High, through the widest space his orbit may describe, he holds on his course to guide or to enlighten; but the noises below reach him not! Until the wheel is broken,--until the dark void swallow up the star,--it makes melody, night and day, to its own ear: thirsting for no sound from the earth it illumines, anxious for no companionship in the path through which it rolls, conscious of its own glory, and contented, therefore, to be alone! But minds of this order are rare.

All ages cannot produce them.

They are exceptions to the ordinary and human virtue, which is influenced and regulated by external circumstance.

At a time when even to be merely susceptible to the voice of fame was a great pre-eminence in moral energies over the rest of mankind, it would be impossible that any one should ever have formed the conception of that more refined and metaphysical sentiment, that purer excitement to high deeds--that glory in one's own heart, which is so immeasurably above the desire of a renown that lackeys the heels of others.

In fact, before we can dispense with the world, we must, by a long and severe novitiate--by the probation of much thought, and much sorrow--by deep and sad conviction of the vanity of all that the world can give us, have raised our selves--not in the fervour of an hour, but habitually--above the world: an abstraction--an idealism--which, in our wiser age, how few even of the wisest, can attain! Yet, till we are thus fortunate, we know not the true divinity of contemplation, nor the all-sufficing mightiness of conscience; nor can we retreat with solemn footsteps into that Holy of Holies in our own souls, wherein we know, and feel, how much our nature is capable of the self-existence of a God! But to return to the things and thoughts of earth.