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Reason would teach us that this divine captive must advance if she would not be wretched; and experience confirms the judgment, and sounds through all her avenues the broad Amen.

We have heard good fellows, warm with wine, wish they might live forever as they were. They did not know themselves. Place man in Paradise, perfect in all things but knowledge and power, and he will not remain: he will experiment—he will do some thing for better or for worse. Reader, perhaps you have been sick,—you have languished for the green fields and the pleasant sun. At length, after weary weeks, came convalescence; you went out into the clear air, and all was beautiful. The sun shone on the waving grass as he never shone before; the bluebird warbled a celestial music; a thousand swallows cut the heavens with wings of steel; and high imagination looked beyond the distant peaks, and spotted the round world with nations; you gave yourself up utterly to the hour, without hope or thought beyond —more than warm, intoxicated with the wine of new life:—yet before the sun went down your soul had almost outgrown its beautiful new world,—you were almost as indifferent as before sad illness had arrested your career.

"Ah!—but if I could remain thus happy!—I know that I weary; but let me remain thus happy, and I should be content."—Aye, this were joy indeed. But see you not that for you to remain thus happy the world must ever increase its beauty?—Will you accept the knowledge of good and evil—the secrets of the gods—the Promethean spark? Will you be