44 JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS. 



for the exercise of manhood. The self same soil produces the 

 hero and the coward, the man of honor and the knave. 

 Edward I and Edward III had no better opportunities than 

 Edward the II, but they were men while he was a poltroon. 

 Washington's character has made his name the synonym of 

 nobility the world over ; Benedict Arnold's perfidy made him 

 despised by the British, and gained for him the contempt of 

 posterity. George Brown and William Lyon Mackenzie were 

 determined advocates of popular rights ; the same soil produced 

 an unbalanced rebel and a prince among men. Not alone in 

 the larger events of history, but in every conflagration, every 

 shipwreck and railway disaster do we find the same circum- 

 stances producing the finest heroism and the most pitiable 

 cowardice, the sweetest devotion and the cruelest selfishness. 



Thus history reveals man's dignity with his subordination, 

 and in the acting of his part he recognizes dignity and subor- 

 dination as one. His confidence in his own freedom is not 

 disturbed by the conviction that history moves as an organized 

 whole. Guizot profoundly says, " Man advances in the execu- 

 tion of a plan which he has not conceived and of which he is 

 not even aware. He is the free and intelligent artificer in a 

 work which is not his own. Conceive a great machine, the 

 design of which is centered in a single mind, tho' its various 

 parts are intrusted to various workmen, separated from and 

 strangers to each other. No one of them understands the work 

 as a whole, nor the general result which he concurs in produc- 

 ing, but every one executes with intelligence and freedom, by 

 rational and voluntary acts, the particular task assigned to him." 



And with him the Laureate-seer : 



' ' I doubt not, thro the ages one increasing purpose runs, 

 And the thoughts of man are widened with the process of the suns.'' 



Once I cherished a fond hope which inspired as often as it 

 filled my mind. It is gone with a varied assortment of bright 

 and interesting illusions. This particuliar hope was centered 

 in the great Pyramid ! Could I but climb where ancient builders 

 stood, and view the landscape o'er, my sovil would be filled with 

 delight. One night half dreaming, half waking, I toiled to the 



