everywhere, as in a universal torch-dance; singeing your
whiskers as you traverse the public thoroughfares in town and
country. Great souls, true Governors, go about under all manner
of disguises now as then. Such telescopes, such enlightenment,--
and such discovery! How comes it, I say; how comes it? Is it
not lamentable; is it not even, in some sense, amazing?

Alas, the defect, as we must often urge and again urge, is less a
defect of telescopes than of some eyesight. Those superstitious
blockheads of the Twelfth Century had no telescopes, but they had
still an eye: not ballot-boxes; only reverence for Worth,
abhorrence of Unworth. It is the way with all barbarians. Thus
Mr. Sale informs me, the old Arab Tribes would gather in
liveliest _gaudeamus,_ and sing, and kindle bonfires, and wreathe
crowns of honour, and solemnly thank the gods that, in their
Tribe too, a Poet had shewn himself. As indeed they well might;
for what usefuller, I say not nobler and heavenlier thing could
the gods, doing their very kindest, send to any Tribe or Nation,
in any time or circumstances? I declare to thee, my afflicted
quack-ridden brother, in spite of thy astonishment, it is very
lamentable! We English find a Poet, as brave a man as has been
made for a hundred years or so anywhere under the Sun; and do we
kindle bonfires, thank the gods? Not at all. We, taking due
counsel of it, set the man to gauge ale-barrels in the Burgh of
Dumfries; and pique ourselves on our 'patronage of genius.'

Genius, Poet: do we know what these words mean? An inspired
Soul once more vouchsafed us, direct from Nature's own great
fire-heart, to see the Truth, and speak it, and do it; Nature's
own sacred voice heard once more athwart the dreary boundless