to that consummation of knowledge and of crime, which leads, by a natural operation, to great alterations in their condition.

4. Hence also we obtain a glimpse of the important truth, that one state of society or of the human mind is essential to the development of another and higher state by which it is to be succeeded -and that thus the ultimate state of the species, is not something to be reached by any sudden or violent exertion, but the result of a process and of a gradual rising from one degree of attainment to another, which is as much founded in nature, and as incapable of being reversed, as the corresponding progress in individuals from the limited notions and immature strength of early life, to the expanded knowledge-and full development of powers which belong to the perfect man. The whole progress, in both cases, is one connected series of attainments-each succeeding step depending essentially on that which had preceded it---as it is itself destined to be a necessary preparation for another and higher by which it is to be followed. Thus our present condition has resulted, by a natural sequence, from that in which our immediate predecessors were found---and the state in which we now exist will give place to some other, the elements of which, though we may not now understand them, are equally incorporated with the peculiarities of our present position.

The same thing exactly is true of the whole science of man ---that is to say, human knowledge, considered as the attainment of the race, is not something to which they ever have attained or ever can attain, by a sudden and unprepared effort--but must be the slow product of successive generations---each taking for their starting place the level attained by the race that had preceded them. It is here again, as in the attainments of an individual---what he ultimately gains is the natural result of all the previous acquisitions by which the successive steps of his history had been marked---and his final achievements in knowledge and in virtue are but the gradual evolutions of a nature, gifted originally with definite powers---and which could not in its whole progress, advance one step beyond the range of that capacity with which it was originally gifted, but which, by that original gift, was also destined to attain its consummation only by a gradual, and in the general tenor of its progress, by an almost imperceptible development.

5. Reverting, however, to the train of ideas with which we

commenced this note, it is interesting to remark, that we sometimes lose, in the depth and magnificence of the impression made on our imaginations, what we gain by the extent of the view and the beauty of the prospect which advanced knowledge affords us-nor do I know that this was ever more strikingly illustrated than by the reflections of Chateaubriand after narrating the voyage of Hanno the Carthaginian, who with a fleet of sixty vessels, each worked by fifty oars, and having on board thirty thousand persons-attempted to make his way first through the Straits of Gades, and thence along the unvisited shores of the great African continent. Every thing in the course of this voyage was to the unexperienced navigators a mystery and a wonder-and there cannot be a better analogy than that which the history of this voyage furnishes, when compared with the free navigation of Cook, who circumnavigated the globe-between the feelings of those who, in the early ages of philosophy, first endeavoured to scan the wonders of nature, and the state of mind which is generated by the boundless views which the present state of science has opened up. "It must nevertheless be allowed," says Chateaubriand, "that we sometimes lose in sentiment what we gain in science. The souls of the ancients liked to plunge into the infinite void; ours are circumscribed by their knowledge. When I have climbed a mountain in the interior of Canada, my eyes were always turned to the west, over the unfrequented deserts which stretch that way. Towards the east my imagination immediately found the Atlantic, and countries which I had traversed, so that I lost my pleasure; but even in the opposite direction the effect was almost the same. I incessantly arrived at the South Sea-thence in Asia-thence in Europe-thence I wished to have said like the Greeks: There below me is the unknown land, the immense land.' Every thing in nature balances itself. If I were allowed to choose whether I should possess the knowledge of Cook or the ignorance of Hanno, I believe that I should be weak enough to decide in favour of the latter."

There is no doubt some truth in all this, yet it must be confessed that the feeling awakened by a wide-uninterrupted and luminous view of nature, has in it a simplicity—a grandeur—and at the same time an adaptation to the expansive powers of man,

which do not belong in the same degree to the limited views which early science is alone capable of taking of the same subject while to those who love mystery-and who delight to lose themselves in impenetrable vastness, there must always be a boundless territory, beyond the utmost limits of human research, sufficient to awaken their utmost powers of feeling in the minds of the contemplative.

6. We may now only notice, in the last place, that all that we have said in this note respecting opinions and attainments in science is equally applicable to institutions and to forms of social and political life.-Imperfect ones may have excellent effects at certain times-and in particular stages of human progress, because the ideas of the human mind have not then attained to any thing better or more perfect-and, on the other hand, the most perfect institutions may not only be altogether unsuited to men in an early and rude state of their progress—but may fail to produce equally good effects, with the forms of the earlier ages-on those who are subject to their influence.

It is thus a poor and limited mode of thought which has so often led men, puffed up with new views of what human life and human knowledge may be, to despise the attainments of those by whom they have been preceded in life-and it is a vain mode of thought which induces men to believe, that they are in a condition to realize the utmost perfection of form which human society or human knowledge is capable of attaining. On the contrary, we should keep in mind that former things were the foundation of the present and that the present will lead to others by an equally natural and necessary evolution-that this progress will be continued in an indefinite series-that each age, however, may find in its own forms the best securities for its virtue and happiness-and that a future and more enlightened generation will have no better reason to laugh at our imperfect modes of opinion or of conduct, than we now have to ridicule the less enlightened customs of those who were our predecessors in life.

The whole, in short, is one wisely conducted-and intimately connected process---suited to a race of beings who are progressive by their very nature---and who have their place in a world where change is incessant.

EXTENSIVE VIEWS THE BEST SOURCES OF
TRANQUILLITY AMIDST ALL CHANGES.

"You may kill men," it has been said, and the remark has been justly considered as pregnant with that pith of wit which characterizes truth, "but you cannot kill things." Therefore the more subordinate adherents of party, who attach themselves solely to its accidents---to the name by which it is designated---to the individual leaders who support it---or to the advantages which it procures to its friends-are easily disheartened when any change occurs which seems to put an end to their hopes and attachments;—but men who value party for the principles which it involves provided these principles be founded in nature and in truth---feel little anxiety when, amidst the changes to which all human affairs are subject, the mere accidents of their cause appear for a time to be overwhelmed they know that the cause to which they have attached themselves is immortal-and that however long may be the subversion to which, from temporary incidents, it may have been subjected-it must ultimately regain the ascendancy which for a time it seems to have lost.

There never was any party contest to which this remark is so applicable as that which agitates the minds of the present generation. For it is essentially not only a change of principle -but of principle founded on the immutable laws which govern the entire course of things on earth-respecting as it does the supremacy which ought to be given either to that conservative or to that progressing power, which by their union produce the whole order of Nature and of Providence. But we have seen that though nature is essentially progressive, yet it is a progress which is accompanied with a constant aspect-at least in the grand and settled order of things-of harmony and repose---and hence it is that we have also educed the conclusion, that a mere progressive power never can permanently be the guiding force

of any political institutions---that sooner or later a conservative must take the helm of affairs---and that the perfection of government will have been attained, when these two, as in the everchanging but yet ever apparently stationary system of nature, shall have been so combined, as at once to carry forward the affairs of life---and yet to maintain a settled appearance of order and of rest. Amidst all violent agitations, therefore, the man who has taken this view of things rests in the assured confidence that a time will come when his principles must prevail, and when human affairs will regain that quiet, without which, for any great length of time, the true interests of the species must be abandoned.

2. The same rule may be applied to the more private contentions of ordinary life. The best of men, amidst the collisions of society, must sometimes be misrepresented-and offendedand many petty irritations produced in their minds, if they have not adopted and held fast by wide and liberal views of the springs of action in their fellow-men. And it is from the want of such views, that weak minds are so easily thrown into excitation when they feel themselves assailed by the injustice or apparent selfishness of their fellow-creatures. But amidst all such strifes, a man of enlarged views of human life, looks only to the truth and purity of his own conduct---and, provided he is certain that these are as they should be, he has no doubt but the restlessness of his fellow-men will soon subside, and that his character will gain that lustre---and be hailed with that approbation, to which, in the secret consciousness of his own heart, he knows that it is entitled. A man of liberal views is thus also always a man who takes the petty vexations of life with coolness and selfpossession.

3. And hence we see, in the last place, the truth of the maxim, that benevolence is the truest wisdom, and ought to be the reigning propensity of all minds of superior attainments. In the words of an anonymous author, "however it may suit the world, in its present imperfect state, to act habitually upon selfish principles, there is not an enlightened man in it, who has not had internal revelations of the great truth, that benevolence is, after all, the superior sentiment, and the most certain, because the ruling guide of human action. It is only because the most of men are