invention, observe how little the light epicures of the hour heed the
scowl of the monk, or the restless gesture of Richard, or the troubled
gleam in the eyes of the artisan, King Edward, handsome Poco curante,
delighted in the surprise of a child, with a new toy, and Clarence, with
his curious, yet careless, glance,--all the while Caxton himself, calm,
serene, untroubled, intent solely upon the manifestation of his
discovery, and no doubt supremely indifferent whether the first proofs of
it shall be dedicated to a Rivers or an Edward, a Richard or a Henry,
Plantagenet or Tudor--'t is all the same to that comely, gentle-looking
man. So is it ever with your Abstract Science!--not a jot cares its
passionless logic for the woe or weal of a generation or two. The
stream, once emerged from its source, passes on into the great
Intellectual Sea, smiling over the wretch that it drowns, or under
the keel of the ship which it serves as a slave.

Now, when about to commence the present chapter on the Varieties of Life,
this masterpiece of thoughtful art forced itself on my recollection, and
illustrated what I designed to convey. In the surface of every age it is
often that which but amuses for the moment the ordinary children of
pleasant existence, the Edwards and the Clarences (be they kings and
dukes, or simplest of simple subjects), which afterwards towers out as
the great serious epoch of the time. When we look back upon human
records, how the eye settles upon WRITERS as the main landmarks of the
past! We talk of the age of Augustus, of Elizabeth, of Louis XIV., of
Anne, as the notable eras of the world. Why? Because it is their
writers who have made them so. Intervals between one age of authors and
another lie unnoticed, as the flats and common lands of uncultured
history. And yet, strange to say, when these authors are living amongst
us, they occupy a very small portion of our thoughts, and fill up but
desultory interstices in the bitumen and tufo wherefrom we build up the