"We men, before the great picture of the destinies of the universe, play the part of such dunces, such novices in art. Here we are attracted by a bright spot, a graceful configuration; _there_ we are repelled by a deep shadow, a painful object; the immense WHOLE bewilders and perplexes us; we seek in vain to penetrate the leading idea of that great Being, who designed the whole upon a plan which our limited human intellect cannot comprehend." * * * * * SOUTHEY'S DOCTOR. March 29. To those who see only with their eyes, the distant is always indistinct and little, becoming less and less as it recedes, till utterly lost; but to the imagination, which thus reverses the perspective of the senses, the far off is great and imposing, the magnitude increasing with the distance. * * * * * I amused myself this morning with that most charming book "The Doctor;"--it is not the second nor the third time of reading. How delicious it is wherever it opens!--how brimful of erudition and wit, and how rich in thought, and sentiment, and humour! but containing assumptions, and opinions, and prognostications, in which I would not believe;--no, not for the world! * * * * * How true what Southey says! (the Doctor I mean--I beg his pardon)--"We make the greater part of the evil circumstances in which we are placed, and then we fit ourselves for those circumstances by a process of degradation, the effect of which most people see in the classes below them, though they may not be conscious that it is operating in a different manner, but with equal force, upon themselves."