1. I.
There is, after all, only a certain quantity of power
in the world, and the loss of it from one spot simply announces
its transfer to another. Our plaints for the
decayed town or the ruined empire, grateful enough to
the spirit of poetry, are not often called for in reality.
These events usually result from some leading necessity,
which, deplorable enough at the time, the foresight of a
benevolent Providence designs for some lasting and
general benefit. Our regrets are most usually precipitate:
our sorrows, in half the number of cases,
in advance of their occasion, and imagination, in this
way, too frequently usurps the province of experience.
Change is the subject of lament, for ever, with the men
who are themselves stationary—the men who receive,
but never transmit, opinions. Innovation, sometimes
ruinous, is always of good import, since it indicates
mental activity—the lack of which is the worst feature in
the history of men and nations. Even revolutions, the
horrors of which are lamentable, are injurious to places
rather than to people. The great bulk of mankind grow
wiser upon them, and the discovery of a new abiding-place,
like the discovery of a new truth, must always
afford an added empire to thought, and a wider realm to
the wing of liberty.
