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VIVIAN GREY.

amination soon convinced him of the futility of that mass of insanity and imposture—the Greek philosophy. Introduced to that band of noble spirits, the great poets, and legislators, and philosophers of modern Europe, the mind of Vivian Grey recovered, in a study of their immortal writings, a great portion of its original freshness and primal vigour. Nor in his new worship did he blaspheme against the former objects of his adoration. He likened the ancient and the new literatures to the two Dispensations of Holy Writ:—the one arose to complete the other. Æschylus was to him not less divine, because Shakspeare was immortal; nor did he deny the inspiration of Demosthenes, because he recognised in Burke the divine afflatus. The ancient literature, lost in corruption, degraded, and forgotten, ceased to benefit society; the new literature arose. It hurled from "the high places," the idols of corrupt understandings and perverted taste; but