of style, which the imitative Romans, with all their splendour, never attained.... The ancients invented their Governments according to their wants; the moderns have adopted foreign policies, and then modelled their conduct upon this borrowed regulation._ This circumstance has occasioned our manners and customs to be so confused, absurd, and unphilosophical. What business had we, for instance, to adopt the Roman law--a law foreign to our manners, and consequently disadvantageous? He who profoundly meditates upon the situation of modern Europe will also discover how productive of misery has been the senseless adoption of Oriental customs by Northern peoples. Whence came that divine right of kings which has deluged so many countries with blood?--that pastoral and Syrian law of tithes, which may yet shake the foundations of so many ancient institutions?” The spirit of this passage was ever present to his mind. He went even further. He has asserted that the mere fact of copying or assuming ideas deprives them of their native virtue, and that all that is second-hand loses the vigour and flavour of its originals in imitating them. Preparation must be succeeded, and, indeed, attended, by meditation. I shall return to this idea shortly, and consider it in his own instance. But there comes a juncture when action must rise from the chrysalis of thought which encloses it. “... You must renounce meditation. Action is now your part. Meditation is culture. It is well to think until a man has discovered his genius and developed his faculties, but then let him put his intelligence in motion. Act, act, act without ceasing, and you will no longer talk of the vanity of life.” The perpetual thought of death he considered harmful. To live in present duty and energy was truer piety than to brood on the coming hour when no man can work; and the very sense of existence is a great happiness, and leads to hope. “... If, in striking the balance of sensation, misery were found to predominate, no human being would endure the curse of existence....”[183] He would surely have echoed that fine saying of Gladstone--“Indifference to the world is not love of God.” He was infinitely sanguine in outlook, although extremely cautious in expedients. I may recall that when _Coningsby_ has missed his fortune, _Sidonia_ consoles him by a series of more disagreeable contingencies.