is self-centred, and will be true to himself though none ever
were before; who, as Montaigne says, "puts his ear close by
himself, and holds his breath and listens." And none can be
offended with the self-subsistency of one so catholic and jocund.
And 't is good to have a new eye inspect our mouldy social forms,
our politics, and schools, and religion. I say _our,_ for it
cannot have escaped you that a lecture upon these topics written
for England may be read to America. Evermore thanks for the
brave stand you have made for Spiritualism in these writings.
But has literature any parallel to the oddity of the vehicle
chosen to convey this treasure? I delight in the contents; the
form, which my defective apprehension for a joke makes me not
appreciate, I leave to your merry discretion. And yet did ever
wise and philanthropic author use so defying a diction? As if
society were not sufficiently shy of truth without providing it
beforehand with an objection to the form. Can it be that this
humor proceeds from a despair of finding a contemporary audience,
and so the Prophet feels at liberty to utter his message in droll
sounds. Did you not tell me, Mr. Thomas Carlyle, sitting upon
one of your broad hills, that it was Jesus Christ built Dunscore
Kirk yonder? If you love such sequences, then admit, as you
will, that no poet is sent into the world before his time; that
all the departed thinkers and actors have paved your way; that
(at least when you surrender yourself) nations and ages do guide
your pen, yes, and common goose-quills as well as your diamond
graver. Believe then that harp and ear are formed by one
revolution of the wheel; that men are waiting to hear your
epical song; and so be pleased to skip those excursive involved
glees, and give us the simple air, without the volley of
variations. At least in some of your prefaces you should give us