mockery of himself, reposing on the monument of his fame--

"Sedet, in eternumque sedebit infelix Theseus."

No work in our time gave such a blow to the philosophical mind of the
country as the celebrated _Enquiry concerning Political Justice_. Tom
Paine was considered for the time as a Tom Fool to him; Paley an old
woman; Edmund Burke a flashy sophist. Truth, moral truth, it was
supposed, had here taken up its abode; and these were the oracles of
thought. "Throw aside your books of chemistry," said Wordsworth to a
young man, a student in the Temple, "and read Godwin on Necessity." Sad
necessity! Fatal reverse! Is truth then so variable? Is it one thing at
twenty, and another at forty? Is it at a burning heat in 1793, and below
_zero_ in 1814? Not so, in the name of manhood and of common sense! Let
us pause here a little.--Mr. Godwin indulged in extreme opinions, and
carried with him all the most sanguine and fearless understandings of
the time. What then? Because those opinions were overcharged, were they
therefore altogether groundless? Is the very God of our idolatry all of
a sudden to become an abomination and an anathema? Could so many young
men of talent, of education, and of principle have been hurried away by
what had neither truth, nor nature, not one particle of honest feeling
nor the least shew of reason in it? Is the _Modern Philosophy_ (as it
has been called) at one moment a youthful bride, and the next a withered
beldame, like the false Duessa in Spenser? Or is the vaunted edifice
of Reason, like his House of Pride, gorgeous in front, and dazzling to
approach, while "its hinder parts are ruinous, decayed, and old?" Has
the main prop, which supported the mighty fabric, been shaken and given
way under the strong grasp of some Samson; or has it not rather been
undermined by rats and vermin? At one time, it almost seemed, that "if
this failed,