prevailing feeling in
society. Pere Enfantin in France, Wilberforce in England, Garrison in
America,--these are watchmen set on a pinnacle (whoever may object to
their being there) who can tell us "what of the night," and how a new
morning is breaking. Whether they may be most cause or effect, whether
they have more or less decidedly originated the interest of which they
are the head, it is clear that there is a certain adaptation between
themselves and the general mind, without which they could not have risen
to be what they are.--Every society has always its idols. If there are
none by merit, at any moment, station is received as a qualification.
Large numbers are always worshipping the heads of the aristocracy, of
whatever kind they may be; and there is rarely a long interval in which
there is not some warrior, some poet, artist, or philanthropist on whom
the multitude are flinging crowns and incense. The popularity of Byron
testified to the existence of a gloomy discontent in a multitude of
minds, as the adoration of De Beranger discloses the political feelings
of the French. Statesmen rarely command an overwhelming majority of
worshippers, because interest enters much more than sentiment into
politics: but every author, or other artist who can reach the general
mind,--every preacher, philanthropist, soldier, or discoverer, who has
risen into an atmosphere of worship in pursuit of a purpose, is a fresh
Peter the Hermit, meeting and stimulating the spirit of his time, and
exhibiting its temper to the observer,--foreign as to either clime or
century. The physical observer of a new region might as well shut his
eyes to the mountains, and omit to note which way the streams run, as
the moral observer pass by the idols of a nation with a heedless gaze.

* * * * *

Side by side with this lies the inquiry into the great Epochs of the
society visited. Find out what individuals and nations date from, and
you discover what events are most interesting to them. A child reckons
from his first journey, or his entrance upon school: a man from his
marriage, his beginning practice in his profession, or forming a fresh
partnership in trade; if he be a farmer, from the year of a good or bad
crop; if he be a merchant, from the season of a currency pressure; if he
be an operative, from the winter of the Strike: a matron dates from the
birth of her children; her nursemaid from her change of place. Nations,