ough the ages. And each book in the Parisian library stands
for all this,--some that were produced with tears having been always
read for jest,--some that were lightly written being now severe tasks
for historians, antiquaries, and source-mongers.

Suppose an old Egyptian, who in primaeval Hierapolis incased his thought
in papyrus, to be able now to take a stroll into the Bibliotheque, and
to see what has become of his thought so far as there represented. He
would find that it had haunted mankind ever since. An alcove would be
filled with commentaries on it, and discussions as to where it came from
and what it meant. He would find it modifying and modified by the
Greeks, and reproduced by them with divers variations,--extinguished by
Christianity,--revived, with a new face, among the theurgies and cabala
of Alexandria; he would catch the merest glimpse of it amid the
Christian legends and credulities of the Middle Ages,--but the Arabs
would have kept a stronger hold on it; he would see it in the background
after the revival of learning, till, gradually, as modern commerce
opened the East, scholars, also, discovered that there were wonders
behind the classic nations; and finally he would see how modern
research, rushing back through comparison of language-roots, through
geological data, through ethnological indications, through antiquarian
discoveries, has rooted out of the layers of ages all the history
attendant upon its original production. He would find the records of
this long history in the library around him. In every age, the thought,
born of pain, has been reproduced with travail. It did not do its
mission at once, penetrate like a ray of light into the heart of the
race, and leave a chemical effect which should last forever. No, the
blood of man's spirit was not purified,--only an external application
was made, and that application must be repeated with torture upon every
generation. Was this designed to be the function of thought, the mission
of heavenly ideas?

This is the history of his thought in books. But let us conceive what
might have been its history but for the books;--how it might have been
written in the fibres of the soul, and lived in eternal reason, instead
of having been written on papyrus and involved in the realm of dead
matter. His idea, thrilling his own soul, would have revealed itself in
every particle and movement of his body; for "soul is form, and doth the
body make." Its first product