ment
so long.

If we have thus desecrated ourselves,--as who has not?--the remedy will
be by wariness and devotion to reconsecrate ourselves, and make once
more a fane of the mind. We should treat our minds, that is, ourselves,
as innocent and ingenuous children, whose guardians we are, and be
careful what objects and what subjects we thrust on their attention.
Read not the Times. Read the Eternities. Conventionalities are at length
as bad as impurities. Even the facts of science may dust the mind by
their dryness, unless they are in a sense effaced each morning, or
rather rendered fertile by the dews of fresh and living truth. Knowledge
does not come to us by details, but in flashes of light from heaven.
Yes, every thought that passes through the mind helps to wear and tear
it, and to deepen the ruts, which, as in the streets of Pompeii, evince
how much it has been used. How many things there are concerning which we
might well deliberate, whether we had better know them,--had better let
their peddling-carts be driven, even at the slowest trot or walk, over
that bridge of glorious span by which we trust to pass at last from the
farthest brink of time to the nearest shore of eternity! Have we no
culture, no refinement,--but skill only to live coarsely and serve the
Devil?--to acquire a little worldly wealth, or fame, or liberty, and
make a false show with it, as if we were all husk and shell, with no
tender and living kernel to us? Shall our institutions be like those
chestnut-burs which contain abortive nuts, perfect only to prick the
fingers?

America is said to be the arena on which the battle of freedom is to be
fought; but surely it cannot be freedom in a merely political sense that
is meant. Even if we grant that the American has freed himself from a
political tyrant, he is still the slave of an economical and moral
tyrant. Now that the republic--the _res-publica_--has been settled, it
is time to look after the _res-privata_,--the private state,--to see, as
the Roman senate charged its consuls, "_ne quid res-PRIVATA detrimenti
caperet_," that the _private_ state receive no detriment.

Do we call this the land of the free? What is it to be free from King
George and continue the slaves of King Prejudice? What is it to be born
free and not to live free? What is the value of any political freedom,
but as a means to moral freedom? Is it a freedom to be slaves, or a
freedom to be free, of which we boast? We are a nati