16 
JOURNAL OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 
enabling us to take a broader and therefore more complete view of 
human life, they teach us how to judge more accurately of all its 
isolated details ; by the abundant precedents they supply of success 
and failure in the conduct of individual and national life, they 
show how men and nations may secure the one and escape the 
other ; they warn us, as with the blast of a trumpet, that injustice 
and wrong, though they may long escape with impunity, will 
surely be overtaken at last by Vengeance, who hobbles along with 
lame but inevitable step ; they are the delight of our youth and 
the solace of our riper years ; the source of wisdom and the source 
of power; without them human life would lose half its charm, 
and human nature more than half its dignity. 
The Literature of a community should be the highest concern of 
every individual member of it, for it is a mighty power, whether 
for good or for evil. It moves with irresistible force ; for it is the 
embodiment of a nation's thought, and the audible expression of 
its will. It acts and reacts ; expresses and creates conviction. 
The part it has played in the correction of abuses is well known 
to every student of history, and must be patent to every careful 
observer of the events of our time. We have already spoken of 
the effects of the work entitled It } s Never Too Late to Mend, and 
this is no solitary example. The French nation might have been 
still groaning under the tyranny of an antiquated feudalism, had 
not Voltaire, like an athlete, arisen, and with his mighty pen 
dashed the chains asunder. 
" II brisa les entraves de l'esprit humain." 
The United States would probably have been still struggling to rid 
themselves of the curse of slavery, had not a woman written a 
little book, which, like David's stone, entered the monster's fore- 
head, and felled him to the ground. It has been frequently 
observed that some women are prettiest when they are angry, and 
positively irresistible when in tears; and assuredly Literature is 
never so grand, never vindicates so clearly her divine mission, as 
when her heart is touched at the sight of cruelty or wrong, when 
she dashes aside with impatience all the sophistries of expediency 
and a false conventionality, and with eagle glance sees the proper 
remedy. Then she girds on her own peculiar weapons — weapons 
as ethereal and irresistible as those of fairy romance ; her breast 
heaves with the contending passions of sympathy and vengeance 
— sympathy for the helpless and oppressed, vengeance for the 
