[Footnote 1:
They were both born within twelve months of each other, I believe; but
Luther's birth was in November, 1484, and that of Rabelais is generally
placed at the end of the year preceding.—ED.]
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"Great wits are sure to madness near allied,"
says Dryden, and true so far as this, that genius of the highest kind implies an unusual intensity of the modifying power, which detached from the discriminative and reproductive power, might conjure a platted straw into a royal diadem: but it would be at least as true, that great genius is most alien from madness,—yea, divided from it by an impassable mountain,— namely, the activity of thought and vivacity of the accumulative memory, which are no less essential constituents of "great wit."
_May _4. 1833.
COLONIZATION.—MACHINERY.—CAPITAL.
Colonization is not only a manifest expedient for, but an imperative duty on, Great Britain. God seems to hold out his finger to us over the sea. But it must be a national colonization, such as was that of the Scotch to America; a colonization of hope, and not such as we have alone encouraged and effected for the last fifty years, a colonization of despair.
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The wonderful powers of machinery can, by multiplied production, render the mere _arte facta _of life actually cheaper: thus money and all other things being supposed the same in value, a silk gown is five times cheaper now than in Queen Elizabeth's time; but machinery cannot cheapen, in any thing like an equal degree, the immediate growths of nature or the immediate necessaries of man. Now the _arte facta _are sought by the higher classes of society in a proportion incalculably beyond that in which they are sought by the lower classes; and therefore it is that the vast increase of mechanical powers has not cheapened life and pleasure to the poor as it has done to the rich. In some respects, no doubt, it has done so, as in giving cotton dresses to maid-servants, and penny gin to all. A pretty benefit truly!
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