[Sidenote: C'EST MAGNIFIQUE, MAIS CE N'EST PAS LA POÉSIE]
A long line of (!!) marks of admiration would be its aptest symbol! It has given me the eye-ache with dazzlement, the brain-ache with wonderment, the stomach and all-ache with the shock and after-eddy of contradictory feelings. Splendour is there, splendour everywhere--distinct the figures as vivid--skill in construction of events--beauties numberless of form and thought. But there is not anywhere the "one low piping note more sweet than all"--there is not the divine vision of the poet, which gives the full fruition of sight without the effort--and where the feelings of the heart are struck, they are awakened only to complain of and recoil from the occasion. O! it is mournful to see and wonder at such a marvel of labour, erudition and talent concentered into such a burning-glass of factitious power, and yet to know that it is all in vain--like the Pyramids, it shows what can be done, and, like them, leaves in painful and almost scornful perplexity, why it was done, for what or whom.
[Sidenote: SILENCE IS GOLDEN September 29th, 1812]
Grand rule in case of quarrels between friends or lovers--never to say, hint, or do _anything_ in a moment of anger or indignation or sense of ill-treatment, but to be passive--and even if the fit should recur the next morning, still to delay it--in short, however plausible the motive may be, yet if you have loved the persons concerned, not to say it till their love has returned toward you, and your feelings are the same as they were before. And for this plain reason--you knew this before, and yet because you were in kindness, you never felt an impulse to speak of it--then, surely, not now when you may perpetuate what would otherwise be fugitive.
"That not one of the _peculiarities_ of Christianity, no one point in which, being clearly different from other religions or philosophies, it would have, at least, the _possibility_ of being superior to all, is retained by the modern Unitarians." This remark is occasioned by my reflections on the fact that Christianity _exclusively_ has asserted the _positive_ being of evil or sin, "of sin the exceeding sinfulness"--and thence exclusively the _freedom_ of the creature, as that, the clear intuition of which is, both, the result and the accompaniment of redemption. The nearest philosophy to Christianity is the Platonic, and it is observable that this is the mere antipodes of the Hartleio-Lockian held by the Unitarians; but the true honours of Christianity would be most easily manifested by a comparison even with that "_nec pari nec secundo_," but yet "_omnibus aliis propriore_," the Platonic! With what contempt, even in later years, have I not contemplated the doctrine of a devil! but now I see the intimate connection, if not as existent _person_, yet as essence and symbol with Christianity--and that so far from being identical with Manicheism, it is the surest antidote (that is, rightly understood).