We have seen the British nation,
choosing by the accident of birth a baby for its future sovereign, and
training it in a way the least possible calculated to favor relations
of acquaintance and sympathy with varied wants of the many; and our
first impression, I fear, has been our last: What drivellers!
Obstinately blind to the clearest lights of common sense! Whereas
wiser for us would it be, to derive from the spectacle these general
conclusion: that hard is it for the human mind to proceed in advance
of ideas received and fashionable; that the so-called independent and
original thinkers--leaders of public sentiment-are such as anticipate
by a little the general progress of thought, as our hill-tops catch
first by a little the beams of the rising sun, before they fill the
intervening valleys; that men's superiority in profound thought or
liberal ideas, in one direction, affords no security for their
attaining to mediocrity in others; and that one familiar with the
history of thought, may pronounce, with moral certainty, that such and
such ideas were never entertained in such or such society, where due
preparation did not exist. As we may confidently say, No mountain-top
can tower high enough, to catch the sunbeams at midnight; with equal
confidence we may say of many ideas now familiar as school-boy truths:
no intellect in ancient Greece or Rome soared high enough above the
mass to grasp them.
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