and not only so; but when faith is languid, and hope faint, and love expiring, these faculties themselves shall often in their turn initiate the process which shall revive them all; some outward object, some incident of life, some “magic word,” some glorious image, some stalwart truth, suddenly and energetically stated, shall, through the medium of the senses, the imagination, or the intellect, set the soul once more in a blaze, and revive the emotions which it is at other times only their office to express.  A sanctified intellect, a hallowed imagination, devout affections, have a reciprocal tendency to stimulate each other.  In whatever faculty of our nature the stimulus may be felt,—­in the intellect or the imagination,—­it is thence propagated through the mysterious net-work of the soul to the emotions, the affections, the conscience, the will:  or, conversely, these last may commence the movement and propagate it in reverse order.  Each may become in turn a centre of influence; but so indivisible is the soul and mind of man, so indissolubly bound together the elements which constitute them, that the influence once commenced never stops where it began, but acts upon them all.  The ripple, as that of a stone dropped into still water, no matter where, may be fainter and fainter the farther from the spot where the commotion began, but it will stop only with the bank.  Ordinarily many functions of the mind are involved in each, and sometimes all in one.

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July 24.  Yesterday, a somewhat interesting conversation took place between Harrington and Edward Robinson, a youth at college, a friend of George Fellowes’s family.  He is a devout admirer of Strauss, and thinks that writer has completely destroyed the historical character of the Gospels.  I was, as usual, struck with the candor and logical consistency with which our sceptic was disposed to regard the subject.

“You have Lingard and Macaulay here, I see,” said young Robinson.  “I need hardly ask, I think, which you find the most pleasant reading?”

“You need not, indeed,” cried Harrington.  “Mr. Macaulay is so superior to the Roman Catholic historian (though his merits are great too) in genius, in consequence, in variety and amplitude of knowledge, in imagination, in style, that there is no comparison between them.”

“And do you think Mr. Macaulay as accurate as he is full of genius and eloquence?”

“If he be not,” said Harrington, laughing, “I am afraid there are very few of us deeply versed enough in history to detect his delinquencies, or even to say whether they have been committed.  There may be, for aught I know, some cases (of infinite importance of course) in which he has represented an event as having taken place on the 20th of Dec. 1693; whereas it took place on the 3d Jan. 1694; or he may have said that Sir Thomas Nobody was the son of another Sir Thomas Nobody, whereas two or three antiquarians can incontestably prove that he was the