A WORD FOR PHILOSOPHY. 101 



justifies itself, whatever be the system in which it settles. He must 

 renounce all anathematizing denunciations ; disclaim any preference 

 due to a particular system because it is that of the state ; and disavow 

 any right of annexing penalties and privations to non-conformity to a 

 predominant faith. Unless he agrees to these preliminaries, he is in 

 effect no more a friend to free enquiry than the Romanist ; and, when 

 he urges examination, it is only upon the tacit condition that its result 

 should be conversion to his own opinions. The philosopher who has 

 thrown off the authority of my grandmother's, grandfather's, god- 

 mother's, uncle's wife the pope and his council is not likely to yield 

 to that of Luther or Calvin, a convocation or a synod. 



To conclude Philosophy, understood in its proper sense of " the 

 love of wisdom," or of truth (which is tne same thing), is the only 

 principle to be relied on, not only for meliorating the state of the 

 world, but for preventing a relapse to barbarism. True it is we now 

 have your Russells your Peels your Stanleys, and so on. If she be 

 excluded from all guidance of human affairs, in whose hands shall it be 

 placed ? in those of Avarice, of Ambition, of Bigotry ? She may 

 have had her moments of delirium, but she is essentially the votary of 

 Reason, and possesses within herself the power of correcting her own 

 errors. Policy, if she be not called in as a counsellor, degenerates 

 into craft; and Religion, without her direction, into superstition. 

 They who are afraid of her "SEARCHING SPIRIT" must be conscious 

 of something that will not bear the light of investigation. They are 

 foes to the truth because " the truth is not in them." 



M. M. 



SONNET. WRITTEN BY THE SEA-SIDE. 

 By Lady Emmeline Stuart Worthy. 



OCEAN ! thy foam-crowned bulwarks round our land, 

 Thy mountain wall of waves must they be vain 

 To shield her from the curse, the scourge, the chain ? 

 Shall she forget in palmy pride to stand ? 

 Shall Ruin spoil her with its red right hand ? 

 And must thy rolling ramparts, mightiest main, 

 Prove weak to o'erwhelm her foes or to restrain ? 

 Out upon those! the abhorred, the unrighteous band. 

 Alas ! the children of her bosom they 

 Who to her heart the envenomed dagger hold, 

 And to her lips the cup of sore dismay 



By such shall England's golden days be told ? 

 Ocean ! ere they become the traitors' prey, 

 Shroud up the Imperial Isles in thy hoar surges old ! 

 1834. 



