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always advanced three steps from the throne to receive If ever the voice of individuals can recompense a life of literary labour it is in speaking a foreign accent-it sounds like the distant plaudit of posterity. The distance of space between the literary character and the inquirer in some respects represents the distance of time which separates the author from the next age. Fontenelle was never more gratified than when a Swede, arriving at the gates of Paris, inquired of the custom-house officers where Fonte nelle resided, and expressed his indignation that not one of ther had ever heard of his name. Hobbes expresses his proud delight that his portrait was sought after by foreigners and that the Great Duke of Tuscany made the philosopher the object of his first inquiries. Camden was not insensible to the visits of German noblemen, who were desirous of seeing the British Pliny; and Pocock, while he received no aid from patronage at home for his Oriental studies, never relaxed in those unrequited labours, from the warm personal testimonies of learned foreigners, who hastened to see and converse with this prodigy of eastern learning.

Yes! to the very presence of the man of genius will the world spontaneously pay their tribute of respect, of admiration, or of love; many a pilgrimage has he lived to receive, and many a crowd has followed his footsteps. There are days in the life of genius which repay its sufferings. Demosthenes confessed he was pleased when even a fishwoman of Athens pointed him out. Corneille had his particular seat in the theatre, and the audience would rise to salute him when he entered. At the presence of Raynal in the House of Commons, the speaker was requested to suspend the debate till that illustrious foreigner, who had written on the English parliament, was there placed and distinguished, to his honour. Spinosa, when he gained a humble livelihood by grinding optical glasses, at an obscure village in Holland, was visited by the first General in Europe, who, for the sake of this philosophical conference, suspended his march.

In all ages, and in all countries, has this feeling been created: nor is it a temporary ebullition, nor an individual nonour; it comes out of the heart of man. In Spain, whatever was most beautiful in its kind was described by the name of the great Spanish bard; every thing excellent was called a Lope. Italy would furnish a volume of the public honours decreed to literary men, nor is that spirit extinet, though the national character has fallen by the chance of fortune; and Metastasio and Tiraboschi received what had been accorded to Petrarch and to Poggio. Germany, patriotic to its literary characters, is the land of the enthusiasm of genius. On the borders of the Linnet, in the public walk of Zurich, the monument of Gesner, erected by the votes of his fellow-citizens, attests their sensibility; and a solemn funeral honoured the remains of Klopstock, led by the senate of Hamburgh, with fifty thousand votaries, so penetrated by one universal sentiment, that this multitude preserved a mournful silence, and the interference of the police ceased to be necessary through the city at the solemn burial of the man of genius. Has even Holland proved insensible? The statue of Erasnrus, in Rotterdam, still animates her young students, and offers a noble example to her neighbours of the influence even of the sight of the statue of a man of genius: nor must it be forgotten that the senate of Rotterdam declared of the eaugrant Bayle, that such a man should not be consulered as a foreigner.' In France, since Francis I created genius, and Louis XIV knew to be liberal to it, the impulse was communicated to the French people. There the statues of their illustrious men spread inspiration on the spots which living they would have hauntedin their theatres the great dramatists; in their Institute their illustrious authors; in their public edifices their other men of genius.* This is worthy of the country which

• We cannot bury the Fame of our English worthies-that exists before us, independent of ourselves; but we bury the influence of their inspiring presence in those immortal memorials of genius easy to be read by all men, their statues and their brusta, congning them to spots seldom visited, and often too obscure to be viewed. Count Algarotti has ingeniously wal L'argent que nous employons en tabatières et en pompeus servont aux anciens à célébrer la mémoire des grands hommes par des monumens dignes de passer à la postérité; et la nu l'on brule des feur de joie pour une victoire rempor tée, lis élevèrent des arcs de triomphe de porphyre et de mar bre. May we not, for our honour, and for the advantage of our artists, predict better times for ourselves?

privileged the family of La Fontaine to be for ever exempt, from taxes, and decreed that the productions of the mind, were not seizable, when the creditors of Crebillon would have attached the produce of his tragedies. These distinctive honours accorded to genius were in unison with their decree respecting the will of Bayle. It was the subject of a law-suit between the heir of the will, and the inheritor by blood. The latter contested that this great literary character, being a fugitive for religion and dying in a prohibited country, was without the power of disposing of his property, and that our author, when he resided in Holland, was civilly dead. In the parliament of Toulouse the judge decided that learned men are free in all countries; that he who had sought in a foreign land an asylum from his love of letters, was no fugitive; that it was unworthy of France to treat as a stranger a son in whom she gloried; and he protested against the notion of a civil death to such a man as Bayle, whose name was living throughout Europe.

Even the most common objects are consecrated when associated with the memory of the man of genius. We still seek for his tomb on the spot where it has vanished; the enthusiasts of genius still wander on the hills of Pausilippe, and muse on Virgil to retrace his landscapes or as Sir William Jones ascended Forest-hill, with the Allegro in his hand, and step by step, seemed in his fancy to have trodden in the foot-path of Milton; there is a grove at Magdalen College which retains the name of Addison's walk, where still the student will linger; and there is a cave at Macao, which is still visited by the Portuguese from a national feeling, where Camoens is said to have composed his Lusiad. When Petrarch was passing by his native town he was received with the honors of his fame; but when the heads of the town, unawares to Petrarch, conducted him to the house where the poet was born, and informed him that the proprietor had often wished to make alterations, but that the towns-people had risen to insist that the house which was consecrated by the birth of Petrarch should be preserved unchanged; this was a triumph more affecting to Petrarch than his coronation at Rome. In the village of Certaldo is still shown the house of Boccaccio; and on a turret are seen the arms of the Medici, which they had sculptured there, with an inscription alluding to a small house and a name which filled the world. Foreigners,' says Anthony Wood of Milton, have, out of pure devotion, gone to Bread-street to see the house and chamber where he was born;' and at Paris the house which Voltaire inhabited, and at Ferney his study, are both preserved inviolate. Thus is the very apartment of a man of genius, the chair he studied in, the table he wrote on, contemplated with curiosity; the spot is full of local impressions. And all this happens from an unsatisfied desire to see and hear him whom we never can see nor hear; yet in a moment of illusion, if we listen to a traditional conversation, if we can revive one of his feelings, if we can catch but a dim image of his person, we reproduce this man of genius before us, on whose features we so often dwell. Even the rage of the military spirit has taught itself to respect the abode of genius; and Cæsar and Sylla, who never spared their own Roman blood, alike felt their spirit rebuked, and saved the literary city of Athens. The house of the man of genius has been spared amidst contending empires, from the days of Pindar to those of Buffon; and the recent letter of Prince Schwartzenberg to the Countess, for the preservation of the philosopher's chateau, is a memorial of this elevated feeling."

And the meanest things, the very household stuff associated with the memory of the man of genius, become the objects of our affections. At a festival in honour of Thom

*In the grandeur of Milton's verse we perceive the feeling he associated with this literary honour.

The great Emathian conqueror bid spare
The house of Pindarus when temple and tower
Went to the ground-
Sonnet VIII,

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To the Countess of Buffon, in Montbard. The Emperor, my Sovereign, having ordered me to provide for the security of all places dedicated to the sciences, and of such as recall the remembrance of men who have done honour to the age in which they lived, I have the honour to send to your ladyship a safeguard for your chateau of Montbard.

The residence of the Historian of Nature must be sacred in the eyes of all the friends of science. It is a domain which belongs to all mankind.-I have the honour, &c.

'SCHWARTZENBERG.'

son the poet, the chair in which he composed part of his Seasons was produced, and appears to have communicated some of the raptures to which he was liable who had sat in that chair; Rabelais among his drollest inventions, could not have imagined that his old cloak would have been preserved in the University of Montpellier for future doctors to wear on the day they took their degree; nor could Shakspeare, that the mulberry tree which he planted would have been multiplied into relics. But in such instances the feeling is right with a wrong direction; and while the populace are exhausting their emotions on an old tree, and an old cloak, they are paying that involuntary tribute to genius which forms its pride, and will generate

the race.

CHAPTER XIX.

THE INFLUENCE OF AUTHORS.

Wherefore should not the literary character be associated in utility or glory with the other professional classes of society? These indeed press more immediately on the attention of men; they are stimulated by personal interests, and they are remunerated by honours; while the literary character, from its habits, is secluded; prodcing its usefulness in concealment, and often at a late period in life; not always too of immediate application, and often even unvalued by the passing generation.

It is curious to observe of the characters of the other classes in society, how each rises or falls in public esteem, according to the exigencies of the times. Ere we had swept from the seas all the fleets of our rivals, the naval hero was the popular character; while military, from the political panic occasioned by standing armies, was invariably lowered in public regard; the extraordinary change of circumstances, and the genius of one man, have entirely reversed the public feeling.*

The commercial character was long, even in this country, placed very low in the scale of honour; the merchant was considered merely as a money-trader, profiting by the individual distress of the nobleman, and afterwards was viewed with jealous eyes by the country gentleman. A Dutch monarch, who initiated us into the mysteries of banks and loans, by combining commercial influence with political power, raised the mercantile character.

But the commercial prosperity of a nation inspires no veneration in mankind; nor will its military power win their affection. There is an interchange of opinions, as well as of spices and specie, which induces nations to esteem each other; and there is a glorious succession of authors, as well as of seamen and soldiers, for ever standing before the eyes of the universe.

It is by our authors that foreigners have been taught to subdue their own prejudices. About the year 1700, the Italian Gemelli told all Europe that he could find nothing among us but our writings to distinguish us from the worst of barbarians. Our civil wars, and our great revolution, had probably disturbed the Italian's imagination. Too long we appeared a people whose genius partook of the density and variableness of our climate, incapacitated even by situation, from the enjoyment of arts which had not yet travelled to us; and as if Nature herself had designed to disjoin us from more polished neighbours and brighter skies. We now arbitrate among the nations of the world; we possess their involuntary esteem, nor is there a man of genius among them who stands unconnected with our intellectual soveregnty.

'We conquered France, but felt our captive's charms, Her arts victorious triumphed o'er our arms.' At the moment Pope was writing these lines, that silent operation of genius had commenced, which changes

the fate of nations. The first writers of France were passing over into England to learn to think and write, or thought and wrote like Englishmen in France. This

*Mr Gifford, in his notes to his recent Translation of Persius, with his accustomed keenness of spirit, has detected this fact in our popular manners. Persius, whenever he has occasion for a more worthless character than ordinary, commonly repairs to the camp for him. Fielding and Smollet in compli ance with the cant of their times, manifested a patriotic abhorrence of the military; and seldom went farther for a blockhead, a parasite, or an adept in low villany, than the Armylist. We have outlived this stupid piece of injustice, and a 'led-captain' is no longer considered as the indispensable vice of every novel.'

Voltaire borrowed all the genius of our country; our poetry and our philosophy. Buffon began by translating Hales's • Vegetable Static's ;' and before Linnæus classed his plants,

singular revolution in the human mind, and, by its re-sc tion, in human affairs, was not effected by merchants profiting over them by superior capital; or by admirals and ge nerals humiliating them by victories; but by our authors, whose works are now printed at foreign presses, a circumstance which proves, as much as the commerce and prowess of England, the ascendency of her gemus. Even had our nation displayed more limited resources than its awful powers have opened; had the sphere of its dominion been only its island boundaries, could the same literary character have predominated, we might have attained to the same eminence and admiration in the hearts of our continental neighbours. The small cities of Athens and of Florence will perpetually attest the influence of the literary character over other nations; the one received the tributes of the mistress of the universe, when the Romans sent their youth to be educated at Athens; while the other, at the revival of letters, beheld every polished European crowding to its little court.

There is a small portion of men, who appear marked out by nature and habit, for the purpose of cultivating their by disclosing them to the people. Those who govern a nathoughts in peace, and giving activity to their sentiments,

tion cannot at the same time enlighten them--authors stand between the governors and the governed.

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Important discoveries are often obtained by accident; by the single thought of a man of genius, which has some. times changed the dispositions of a people, and even of an age, is slowly matured in meditation. Even the mechan cal inventions of genius must first become perfect in its own solitary abode, ere the world can possess them. The people are a vast body, of which men of genius are the the philosophical writer; these are axioms as demonstra eyes and the hands; and the public mind is the creation of ble as any in Euclid, and as sure in their operation, as any principle in mechanics. When Epicurus published his doctrines, men immediately began to express themselves with freedom on the established religion; the dark and fearful superstitions of paganism fell into neglect, and mouldered away, the inevitable fate of established falsehood. When Machiavel, living amidst the principalities of Italy, where stratagem and assassination were the poli tics of those wretched rivals, by lifting the veil from these cabinets of banditti, that calumniated man of genius, alarmed the world by exposing a system subversive of all human virtue and happiness, and led the way to political freedom. When Locke and Montesquieu appeared, the old systems of government were reviewed; the principles of legislation were developed and many changes have succeeded, and are still to succeed. Politicians affect to disbelieve that abstract principles possess any considerable influence on the conduct of the subject. In times of tranquillity,' they say, they are not wanted, and in times of confusion they are never heard.' But this has been their error; it is in leisure, when they are not wanted, that they are studied by the speculative part of mankind; and when they are wanted they are already prepared for the active multitude, who come like a phalanx, pressing each other with an unity of feeling and an integrity of force. Paley would not close his eyes on what was passing before him; and; be has observed, that during the convulsive troubles at Geneva the political theory of Rousseau was prevalent in their contests; while in the political disputes of our country, those ideas of civil authority displayed in the works of Locke, recurred in every form. How, therefore, can the character of an author be considered as subordinate in society? Politicians do not secretly think so, at the moment they are proclaiming it to the world: nor do they fancy, as they would have us imagine, that paper and pens are only rags and feathers; whatever they affect, the truth and Buffon began his Natural History, our own naturalist Ray had opened their road to Nature. Bacon, Newton, and Boyle, reduced the fanciful philosophy of France mto experi ment and demonstration. Helvetius, Diderot, and their trothers, gleaned their pretended discoveries from our Shaftes bury, Mandeville, and Toland, whom sometimes they only translated. Even our novelists were closely imitated. Our great compilations of voyages and travels, Hackluyt, Churchill, &c, furnished Montesquieu with the moral facta be re quired for his large picture of his Esprit des Lol.' The Cyclopædia of Chambers was the parent of the French work Even historical compilers existed in our country before the race appeared in France. Our Universal History, and Stan ley, Echard, and Hooke, preceded Rollin and other French abridgers of history; while Hume and our philosophical his torians set them a nobler example, which remains te them yet to rival.

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is that they consider the worst actions of men, as of far less consequence than the propagation of their opinions. They well know, as Sophocles declared, that opinion is ever stronger than truth.' Have politicians not often exposed their disguised terrors? Books, and sometimes their authors, have been burnt; but burning books is no part of their refutation. Cromwell was alarmed when he saw the Oceana of Harrington, and dreaded the effects of that volume more than the plots of the royalists; while Charles II. trembled at an author, only in his manuscript state; and in the height of terror, and to the honour of genius, it was decreed, that Scribere est agere.'*

Observe the influence of authors in forming the character of men, where the solitary man of genius stamps his own on a people. The parsimonious, habits, the moneygetting precepts, the wary cunning, and not the most scrupulous means to obtain the end, of Dr Franklin, imprinted themselves on his Americans; loftier feelings could not elevate a man of genius, who became the founder of a trading people, retaining the habits of a journeyman printer: while the elegant tastes of Sir William Jones could inspire the servants of a commercial corporation to open new and vast sources of knowledge; a mere company of traders, influenced by the literary character, enlarge the stores of the imagination and collect fresh materials for the history of human nature.

I have said that authors produce their usefulness in privacy, and that their good is not of immediate application, and often unvalued by their own generation. On this occasion the name of Evelyn always occurs to me. This author supplied the public with nearly thirty works, at a time when taste and curiosity were not yet domiciliated in our country; his patriotism warmed beyond the eightieth year of his age; and in his dying hand he held another legacy for his nation. Whether his enthusiasm was introducing to us a taste for medals and prints; or intent on purifying the city of smoke and smells, and to sweeten it by plantations of native plants; or having enriched our orchards and our gardens; placed summer-ices on our tables, and varied even the sallads of our country; furnishing a Gardener's Kalendar,' which, as Cowley said, was to last as long as months and years,' and the horticulturist will not forget Father Evelyn in the heir of his fame, Millar; whether the philosopher of the Royal Society, or the lighter satirist of the toilette, or the fine moralist for active as well as contemplative life;-yet in all these changes of a studious life, the better part of his history has not been told.-While Britain retains her awful situation among the nations of Europe, the Sylva' of Evelyn will endure with her triumphant oaks. In the third edition of that work the heart of the patriot exults at its result: he tells Charles, I how many millions of timber trees, besides infinite others, have been propagated and planted at the instigation, and by the sole direction of this work.' It was an author in his studious retreat, who casting a prophetic eye on the age we live in, secured the late victories of our naval sovereignty. Inquire at the Admiralty how the fleets of Nelson have been constructed? and they can tell you that it was with the oaks which the genius of Evelyn planted.†

The same character existed in France, where De Serres in 1599 composed a work on the cultivation of mulberry trees in reference to the art of raising silk-worms. He taught his fellow citizens to convert a leaf into silk, and silk to become the representative of gold. Our author encountered the hostility of the prejudices of his times in giving his country one of her staple commodities; but I fately received a medal recently struck in honour of De Serres, by the Agricultural Society of the department of the Seme. We are too slow in commemorating the geAlgernon Sydney was condemned to death for certain manuscripts found in his library; and the reason alleged was, that scribere est agere-that to write is to act. The papers which arrved to condemn Sydney, it appears, were only an. awers to Filmer's obsolete Defence of Monarchical TyrannyThe metaphysical inference drawn by the crown lawyers is not a necessary consequence. Authors may write that which they may not afterwards approve; their manuscript opinions are very liable to be changed, and authors even change those mpanions they have published. A man ought only to lose his head for his opinions, in the metaphysical sense; opinions against opinions; but not an axe against a pen.

Since this has been written, the Diary of Evelyn is pub. lished: it cannot add to his general character, whatever it may be; but we may anticipate much curious amusement from the diary of a luerary character whose studies formed the business of life.

nius of our own country; and our authors are defrauded even in the debt we are daily incurring of their posthumous fame.

When an author writes on a national subject, he awakens all the knowledge which lies buried in the sleep of nations; he calls around him, as it were, every man of talents; and though his own fame should be eclipsed by his successors, yet the emanation, the morning light, broke from his source. Our naturalist Ray, though no man was more modest in his claims, delighted to tell a friend that 'since the publication of his catalogue of Cambridge Plants, many were prompted to botanical studies, and to herbalise in their walks in the fields.' A work in France, under the title of 'L'Ami des Hommes,' first spread there a general passion for agricultural pursuits; and although the national ardour carried all to excess, yet marshes were drained and waste lands enclosed. The Emilius of Rousseau, whatever errors and extravagancies a system which would bring us back to nature may contain, operated a complete revolution in modern Europe, by changing the education of men; and the boldness and novelty of some of its principles communicated a new spring to the human intellect. The commercial world owes to two retired philosophers, in the solitude of their study, Locke and Smith, those principles which dignify Trade into a liberal pursuit, and connect it with the happiness of a people.

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Beccaria, who dared to raise his voice in favour of humanity, against the prejudices of many centuries, by his work on Crimes and Punishments,' at length abolished torture; and Locke and Voltaire, on Toleration,' have long made us tolerant. But the principles of many works of this stamp have become so incorporated in our minds and feelings, that we can scarcely at this day conceive the fervour they excited at the time, or the magnanimity of their authors in the decision of their opinions.

And to whom does the worid owe more than to the founders of miscellaneous writing, or the creators of new and elegant tastes in European nations? We possess one peculiar to ourselves. To Granger our nation is indebted for that visionary delight of recalling from their graves the illustrious dead; and as it were, of living with them, as far as a familiarity with their features and their very looks forms a part of life. This pleasing taste for portraits seems peculiar to our nation, and was created by the ingenuity of a solitary author, who had very nearly abandoned those many delightful associations which a collection of fine portraits affords, by the want of a due comprehension of their nature among his friends, and even at first in the public. Before the miscellanists rose, learning was the solitary enjoyr ent of the insulated learned; they spoke a language of their own; and they lived in a desert, separated from the world; but the miscellanists became their interpreters, opening a communication between two spots, close to each other, yet which were so long separated, the closet and the world. These authors were not Bacons, Newtons, and Leibnitzes; but they were Addison, Fontenelle, and Feyjoo, the first popular authors in their nations who taught England, France, and Spain to become a reading people; while their fugitive page imbues with intellectual sweetness, an uncultivated mind, like the perfumed mould which the swimmer in the Persian Sadi took up; it was a piece of common earth, but astonished at its fragrance, he asked whether it were musk or amber? I am nothing but earth; but roses were planted on my soil, and their odorous virtues have deliciously penetrated through all my pores; I have retained the infusion of sweetness; otherwise I had been but a lump of earth.'

There is a singleness and unity in the pursuits of genius, through all ages, which produces a sort of consanguinity in the characters of authors. Men of genius, in their different classes, living at distinct periods, or in remote countries, seem to be the same persons with another name: and thus the literary character who has long departed, seems only to have transmigrated. In the great march of the human intellect he is still occupying the same place, and he is still carrying on with the same powers, his great work, through a line of centuries.

In the history of genius there is no chronology, for to us every thing it has done is present; and the earliest attempt is connected with the most recent. Many men of genius must arise before a particular man of genius can appear. Before Homer there were other bards-we have a catalogue of their names and works. Corneille could not have been the chief dramatist of France, had not the founders of the French drama preceded him; and Pope

could not have appeared before Dryden. Whether the works of genius are those of pure imagination, or searches after truth, they are alike tinctured by the feelings and the events of their times; but the man of genius must be placed in the line of his descent.

Aristotle, Hobbes, and Locke, Descartes and Newton, approximate more than we imagine. The same chain of intellect Aristotle holds, through the intervals of time, is held by them; and links will only be added by their successors. The naturalists, Pliny, Gesner, Aldrovandus, and Buffon, derive differences in their characters from the spirit of the times; but each only made an accession to the family estate, while each was the legitimate representative of the family of the naturalists. Aristophanes, Moliere, and Foote, are brothers of the family of national wits: the wit of Aristophanes was a part of the common property, and Moliere and Foote were Aristophanic. Plutarch, La Mothe le Vayer, and Bayle, alike busied in amassing the materials of human thought and human action, with the same vigorous and vagrant curiosity, must have had the same habits of life. If Plutarch was credulous, La Mothe le Vayer sceptical, and Bayle philosophical, the heirs of the family may differ in their dispositions, but no one will arraign the integrity of the lineal descent. My learned and reflecting friend, whose original researches have enriched our national history, has thus observed on the character of Wickliffe:-To complete our idea of the importance of Wickliffe, it is only necessary to add, that

as his writings made John Huss the reformer of Bohemia, so the writings of John Huss led Martin Luther to be the reformer of Germany; so extensive and so incalculable are the consequences which sometimes follow from human actions.'* Our historian has accompanied this by giving the very feelings of Luther in early life on his first perusal of the works of John Huss: we see the spark of creation caught at the moment; a striking influence of the generation of character! Thus a father spirit has many sons; and several of the great revolutions in the history of man have been opened by such, and carried on by that secret creation of minds visibly operating on human affairs. In the history of the human mind, he takes an imperfect view, who is confined to contemporary knowledge, as well as he who stops short with the Ancients, and has not advanced with their descendants. Those who do not carry their re searches through the genealogical lines of genius, will mutilate their minds, and want the perfect strength of an

entire man.

Such are the great lights of the world,' by whom the torch of knowledge has been successively seized and transmitted from one to the other. This is that noble image borrowed from a Grecian game, which Plato has applied to the rapid generations of man to mark how the continuity of human affairs is maintained from age to age. The torch of genius is perpetually transferred from hand to hand amidst this fleeting scene. Turner's History of England, vol. ii. p. 432.

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CURIOSITIES

OF

LITERATURE.

FIRST SERIES.

BY I. D'ISRAELI, ESQ.

"ALEXANDRIAN EDITION."

NEW-YORK:

WILLIAM PEARSON & CO., 106 NASSAU STREET;

SAMUEL COLMAN, BOSTON; AND CHAPPELL AND CO., PHILADELPHIA,

1835.

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