London to John O 1 Groat's. 157 



scaffolding the highest ? over Confucius, or Socrates, or 

 the Scandinavian seer, or Druid or Aztec priest ? Was 

 it highest at Athens, because there the great apostle to 

 the Grentiles planted his feet upon it, and said, in the 

 ears of the Grecian sophists, " Him whom ye ignorantly 

 worship declare I unto you ?" At that brilliant centre 

 of pagan civilisation it might have reached its loftiest 

 altitude, measured by a purely intellectual standard; 

 but morally, this scaffolding was on the same low level 

 of human life and character all the world around. The 

 immortalities erected by Egyptian or Grecian philo- 

 sophy were no purer, in moral conception and attri- 

 butes, than the mythological fantasies of the North 

 American Indians. In them all, human nature was to 

 have the old play of its passions and appetites ; in some 

 of them, a wider sweep and sway. There was not one 

 in the whole set of Grecian deities half so moral and 

 pure, in sentiment and conduct, as Socrates ; nor were 

 Jupiter and his subordinate celestials better than the 

 average kings and courts of Greece. Out of the hay, 

 wood, and stubble of sheer fancy the human mind was 

 left to raise these fantastic structures. They exercised 

 and entertained the imagination, but brought no light 

 nor strength to the soul ; no superior nor additional 

 motives to shape the conduct of life. But they did 

 this, undoubtedly, with all their delusions ; they de- 



