- tury is not wanting in the highest literary power. It
has given us the universal insight and sympathy of Goethe, whose writings Carlyle describes as "A Thousand-voiced Melody of Wisdom." He thus continues, "So did Goethe catch the Music of the Universe, and unfold it into clearness, and, in authentic celestial tones, bring it home to the hearts of men."
This century has revealed the grandeur of metaphysical thought through Hegel, and found a wonderful expounder of science in Spencer. Each an exponent of a great philosophy, both giants in mental grasp, they greatly influence the thought of the age, and become co-workers in the investigation of many-sided truth.
Next stands Carlyle, in the midst of this mechanical and seemingly unpoetic age, and proclaims it an age of romance; in inspired words teaches the beauty of the genuine, the sublimity of creation, the grandeur of human life. Wordsworth, Nature's priest, interprets her forms and moods with finest insight, and finds them expressive of divine thought. He looks quite through material forms and feels
"A sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things."
Our own Emerson to this generation quaintly says, "Hitch your wagon to a star," and thousands strive to rise superior to occupation, rank, and habit into
