– ALL THAT IS WORTH REMEMBERING –

real feelings and incidents hung upon these impressions, of which such dim traces and doubtful suggestions are all that is left? And is it not better that truth and nature should speak this imperfect but heartfelt language, than be entirely dumb? And should we not preserve and cherish this precious link that connects together the finer essence of our past and future being by some expressive symbol, rather than suffer all that cheers and sustains life to fall into the dregs of material sensations and blindfold ignorance? There, now, is half a definition of Sentiment: for the other half we must wait till we see the article in the Scotch Encyclopedia on the subject. To deprive man of sentiment, is to deprive him of all that is interesting to himself or others, except the present object and a routine of cantphrases, and to turn him into a savage, an automaton, or a Political Economist. Nay more, if we are to feel or do nothing for which we cannot assign a precise reason, why we cannot so much as walk, speak, hear, or see, without the same unconscious, implicit faith—not a word, not a sentence but hangs together by a number of imperceptible links, and is a bundle of prejudices and abstractions.

R. I can make nothing of you or your arguments. S. All I would say is, that you cannot take the measure of human nature with a pair of compasses or a slip of parchment: nor do I think it an auspicious opening to the new Political Millennium to begin with setting our faces against all that has hitherto kindled the

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