the physical force and character of man.  An Italian marquis, whose birth and habits seemed little favourable to study, operated a moral revolution in the administration of the laws.  BECCARIA dared to plead in favour of humanity against the prejudices of many centuries in his small volume on “Crimes and Punishments,” and at length abolished torture; while the French advocates drew their principles from that book, rather than from their national code, and our Blackstone quoted it with admiration!  LOCKE and VOLTAIRE, having written on “Toleration,” have long made us tolerant.  In all such cases the authors were themselves entirely unconnected with their subjects, except as speculative writers.

Such are the authors who become universal in public opinion; and it then happens that the work itself meets with the singular fate which that great genius SMEATON said happened to his stupendous “Pharos:”  “The novelty having yearly worn off, and the greatest real praise of the edifice being that nothing has happened to it—­nothing has occurred to keep the talk of it alive.”  The fundamental principles of such works, after having long entered into our earliest instruction, become unquestionable as self-evident propositions; yet no one, perhaps, at this day can rightly conceive the great merits of Locke’s Treatises on “Education,” and on “Toleration;” or the philosophical spirit of Montesquieu, and works of this high order, which first diffused a tone of thinking over Europe.  The principles have become so incorporated with our judgment, and so interwoven with our feelings, that we can hardly now imagine the fervour they excited at the time, or the magnanimity of their authors in the decision of their opinions.  Every first great monument of genius raises a new standard to our knowledge, from which the human mind takes its impulse and measures its advancement.  The march of human thought through ages might be indicated by every great work as it is progressively succeeded by others.  It stands like the golden milliary column in the midst of Rome, from which all others reckoned their distances.

But a scene of less grandeur, yet more beautiful, is the view of the solitary author himself in his own study—­so deeply occupied, that whatever passes before him never reaches his observation, while, working more than twelve hours every day, he still murmurs as the hour strikes; the volume still lies open, the page still importunes—­“And whence all this business?” He has made a discovery for us! that never has there been anything important in the active world but what is reflected in the literary—­books contain everything, even the falsehoods and the crimes which have been only projected by men!  This solitary man of genius is arranging the materials of instruction and curiosity from every country and every age; he is striking out, in the concussion of new light, a new order of ideas for his own times; he possesses secrets which men hide from their contemporaries,