Mr. Herbert Spencer writes with learning and eloquence about the Power of the Universe and the Unknowable. Shelley pricked this bubble of speculation in the following passage: What is that Power? Some moonstruck sophist stood Watching the shade from his own soul upthrown Fill Heaven and darken Earth, and in such mood The Form he saw and worshipped was his own, His likeness in the world's vast mirror shown. In one verse of the _Ode to Liberty_ the poet exclaims: O that the free would stamp the impious name Of ------ into the dust or write it there. What is the omitted word? Mr. Swinburne says the only possible word is--God. We agree with him. Anything else would be a ridiculous anti-climax, and quite inconsistent with the powerful description of-- This foul gordian word, Which, weak itself as stubble, yet can bind Into a mass, irrefragably firm, The axes and the rods that awe mankind. "Pope" and "Christ" are alike impossible. With respect to "mankind" they are but local designations. The word must be universal. It is _God_. The glorious speech of the Spirit of the Hour, which terminates the third Act of _Prometheus Unbound_--that superb drama of emancipate Humanity--lumps together "Thrones, altars, judgment seats, and prisons," as parts of one gigantic system of spiritual and temporal misrule. Man, when redeemed from falsehood and evil, rejects his books "of reasoned wrong, glozed on by ignorance"; and the veil is torn aside from all "believed and hoped." And what is the result? Let the Spirit of the Hour answer. The loathsome mask has fallen, the man remains Sceptreless, free, uncircumscribed, but man Equal, unclassed, tribeless, and nationless, Exempt from awe, worship, degree, the king Over himself; just, gentle, wise; but man Passionless? no, yet free from guilt or pain, Which were, for his will made or suffered them; Nor yet exempt, though ruling them like slaves, From chance, and death, and mutability, The clogs of that which else might oversoar The loftiest star of unascended heaven, Pinnacled dim in the intense inane. What a triumphant flight! The poet springs from earth and is speedily away beyond sight--almost beyond conception--like an elemental thing. But his starting-point is definite enough. Man is exempt from awe and worship; from spiritual as well as political and social slavery; king over himself, ruling the anarchy of his own passions. And the same idea is sung by Demogorgon at the close of the fifth Act. The "Earth-born's spell yawns for heaven's despotism," and "Conquest is dragged captive through the deep." Love, from its awful throne of patient power In the wise heart, from the last giddy hour Of dread endurance, from the slippery steep, And narrow verge of crag-like agony, springs And folds over the world its healing wings.