--ED.]
* * * * *
"Great wits are sure to madness near allied,"
says Dryden, and true so far as this, that genius of the highest kind
implies an unusual intensity of the modifying power, which detached from
the discriminative and reproductive power, might conjure a platted straw
into a royal diadem: but it would be at least as true, that great genius is
most alien from madness,--yea, divided from it by an impassable mountain,--
namely, the activity of thought and vivacity of the accumulative memory,
which are no less essential constituents of "great wit."
_May _4. 1833.
COLONIZATION.--MACHINERY.--CAPITAL.
Colonization is not only a manifest expedient for, but an imperative duty
on, Great Britain. God seems to hold out his finger to us over the sea. But
it must be a national colonization, such as was that of the Scotch to
America; a colonization of hope, and not such as we have alone encouraged
and effected for the last fifty years, a colonization of despair.
* * * * *
The wonderful powers of machinery can, by multiplied production, render the
mere _arte facta _of life actually cheaper: thus money and all other things
being supposed the same in value, a silk gown is five times cheaper now
than in Queen Elizabeth's time; but machinery cannot cheapen, in any thing
like an equal degree, the immediate growths of nature or the immediate
necessaries of man.
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