g else; and for
every thing you gain, you lose something. If riches increase, they are
increased that use them. If the gatherer gathers too much, Nature takes
out of the man what she puts into his chest; swells the estate, but
kills the owner. Nature hates monopolies and exceptions. The waves of
the sea do not more speedily seek a level from their loftiest tossing
than the varieties of condition tend to equalize themselves. There is
always some levelling circumstance that puts down the overbearing, the
strong, the rich, the fortunate, substantially on the same ground with
all others. Is a man too strong and fierce for society and by temper and
position a bad citizen,--a morose ruffian, with a dash of the pirate
in him?--Nature sends him a troop of pretty sons and daughters who are
getting along in the dame's classes at the village school, and love and
fear for them smooths his grim scowl to courtesy. Thus she contrives to
intenerate the granite and felspar, takes the boar out and puts the lamb
in and keeps her balance true.

The farmer imagines power and place are fine things. But the President
has paid dear for his White House. It has commonly cost him all his
peace, and the best of his manly attributes. To preserve for a short
time so conspicuous an appearance before the world, he is content to eat
dust before the real masters who stand erect behind the throne. Or,
do men desire the more substantial and permanent grandeur of genius?
Neither has this an immunity. He who by force of will or of thought is
great and overlooks thousands, has the charges of that eminence. With
every influx of light comes new danger. Has he light? he must bear
witness to the light, and always outrun that sympathy which gives
him such keen satisfaction, by his fidelity to new revelations of the
incessant soul. He must hate father and mother, wife and child. Has he
all that the world loves and admires and covets?--he must cast behind
him their admiration, and afflict them by faithfulness to his truth, and
become a byword and a hissing.

This law writes the laws of cities and nations. It is in vain to build
or plot or combine against it. Things refuse to be mismanaged long. Res
nolunt diu male administrari. Though no checks to a new evil appear,
the checks exist, and will appear. If the government is cruel, the
governor's life is not safe. If you tax too high, the revenue will
yield nothing. If you make the criminal code sanguinary, juries wil