“Else wherefore burns, In mortal bosoms, this unquenched hope That breathes from day to day sublimer things, And mocks possession! Wherefore darts the mind, With such resistless ardour, to embrace Majestic forms, impatient to be free, Proud of the strong contention of her toils, Proud to be daring?”[54]-- “Why departs she wide[55] From the dull track and journey of her times, To grasp the good she knows not? In the field Of things which may be, in the spacious field Of science, potent arts, or dreadful arms, To raise up scenes, in which her own desires Contented may repose,--when things which are Pall on her temper like a twice told tale.”[56] It is sufficient, that we are endowed with powers of discovery. Our gratitude is due to Heaven for the gift; and the more due for that gracious wisdom, which has known how to _limit_ the powers which it gave, so as to produce a greater result of good by the very limitation. Our prejudices, which sometimes forbid reasoning, and the errors, to which our imperfect reasoning often leads us, we should consider, when all their remote relations are taken into account, as indirect sources of happiness; and though we may wish, and justly wish, to analyse them, and to rise above their influence,--for, without this exertion, and consequent feeling of progress, on our part, they would be evil rather than good,--we must not forget, that it is to them we owe the luxury, which the immediate analysis affords, and the acquisition of the innumerable truths, which the prevalence of these errors, in past ages, has left to be discovered by the ages which succeed. In this, and in every thing which relates to man, Nature has had in view, not the individual or the single generation only, but the _permanent race_. She has therefore, not exhausted her bounty on any one period of the long succession; but, by a provision, which makes our very weakness instrumental to her goodness, she has given to all, that distant and ever-brightening hope, which, till we arrive at our glorious destination, “Leads from goal to goal, And opens still, and opens on the soul.”