There could always be traced, in the most barbarous tribes, and also in the most character-destroying civilization, some vestiges of a faith in genius, as in the exemption of a priesthood or bards or artists from taxes and tolls levied on other men; or in civic distinction; or in enthusiastic homage; or in hospitalities; as if men would signify their sense that genius and virtue should not pay money for house and land and bread, because they have a royal right in these and in all things,--a first mortgage that takes effect before the right of the present proprietor. For they are the First Good, of which Plato affirms that “all things are for its sake, and it is the cause of everything beautiful.” This reverence is the re-establishment of natural order; for as the solidest rocks are made up of invisible gases, as the world is made of thickened light and arrested electricity, so men know that ideas are the parents of men and things; there was never anything that did not proceed from a thought. The scholar has a deep ideal interest in the moving show around him. He knew the motley system in its egg. We have--have we not?--a real relation to markets and brokers and currency and coin. “Gold and silver,” says one of the Platonists, “grow in the earth from the celestial gods,--an effluxion from them.” The unmentionable dollar itself has at last a high origin in moral and metaphysical nature. Union Pacific stock is not quite private property, but the quality and essence of the universe is in that also. Have we less interest in ships or in shops, in manual work or in household affairs; in any object of nature, or in any handiwork of man; in any relation of life or custom of society? The scholar is to show, in each, identity and connexion; he is to show its origin in the brain of man, and its secret history and issues. He is the attorney of the world, and can never be superfluous where so vast a variety of questions are ever coming up to be solved, and for ages.