its laugh over these romances. When unable to refute their
theories, it could sneer at the authors, and answer them to the
satisfaction of the generation in which they lived, at least by a general
charge of lunacy. Some of their notions were no doubt as absurd as those
of the astronomer in "Rasselas", who tells Imlac that he has for five
years possessed the regulation of the weather, and has got the secret of
making to the different nations an equal and impartial dividend of rain
and sunshine. But truth, even when ushered into the world through the
medium of a dull romance and in connection with a vast progeny of errors,
however ridiculed and despised at first, never fails in the end of
finding a lodging-place in the popular mind. The speculations of the
political theorists whom we have noticed have not all proved to be of

"such stuff
As dreams are made of, and their little life
Rounded with sleep."

They have entered into and become parts of the social and political
fabrics of Europe and America. The prophecies of imagination have been
fulfilled; the dreams of romance have become familiar realities.

What is the moral suggested by this record? Is it not that we should
look with charity and tolerance upon the schemes and speculations of the
political and social theorists of our day; that, if unprepared to venture
upon new experiments and radical changes, we should at least consider
that what was folly to our ancestors is our wisdom, and that another
generation may successfully put in practice the very theories which now
seem to us absurd and impossible? Many of the evils of society have been
measurably removed or ameliorated; yet now, as in the days of the
Apostle, "the creation groaneth and travaileth in pain;" and although
quackery and empiricism abound, is it not possible that a proper
application of some of the remedies proposed might ameliorate the general
suffering? Rejecting, as we must, whatever is inconsistent with or
hostile to the doctrines of Christianity, on which alone rests our hope
for humanity, it becomes us to look kindly upon all attempts to apply
those doctrines to the details of human life, to the social, political,
and industrial relations of the race. If it is not permitted us to
believe all things, we can at least hope them. Despair is infidelity and
death. Temporally and spiritually, the declaration of inspiration holds
good, "We