the _only_ form in which the higher applications of his discovery can be made to any purpose in that age? Who would expect to find this part in any professedly scientific work, when he tells us expressly, 'Reason cannot be so sensible, nor examples so fit,' as the examples which his scientific terminology includes in the department of _Poesy?_ All the old historical wisdom was in that form, he says; all the first philosophy was poetical; all the old divinity came in history and parable; and even to this day, he who would let in new light upon the human understanding, without raising opposition or disturbance, must still go in the same path, and have recourse to the like method. He was an innovator; he was _not_ an agitator. And he claims that mark of a divine presence in his work, that its benefactions come, without noise or perturbation, _in aura leni_. Of innovations, there has been none in history like that which he propounded, but neither would he strive nor cry. There was no voice in the streets, there was no red ensign lifted, there was no clarion-swell, or roll of the conqueror's drum to signal to the world that entrance. He, too, claims a divine authority for his innovation, and he declares it to be of God. It is the providential order of the world's history which is revealed in it; it is the fulfilment of ancient prophecy which this new chief, laden with new gifts for men, openly announces. 'Let us begin from God,' he says, when he begins to open his ground of _hope_, after he has exposed the wretched condition of men as he finds them, without any scientific knowledge of the laws and institutes of the universe they inhabit, engaged in a perpetual and mad collision with them; 'Let us begin from God, and show that our pursuit, from its exceeding goodness, _clearly_ proceeds from Him, the Author of GOOD and Father of LIGHT. Now, _in all divine works_, the smallest beginnings lead assuredly to some results; and the rule in spiritual matters, that the Kingdom of God cometh without observation, is also found to be true _in every great work of_ PROVIDENCE, so that everything glides in quietly, without confusion or noise; and the matter is achieved before men even think of perceiving that it is commenced.' 'Men,' he tells us, 'men should imitate Nature, who innovateth _greatly_ but _quietly_, and by degrees scarce to be perceived,' who will not dispense with the old form till the new one is finished and in its place.