De toutes les cordes qui vibrent dans l'âme il n'en coupait aucune, LONDON: PUBLISHED BY WHITTAKER & CO., AVE MARIA LANE. = 1841. INTRODUCTION. TWO DISPENSATIONS have already been revealed in the world, and to their blended results the human race is now subject. Union has been the end and aim in both, though the idea union has been exhibited in actual characteristics distinctly and almost oppositely varied. The first dispensation, assuming the form of family union, or connexion by tribes, can now be contemplated as really a disunion or a dispersive state for humanity. In principle it is separative, and in action it induces division to the most hostile extent. The second dispensation, embracing, by a loftier idea, the unitive principle in man, has generated the state of union called national. Though wider and more liberal in principle than the system which maintains family union, it has not been able to elevate man from the narrowness of the latter; and thus, under subjection to the evils in both, humanity now struggles in alternate despair and hope. Beautiful as are family ties and national associations, considered with relation to some antece |