uch of a retreat as
an advance, but still the tide moves on.' Emerson has used the same
figure, but in a passage which ought not to be regarded as impairing
our author's originality.

On the vexed and perplexing question of _Evil_, Mr Helps has said many
acute and consolatory things, from among which we have culled the
following sentences:--'The man who is satisfied with any given state
of things that we are likely to see on earth, must have a creeping
imagination: on the other hand, he who is oppressed by the evils
around him so as to stand gaping at them in horror, has a feeble will
and a want of practical power, and allows his fancy to come in, like
too much wavering light upon his work, so that he does not see to go
on with it. A man of sagacity, while he apprehends a great deal of the
evil around him, resolves what part of it he will be blind to for the
present, in order to deal best with what he has in hand; and as to men
of any genius, they are not imprisoned or rendered partial even by
their own experience of evil, much less are their attacks upon it
paralysed by their full consciousness of its large presence.'
Here, in the next place, is an aphorism worth pondering and
remembrance:--'Vague injurious reports are no men's lies, but all
men's carelessness.' And by the side of it we may place a pleasant
sarcasm attributed to Ellesmere, and apparently intended as a reminder
for stump-orators: 'How exactly proportioned to a man's ignorance of
the subject is the noise he makes about it at a public meeting.' Not
altogether out of connection here may be this brief sentence:--'Next
to the folly of doing a bad thing, is that of fearing to undo it.' In
the following, we have a brief sufficient argument against the
indulgence of unavailing sorrow or anxiety:--'It has always appeared
to me, that there is so much to be done in this world, that all
self-inflicted suffering which cannot be turned to good account for
others, is a loss--a loss, if you may so express it, to the spiritual
world.' There is plain truth, too, in the next, though it is not
likely to be much remembered by those who are most in need of it:--'An
ill-tempered man often has everything his own way, and seems very
triumphant; but the demon he cherishes, tears him as well as awes
other people.' In another place, and from another point of view, he
indicates the admirable benefits of human, sympathy. 'Often,' says he,
'all that a man wants in order to accomplis