ral power to attain a greater eminence in virtue, than the habits and arts of the existing world will allow us to reach. Perhaps it is not paradoxical to say that we could scarcely believe perfection in others, were not the germ of perfectibility in our own minds! When a man has lived some years among the actual contests of faction, without imbibing the prejudice as well as the experience, how wonderingly he smiles at his worship of former idols!—how different a colour does history wear to him!—how cautious is he now to praise!—how slow to admire!—how prone to cavil! Human Nature has become the human nature of art; and he estimates it not from what it may be, but from what, in the corruptions of a semi-civilization, it is! But in the same manner as the young student clings to the belief, that the sage, or the minstrel, who has enlightened his reason or chained his imagination, is in character as in genius elevated above the ordinary herd, free from the passions, the frivolities, the little meannesses, and the darkening vices which ordinary flesh is heir to, does a woman, who loves for the first time, cling to the imagined excellence of him she loves! When
