which he would set on grandeur. There shall be exempts of two kinds:
first, those who by demerit have put themselves below
protection,--outlaws; and secondly, those who by eminence of nature
and desert are out of the reach of your rewards; let such be free of
the city, and above the law. We confide them to themselves; let them
do with us as they will. Let none presume to measure the irregularities
of Michel Angelo and Socrates by village scales.

In his eighth book of the Republic, he throws a little mathematical
dust in our eyes. I am sorry to see him, after such noble superiorities,
permitting the lie to governors. Plato plays Providence a little with
the baser sort, as people allow themselves with their dogs and cats.




III. SWEDENBORG; OR, THE MYSTIC.

Among eminent persons, those who are most dear to men are not the class
which the economists call producers; they have nothing in their hands;
they have not cultivated corn, nor made bread; they have not led out
a colony, nor invented a loom. A higher class, in the estimation and
love of this city-building, market-going race of mankind, are the
poets, who, from the intellectual kingdom, feed the thought and
imagination with ideas and pictures which raise men out of the world
of corn and money, and console them for the shortcomings of the day,
and the meannesses of labor and traffic. Then, also, the philosopher
has his value, who flatters the intellect of this laborer, by engaging
him with subtleties which instruct him in new faculties. Others may
build cities; he is to understand them, and keep them in awe. But there