We smile perhaps when we read Goldsmith's
amusing story, in which with exquisite humor
he narrates the dialogue of the disabled soldier
and confined debtor, which in ludicrous con-
trast with their own wants terminates in an
enthusiastic paean of " Liberty, Property,
and Old England for ever ! " And yet on
deeper reflection who will venture to assert
that the " Idea " of the British Constitution
was consciously apprehended even by the
statesmen and patriots, who mainly aided in
its establishment? But the seed, semen gene-
ticuMy having found an appropriate soil, has
grown and evolved itself, as it were, by a blind
and silent life ; and, notwithstanding the occa-
sional frost-blight, the shock of the blast,
and the stroke of the lightning, amid faction,



i



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36 IDEAS.
invasion and revolution, has reared itself into
a growth, stately as the native oak of the same
soil. And I have still faith enough in the
English heart of my country to believe, that as
long as its " Spirit " remains national in that
best sense of the word which respects not a
particular generation, — not the people at one
time existing, but the unity of the generations,
the type of our inward humanity in the flux of
our outward mortality — ^the *'Idea" of the
Constitution will continue to expand, prosper
and perfect itself harmoniously as by an or-
ganic life.
The philosopher of Konigsberg, following
Seneca, has said that the two sublimest con-
templamina for the humian mind are the starry
firmament without and the moral law within.
