right to plead their merits; but so little genius as there is in the
world, you must surely grant that pleas of this sort are very rarely
to be urged."

"And why rarely," cried Belfield, "but because your general rules,
your appropriated customs, your settled forms, are but so many
absurd arrangements to impede not merely the progress of genius, but
the use of understanding? If man dared act for himself, if neither
worldly views, contracted prejudices, eternal precepts, nor
compulsive examples, swayed his better reason and impelled his
conduct, how noble indeed would he be! _how infinite in faculties!
in apprehension how like a God!_" [Footnote: Hamlet.]

"All this," answered Mr Monckton, "is but the doctrine of a lively
imagination, that looks upon impossibilities simply as difficulties,
and upon difficulties as mere invitations to victory. But experience
teaches another lesson; experience shows that the opposition of an
individual to a community is always dangerous in the operation, and
seldom successful in the event;--never, indeed, without a
concurrence strange as desirable, of fortunate circumstances with
great abilities."

"And why is this," returned Belfield, "but because the attempt is so
seldom made? The pitiful prevalence of general conformity extirpates
genius, and murders originality; the man is brought up, not as if he
were 'the noblest work of God,' but as a mere ductile machine of
human formation: he is early taught that he must neither consult his
understanding, nor pursue his inclinations, lest, unhappily for his
commerce with the world, his understanding should be averse to
fools, and provoke him to despise them; and his inclinations to the