Nevertheless it is a reproach to those whom militant thought has made free, if they remain unmindful of the fate of their inferiors. Yet Christian churches, with all self-complacent superiority to which many of them are prone, are not free from the sins of indifference and superfineness. This was conspicuously shown by Southey in a letter to Sir Henry Taylor, in which he says:--"Have you seen the strange book which Anastasius Hope left for publication and which his representatives, in spite of all dissuasion, have published? His notion of immortality and heaven is that at the consummation of all things he, and you, and I, and John Murray, and Nebuchadnezzar, and Lambert the fat man, and the Living Skeleton, and Queen Elizabeth, and the Hottentot, Venus, and Thutell, and Probert, and the Twelve Apostles, and the noble army of martyrs, and Genghis Khan and all his armies, and Noah with all his ancestors and all his posterity,--yea, all men, and all women, and all children that have ever been, or ever shall be, saints and sinners alike, are all to be put together and made into one great celestial, eternal human being.... I do not like the scheme. I don't like the notion of being mixed up with Hume, and Hunt, and Whittle Harvey, and Philpotts, and Lord Althorp, and the Huns, and the Hottentots, and the Jews, and the Philistines, and the Scotch, and the Irish. God forbid! I hope to be I, myself, in an English heaven, with you yourself,--you and some others without whom heaven would be no heaven to me." Most of these persons would have the same dislike to be mixed up with Mr. Southey. Lord Byron would not have been enthusiastic about it. The Comtists have done something to preach a doctrine of humanity, and to put an end to this pitiful contempt of a few men for their fellows,--fellows who in many respects are often superior to those who despise them. All superiority is apt to be contemptuous of inferiors, unless conscience and generosity takes care of it, and incites it to instruct inferior natures. The prayer of Browning is one of noble discernment:-- "Make no more giants, God-- But elevate the race at once." Even free thought, so far as it confines itself to itself, becomes stationary. Like the squirrel in its cage: "Whether it turns by wood or wire, Never gets one hair's breadth higher."