made illustrations of the atomic theory of the
soul, every atom being a separate savage, after the social theory of
Hobbes. We are crazed by a multitudinousness of details, till the eye
sees no picture, the ear hears no music, the taste finds no beauty, and
the reason grasps no system. The only wonder is that the diabolical
invention of Faust or Gutenberg has not already transformed the growths
of the mind into a fauna and flora of perdition.

It was a sad barbarism when men ran wild with their own impulses, unable
to control the fierceness of instinct. It is a sadder barbarism when men
yield to every impulse from without, with no imperial dignity in the
soul, which closes the apartments against the violence of the world and
frowns away unseemly intruders. We have no spontaneous enthusiasm, no
spiritual independence, no inner being, obedient only to its own law. We
do not plough the billows of time with true beak and steady weight, but
float, a tossed cork, now one side up and now the other. We live the
life of an insect accidentally caught within a drum. Every steamer that
comes hits the drum a beat; every telegram taps it; it echoes with every
representative's speech, reverberates with every senator's more portly
effort, screams at every accident. Everything that is done in the
universe seems to be done only to make a noise upon it. Every morning,
whatsoever thing has been changed, and whatsoever thing has been
unchanged, during the night, comes up to batter its report on the
omni-audient tympanum of the universe, the drum-head of the press. And
then we are inside of it. It may be music to the gods who dwell beyond
the blue ether, but it is terrible confusion to us.

Virgil exhausted the resources of his genius in his portraiture of
Fame:--

"Fama, malum, quo non aliud velocius ullum:
Mobilitate viget, viresque acquirit eundo:
Parva metu primo; mox sese attollit in auras,
Ingrediturque solo, et caput inter nubila condit.

*** *** *** ***

Tot linguae, totidem ora sonant, tot subrigit aures.
Nocte volat coeli medio terraeque per umbram
Stridens, nec dulci declinat lumina somno."

What would he have done, had he known our modern monster, the
alphabet-tongued, steel-sinewed, kettle-lunged Rumor? It is a sevenfold
horror. The Virgilian Fame was not a mechanical, but a living thing; it
grew as it ran; it at least gave a poetical impression. Its story grew
as legends grow, full to th