n languishes, and the soil is parched for a while,
the great source of refreshing and fertility still lies before us--the
public mind, in its boundless expansion, and in its unfathomable
depth; the intellectual ocean which no plummet has ever sounded, and
which no shore has ever circumscribed, lies ready to restore the
balance of nature.

But the sense of power itself in the national mind forbids the
exhibition of its strength in tranquil times. It is lofty and
fastidious; it will not stoop to a contest in which nothing is to be
contended for. It is not an actor; and it cannot adopt the figured
passion of the actor, rend its robe, and flourish, and obtest heaven
against the traitor and the oppressor, to the sound of an orchestra,
or in the glitter of stage lamps. The true ability of the empire must
scorn all mimic encounter; and what else can be the little struggles
of party shut up in the legislature, whose sound scarcely transpires
through the walls, whose triumphs are a tax, and whose oracles are an
intrigue? But, when the true day of trial shall come--when an enemy
shall be seen hovering on the coasts of the Constitution--when trumpet
answers trumpet, and the "country is proclaimed in danger"--then, and
not till then, shall we know the superb resources of our intellectual
strength: whatever may have been the prowess of the past, we may see
it not merely rivaled but thrown into eclipse by the future; the
burnished armour, and massive swords and maces of our old intellectual
chivalry, superseded by more manageable and more destructive
implements of success; and the sterner conflict followed by the more
consummate triumph. Yet, when we undervalue the living ability of a
nation from its quietude at the moment, we but adopt the example of
every past age in succession. The last ten years of the last century
were preceded by a period of despair; Chatham's career was run, and
the national regrets over his tomb were mingled with sorrows for the
extinction of all parliamentary renown!--The day had gone down, and
darkness was to cover the sky for ever. But while the prediction was
scarcely uttered, the horizon as in a blaze, mighty meteors rushed
across it in a thousand courses of eccentric speed and splendour; and
a period of intellectual display began, which at once dazzled and
delighted mankind. Anne's Augustan age of war, negotiation, and
eloquence, was once pronounced to be, like the Augustan age of Rome,
incapable of ri