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the motives, of another man’s soul are to me underground 
rivers, flowing in undiscernible abysses; and his thoughts 
flash before my eyes like Protei in the waters of the cavern 
at Adelsberg. What can I know of their birth, or of their 
true shapes and natures? I can see that many of them are 
blind ; but I must argue that they are all well fitted for their 
native home. The good and the bad, the wise and the fool- 
ish, all add alike to the beauty of the entire universe. The 
biographical critic therefore runs a thousand risks, either 
of impertinently maligning the creature, or of presumptu- 
ously arraigning the Creator. Neither is all gold that glit- 
ters; and the biographer must not expect to be believed 
when he returns to the daylight of crowded life and describes 
his Wier’s Cave as filled with exquisite carved statues of 
Washington, or the glittering crystals in the roof of his Mam- 
moth Cave as equalling, in their brilliancy, number, and 
effect upon the senses, the stars in a tropical sky. Too 
much sensational biography has been allowed. Individual 
souls are worth no more to the race than individual soldiers 
toan army. Even in camp the waste is ten per cent. But 
the moment the army moves, the waste becomes thirty per 
cent. and forty per cent. Such is the waste of souls in time 
of spiritual excitement, in revivals of literature or religion, 
and in the periodical advancements of national politics 
towards a perfect socialism. Yet the histories of nations 
lost, and the biographies of souls wasted, deserve better to be 
written, because fuller of adventure, and therefore of instruc- 
tion, than those of Rome and Cxsar. But the muse of his- 
tory can only write in presence of its monuments. What 
botanist could succeed, were he to study only the fallen 
trunks and macerated leaves of the forest? The monuments 
Of a life are its only guaranty of immortality ; dim, mystical 
S seemed though the hieroglyphics be from which 
