in every thing God has made. It would seem there is always
this vindictive circumstance stealing in at unawares even
into the wild poesy in which the human fancy attempted to
make bold holiday and to shake itself free of the old laws,
--this back-stroke, this kick of the gun, certifying that
the law is fatal; that in nature nothing can be given, all
things are sold.

This is that ancient doctrine of Nemesis, who keeps watch
in the universe and lets no offence go unchastised. The
Furies they said are attendants on justice, and if the sun
in heaven should transgress his path they would punish him.
The poets related that stone walls and iron swords and
leathern thongs had an occult sympathy with the wrongs of
their owners; that the belt which Ajax gave Hector dragged
the Trojan hero over the field at the wheels of the car of
Achilles, and the sword which Hector gave Ajax was that on
whose point Ajax fell. They recorded that when the Thasians
erected a statue to Theagenes, a victor in the games, one
of his rivals went to it by night and endeavored to throw
it down by repeated blows, until at last he moved it from
its pedestal and was crushed to death beneath its fall.

This voice of fable has in it somewhat divine. It came
from thought above the will of the writer. That is the
best part of each writer which has nothing private in
it; that which he does not know; that which flowed out
of his constitution and not from his too active invention;
that which in the study of a single artist you might not
easily find, but in the study of many you would abstract