for an hour, ay, for many hours! to make
a very bar-room of the mind's inmost apartment, as if for so long the
dust of the street had occupied us,--the very street itself, with all
its travel, its bustle, and filth had passed through our thoughts'
shrine! Would it not be an intellectual and moral suicide? When I have
been compelled to sit spectator and auditor in a court-room for some
hours, and have seen my neighbors, who were not compelled, stealing in
from time to time, and tiptoeing about with washed hands and faces, it
has appeared to my mind's eye, that, when they took off their hats,
their ears suddenly expanded into vast hoppers for sound, between which
even their narrow heads were crowded. Like the vanes of windmills, they
caught the broad, but shallow stream of sound, which, after a few
titillating gyrations in their coggy brains, passed out the other side.
I wondered if, when they got home, they were as careful to wash their
ears as before their hands and faces. It has seemed to me, at such a
time, that the auditors and the witnesses, the jury and the counsel, the
judge and the criminal at the bar,--if I may presume him guilty before
he is convicted,--were all equally criminal, and a thunderbolt might be
expected to descend and consume them all together.

By all kinds of traps and sign-boards, threatening the extreme penalty
of the divine law, exclude such trespassers from the only ground which
can be sacred to you. It is so hard to forget what it is worse than
useless to remember! If I am to be a thoroughfare, I prefer that it be
of the mountain-brooks, the Parnassian streams, and not the town-sewers.
There is inspiration, that gossip which comes to the ear of the
attentive mind from the courts of heaven. There is the profane and stale
revelation of the bar-room and the police court. The same ear is fitted
to receive both communications. Only the character of the hearer
determines to which it shall be open, and to which closed. I believe
that the mind can be permanently profaned by the habit of attending to
trivial things, so that all our thoughts shall be tinged with
triviality. Our very intellect shall be macadamized, as it were,--its
foundation broken into fragments for the wheels of travel to roll over;
and if you would know what will make the most durable pavement,
surpassing rolled stones, spruce blocks, and asphaltum, you have only to
look into some of our minds which have been subjected to this treat