aylight, is depicted there, in the shadow
that obscures the Book--in the scowl that is fixed upon the
Book-diffuser;--that sombre musing face of Richard, Duke of Gloucester,
with the beauty of Napoleon, darkened to the expression of a Fiend,
looking far and anxiously into futurity, as if foreseeing there what
antagonism was about to be created to the schemes of secret crime and
unrelenting force;--the chivalrous head of the accomplished Rivers, seen
but in profile, under his helmet, as if the age when Chivalry must
defend its noble attributes, in steel, was already half passed away:
and, not least grand of all, the rude thews and sinews of the artisan
forced into service on the type, and the ray of intellect, fierce, and
menacing revolutions yet to be, struggling through his rugged features,
and across his low knitted brow;--all this, which showed how deeply the
idea of the discovery in its good and its evil its saving light and its
perilous storms, had sunk into the artist's soul, charmed me as
effecting the exact union between sentiment and execution, which is the
true and rare consummation of the Ideal in Art. But observe, while in
these personages of the group are depicted the deeper and graver
agencies implicated in the bright but terrible invention--observe how
little the light epicures of the hour heed the scowl of the monk, or the
restless gesture of Richard, or the troubled gleam in the eyes of the
artisan--King Edward, handsome _Poco curante_, delighted, in the
surprise of a child, with a new toy; and Clarence, with his curious yet
careless glance--all the while Caxton himself, calm, serene, untroubled,
intent solely upon the manifestation of his discovery, and no doubt
supremely indifferent whether the first proofs of it shall be dedicated
to a Rivers or an Edward, a Richard or a Henry, Plantagenet or
Tudor--'tis all the same to that comely, gentle-looking man. So is it
ever with your Abstract Science!--not a jot cares its passionless logic
for the woe or weal of a generation or two. The stream, once emerged
from its source, passes on into the Great Intellectual Sea, smiling over
the wretch that it drowns, or under the keel of this ship which it
serves as a slave.

Now, when about to commence the present chapter on the Varieties of
Life, this masterpiece of thoughtful art forced itself on my
recollection, and illustrated what I designed to say. In the surface of
every age, it is often that which but amuses, f