoted and criti- |