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universe: for I have entered on my vocation, and it is more enduring than ye are; it is Eternal, and I am Eternal like it."
The heaven of progression is the home of liberty. Not liberty to follow with impunity the dictates of an obdurate heart,—but liberty by will and reason from the control of all unprofitable desire, which now annuls the wisdom of the world. And to this liberty we are growing forever; to this all things inevitably lead us.
Liberty is the idol of the soul—the burden of every prayer; it is the gold of gold, the beauty of the beautiful, the strength of the strong. The soul is in fetters, and struggles to be free.—O! bannered War, and death-defying Courage! why are ye the glory of the earth? Why do fame, wit and fortune bow down before the hero? The poet sings him, and the artist paints him, glorious to themselves as heralds of his glory. The pride of art, and time, and weary labor, fades at the sudden coming of that vehement discontent which, in ancient fable, first hung the holy heavens in sorrow, when the brow of Lucifer uprose to scorn and anger. It is not for the love of slaughter in itself, nor hate of man's creations,—it is not for envy of ill-gotten wealth, nor hate of beauty, when we see the soiled maid trampled in the bloody earth, besmirched and spotted,—the works of genius littered from their classic shelves, and temples tumbled down, where the owl may hoot from ruins at the cold and solemn moon,—no! but it is for the spleen of weakness, and the hate of foreign power,—the time-old wish for freedom,—the wish to triumph