illustration than for argument. Let us come to facts.--Dr. Pritchard,
lately executed for murder, had no lack of that invention, which is, as
it were, the intellect of the imagination--its lowest form. One of the
clergymen who, at his own request, attended the prisoner, went through
indescribable horrors in the vain endeavour to induce the man simply to
cease from lying: one invention after another followed the most earnest
asseverations of truth. The effect produced upon us by this clergyman's
report of his experience was a moral dismay, such as we had never felt
with regard to human being, and drew from us the exclamation, "The man
could have had no imagination." The reply was, "None whatever." Never
seeking true or high things, caring only for appearances, and,
therefore, for inventions, he had left his imagination all undeveloped,
and when it represented his own inner condition to him, had repressed it
until it was nearly destroyed, and what remained of it was set on fire
of hell. [Footnote: One of the best weekly papers in London, evidently
as much in ignorance of the man as of the facts of the case, spoke of
Dr. MacLeod as having been engaged in "white-washing the murderer for
heaven." So far is this from a true representation, that Dr. MacLeod
actually refused to pray with him, telling him that if there was a hell
to go to, he must go to it.]

Man is "the roof and crown of things." He is the world, and more.
Therefore the chief scope of his imagination, next to God who made him,
will he the world in relation to his own life therein. Will he do better
or worse in it if this imagination, touched to fine issues and having
free scope, present him with noble pictures of relationship and duty, of
possible elevation of character and attainable justice of behaviour, of
friendship and of love; and, above all, of all these in that life to
understand which as a whole, must ever be the loftiest aspiration of
this noblest power of humanity? Will a woman lead a more or a less