pulpit,--putting in its word every where, always at hand, always
sufficient, constituting itself, in virtue of its own irresistible
claims and in the face of what we are told of it, the oracle, the
great practical, mysterious, but universally acknowledged, oracle of
our modern life; the fact that these two great branches of the modern
philosophy make their appearance in history at the same moment, that
they make their appearance in the same company of men--in that same
little courtly company of Elizabethan Wits and Men of Letters that the
revival of the ancient learning brought out here--this is the fact
that strikes the eye at the first glance at this inquiry.

But that this is none other than that same little clique of
disappointed and defeated politicians who undertook to head and
organize a popular opposition against the government, and were
compelled to retreat from that enterprise, the best of of them
effecting their retreat with some difficulty, others failing entirely
to accomplish it, is the next notable fact which the surface of the
inquiry exhibits. That these two so illustrious branches of the modern
learning were produced for the ostensible purpose of illustrating and
adorning the tyrannies which the men, under whose countenance and
protection they are produced, were vainly attempting, or had vainly
attempted to set bounds to or overthrow, is a fact which might seem of
itself to suggest inquiry. When insurrections are suppressed, when
'the monstrous enterprises of rebellious subjects are overthrown, then
FAME, who is _the posthumous sister of the giants_,--the sister of
_defeated_ giants springs up'; so a man who had made some political
experiments himself that were not very successful, tells us.

The fact that the men under whose patronage and in whose service 'Will
the Jester' first showed himself, were men who were secretly