[1] The reader must observe, that having been thoroughly disciplined in the Evangelical schools, I supposed myself, at four-and-twenty, to know all about the ordinances of the Almighty. Nevertheless, the practical contents of the sentence are good; if only they are intelligible, which I doubt. 5. A great Idealist never can be egotistic. The whole of his power depends upon his losing sight and feeling of his own existence, and becoming a mere witness and mirror of truth, and a scribe of visions,--always passive in sight, passive in utterance, lamenting continually that he cannot completely reflect nor clearly utter all he has seen,--not by any means a proud state for a man to be in. But the man who has no invention is always setting things in order,[2] and putting the world to rights, and mending, and beautifying, and pluming himself on his doings, as supreme in all ways. [2] I am now a comic illustration of this sentence, myself. I have not a ray of invention in all my brains; but am intensely rational and orderly, and have resolutely begun to set the world to rights. 6. So far as education does indeed tend to make the senses delicate, and the perceptions accurate, and thus enables people to be pleased with quiet instead of gaudy colour, and with graceful instead of coarse form; and by long acquaintance with the best things, to discern quickly what is fine from what is common--so far acquired taste is an honourable faculty, and it is true praise of anything to say it is "in good taste." But,[3] so far as this higher education has a tendency to narrow the sympathies and harden the heart, diminishing the interest of all beautiful things by familiarity, until even what is best can hardly please, and what is brightest hardly entertain,--so far as it fosters pride, and leads men to found the pleasure they take in anything, not on the worthiness of the thing, but on the degree in which it indicates some greatness of their own, (as people build marble porticoes, and inlay marble floors, not so much because they like the colours of marble, or find it pleasant to the foot, as because such porches and floors are costly, and separated in all human eyes from plain entrances of stone and timber);--so far as it leads people to prefer gracefulness of dress, manner, and aspect, to value of substance and heart, liking a well-_said_ thing better than a true thing, and a well-trained manner better than a sincere one, and a delicately-formed face better than a good-natured one,--and in all other ways and things setting custom and semblance above everlasting truth;--so far, finally, as it induces a sense of inherent distinction between class and class, and causes everything to be more or less despised which has no social rank, so that the affection, pleasure, and grief of a clown are looked upon as of no interest compared with the affection and grief of a well-bred man;--just so far, in all these several ways, the feeling induced by what is called "a liberal