“The pillar’d firmament was rottenness,
  And earth’s base built of stubble:” 

now scarce a shadow of it remains, it is crumbled to dust, nor is it even talked of!  “What then, went ye forth for to see, a reed shaken with the wind?” Was it for this that our young gownsmen of the greatest expectation and promise, versed in classic lore, steeped in dialectics, armed at all points for the foe, well read, well nurtured, well provided for, left the University and the prospect of lawn sleeves, tearing asunder the shackles of the free born spirit, and the cobwebs of school-divinity, to throw themselves at the feet of the new Gamaliel, and learn wisdom from him?  Was it for this, that students at the bar, acute, inquisitive, sceptical (here only wild enthusiasts) neglected for a while the paths of preferment and the law as too narrow, tortuous, and unseemly to bear the pure and broad light of reason?  Was it for this, that students in medicine missed their way to Lecturerships and the top of their profession, deeming lightly of the health of the body, and dreaming only of the renovation of society and the march of mind?  Was it to this that Mr. Southey’s Inscriptions pointed? to this that Mr. Coleridge’s Religious Musings tended?  Was it for this, that Mr. Godwin himself sat with arms folded, and, “like Cato, gave his little senate laws?” Or rather, like another Prospero, uttered syllables that with their enchanted breath were to change the world, and might almost stop the stars in their courses?  Oh! and is all forgot?  Is this sun of intellect blotted from the sky?  Or has it suffered total eclipse?  Or is it we who make the fancied gloom, by looking at it through the paltry, broken, stained fragments of our own interests and prejudices?  Were we fools then, or are we dishonest now?  Or was the impulse of the mind less likely to be true and sound when it arose from high thought and warm feeling, than afterwards, when it was warped and debased by the example, the vices, and follies of the world?

The fault, then, of Mr. Godwin’s philosophy, in one word, was too much ambition—­“by that sin fell the angels!” He conceived too nobly of his fellows (the most unpardonable crime against them, for there is nothing that annoys our self-love so much as being complimented on imaginary achievements, to which we are wholly unequal)—­he raised the standard of morality above the reach of humanity, and by directing virtue to the most airy and romantic heights, made her path dangerous, solitary, and impracticable.  The author of the Political Justice took abstract reason for the rule of conduct, and abstract good for its end.  He places the human mind on an elevation, from which it commands a view of the whole line of moral consequences; and requires it to conform its acts to the larger and more enlightened conscience which it has thus acquired.  He absolves man from the gross and narrow ties of sense, custom, authority,