His merit
must rest at last, not on the spirit of the dialogue, or the symmetry
of any of his historical portraits, but on the value of his
sentences. Many of these will secure their own immortality in
English literature; and this, rightly considered, is no mean merit.
These are not plants and animals, but the genetical atoms, of which
both are composed. All our great debt to the oriental world is of
this kind, not utensils and statues of the precious metal, but
bullion and gold dust. Of many of Mr. Landor's sentences we are fain
to remember what was said of those of Socrates, that they are cubes,
which will stand firm, place them how or where you will.
We will enrich our pages with a few paragraphs, which we
hastily select from such of Mr. Landor's volumes as lie on our table.
___________
"The great man is he who hath nothing to fear and nothing to
hope from another. It is he, who while he demonstrates the iniquity
of the laws, and is able to correct them, obeys them peaceably. It
is he who looks on the ambitious, both as weak and fraudulent.
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