ost entirely a single act--without
parts, or contributions, or stages, or preparations from other
quarters--that these long disputed ideas could not be derived from the
experience assigned by Locke, inasmuch as they are themselves
_previous conditions under which any experience at all is possible_:
he teaches him that these ideas are not mystically originated, but
are, in fact, but another phasis of the functions, or, forms of his
own understanding; and, finally, he gives consistency, validity, and
a charter of authority, to certain modes of _nexus_, without which the
sum total of human experience would be a rope of sand.

In terminating this slight account of the Kantian philosophy, I may
mention that in or about the year 1818-19, Lord Grenville, when
visiting the lakes of England, observed to Professor Wilson that,
after five years' study of this philosophy, he had not gathered from
it one clear idea. Wilberforce, about the same time, made the same
confession to another friend of my own.

It is not usual for men to meet with their capital disappointments in
early life, at least not in youth. For, as to disappointments in love,
which are doubtless the most bitter and incapable of comfort, though
otherwise likely to arise in youth, they are in this way made
impossible at a very early age, that no man can be in love to the
whole extent of his capacity, until he is in full possession of all
his faculties, and with the sense of dignified maturity. A perfect
love, such as is necessary to the anguish of a perfect disappointment,
presumes also for its object not a mere girl, but woman, mature both
in person and character, and womanly dignity. This sort of
disappointment, in a degree which could carry its impression through
life, I cannot therefore suppose occurring earlier than at twenty-five
or twenty-seven. My disappointment--the profound shock with which I
was repelled from German philosophy, and which thenceforwards tinged
with cynical disgust towards man in certain aspects, a temper which,
originally, I will presume to consider the most benign that can ever
have been created--occurred when I was yet in my twentieth year. In a
poem under the title of _Saul_, written many years ago by Mr. Sotheby,
and perhaps now forgotten, having never been popular, there occurs a
passage of some pathos, in which Saul is described as keeping amongst
the splendid equipments of a royal wardrobe, that particular pastoral
habit which he had