eloquence, and genius breathing enchantment. Both the actual possessors of
this mental opulence, and the part of society forming, around them, the
sphere immediately pervaded by the delight and instruction imparted by
them, might as well, for anything they diffused of this luxury and benefit
among the general multitude, have been a Brahminical caste, dissociated by
an imagined essential distinction of nature. While they were exulting in
this elevation and free excursiveness of mental existence, the prostrate
crowd were grovelling through a life on a level with the soil where they
were at last to find their graves. But this crowd it was that constituted
the substance of the _nation_; to which, nation, in the mass, the
historian applies the superb epithets, which a small proportion of the men
of that age claimed by a striking _exception_ to the general state of the
community. History too much consults our love of effect and pomp, to let
us see in a close and distinct manner anything

"On the low level of th' inglorious throng;"

and our attention is borne away to the intellectual splendor exhibited
among the most favored aspirants of the seats of learning, or in councils,
courts, and camps, in heroic and romantic enterprises, and in some
immortal works of genius. And thus we are gazing with delight at a fine
public bonfire, while, in all the cottages round, the people are shivering
for want of fuel.

Our history becomes very bright again with the intellectual and literary
riches of a much later period, often denominated a golden age,--that which
was illustrated by the talents of Addison, Pope, Swift, and their numerous
secondaries in fame; and could also boast its philosophers, statesmen, and
heroes. And in the lapse of four or five ages, according to the average
term of human life, since the earlier grand display of mind, what had been