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202 LETTERS.
thereto. Pleasing in the highest degree, indeed, is the fer-
ment of the times in which we live: the development
of the state into a constitutional society; a development
founded upon the spirit of Christianity, of liberty, and
equality, and which makes every individual, every talent,
every power valuable and useful in the whole. Christ is
the first originator of true liberalism. He made religion
popular, and with it and through it also every other good
teaching and wisdom ; for if all human beings are in reality
the children of the same Father and equal before Him,
then they also have all an equal right to enjoy the blessings
which the genius of man can create. Is it not this knowl-
edge which, after and through many long and sanguinary
conflicts, permeates the age and reorganizes society ;
erects schools; instructs the children of the poor; spreads
amongst all classes the results of scientific researches ; re-
sounds in the chords of poetry’s lyre (the whole of the
modern literature of romance is but a lay, a development
of the moral truths, which flow out of this one great truth) ;
draws nearer to each other master and man; unites more
closely parents and children ; eradicates hateful prejudices
and humanizes the world? Long life, therefore, to print-
ing-presses, steamboats, and all such inventions, for they
are the heralds of ¢deas ; and, above all, long life to the
ideas themselves, — the great, the noble, I mean; to their
organs, mankind ; and, above all, praise to the Great and
the Good, who sends them! This was a wide embrace, my
dear Frances; but such a one is sometimes wanted, to be
able heartily to embrace also what is little within our own
little world and sphere of activity. In contemplating this
great institution, the world, we can better understand our
own place there, our mission and our children’s, be they
human beings or books.
For my next work I want a vignette, representing a
butterfly fluttering over its chrysalis. The world-life in
all its forms, has no truer image of its reality, its essence.
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