ve than the Venus de Milo or the Apollo
Belvedere; or any system of jurisprudence be more completely codified
than that systematized by Justinian; or any Gothic church rival the
lofty expression of Cologne cathedral; or any painting surpass the holy
serenity and ethereal love depicted in Raphael's madonnas; or any court
witness such a brilliant assemblage of wits and beauties as met at
Versailles to render homage to Louis XIV.; or any theological discussion
excite such a national interest as when Luther confronted Doctor Eck in
the great hall of the Electoral Palace at Leipsic; or any theatrical
excitement such as was produced on cultivated intellects when Garrick
and Siddons represented the sublime conceptions of the myriad-minded
Shakspeare. These glories may reappear, but never will they shine as
they did before. No more Olympian games, no more Roman triumphs, no more
Dodona oracles, no more Flavian amphitheatres, no more Mediaeval
cathedrals, no more councils of Nice or Trent, no more spectacles of
kings holding the stirrups of popes, no more Fields of the Cloth of
Gold, no more reigns of court mistresses in such palaces as Versailles
and Fontainbleau,--ah! I wish I could add, no more such battlefields as
Marengo and Waterloo,--only copies and imitations of these, and without
the older charm. The world is moving on and perpetually changing, nor
can we tell what new vanity will next arise,--vanity or glory, according
to our varying notions of the dignity and destiny of man. We may predict
that it will not be any mechanical improvement, for ere long the limit
will be reached,--and it will be reached when the great mass cannot find
work to do, for the everlasting destiny of man is toil and labor. But it
will be some sublime wonders of which we cannot now conceive, and which
in time will pass away for other wonders and novelties, until the great
circle is completed; and all human experiments shall verify the moral
wisdom of the eternal revelation. Then all that man has done, all that
man can do, in his own boastful thought, will be seen, in the light of
the celestial verities, to be indeed a vanity and a failure, not of
human ingenuity and power, but to realize the happiness which is only
promised as the result of supernatural, not mortal, strength, yet which
the soul in its restless aspirations never ceases its efforts to
secure,--everlasting Babel-building to reach the unattainable on earth.

Now the revival of art in