_Mr. Forester._ The collective stock of knowledge which is the common property of scientific men necessarily increases, and will increase from the circumstance of admitting the cooperation of numbers: but collective knowledge is as distinct from individual mental power as it is confessedly unconnected with wisdom and moral virtue, and independent of political liberty. A man of modern times, with machines of complicated powers, will lift a heavier mass than that which Hector hurled from his unassisted arm against the Grecian gates; but take away his mechanism, and what comparison is there between him and Hector? In the same way a modern man of science _knows_ more than Pythagoras knew: but consider them with relation only to _mental power_, and what comparison remains between them? No more than between a modern poet and Homer—a comparison which the most strenuous partisan of modern improvement will scarcely venture to institute. _Mr. Fax._ I will venture to oppose Shakespeare to him nevertheless. _Mr. Forester._ That is, however, going back two centuries, to a state of society very peculiar, and very fertile in genius. Shakespeare is the great phenomenon of the modern world, but his men and women are beings like ourselves; whereas those of Homer are of a nobler and mightier race; and his poetry is worthy of his characters: it is the language of the gods. Mr. Forester rose, and approached the little closet, with the avowed intention of taking down Homer. ‘Take care how you touch him,’ said the Reverend Mr. Portpipe: ‘he is in a very dusty condition, for he has not been disturbed these thirty years.’ CHAPTER XXXVI THE MOUNTAINS They followed the mountain road till they arrived at the spot where it divided into several branches, one of which they selected on some principle of preference, which we are not sagacious enough to penetrate. They now proceeded by a gradual ascent of several miles along a rugged passage of the hills, where the now flowerless heath was the only vestige of vegetation; and the sound of the little streams that everywhere gleamed beside their way, the only manifestation of the life and motion of nature. ‘It is a subject worthy of consideration,’ said Mr. Fax, ‘how far scenes like these are connected with the genius of liberty: how far the dweller of the mountains, who is certainly surrounded by more sublime excitements, has more loftiness of thought, and more freedom of spirit, than the cultivator of the plains.’ _Mr. Forester._ A modern poet has observed, that the voices of the sea and the mountains are the two voices of liberty: the words mountain liberty have, indeed, become so intimately associated, that I never yet found any one who even thought of questioning their necessary and natural connection.