the death of Galileo, but ample justice has been
done to his memory. His name will be a watchword through all time, to
urge men forward in the great cause of moral and intellectual progress;
and the Tree of Knowledge, whose fruits were once on earth, plucked,
perhaps, ere they were matured, has shot up with its golden branches
into the skies, over which has radiated the smiles of a beneficent
Providence to cheer man onward in the career of virtue and intelligence.

"There is something," as a profound writer has observed,[20] "in the
spirit of the present age, greater than the age itself. It is, the
appearance of a new power in the world, the multitude of minds now
pressing forward in the great task of the moral and intellectual
regeneration of mankind."

And this cause must ultimately triumph. The energies and discoveries of
men like Galileo, remote as their history becomes, have an undying
influence.

The power of a great mind is like the attraction of a sun. It appears in
the infinite bounds of space, far, far away, as a grain among other gold
dust at the feet of the Eternal, or, at most, but as a luminous spot;
and yet we know that its influence controls, and is necessary for, the
order and arrangement of the nearest, as well is the remotest system. So
in the moral and intellectual universe, from world to world, from star
to star, the influence of one great mind extends, and we are drawn
toward it by an unseen, but all-pervading affinity. Thus has the cause
of moral and intellectual progress a sure guarantee of success. It has
become a necessity, interwoven with the spirit of the age--a necessity
impressed by every revelation of social evil, as well as proclaimed by
every scientific discovery--gaining increased energy and power from the
manifestation of every new wonder and mystery of nature--nay, from the
building of every steam-ship, the laying down of every new line of
railway.

FOOTNOTES:

[20] Channing.

[From Dickens's "Household Words."]

EBENEZER ELLIOTT

The name of Ebenezer Elliott is associated with one of the greatest and
most important political changes of modern times, with events not yet
sufficiently removed from us, to allow of their being canvassed in this
place with that freedom which would serve the more fully to illustrate
his real merits. Elliott would have been a poet, in all that constitutes
true poetry, had the corn laws never existed.

He was born on 25th March, 1781, at