"There is something," as a profound writer has observed,[20] "in the spirit of the present age, greater than the age itself. It is, the appearance of a new power in the world, the multitude of minds now pressing forward in the great task of the moral and intellectual regeneration of mankind." And this cause must ultimately triumph. The energies and discoveries of men like Galileo, remote as their history becomes, have an undying influence. The power of a great mind is like the attraction of a sun. It appears in the infinite bounds of space, far, far away, as a grain among other gold dust at the feet of the Eternal, or, at most, but as a luminous spot; and yet we know that its influence controls, and is necessary for, the order and arrangement of the nearest, as well is the remotest system. So in the moral and intellectual universe, from world to world, from star to star, the influence of one great mind extends, and we are drawn toward it by an unseen, but all-pervading affinity. Thus has the cause of moral and intellectual progress a sure guarantee of success. It has become a necessity, interwoven with the spirit of the age--a necessity impressed by every revelation of social evil, as well as proclaimed by every scientific discovery--gaining increased energy and power from the manifestation of every new wonder and mystery of nature--nay, from the building of every steam-ship, the laying down of every new line of railway. FOOTNOTES: [20] Channing. [From Dickens's "Household Words."] EBENEZER ELLIOTT The name of Ebenezer Elliott is associated with one of the greatest and most important political changes of modern times, with events not yet sufficiently removed from us, to allow of their being canvassed in this place with that freedom which would serve the more fully to illustrate his real merits. Elliott would have been a poet, in all that constitutes true poetry, had the corn laws never existed. He was born on 25th March, 1781, at the New Foundry, Masborough, in the parish of Rotherham, where his father was a clerk in the employment of Messrs. Walker, with a salary of L60 or L70 per annum. His father was a man of strong political tendencies, possessed of humorous and satiric power, that might have qualified him for a comic actor. Such was the character he bore for political sagacity that he was popularly known as "Devil Elliott." The mother of the poet seems to have been a woman of an extreme nervous temperament, constantly suffering from ill health, and constitutionally awkward and diffident.