that strikes the fancy is a thought.  There are literary rag-pickers of every degree of ability; and a great deal of judgment can be shown in finding the scrap or nail you want in a heap of rubbish.  Quotable matter is generally considered to be strongly veined with thought.  Some people estimate a writer according to the number of apt sentences imbedded in his work.  But who is judge of aptness itself?  What is apt for an epigram is not apt for a revolution:  the shock of a witty antithesis is related to the healthy stimulus of creative thinking, as a small electrical battery to the terrestrial currents.  Well-built rhetorical climaxes, sharp and sudden contrasts, Poor Richard’s common-sense, a page boiled down to a sentence, a fresh simile from Nature, a subtle mood projected upon Nature, a swift controversial retort, all these things are called thoughts.  The pleasure in them is so great, that one fancies they leave him in their debt.  That depends upon one’s standard of indebtedness.  Now a penny-a-liner is indebted to a single phrase which furnishes his column; a clergyman near Saturday night seizes with rapture the clue of a fine simile which spins into a ‘beautiful sermon’; for the material of his verses a rhymester is ‘indebted’ to an anecdote or incident.  In a higher degree all kinds of literary work are indebted to that commerce of ideas between the minds of all nations, which fit up interiors more comfortably, and upholster them better than before.  And everything that gets into circulation is called a thought, be it a discovery in science, a mechanical invention, the statement of a natural law, comparative statistics, rules of economy, diplomatic circulars, and fine magazine-writing.  It is the manoeuvring of the different arms in the great service of humanity, solid or dashing, on a field already gained.  But the thought which organizes the fresh advance goes with the pioneer-train that bridges streams, that mines the hill, that feels the country.  The controlling plan puts itself forth with that swarthy set of leather-aproned men shouldering picks and axes.  How brilliantly the uniforms defile afterward, with flashing points and rhythmic swing, over the fresh causeway, to hold and maintain a position whose value was ideally conceived!  So that the brightest facings do not cover the boldest thought.”

By omissions here and there,—­in all not amounting to ten pages of printed matter,—­these literary remains of Theodore Parker might have been made less offensive to believers in the Christian Revelation, as well as to the not small class of gentlemanly skeptics who go through whatever motions the best society esteems correct.  In these days, many worthy people, who are not quite sound upon Noah’s ark, or even the destruction of the swine, will wince perceptibly at hearing the Lord’s Supper called “a heathenish rite.”  And it would be unfair to the memories of most noted men to stereotype for ten thousand eyes the rough estimates of familiar