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cannot fill it. The soul is the great critic: it can appreciate better things than it can produce: it stands on its dignity, and refuses to be pleased. What is our Shakspeare to the Shakspeare of Shakspeare? Yet what were he to the ever-expanding soul, whose thought there has been neither patience, wit, nor courage to write down? All things present themselves to the soul with averted eyes; they are but the regrets and compliments of the great truth that is unavoidably detained; and the soul accepts them as apologies from the infinite Perfect which alone could satisfy it. Present any thing,—the soul will outgrow it. There is an infinite maw, of which what we are wont to call ourselves is but the mouthpiece, which can swallow all the future, and comprehend, contain, outgrow the whole universe of God. This maw must be fed, and that with fresh food. If we shall live forever we must swallow all things and digest them; little by little we must eat up sun, moon and stars. We must have eternal news from God. Our souls are strung upon knowledge like beads : it passes through us, it polishes us, and ceases to be of absorbing interest. Once the picture of a battle pleased us : now the battle itself grows dull. We forget our baby consciousness, and live but where we are. Our life is as the deep, its bottom towards the centre; and we live only in the upper surface—the foam that grows by the agitation of the wind.—We cannot be satisfied ; we cannot be filled. More! More! shouts the soul. She shakes her chain, and the hills of the earth and the fixed stars of heaven echo and re-echo her cry, "Excelsior! Excelsior!"