here was the secret of happiness, about which philosophers had disputed for so many ages, at once discovered; happiness might now be bought for a penny, and carried in the waistcoat-pocket; portable ecstasies might be had corked up in a pint-bottle; and peace of mind could be sent down by the mail.

If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination.

Fierce sectarianism breeds fierce latitudinarianism.

No progressive knowledge will ever medicine that dread misgiving of a mysterious and pathless power given to words of a certain import.

War has a deeper and more ineffable relation to hidden grandeurs in man than has yet been deciphered.

The pulpit style of Germany has been always rustically negligent, or bristling with pedantry.

Enough if every age produce two or three critics of this esoteric class, with here and there a reader to understand them.