mmediately behind--a mock truce
between immortal foes, which either party might violate at pleasure.
'Because the gods were wicked, man was religious; because Olympus was
cruel, earth trembled; because the divine beings were the most lawless
of Thugs, the human being became the most abject of sycophants.' Even in
the most solemn mysteries no such thing as _instruction_ was known--'the
priest did not address the people at all.' Hence all moral theories, all
doctrinal teaching was utterly disjoined from ancient religions--that
was resigned to nature--and, consequently, powerless alike to instruct
men or command their respect, they had no inherent, self-sustaining
energy, but were built upon a mere impulse, and that impulse was the
most abject terror. Where, then, lurks the transcendent power of
Christianity as an organ of political movement? Simply in the fact that
it brings men into the most tender and affecting relations with God,
and, over and above this, that it rests upon a dogmatic or doctrinal
basis. These features were never suspected even as possible until
Christianity revealed them. Hence Christianity 'carried along with
itself its own authentication; since, while other religions introduced
men simply to ceremonies and usages, which could furnish no aliment or
material for their intellect, Christianity provided an eternal
_palaestra_, or place of exercise, for the human understanding vitalized
by human affections: for every problem whatever, interesting to the
human intellect, provided only that it bears a moral aspect, immediately
passes into the field of religious speculation. Religion had thus become
the great organ of human culture.' Of this profound distinction De
Quincey was the original discoverer.

It is known, of course, to every literary person, that Bentley attempted
to _amend_ Milton's 'Paradise Lost,' and that, on the whole, he made a
very signal failure. It has been a matter of great surprise on the part
of many, that one who is so confessedly superior in the criticism of
classical poetry, whose ear was so exquisitely sensitive and accurate
when awakened by ancient lyres, should prove himself such a driveller in
the presence of the grandest cathedral-music of modern times. Coleridge
took occasion to observe that it was only our ignorance that prevented
Bentley's emendations and innovations from appearing as monstrous and
unnatural in the poetry of the ancients as in that of John Milton. The
charge