lM^,;i:.; Cornall University Library ACS .M65 1865 3 1924 029 633 082 1 olin Cornell University Library The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924029633082 6o«£& anir ^imolu's ^ublixations. jnziiER'S CBVI8E OX" TBE BETSEY ( or, a Summer Ramble among the Fossiliferous Deposits of the Hebrides. With Rambles of a Geolo^t ; or, Ten Thonsand Miles over the Fossiliferous Deposits of Scotland, llimo, pp. S24, cloth, 1.7S. MIZI^EM'S ESSAYS, Historical and Biographical, Political and Social, Lit- erary and Scientific, By Hugh Milleb. With Preface by Peter Bayne. 12nio, cloth, 1.75. XIZJyER'S JFOOT-PBIlfTS OX" THE CBEATOB ; or, the Asterolepis of Stromness, with numerous Illustrations, With a Memoir of the Author, by Louis Agassiz, 12mo, cloth, 1.7S. XJJLX,EX'8 TIXST IMPKESSIONS OF EXOrAXD AND ITS PEOPLE. With a fine Engraving of the Author. 12mo, cloth, 1.S0. SriLLEn'S HEADSHIP OP CHRIST, and the Rights of the Christian People, a Collection of Personal Portraitures, Historical and Deseriptive Sketches and Essays, with the Author's celebrated Letter to Lord Brougham. By Hugh Miller, Edited, with a Preface, by Peteb Batke, A, M. 12mo, cloth, 1.75. jaillEB'S OIB RED SANDSTONE ; or. New Walks in an Old Field, illustrated with Plates and Geological Sections, New Edition, Revised AXD MUCH Enlarged, by the addition of new matter and new Illustrations, &c. 12mo, cloth, 1.75. JUIIIER'S POPULAR GEOZO&Y; With Descriptive Sketches from a Geologist's Portfolio, By Hugh Miller. With a Resume of the Progress of Geological Science during the last two years. By Mrs. Miller, 12mo, cloth, 1.75. MILLER'S SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS; or, the Story of my Education. As Autobiography. With a full-length Portrait of the Author. 12mo, 1.75, MILLER'S TALES AND SKETCHES. Edited, with a Preface, &c., by Mrs, Miller, 12mo, 1.50. Amongthe subjects are: Recollections of Ferguson — Bums — The Salmon Fisher of Hdoli— The Widow of Dunskalth— The Lykewake— Bill Whyte— The Young Surgeon — George Ross, the Scotch Agent— M'Culloch, the Mech- anician—A True Story of the Life of a Scotch Merchant of the Eighteenth Century, MILLER'S TESTIMONY OF THE ROCKS; or, Geology in its Bear- ings on the two Theologies, Natural and Revealed, " Thou shalt be in league with the stones of the field,"— Job. With numeroas elegant Illustrations. One volume, royal 12mo, cloth, 1,75. HTTGH MILLER'S WORKS. Ten volnmes, uniform style, in an elegant box, embossed cloth, 17 ; library sheep, 20 ; half calf, 31; antique, 34. MACAULAY ON SCOTLAND. A Critique from HUGH Miller's "Wit- ness." 16mo, flexible cloth. 37cts. 'ESSAYS, HISTORICAL AND BIOGEAPHICAL, POLITICAL, SOCIAL, LITERARY, AND SCIENTIFIC. BY HUGH MILLER, AUTIIOB OP "THE OLD BED SANDBTONEf" '* HT SCHOOLS AVD SOUOOLUASTEnS*" " THE TESTIUONY OP TDE BOCKS," ETC. ETC. By peter BAYNE, AUTnOa OF "THE CUBISTIAS LIFE," ETC. BOSTON: GOULD AND LINCOLN, £9 7A8HINOTOK 8TBEZT. NEW TOKK! SnELDON AND COMPANT. CINCINNATI: GEORGE S. BLANCHAKD. 1865. PREFACE. Unusual as it is to republish newspaper articles, no apology is deemed necessary in presenting this volume to the public. At the time of Mr. Hugh Miller's death, it was felt that a large proportion of his contributions to the " Witness " deserved a permanent place in the literature of his country. They were recognized as distinguished, both by their literary merit and their sterling value, from the fugitive and ephemeral produc- tions of every-day journalism. Assuming the conduct of a newspaper in the matu- rity of his powers, and in the plenitude of his literary and scientific information, Mr. Miller's habit of compo- sition was entirely different from that of ordinary ready writers of the press. As was correctly remarked at the time of his death, " he did not work easy, but VI PREFACE. with laborious special preparation." He meditated his articles as an author meditates his books or a poet his verses, — conceiving them as wholes, working fully out their trains of thought, enriching them with far-brought treasures of fact, and adorning them with finished and apposite illustration. In the quality of completeness, those articles stand, so far as I know, alone in the records of journalism. For rough and hurrying vigor they miglrt be matched, or more, from the columns of the " Times ; " in lightness of wit and smart lucidity of statement they might be surpassed by the happiest performances of French journalists, — a Prevost Par^ adol or a St. Marc Girardin ; and for occasional hrih liancies of imagination, and sudden gleams of piercing thought, neither they nor any other newspaper articles have, I think, been comparable with those of S. T. Coleridge. But as complete journalistic essays, sym- metrical in plan, finished in execution, and of sustained and splendid ability, the articles of Hugh Miller are unrivalled. For the most part, the topic suggesting them was but the occasion for a display of the writer's PREFACE. VII thought and imagination, — the fly round which the precious and imperishable amber of Mr. Miller's genius was accumulated. I am not prepared to say that these are the most striking or powerful articles published in the " Witness" by Mr. Miller. He conducted that paper for sixteen years ; and, on a moderate computation, he wrote for it a thousand articles. Having surveyed this vast field, I retain the impression of a magnificent expenditure of intellectual energy, — an expenditure of wliich the world will never estimatfe the sum. By far the larger portion of what Mr. Miller wrote for the " Witness " is gone forever. Admirable disquisitions on social and ethical questions, felicities of humor and sportive though tren- chant satire, delicate illustration and racy anecdote from an inexhaustible literary erudition, and crystal jets of the purest poetry, — such things will repay the careful student of the " Witness " file, but can never be known to the general public. Having done my utmost in the way of compression, there still remained about three volumes of articles. VIII PREFACE. between the claims of which to republication I could not decide. This most difficult and delicate task was performed by Mrs. Hugh Miller, in a way which com- manded my entire approval, and which will, I have no doubt, give satisfaction to the public. Should the present volume meet the reception which, in my humble opinion, it deserves, its issue can be fol- lowed up by that of others of closely corresponding character and value. PETER BAYNE. CONTENTS. HISTOBIOAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL. I. PAQS Thb New Yeab 13 II. BOTAL PnOGKSSSES, BEOEKT AKD ItEMOTB 16 III. The Infabt Fbikcb 80 IV. Bemaihs of Nafoleob S4 V. Jean D'Aobk 87 VI. The Cbomwell Coktbovebbt 43 VII. Thb Thibd Feench Retolutioh S2 VIII. Thb Duke of Wellikotos 60 IX. Eael Geet ' 70 X. LOED Jeffbey '8 XI. Fire at the Towee op Londoit 89 X ' CONTENTS. XII. PAOB TuK Cebtbkakt of " The Foktt-Fivb " 9* xm. The Hali^Ckntuey 103 XIV. XiiB Echoes oir the Wobld U<) XV. CtKN Tilt Tabooed 124 XVL EDiKBunoH AH Age Ago 133 xvn. The Bubkb FEaxivAL akd IIeeo Woebhip . " .• . . . . W4 POLITfOAL AND SOCIAL. I. Owe Woekiiio Classes 164 II. Peasabt PaopEUTiia 100 m. The Fbaitohisb 168 IV. A FlVE-POUHD QnALIFICATION 176 V. The Steikes 183 VI. The Cottaqes^op oun Hnros K7 VII. The Dotht System 210 The UiaaLANDs CONTENTS. .XI vm. 218 IX. Thu Scotch Pooh-Law 227 X. Favperisii ,.•240 XI. Paupbb La'eou . 245 XII. Tub CKiME-MAKiifo Laws 252 xm. Is GAUE PBOPEETr? 202 XIV. The Fblohs op the Couhtet 273 XV. The Legislative Coitet 282 XVI. The Peace SIeetiiios 293 xvn. LlTEBATUBE OF THE PEOPLE gOQ LITERAET AND SCIENTIFIO. I. FABTIBQ ImPBESSIODB op the GHEAT KXHIBITIOir ..... 309 y n. CMTicissr FOB the Uhikitiated 327 in. Geoloqt tebbus Astbokojit 370 XII CONTENTS. IV. rAOZ Thb Spaoss ahd the Veriodb ^* V. Ujimr OF THE Huuah IIaceb 894 VI. KOBWAY AHD ITS Gl we repeat, has become inevitable in Scotland. The con- troversy between contending systems exists among us no longer. Dr. Alison still occupies his ground; Dr. Chal- mers has withdrawn. Truly, it is enough to make one's heart swell to think how the gigantic exertions of this great and good man in behalf of his country have been met in this cause. Were we to say that the poor of Scotland are on the eve of per- ishing in utter degradation, from a lack of faith in the effi- cacy of the gospel of Christ on the part of our influential classes, the remark would no doubt be deemed over ex- treme and severe ; and it would be a remark open, doubt- 288 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL, less, to objection, — not, however, from its severity, but from its tame and inexpressive inadequacy. It is the con- demnation of the class most influential in directing the destinies of our country, not that, in the indifferency of unbelief, they have stood aloof and done nothing, but that they have risen in maniac hostility, and overpowered those who were straining all their energies in their behalf, Not since the days of Knox did any venerable father of the Church of Scotland so exert himself in bringing Christian- ity to the people by the erection of congregations and the planting of churches, as Dr. Chalmers has done. Never has merchant so travailed to fill his coffers, or statesman so labored to consolidate his power, as this man has trav- ailed and labored, in season and out of season, to bring the blessings of the gospel to the poor, the degraded, and the forgotten. In ten years the Church of Scotland saw two hundred places of worship added to her communion. And how have these his weapons — forged to bear down the crime and ignorance, and, with these, the poverty of the country — been dealt with? Let our la'jv-courts tell, in the first instance ; let our aristocrats who stand by applaud- ing their decisions, declare in the second. Who was it that, when the state and the aristocracy of the country refused to endow his churches, and when the industrious and religious poor came forward for the purpose with their coppers, widows with their mites, and toil-worn laborers and mechanics with pittances subtracted from their scanty wages, — who was it that made prize of their humble offer- ings, and confiscated them, on behalf of the pauperism of the country,- forsooth ? There was an irony in the pretext which those who employed it could not have fully under- stood at the time, but which they will come to appreciate by and by. And who, through the Stewarton and Auch- terarder decisions, have fully completed what the Brechin decision began? Truly, the parties who had most at stake in the exertions of the champion who took the field in theii' behalf have been wonderfully successful in disarm- THE SCOTCH POOR-LAW. 239 ing and forcing him aside ; and all that is necessaiy for them now is, just to be equally successful in grappling with the o'ermastering and enormous evils which he set himself so determinedly to oppose. We trust, however, that they will no longer attempt deceiving the country, by speaking of a moral force as a thing still in the field, in opposition to the merely pecuniary force recommended by Dr. Alison. The moral force is in the field no longer ; Dr. Alison stands alone. For the present, however, we must conclude. Very im- portant questions of morals are on the eve of becoming questions of arithmetic in Scotland; and the wealth of the country, though it may find the exercise a reducing one, will be quite able to sum them up in their new character. Let us just touch one two of them by way of specimen. We have adverted oftener than once to the evils of the bothy system. They are going to take the form of a weighty assessment ; and our proprietary may be induced to inquire into them in consequence. There is another great evil to which we have not referred so directly. All our readers must have heard of vast improvements which have taken place during the present century in the northern Highlands. The old small farm, semi-pastoral, semi-agri- cultural system was broken up, the large sheep-farm system introduced in its place, and the inland population of the country shaken down, not without violence, to the skirts of the land, there to commence a new mode of life as la- borers and fishermen. And all this was called improve- ment. It was called great improvement not many years since, in most respectable English, in the pages of the " Quarterly Review." And we heard a voice raised in re- ply. It was the scrannel voice of meagre famine from the shores of the northern Highlands, prolonged into a yell of suffering and despair. But, write as you may, apologists of the system, you have ruined the country, and the fact is on the eve of being stated in figures. The poor-law assess- ment will find you out. 240 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL. X. PAUPERISM. The utterly miserable are always unsafe neighbors. la former days, when a barbarousjurisprudence, with its savage disregard of human life, extended to our prisons, and every place of confinement in the kingdom was a stagnant den of filth and wretchedness, the contagions disease originated in these receptacles of horror and suffering, and which from this circumstance bore the name of the jail-distemper, frequently burst out on the inhabitants of the surrounding town or village, and carried them off by hundreds at a time. It is recorueu, .L.it, after a criminal court had been held on one occasion, in the reign of James VI., at which the cele- bi'ated Lord Bacon took some official part, a malignant fever broke out among the persons who had attended, which terminated fatally in the case of several of the jury and of some of the gentlemen of the bar, and that the philosophic Chancellor expressed his conviction that the contagion had been carried into the court-room by a posse of wretched felons from the tainted atmosphere of their dungeon. Self-preservation in these cases enforced the dictates of humanity: the same all-powerful principle enforces them still. It is more than probable that the misery of the neglected classes occasionally breaks out upon that portion of our population which occupies the upper walks in society, in the form of contagious disease, — in the form of typhus fever, for instance : there can be no doubt whatever that it often breaks out upon them in the form of crime. But where is the true remedy to be found ? It was com- paratively an easy matter to ventilate our prisons, and to PAUPERISM, 241 introduce into them the various improvements recom- mended alike by the dictates of humanity and prudence. But how are the suffering masses to be ventilated, and their condition permanently improved ? It does not do to grope in the dark in such matters. It is well, surely to meet with the evil in its effects when it has become utter misery and destitution, and to employ every possible means for relieving its victims. It is infinitely better, however, to meet with it in its causes, — to meet with it in the forming, and to check it there. It was not by baling back the waters of the river that Cyrus laid bare the bed of the Euphrates ; it was by cutting off the supply. Where aie the sources of this fearfully accumulated and still accu- mulating misery to be found ? At what particular point, or in what particular manner, should the enlightened ben- efactor of the suffering classes interfere to cut off the sup- ply ? The reader anticipates a truism, — one of those important and unquestioned truths which, according to Goethe, seem divested of their proper effect, as important just from the circumstance of their being unquestioned, and which, gliding ineflSciently along the stream of universal assentation, are allowed to weigh less with the public mind than the short-lived and unfruitful paradoxes of the pass- ing time. Instead, however, of laying down a principle, we shall simply state a few facts of a kind which many of our humbler readers — the " men of handicraft and hard labor " — will be able fully to verify from their own expe- rience, and that embody the principle which seems to bear most directly on the subject. We passed part of two years in the neigbboiiiood of Edinburgh immediately before the great crisis of 1825, and knew perhaps more about the working classes of the place than can well be known by men who do not live on their own level. The speculations of the time had given an impulse to the trading world. Employment was abundant, and wages high ; and we had a full opportunity of seeing in what degree the mere commercial and trading prosper- 242 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL. ity of a country — the mere money-welfare wbich men such as Joseph Hume can appreciate — is truly beneficial to the laboring portion of the community. We shall pick out, by way of specimen, the case of a single party of about twenty workmen, engaged at from twenty-four to twenty-seven shillings per week, most of them young, un- married men, in the vigor of early manhood. Remember we are drawing no fancy sketch. Fully two thirds of that number were irreligious, and in a greater or less degree dissipated. They were paid by their employer regularly once a fortnight, on the evening of Saturday ; and imme- diately as they had pocketed their wages, a certain num- ber of them disappeared. On the morning of the following Wednesday, but rarely sooner, they returned again to their labors, worn out and haggard with the excesses of three days grossly spent, and without a single shilling of the money which they had earned during the previous fort- night. And such was the regular round with these unfor- tunate men, until the crisis arrived, and they were thrown out of employment in a state of as utter poverty as if they had never been employed at all. There was a poor laborer attached, with a few others, to the party we describe, whose wages amounted to about half the hire of one of the mechanics. His earnings at most did not exceed fourteen shillings per week. This laborer supported his aged mother. On Sundays he was invariably dressed in a neat, clean suit ; he occasionally in- dulged, too, in the purchase of a good book; and we have sometimes seen him slip, unnoticed as he thought, a few coppers into the hands of a poor beggar. And yet this man saved a little money. We lived nine months under the same roof with him ; and- as we were honored with his confidence and his friendship, we had opportunities of seeing the character in its undress. Never have we met with a man more thoroughly a Christian, or a man who felt more continually that he was living in the presence of Deity. Now, in the ordinary course of events, and debar- PAUPERISM. 243 ring the agency of accident, it is well-nigh as impossible that men such as this laborer can sink into pauperism, as that men of the opposite stamp can avoid sinking into it. The dissipated mechanics, with youth and strength on their side, and with their earnings of twenty7four and twenty-seven shillings per week, were yet paupers in em- bryo. It is according to the inevitable constitution of society, too, that vigorous working-men should have rela- tives dependent upon them for sustenance, — aged parents or unmarried sisters, or, when they have entered into the marriage relation, wives and families. And hence the mighty accumulation of pauperism when the natural prop fails in yielding its proper support. We have another fact to state regarding our old acquaint- ances, which is not without its importance, and in which, we are convinced, the experience of all our humbler readers will bear us out. Some of the most skilful mechanics of the party, and some, too, of the most intelligent, were among the most dissipated. One of the number, a power- ■fal-minded man, full of information, was a great reader ; there was another, possessed of an intellect more than commonly acute, who had a turn for composition. The first, when thrown out of employment, and on the extreme verge of starvation, enlisted into a regiment destined for some of the colonies, whence he never returned ; the other broke down in constitution, and died, before his fortieth year, of old age. What is the proper inference . here ? Mere intellectual education is not enough to enable men to live well, either in the upper or lower walks of society, and especially in the latter. The moral nature must also be educated. Was Robert Burns an ignorant or unintelli- gent man ? or yet Robert Ferguson ? Facts such as these — and their amount is altogether incalculable — indicate the point at which the sources of pauperism can alone be cut off. The disease must be antici- • pated ; for when it has passed to its last stage, and actually become pauperism, there is no remedy. Every effort which 244 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL. an active but blind humanity can suggest in such desperate circumstances is but a baling back of the river when the floods are rising. If there be a course of moral and reli- gious culture to which God himself sets his seal, and through which even the dissipated can be reclaimed, and the uncontaminated preserved from contamination, — a course through which, by the promised influences of a divine agent, characters such as that of our friend the poor laborer can be formed, — that course of moral and religions culture is the only remedy. The pauperism of Scotland, in its present deplorable extent, is comparatively new to the country ; and certain it is, that in the last age the spirit of anti-pauperism and of anti-patronage were insep- arable among the Presbyterian people. There is a close connection between the non-intrusion principle and the formation of characters such as that of our friend the la- borer. What were the religious sentiments of the class, happily not yet forgotten in our country, who bore up in ,their honest and independent poverty, relying for support on the promise of their Heavenly Father, but who asked not the help of man, and who, in so many instances, would not receive it even when it was extended to them ? To what party in the church did the poor widows belong who refused the profiered aid of the parish, — if they had children, lest it should be " cast up " to them in after-life, — if they had none, " because they had come of honest people ? " Much of what was excellent in the Scottish character in the highest degree arose directly out of the Scottish Church in its evangelical integrity ; much, too, of what was excellent, in the main, though perhaps somewhat dashed with eccentricity, arose out of what we may term the church's reflex influences. PAUPER LABOR. 245 XI. PAUPER LABOR. We hold that the only righteous and practical check on adult pauperism, the only check at once just and efficient, is the compulsory imposition of labor on every pauper to whom God has given, in even the slightest degree, the laboring ability. One grand cause of the inefficiency of "workhouses arises mainly from the circumstance that their names do not indicate their character. The terra work- house has become a misnomer, seeing that it designates buildings in which, for any one useful purpose, no work is done. We say for any useful purpose ; for in some cases there is work done in theni which is of a most mischievous, pauper-producing kind. They enter, in the character of competitors, into that field of unskilled, or at least very partially skilled labor, which is -chiefly occupied by the self-sustaining classes that stand most directly on the verge of pauperism; and their hapless rivals, backed by no such bounty as that upon which they trade, sink in the ill- omened contest, and take refuge within their walls, to assist in carrying on that war against honest industry in which they themselves have gone down. Folly of this extreme character in the management of the pauperism of the country admits of no apology, from the circumstance that it is as palpable as it is mischievous. The legitimate employment of the inmates of a workhouse we find unmis- takably indicated by the nature of their wants. What is it that constitutes their pauperism? Nature has given them certain wants, which, from some defect either in character or person, they themselves fail to supply; they lack food and they lack raiment; and these two wants 246 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL. comprise the wants of a poorhouse. Then let the direct supply of these wants be the work of a poorhouse, — its direct, not its circuitous work, — not its work in the com- petition market, to the inevitable creation of more paupers, but its work in immediate connection with the soil, out of which all food and all raiment are produced, and with the wants of its own inmates. The organization of labor in society at large we regard as an inexecutable vision. In even the most despotic nations of Europe that compulsory power is wanting which must constitute — man being what he is — the moving force of organized labor ; but within the precincts of a workhouse the compulsory power does exist; and there, in consequence, the organization of labor is no inexecutable vision, but a sober possibility. It would impart to our workhouses their proper character, by not only furnishing them with an efficient labor check, and convert- ing them into institutions of discipline, in which the useless member of society, that could but would not work, would • be compelled to exert himself in his own behalf; but it would also convert them into institutions in which a nu- merous pauper class, of rather better character, — too in- efficient, either from lack of energy or of skill, to provide for themselves, amid that pressure and bustle of competition which obtains in society at large, — might, by being shielded from competition, and brought into immediate contact with the staple of their wants, become self-supporting. All that would be necessary in any poorhouse would be simply this, — that its class of raiment-producers should produce clothes enough for both themselves and its sustenance- producers; and that its sustenance-producers should, in turn, produce food enough for both themselves and its raiment-producers. And, brought fairly into contact with the soil and its productions in the raw state, — with their wants reduced to the simple natural level, the profits of the trader superseded, the pressure of taxation removed, the enormous expenses of the dram-shop cut off by that law of eorapulsory temperance which the lack of a com- PAUPER LABOB. 247 mand of money imposes, — we have little fear but that many of those institutions would become self-supporting, or at least very nearly so. The country would still have to bear some of the expense of what has been well termed its heaven-ordained poor, — the halt, the maimed, and the fatuous ; but be it remembered that these^ always bear a definite proportion to the population ; and that the present alarming increase in the countiy's pauperism is not a con- sequence of any disproportionate increase in that modicum of its amount which the heaven-ordained poor composes. So much for the country's adult pauperism. With regard to its juvenile pauperism, the labor scheme is more impor- tant still. The country has many poor children living at its expense in workhouses, or boarded in humble cottages in the country ; and there are many more that either want parents, or worse than want them, that are prowling about its larger towns, and sci-aping up a miserable livelihood by begging or theft. Unless in the season of youth — ere the mind becomes rigid under the influence of liabit, and takes the set which it is to bear through life — these juvenile paupers and vagabonds be converted into self-sustaining, honest members of society, they will inevitably become the adult paupers or criminals of the future, and the country will have to support them either in poorhouses or penal settlements, or, worse still, to pay executioners for hanging them. Of all non-theological things, labor is the most sacred ; of all non-ethical things, labor is the most mural. The working habit — the mere homely ability of laboring fairly and honestly for one's bread — is of more value to a country, when diffused among its people, than aU the" other ^fts — be they hills of gold or rocks of diamonds — that can possibly fall to its share. And if its people, or any very considerable part of them, possess not that habit and ability, it matters not what else it may possess : there is an element of weakness in its constitution for which no amount of even right principle among them will ever form an adequate compensation. There is, we believe, no pai-t 248 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL. of her Majesty's dominions in which there is more right principle than in the Highlands of Scotland ; but, from causes which it might be a mournful, but certainly no un- instructive task to trace, their people possess the working habit and ability in a comparatively small degree ; and so they can do exceedingly little for the propagation of the principles which they hold, and, when disease touches the root of the potato, they find themselves in circumstances in which, save for the charity of their neighbors, they would perish. Principle, even when held truly and in sincerity, as among many of our poor Highlanders, is not enough of itself; and the mere teaching of principle in early life, in lessons which may or may not be received efficiently and in truth, must of itself be still less sufficient. Even if the best churches in the country had the country's vagabond and pauper children subject to their instruction, — sup- posing the thing possible, though, of course, if the churches did not feed them, it is not ; and supposing, further, that they turned them out on society, the course completed, destitute of industrial habits or skill, — what would be the infallible result? The few converted to God by a vital change of heart, — and in all ages of the church the num- bers of such have been proportionably few, — would no doubt either struggle on blamelessly through life, or, sink- ing in the, hard contest, would resign life rather than sustain it by the fruits of a course of crime ; but the great bulk of the others would live as paupers or criminals : they would be simply better instructed yagabonds than if they had been worse taught. The welfare of a country has two founda,tions; Right principle is the one ; and the other, and scarce less important foundation, is industrial habit combined with useful skill.. And in order to obviate the gi-eat danger of permitting juvenile paupers to grow up into adult paupers and criminals, it is essentially necessary that the skill should be communicated to them, and the habits formed in them. And hence the importance of the Al_ _ i 1- PAUPER LABOB. 249 ful paupers of the country, would rear them up in honest, industrial habits, and thus qualify them for being useful members of society. It has been alleged against Presbyterianism by excellent men of the English Church, — among the rest by Thomas Scott the commentator, — that in its history in the past it has been by much too political, and has busied itself too en- grossingly with national affairs. There can be little doubt that its history during the seventeenth and the latter half of the sixteenth century is very much that of Scotland. Presbyterianism was political in those days, and fought the battles of civil as certainly as those of religious liberty. During a considerable part of the eighteenth century it was not political. From the suppression of the Rebellion of 1745 to the breaking out of the great revolutionai-y war, the life led by the Scottish people was an exceedingly quiet one, and there were no exigencies in their circum- stances-important enough to make large demands on the exertions of the patriot or the ingenuity of the political economist. The people of the empire rather fell short than exceeded its resources, and were somewhat less than sufficient to carry on its operations of agriculture and trade ; and hence the comfortable doctrine of Goldsmith and Smollett regarding, population, — a comfortable doc- trine, for it never can obtain save when a nation is in comfortable circumstances. The best proof of the welfare of a country, they said, was the greatness of its population. It was unnecessary in such an age that Pi-esbyterianism should be political. The pauperism which had deluged Scotland immediately after the Kevolution had been all absorbed ; the people, in at least the Lowlands, were a people of good working habits; and in the Highlands little work sei-ved ; and all that had to be done by such of the ministers of religion in the country as were worthy of the name was to exert themselves in adding right principle and belief in relation to the realities of the unseen world, to the right habits in relation to the present one that had 250 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL. already been formed among the people of their charges. Bat with the revolutionary war and the present century the state of matters greatly altered. Pauperism began mightily to increase ; the recesses of our large towns, that some 'forty or fifty years before used to pour out to the churches, at the sound of the Sabbath bells, a moral and religious population, became the foul dens in which a worse than heathen canaille festered in poverty and ignorance ; habits of intemperance had increased twenty-fold among the masses ; the young were growing up by thousands in habits of idleness and crime to contaminate the future ; even the better people, placed with their children in peril- ous juxtaposition with the thoroughly vitiated, were in the circumstances of men in health located per force in the fever-ward of a hospital. The Scottish Highlanders, too, ruined by the clearing system, had come to be in circum- stances greatly different from those of their fathers ; and it had grown once more necessary that the Presbyterian minister should, like his predecessors of the sixteenth cen- tury, interest himself in a class of secular questions that are shown by experience to be as clearly allied to spiritual ones as the body is to the soul." The one great name specially connected with this altered state of things, and the course of action which it demands, is that of Chalmers, — Chalmers, the true type and exemplar of the Presbyte- rian minister as specially suited to the exigencies of the time. But there are other names. The late Dr. Duncan with his savings banks, Guthrie with his ragged schools, Begg and Mackenzie with their dwellings for the working classesj Tasker in his West Port laboring in the footsteps of his friend the great deceased, must be regarded as true successors of those Presbyterian ministers of the seven- teenth century who identified themselves with their people in all their interests, and were as certainly good patriots as sound divines. And there are signs in the horizon that their example is to become general. We have scarce met a single Highland minister for the last three or four years, PAUPER LABOB. 251 — especially those of the northwestern Highlands, — who did not ask, however hopeless of an answer, "What is to be done with our poor people ? " The question indi- cates an awakening to the inevitable necessity of inquiry and exertion in other fields than the purely theological one ; and one of these, in both Lowlands and Highlands, is that in which Chalmers so long labored. The case of the poor must be wisely considered, or there will rest no blessing on the exertions of the churches. But we must bring our remarks to a close ; and we would do so by citing an instance, only too lamentably obvious at the present time, of how very much, in our mixed state of existence as ci-eatures composed of soul and body, a purely physical event may aflfect the religious interests of a great empire. The potato disease was a thing purely physical. It seemed to have nothing of the nature of a missionary society about it ; it did not engage missionaries, nor appoint committees, nor hire committee-rooms, nor hold meetings ; and it seemed to have as little favor for popish priests as for Episcopalian curates or Presbyterian ministers. And yet, by pressing out the popish population of Ireland on every side, and surcharging with them the large towns of England, Scotland, and the United States, it has done more in some three or four years for the spread of popery in Britain and America than all the missionary societies of all the evangelistic churches of the world have done for the spread of Protestantism during the last half- century. He must be an obtuse man who fails to see, with such an example before him, how intimately associated with the ecclesiastical the secular may be. 252 POLITICAL AND SOCUL. XII THE GEIME-MAKING LAWS. If there was a special law enacted against all red-haired men and all men six feet high, red-haired men and men six feet high would in a short time become exceedingly dangerous characters. In order to render them greatly worse than their neighbors, there would be nothing more necessary than simply to set them beyond the pale of the constitution, by providing by statute that whoever lodged informations against red-haired men or men six feet-high should be handsomely rewarded, and that the culprits themselves should be lodged in prison, and kept at hard labor, on every conviction, from a fortnight to sixty days. The country would at length come to groan under the in- tolerable burden of its red-haired men and its men six feet high. There would be frequent paragraphs in our columns and elsewhere to the effect that some three or four re- spectable white-haired gentlemen, varying in height from five feet nothing to five feet five, had been grievously mal- treated in laudably attempting to apprehend some formi- dable felon, habit and repute six feet high ; or to the effect that Constable D. of the third division had been barba- rously murdered by a red-haired ruffian. Philosophers would come to discover, that so deeply implanted was the bias to outrage and wrong in red-haired nature, that it held by the scoundrels even after their heads had become bald and their whiskers gray ; and that so inherent was ruffian- ism to -six-feet-highism, that though four six-feet fellows had, for the sake of example, been cut short at the knees, they had remained, notwithstanding the mutilation, as in- corrigible ruffians as ever. From time to time there would THE CRIME-MAKING LAWS. 253 be some terrible tragedy enacted by some tremendous in- carnation of illegality and evil, who was both red-haired and six feet high to boot. Of course, to secure the pro- tection of the lieges, large additions would be made to the original statute ; and thus the mischief would go on from bad to worae, unmitigated by the teachings of the pulpit or the press, and unrestrained by the terrors of the magis- tracy, until some bold reformer, rather peculiar in his notions, would suggest, as a last resource, the repeal of what ere now would come to be very generally lauded as the sole safeguards of the public peace and the glory of the Constitution, — the anti-red-hair, anti-six-feet-high enactments. And after the agitation of some fifteen or twenty years — after articles innumerable had been writ- ten on both sides, and speeches without number had been spoken — the enactments would come to be fairly re- scinded, and the tall and the red-haired, in the lapse of a generation or two, would improve, in consequence, into good subjects and quiet neighbors. Is the conception too wild and extravagant ? Let the reader pause for a moment ere he condemns. England lit- tle more than a century ago was infamous for the number of its murders committed on the highway. Hawksworth's story, in the " Adventurer," of the highwayman who mur- dered a beloved son, just restored, after a long absence, to his country and his friends, before the eyes of his father, and then threw the old man a shilling, lest, said the ruffian, he should be stopped at the tolls, was not deemed out of nature at the time. It was, on the contrary, quite a prob- able occurrence in the days of Jack Sheppard, Turpin, and Captain Macheath, About an age earlier, as shown by the "London Gazette," one of the oldest of English newspa- pers, there were from six. to eight murders perpetrated yearly by foot-pads on the public roads ; and paragraphs such as the following, which we extract from this ancient journal, were comparatively common : "On the 23d of this month [March, 1682], three highwaymen, two on horse- 22 254 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL. Ijack and one on foot, set upon two persons on Hindhead Heath, in Surrey, one of whom they mortally wounded, and took from them a black crop gelding near fifteen hands high ; " or such notices as the following, inserted as a gen- eral citation of witnesses, by the keeper of the Newgate : — " Whereas many robberies are daily committed on the highways, to the great prejudice of his Majesty's subjects,. — these are to give notice that there has lately been taken and are now in the custody of Captain Richardson, Mas- ter of his Majesty's jail at Newgate, several supposed high- way robbers, of whom here followeth the names and de- scriptiohs," etc. Such was the state of things in times when the earlier British novelists, desirous of making the incidents lie thick in their fictions, gave them the form of a journey, and sent their heroes travelling over England. The evil, however, was at length put down, partly through the marked improvement which took place in the police of the country, but still more through the great increase, of its provincial newspapers, and the vast acceleration in the rate of its travelling, — circumstances which have united to render the escape or concealment of the highwayman impossible. And so highway murder has become one of almost the rarest ofiences in the criminal register of the country. Very different is the case, however, with mur- ders of another kind.. Our newspapers no longer contain in their English corner paragraphs at all resembling those we have just quoted, by way of specimen, from the "Lon- don Gazette," and which so strike in the perusal, as char- acteristic of an age only half escaped from barbarism ; but they exhibit, instead, their paragraphs, to the barbarity of which the accommodating influence of custom can alone rec- oncile the reader, and which will be held, we trust, in less than half an age hence, to bear as decidedly the stamp of savageism. Within the last few years there have been no fewer than twenty-five gamekeepers murdered in England. The cases were all ascertained cases ; coroners' juries sat upon the bodies, and verdicts of wilful murder were re- THE CRIME-MAKING LAWS. 255 turned against certain parties, known or unknown ; and these were, of course, but the murders on the one side. We occasionally hear of the death of a poacher ; and all our readers must remember a late horrible instance, in which an unfortunate man of this class, captured after a des- perate resistance, was found to be so dreadfully injured in the fray that his bowels protruded through his wounds. But in by far the greater number of cases the poor wounded wretch has strength enough left to bear him to his miserable home, and the parish hears little more of the matter than that there has been a brief illness and a sudden death. It is quite bad enough that Hawksworth's story of the highwayman should be a not improbable one in the times of the first two Georges ; it is still worse that Crabbe's story of the rival brothers who killed each other in a mid- night fray, in which the one engaged in the character of a poacher the other in that of a gamekeeper, should be as little improbable in the times of William and Victoria. Be it remembered, too, that the peculiar barbarism of the modern period is greatly more a national reproach than that of the ancient. The older enormities were enormities in spite of a good law ; the newer enormities are enormi- ties that arise directly out of a bad one. There is sound sense as well as good feeling in the remark of Mrs. Saddle- tree on the law, in Effie Dean's case, as laid down by her learned husband the saddler. « The crime," remarked the wiseacre to his better half, " is rather a favorite of the law, this species of murder being one of its own creating." " Then, if the law makes murders," replied the matron, " the law should be hanged for them ; or if they would hang up alawyer instead, the country would find nae faut." All the twenty-five ascertained murders to which we have referred, and the at least equally great number of concealed ones, were crimes of the law's making, — murders which as certainly originated in the law, and which, if the law did not exist, would as certainly not have been, as the supposed crimes of our illustration under the anti-red-hair, 256 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL. anti-six-feet-liigh statutes. No murders arise out of the killing of seals and sea-gulls ; why should there arise any murders out of the killing of, hares and pheasants? Simply because there is a pabulum of law in the one case, out of which the transgression springs, and no producing pabu- lum of law in the other. There can be nothing more peril- ous to the morals of the people than stringent laws, that, instead of attaching their penalties to actual crime, and having, in consequence, like the laws against the house- breaker and the highwayman, the whole weight of the popular conscience on their side, create the crime which they punish, and have thus the moral sense of the country certainly not for, mayhap against them. They become invariably, in all such cases, a sort of machinery for con- verting useful subjects and honest men into rogues and pub- lic pests. Lacking the moral sanction, their penalties are neither more nor less than a certain amount of peril, which bold spirits do not hesitate to encounter, just as a keen sportsman does not hesitate to encounter the modicum of risk which he runs from the gun that he carries. It may burst and kill him; or in drawing it through a hedge a sprig may catch the trigger, and lodge its contents in his body ; or it may hang fire, and send its charge through his head half a minute after he has withdrawn it from his shoulder. Accidents of the kind happen in sporting coun- tries almost every month, — for such is the natural law of accident in the case ; but there is no moral stigma attached, and so men brave the penalty every day. And such is' the principle, when the law, equally dissociated from the promptings of the moral sense, is not a law of accident, but of the statute-book. Men brave the danger of the penalty, as they do the peril of the fowling-piece,» But there is this ultimate difference : without being in any de- gree a felon tried by his own conscience, the traverser of the statutory enactment becomes legally a felon ; he may be dealt with, like the red-haired or six-feet-high felon of our illustration, as decidedly criminal. He is ferociously THE CRIME-MAKINa LAWS. 257 attacked with lethal weapons as a felon ; and, defending himself in hot blood with the resembling weapons, without which his amusements cannot be carried on, he becomes a murderer ; or he is apprehended, manacled, tried, con- demned, imprisoned, transported, as a felon, and, in passing through so degrading a process, becomes at length the ac- tual criminal which he had been in the eye of the law all along. Few of our readers can have any adequate concep- tion of the immense mass of criminalty created yearly in the empire by this singularly deteriorating process. In the year 1843 there were in England and Wales alone no fewer than four thousand five hundred and twenty-nine convic- tions under the game-laws. Forty of that number were deemed cases of so serious a nature that the culprits were transported.. In all the other cases they were either fined or imprisoned, — the fines taken in the aggregate averaging two pounds sterling, the imprisonments seven weeks. And it is out of this system of formidable penalties that the numerous murders have arisen, and that the game-laws of the country have, like those of Draco, come to be written in blood. The character of the ordinary Scotch poacher must be familiar to all our readers. "E'en in our ashes," says the poet, " live our wonted fires." There are few things more truly natural to man than a love of field-sports. Voyagers have remarked of the wild dogs of Juan Fernandez, that they hunt in packs. It needs, it would seem, no previous training to make them hunting animals i they are such by nature ;- and, placed in the proper circumstances, the nature at once develops itself. Now, it would appear as if man were also a hunting animal : the peculiar occupation which the fl*st circumstances of society in almost every country render imperative upon the species, and for which, in an early age of the world, ere the human family was yet dis- persed, Nimrod became so famous, is perhaps of all others the most natural to us. "What the passion which leads to it is in the aristocracy, the game-laws serve of themselves 258 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL. suiSciently to testify; and the humbler classes feel the impulse as strongly. It is truly wonderful how soon men brought up in a state of civilization accommodate them- selves, when thrown by circumstances among a barbarous people, or into a state of seclusion from their fellows, to the life of the hunter, and learn to love it. And the inherent feeling is, of course, as little blamable in the humble as in the wealthy or titled man. We have seen it greatly indulged in by dwellers along the seashore, — farmers, cottars, mechanics, — and almost every more spir- ited young man in the locality becoming in a lesser or greater degree a marksman. For a certain period, a young fellow of fair character has been shooting east, over the beach, towards the ^a, and picking down the scart and the gray goose, the coot and duck, and now and then sending a bullet through the head of au otter or seal. A tempting opportunity occurs, however; and, instead of shooting east, he shoots west, over the beach, towards the landj and lodges his shot, not in a scart or seal, but in a woodcock or hare. Formerly he was in danger from his gun, or in scrambling among the rocks : he is now in dan- ger of being fined, and, should he frequently repeat the offence, of being imprisoned ; but in his own estimate and that of his neighbors the one kind of danger is no more connected- with any moral stigma than the other. Had he fired west, and wilfully shot a sheep or goat, the case would, of course, be altogether different ; but he is merely an occasional poacher, not a scoundrel. And if the game- laws be not strictly enforced in the district, he remains, as at first, a good and useful member of society, in no degree either the better or the worse for. now and then shooting a coot or wild goose that has no standing in the game-list, and now and then picking down a partridge or heath hen that has. But in those parts of England where game are rigidly pi'eserved, and the game-laws strictly enforced, the process is different. The commencement of the poacher's course THE CRIME-MAKING LAWS. . 259 is nearly the same in both cases. There is the same in- stinctive love of sport, and the same general conviction that game is not real property, — a conviction which every view of the sabject serves but to strengthen and confirm. The Englishman sees that if his neighbor the shopkeeper or banker detects a rascal robbing his till or breaking his strong box, he never once thinks of engaging him as his shopman or cashier ; and that, on the same principle, the sheep-feeder or farmer avoids hiring as his shepherd a man notorious for stealing sheep, or declines employing as his farm-servant a man who has been tried and cast for stealing horses. He finds, too, that the fair trader never bargains with habit-and-repute thieves for their stolen goods. But he sees that an entirely difierent principle obtains among game-preservers. Not a few of them, bent on stocking their preserves, deal freely with poachers for live game ; and still more of them, in choosing their game- keepers, prefer poachers — clever, active fellows, exten- sively acquainted among their own class — to any other sort of persons whatever. Nor, if the poachers be nothing worse than poachers, can there be a single objection to the ar- rangement, save on the nnreoognizabl^ untenable ground that game is property. It is, however, the tendency of the poacher, in a country where the game-laws are strictly enforced, to become something worse. He goes to the woods, shoots or traps game, and finds himself^ in conse- quence, in the circumstances of the red-haired or six-feet- high men of our illustration. He is apprehended and fined; and as his wages as a laborer are small, he has just to go to the woods again, in order — we quote a remark grown into a proverb among the class — that ho may seek his money in the place where he lost it. He is again appre- hended, and imprisoned for some six or eight weeks, during which time he is occasionally visited by the chaplain of the prison, who tells him he has done wrong, but always, somehow, forgets to quote the text which proves it, and is besides not particularly clear in his argument. He re^ 260* POLITICAL AND SOCIAL. ceives, too, visits of a different character, — those of hard- ened felons; and their lessons impress him much more deeply than the teachings of the chaplain. He is again discharged ; but he has now become rather an unsettled sort of person, and fails not unfrequently to procure employ- ment. But the neighboring preserves prove an unfailing resource : he is time after time surprised and apprehended ; but he at length becomes weary of passive submission ; the hour is late, the thicket dark and lonely, the gamekeeper alone ; they are simply man to man ; and in the scuffle ■which ensues the keeper is baffled and beaten off. Better a brief fray than a heavy fine or a long imprisonment. The poacher's associates, ere he has reached this stage, are chiefly desperate men. " There are notorious poachers," says Mr. Bright, in his speech on the game-laws with which he prefaced his motion for a parliamentary committee on the subject, " who have by a long succession of offences and imprisonments been driven out almost from the pale of society, — a kind of savages, living in hovels, or wher- ever they can find shelter. One of this outcast class was recently tried at the assizes for an act of incendiarism." Such company can nave, of course,-no tendency to improve a man's morals, or to increase his tenderness of human life. He engages in the forest in one fray more ; and he who commenced his career as a law-made criminal, and free of moral stain in the abstract, terminates it in the character of an atrocious felon in the sight both of God and man, — a red-handed murderer, through whom two human lives have been lost to society, — that of his victim and his own. It must be miserable policy that balances against the lives of human creatures and the morals of thousands of our humbler people, the mere idle amusements of a privi- leged class, comparatively few in number, and who have a great many other amusements full within their reach. Even were their claims to the game of the country clear, — and all know that a right of property in wild animals can be THB CRIME-MAKING LAWS. 201 constituted by taking and keeping them, as Cowper did his hares, — still, did these claims interfere with the public good, they ought of necessity to give way. Justice, as certainly as humanity, demands the sacrifice. We are much pleased, in this point of view, with an anecdote re- lated by Mr. Jesse in his "Gleanings in N^atural History," an exceedingly interesting volume, from which the reader may learn that there are many other ways of deriving amusement from animals besides killing them. "One of the keepers in Richmond Park informs me," says the natu- ralist, " that he has often heard his father, who was also a keeper, mention that, in the reign of George II., a large flock of turkeys, consisting of not less than three thousand, was regularly kept up as part of the stock of the park. In the autumn and winter they fed on acorns, of which they must have had an. abundant supply, since the park was then almost entirely wooded with oak, with a ihick cover of furze ; and although at present eleven miles in circum- ference, it was formerly much larger, and connected with extensive possessions of the Crown, some of which are now alienated. Stacks of barley were also put up in different places of the park for their support ; and some of the old turkey-cocks are said to have weighed from twenty-five to thirty pounds. They were hunted with dogs, and made to take refuge in a tree, where they were frequently shot by George II. I have not been able to learn how long they had been preserved in the park before his reign ; but they were totally destroyed towards the latter end of it, in consequence of the danger to which the keepei's were exposed in protecting them from poachers, with whom they had many bloody fights, being frequently overpowered by them." Here we have a pleasing instance of even the monarch of the country yielding up his amusements in order that the lives of his servants might not be endan- gered. David would not drink of the water which was, he said, " the blood of the men that went for it in jeopardy of their lives," and so he " poured it out unto the Lord." 262 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL. XIII. IS GAME PROPERTY? When we last walked out through several of our busier Edinburgh streets into the country, we did not see a single article in the shop-windows or elsewhere which we did not at once recognize as property, and of whose general line- age, as such, we could not give some satisfactory account. Human skill and labor had been employed upon them all, from the nicely-fashioned implement or machine in which the baser metals had become more valuable than silver, or the elaboi'ate strip of gossamer-like tissue in which the original vegetable fibre had been made to ontprice its weight in gold, to the wild intertropical nut or date gathered from their several palms under the burning sun of the African or Asiatic desert, or the costly furs of the Arctic hunter, purchased by the adven urous merchant of a civilized country amid the wild wastes of Lapland, or on the icy confines of Baffin's Bay or Mackenzie River. All was property on which the eye rested, — that ,of individ- uals or the community ; — houses, churches, public halls, the paved streets, the lamps, the railings, the shrubs and flowers in the squares and gardens, the very stones on the macadamized road, — all was property. As we cleared the suburbs, with their reticulations of cross walls, their scattered trees, and their straggling houses, there opened upon us a wide extent of country, with its woods and fields, its proprietors' seats, and its farm-stead- ' ings. And here was property of another kind, — property in land, emphatically termed by our laws — in contradis- tinction to the portable valuables which we had just seen IS GAME PEOPERTT ? 263 in passing outwards, in the shops, and on the persons of the passengers, — real property. And real property the land of the country unquestionably is, — more obscure in its lineage, mayhap, than the furs furnished in barter by the American Indian, or the flowered piece of netting elaborated to order by the incessant toil, prolonged for months, of the poor lace-maker, but obscure merely on the principle through which the early history of an ancient people or long-derived family is obscure, — obscure simply because its beginnings reach far beyond the era of the annalist and the chronicler. It has been property so long that the metaphysician can but surmise how it became such ; nor can the historian decide which of the philoso- pher's many guesses on the subject is the best one. We incline to the solution of Locke, though in some respects inadequate, in preference to that of Paley, who holds, most unphilosophically we think, that the real foundation of right in the case is the law of the land. Law of the land! We could ais soon believe that a son was the producing cause through which his father came into being, or that a daughter was the producing cause of her mother's existence. Property in the land existed long ere there were laws in the land. Cain must have been as certainly the proprietor of the field which he rendered valuable by incoi-porating his labor with its soil, as Abel of the flock which his labor had tamed or i-eared. Both the land and the animals were general gifts to the species from the Beneficent Giver of all ; and the individual right was fairly constituted in the one case by the man who broke in the animals from their state of original wildness, and in the other by the man who cleared and tilled and sowed the hitherto uncultiva- ted waste, and converted it into a patrimony worthy of being bequeathed to his children. There must have been at least as much labor expended in the case of the agri- culturist as in that of the shepherd ; and, if the poets are to be regarded as authorities, — and there are instances in which they wonderfully approximate to the truth, — 264 POLITICAI. AND SOCIAL. considerably more. Paley tells us that the first partition of an estate which we read of was that which took place be- tween Abram and Lot, — " If thou wilt take the left hand, then I will go to the right ; or if thou depart to the right hand, then I will go to the left." Had he examined his Bible just a little more carefully, he would have found that the transaction was not a partition of land, — for Abram had none at the time, — but a mere temporary ar- rangement regarding the occupation for a certain terra of a certain extent of common ; that the portions of land in that country with which, according to Locke, human labor had been mixed up, had already, in consequence of the incorporation, become property; and that when Abram desired the field of Machpelah, with the sepulchral " cave that was in the end thereof," he had to purchase it of the proprietor for "four hundred shekels of silver." If the sole foundation of men's rights to their landed properties was, as Paley holds, the law of the land, — if there had been no previous foundation of right on which the law itself rested, — we would have to regard as miserably inadequate and precarious indeed the tenures of our laird- ocracy, and to recognize the aspirations of the levelling Chartist and the agrarian ten-acre man as at once rational and fair. The right which the law had created at one time it might without blame disannul at another ; for if the law did not rest on a heaven-derived justice, but was itself a primai'y foundation, and rendered just whatever rested on it, justice would of course be as variable in its nature as opinion among the law-making majorities of the country ; and so it would not be more than equally just for the Con- servative majorities of to-day to secure their estates. to the existing proprietors, than for the Chartist majorities of to- morrow to break up these estates into single fields, and give a field apiece to the working-men of the country. The law of the land cannot create property : it can merely extend its sanction and protection to those previously existing rights of property on which all legislation on the IS GAME PROPERTY ? 2G5 subject must rest, or be mere enacted violence and outrage, abhorrent to that ancient underived justice which existed ere man was, and which shall long survive every merely human law. Nay, even in cases where man's labor has not yet been incorporated with the soil, — on wide moors and among rugged hills, where he has neither ploughed nor planted, — it is for the benefit of the species that individual rights of proprietorship should exist and be recognized. The pro- prietor virtually holds, in many such cases, not merely in his own behalf, but in that of the country also. We were never more forcibly struck by the fact than when travelling sevei-al months ago in the mainland of Orkney, in a local- ity where the properties are small, and there exists a vast breadth of undivided common. Wherever the rights of individual proprietors extended, we found land of some value ; we at least found vegetation and a vegetable soil. On the common, on the contrary, there was almost no vegetable soil, and scarce any vegetation. The upper layer of mould, scanty at first, had been stripped off by repeated parings, and carried away for fuel ; and for hundreds of acres together the boulder clay lay exposed on the surface, here and there mottled by a tuft of stunted heath, but covered by no continuous carpeting of even moss or lichen. Were such the state of the entire island, it would be wholly uniphabitable : it is the rights of individual prop- erty alone that have preserved Pomona to its people. Even a wood of any value is never suffered to grow on a common, unless, perchance, in the uninhabited recesses of a country : no peasant ever dreams of sparing a sapling in order that it may expand into a tree for the benefit of his neighbor's children. The winter is severe, and, standing in need of fuel, he cuts the promising plant down by a stroke of his bill, and, fagoting it up with several hundred others, he carries it home to his fire. Property in land is, we repeat, real property, — property held not merely for the benefit of individual proprietors, but also for the best 23 206 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL, interests of the community ; for, did all the land belong to all, it would be of no value to any. Such were some of .our reflections as we walked on from field to field into the open country. In approaching a small stream that divided the lands of two proprietors, we startled a hare that had been couching amid a plot of tur- nips. It ran downwards for a few score yards along a fur- row, stopped short, looked round, resumed progress, cleared the little stream at a bound, and was then lost to our view amid a brake of furze that skirted one of the fields of the neighboring proprietor. As we walked on, and, after cross- ing the streamlet, were rising on the hillside, beside a field laid down with wheat, we raised a covey of partridges. They went, whirring above our head, and, reversing the course of the hare, flew over the stream, and settled in a second field of wheat, just beside the turnip one. That hare and these partridges were, it seems, property ; and we had witnessed on this occasion a curious transferrence of valua- bles that had taken place without bargain or agreement on the part of any one. Up to a certain moment the hare had belonged to one proprietor ; when we had first started it, and when it was running along the furrow, and when it had turned round to reconnoitre, it had belonged to the proprietor of the turnip-plot ; but no sooner had it cleared the stream, than it straightway belonged to the proprietor of the wheatfield and the furze-brake. And, as if to make the first amends for the loss which he had just sustained, the partridges we had raised, from being the property of him of the field and the brake, had, on flying over the run- nel, become the property of him of the turnip-plot. Cer- tainly a strange mode of conveyancing ! It seemed equally strange, too, that the turnips on which the hare had just been feeding, and the wheat which expanded the crops of the partridges, did not belong to either of the proprietors, but were the property of certain third parties called tenants. We saw within view at the time a considerable number of the tame animals. Enclosed within a fold of stakes and IS GAME PROPERTY ? 267 network, in a corner of the turnip-plot, there was a flock of sheep bearing on their necks a certain red mark to dis- tinguish them from those of any other sheep-owner ; and . a half-dozen cattle were picking up their sustenance for the day amid the furze of the brake. The cattle belonged to the farmer who rented the" brake, and the sheep to the owner of the turnips. The one could recognize his cattle, the other his sheep. If the cattle crossed the stream into the turnip-plot, or the sheep broke loose, and, o'erleaping the runnel fi'om the opposite side, did damage to the sprouting wheat, or picked the brake bare, either tenant would have a legitimate claim for damages done his prop- erty, but there would be no actual transfer of property in the case. The sheep would have an owner equally on both sides of the streamlet, in the tenant whose red mark they bore ; and the cattle, whether in the furze-brake or the turnip-field, would be equally the property of the ten- ant who farmed the brake. Certainly, if the game of the country be property, it must be property of a very anoma- lous kind. Is it personal, or i-eal ? We find it conveyanced from one nominal owner to another, without these owners knowing aught of the matter ; we find that they have no marks by which to distinguish it ; we find that, unlike all other live stock, it is fed on food not theirs ; we find that they can give no account of its origin or lineage in relation to themselves, — it was neither gifted to them nor bought by them ; it runs away from them, and beyond a certain point they dare not follow it ; it is brought to them when dead, and, unable to recognize it as theirs, they purchase it on the ordinary terms. It is not personal propei-ty; it is not real property ; it belongs to an entirely different cate- gory : it is simply imaginary property. We are acquainted with an extensive district in the north of Scotland in which some thirty years ago there was not a single wild rabbit. Rabbits there had once been in the locality, though at a very early period. The laborer, in running his ditches through a sandy soil, or casting up 268 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL, the foundation of some farmhouse or stone fence, laid open, not unfrequently, underground excavations greatly larger than those of the mole, with here and there a black- ened nest-like bunch of decayed grass and leaves, huddled up far from the light, and here and there a few minute bones strewed along the passages; and he would point out the remains to his employer, and say that the site had been once that of a rabbit-warren. But the rabbits them- selves had become as thoroughly extinct in the locality as the wolf or bear. About a -quarter of a century since, however, one of the minor proprietors of the district, a gen- tleman possessed of some two or three hundred acres, let loose a few pairs of rabbits ; and so enormous has been the increase, that, over a space of some two or three hun- dred square miles, rabbits abound ; and of that large area, scarcely one thirtieth part is in the hands of the proprietary; it is farmed by tenants who pay large rents. To whom be- long the millions of rabbits by which it is infested, and who gobble up yearly many hundred pounds' worth of the pro- duce? To the proprietor who originally turned them loose? Alas ! no : the two or three pair, — the progenitors of the whole, — that, so long as they were in his possession, were assuredly his, would have scarce brought him half a crown in the market ; besides, he has long since sold bis little property, and left that part of the kingdom. His claim would be exactly that of the Italian boy, who, having turned loose his two tame mice in a granary, came back some twenty years after, and found their descendants twenty millions strong. Do they belong, then, to the proprietors of the dis- trict in general? On what plea? They were not theirs originally ; they have been supported, not on their produce, but on that of their tenants. The non-farming, non-resi- dent proprietors have not a particle of property in them ; they are simply a certain amount of the grass, corn, and tur- nips of the farmers and farming proprietors, converted into animal food, and running about on all fours. They are mischievous vermin when alive, which no one ought to be IS GAME PROPERTY? 269 prevented from destroying, and which the farmer has a positive right to destroy ; and, when dead, they ought surely, just like the fur-bearing animals of Siberia or Hud- son's Bay, to be the property of the man who has taken the trouble of killing them. All quite right, says the game-preserver. Yon are, however, rather unfortunate in your illustration ; rabbits are not game. We are quite aware of that fact, we reply, and might have chosen what you would have deemed a better illustration. In Pomona, twenty years ago, there were no hares. A young man, the son of a proprietor, procured a very few from the mainland of Scotland ; and hares have in consequence be- come comparatively common in Orkney, just as rabbits have become common in the Black Isle ; and, in propor- tion to their number, they do as much mischie£ It is the part of the game-preserver to show how or why the hares, in such circumstances, should have become property, and the rabbits not. Wherein lies the difference between two tribes of animals that so nearly resemble each other? There can be but one reply ; the law has made the hare property, which means simply, say we, that the game-laws exist, — a fact which it requires no profound process of argumenta- tion to demonstrate. We would never once have thought of writing our present article if the game-laws did not exist. But the unreal and imaginary property, which has no other foundation than human enactment, — which the law makes to-day and unmakes to-morrow, — which a few years ago comprised the wild rabbit, and which a few years hence will not comprise the wild hare, — is property of an emi- nently precarious nature. It resembles property in ice in a warm summer. Laws which are themselves not founded in moral right and the nature of things form but unsolid foundations for aught else. There was a law in Russia, enacted in the days of the capricious Paul, which rendered it imperative on the male portion of Paul's subjects to wear small-clothes, and empowered the police to cut short at the knees the trowsers of the refractory. There was a 270 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL. law in Great Britain in the days of George II., that made it treasonable for a Scotch Highlander to wear tartan. Piit neither the one law nor the other was based on the principles of ever-enduring justice. Independently of conventional enactment, it is no more a. moral offence to wear trowsers than to knock down a partridge, or to sport tartans than to shoot a hare ; and so trowsers are now worn in Russia, and tartans in the Highlands. Our views on this subject are in no respect novel : they do not belong to the times of the Chartist and the leveller. They have, on the contrary, been long embodied in our literature. The conventional game-laws had never the effect of creating in Britain a conventional morality, that learned to respect these laws as its code and standard. On this point our masters of fiction — the men whose special work it was to draw character as they found it, draperied in the manners of their age, and modified by its opinions — are high authorities. When Goldsmith re- quires for the purposes of his story to get a thoroughly honest fellow jnto Newgate, he makes him knock down a hare. When Fielding — an honorable magistrate at least, however lax in other matters, and a determined enemy of thieving — wishes to bring his hero into trouble without rendering him culpable, he^sends him, with all the eagerness of the young sportsman, after a covey he had started on his benefactor's grounds, into the grounds of a neighboring proprietor, and makes him kill them there. " The Ed- wardses of Southhill," says Mackenzie, — " and a worthy family they were ! " — how came these same worthy Ed- wardses to be ruined? Young Edwards, "who was a remarkably good shooter, and kept a pointer," knocked down a partridge one day in the field of his neighbor, a country justice, and so the ruin was quite a matter of course. But there is no end of such instances; and the report on the game-laws shows on how broad a basis of reality these adepts in fictitious narrative (the prose- makers) founded their inventions. Unfortunately, in not IS GAME PROPERTY ? 271 a few cases a poacher becomes a bad character, and a source of loss and annoyance to the community ; but it is not in the beginning of his career, when he is simply a poacher, that he is in any degree a bad character. He is in most cases either an adventurous young fellow, a " good shooter," like young Edwards, and fond of sport, like the game- preserving proprietors whom he annoys, or else some poor man out of employment, with a wife, and family dependent on him, and much in terror of the neighboring workhouse. The evidence of Mr. M. Gibson, Inspector of Prisons in England, is peculiarly valuable on this head: "There are certainly many," he says, "who poach and are sent to prison, who would not commit a robbery." "There are poachers," he adds, " from the love of adventure and of sport, who are the most irreclaimable of any ; there are poachers from poverty ; and there is the young man, always in the fields, who from early life has set his bird-trap, and cannot resist the impulse of subjugating the wild animals." Such is Mr. Gibson's opinion of a numerous class of poach- ers ; and their opinion of themselves seems, as might be expected, not greatly worse than his. " Have you had any opportunity," he is asked by the committee, " of ascertaining the opinions of chaplains and officers of prisons at all gen- erally as to the operation of the present game-laws?" The reply is eminently worthy of being carefully noted and pondered. " Yes," he says ; " with regard to the effect on the prisoners, the opinion of the chaplains generally is, that they can produce no moral effect whatever upon them under the ■ game-laws ; that they leave the prison only to return ; frequently replying to the proffered advice by say- ing that t/ie game was made for the poor as well as the rich, and that God made the birds of the air and the fishes of the sea for oMP It so happens, curiously enough, that Judge Blackstone, and most of the philosophic thinkers which the country has yet produced, were of the same opinion ; but, more curious still, not a few of even the more zealous 272 POLITICAL AISTD SOCIAL. though of course in a greatly more covert style. They are indisputably gentlemen, and would neither employ as their serwants habit-and-repute thieves, nor yet act the part of the Jonathan Wilds of the last age by being receivers of stolen goods. And yet there are two facts which come fully out in the evidence. They have no hesitation what- ever in employing as gamekeepers and gamewatchers , active habit-and-repute poachers; and hundreds of them, when stocking their preserves, drive a trade with the poachers that are still actually such, in live leverets and pheasants' eggs. Now these live leverets and pheasants' eggs cannot be property, or else these same game-preserving proprietors would to a certainty be not gentlemen, but scoundrels. By their doings at least they virtually decide the question against themselves. THE FELONS OP THE COUNTRY. 273 XIV. THE FELONS OF THE COUNTRY. It is very generally felt that life and property are less seem-e in this country at the present time than they were some eight or ten years ago. In the course of nearly a century Britain had greatly changed its character for the better, in the degree of security which the civil magistrate afforded to the peaceable subject. So late as the year 1750, it was unsafe to walk at night the streets of our larger towns; and the man who sauntered unprotected after sunset into their quieter suburbs, or traversed even their more frequented approaches, might be almost certain of being struck down and robbed, if not murdered. Fielding, who was not only a great novelist but also one of the most efficient magistrates that ever lived, relates in his narrative of the earlier stages of that illness which ultimately carried him off, that the symptoms were much aggravated by the fatigue which he incurred in long examinations regarding the street robberies and murders of London, in especial by tbe examinations respecting ^'■fioe different murders, all committed within the space of a week by different gangs of street robbers." The materials of his comparatively little- known volume, " The Life of Jonathan Wild," were col- lected during this period of crime and outrage ; nor does the work, as a whole, exaggerate the actual state of things at the time. Another of his works he entitled an " Inquiry into tbe Increase of Thieves and Robbers," — "a work which contains several hints," says Sir "Walter Scott, "which have been adopted by succeeding statesmen, and some of which are worthy of still more attention than they have received." If an "increase" of the robber class actually 274 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL. took place at the time, as the title indicates, matters mrist have been bad indeed ; for, about an age earliei-, so sadly were the roads that approach the metropolis infested by highwaymen, as to be scarce at all passable by the solitary traveller. " Whatever might be the way in which a jour- ney was performed," says Macaulay, " the travellers, unless they were numerous and well armed, ran considerable risk of being stopped and plundered. The mounted highway- man, a marauder known to our generation only by books, was to be found on every main road. The waste tracts which lay on the main routes near London were especially haunted by plunderers of this class. Honnslow Heath, on the great western road, and Finchley Common, on the great northern road, were perhaps the most celebrated of these spots. The Cambridge scholars trembled when they approached Epping Forest, even in broad daylight; and seamen who had just been paid off at Chatham were often compelled to deliver their purses on Gadshill." Long after the times that Macaulay describes, long after the times of Fielding too, even in country districts, the law served but imperfectly to protect the peaceable subject from the housebreaker and the highwayman. Cowper's graphic description, written in the year 1783, must be familiar to all our readers : — " Now, ere you sleep, See that your polished arms be primed with care, And draw the night-bolt : rufSans are abroad, And the first 'larum of the cock's shrill throat May prove a trumpet summoning your ear To horrid sounds of hostile feet within. Even daylight has its dangers; and the walk Through pathless wastes and woods, unconscious once Of other" tbnants than melodious birds Or harmless flocks, is hazardous and bold." But a gradual improvement took place, especially in the larger towns. The great increase of newspapers, which recorded every act of violence and outrage as it occurred. THE FELONS 01" THE COUNTRY. 275. d set the whole country on its guard,"— that quickening the postal arrangements which soon overtook and dis- Qced the culprit in his escape, — the admirable organi- tion of the police, effected by the act of Sir Robert Peel, above all, the outlet furnished through the discovery of >tany Bay, and its appropriation as a penal colony for e country, — had all their effect in producing a favorable ange ; and, while a great increase took place in the list minor offences, — a consequence of the growth of what e known as the lapsed classes, — crimes of blacker dye, rpetrated by professional felons, became considerably are rare and less atrocious than in an earlier time. Dur- 5 the first two decades of the present cer;tury a" few rrible Cases occurred. The Williams murders of 1812, d the general panic they occasioned, must be remembered • some of our older readers ; and such as belong to a ;er generation may find their startling effects reproduced some degree by the vigorous pen of De Quincey, in his im but singularly powerful essay, " Murder considered as e of the Fine Arts." The murder by the M'Keans, also rmanently recorded by the same graphic writer, belongs a somewhat later period, and is marked by similar cir- mstances of atrocity. We do not refer to the Burke d Bishop murders, which may be considered as wholly i generis ; nor yet to those of the Thurtle or Tawell iss, 'Which occurred in private society, and lay outside lat may be regarded as the professional pale. Within at pale great improvement took place ; robbery accom- nied by violence became rare, and robbery accompanied murder rarer still. The streets and lanes of our larger ies might be traversed in comparative safety at all hours ; e great bulk of offences committed against the person ire offences committed under the influence of drink, — ite a bad enough symptom of the condition and morals a great portion of the humbler classes, but in several iterial respects greatly preferable to that class of offences ainst the Derson which obtained in the days of Fielding, ■276 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL. and respecting wlifch he had to conduct, as has been said, five examinations in a single week. The means, too, by which the darker class of crimes has been suppressed in our own days are equally in advance of those to which the novelist — unrivalled, as his writings show, in his knowledge of the worse traits and specimens of human nature — had been compelled to have recourse a century ago. In the introduction of the " Voyage to Lisbon," he relates that, when consulted by the Premier of the day, the Duke of Newcastle, respecting the best mode of put- ting down the robbers and murderers of the metropolis, he could advise nothing better than the employment of _ money in 9orrupting their associates. "I had the most eager desire," we find him saying, " of demolishing these gangs of villains and cut-thi-oats, which I was sure of ac- complishing the moment I was enabled to pay a fellow who had undertaken for a small sum to betray them into the hands of a set of thifif-takers whom I had enlisted into the service, all men of known and approved fidelity and intre- pidity. After some weeks," he adds, " the money was paid at the treasury ; and within a few days after two hundred pounds of it had come into my hands, the whole gang of cut-throats were entirely dispersed, seven of the thieves were in actual custody, and the rest driven, some out of the town and others out of the kingdom." For the last six or eight years, however, there has cer- tainly been no iniprovement of the nature which took place in the criminal records of the country during the previous quarter of a century ; on the contrary, the course has been retrograde ; and at the present time we seem as if passing to the state of matters which obtained during the days of Justice Fielding and Jonathan Wild. Murders have been committed daring the last month of the old mercenary class, that, in circumstances of merciless barbarity, do not yield to any in the "Newgate Calendar;" assaults on the person for the same object have rendered the new term garrotting a completely naturalized one of familiar use ; THE FELONS OF THE COCXTr.Y. 277 and housebreakings on a large scale have become such common events that almost every succeeding newspaper records their occurrence. In some cases the respectable trader goes to his bed square with the world, and rises in the morning a ruined man. And yet never was there a time when certain of the causes which formed so powerful a check on crime in the past were so inilaentially in opera- tion as now. Never were there so many newspapers to spread over the country the intelligence of every offence in all its details, and to direct public attention on the offend- ers ; never was there a time when such intelligence could be transmitted with even a tithe of the present speed, • — the act of Sir Robert Peel has certainly not been suffered to fall into desuetude ; and never had the country a more active or intelligent magistracy. What, then, can be. the more than neutralizing causes of such various circumstances of advantage, under which crime of what we have termed the professional class is so obviously on the increase ? The question is easily answered. The causes are two. In the first place, that change through which Britain no longer possesses penal colonies has led to a great accumulation of criminals in the country ; and it has got, in consequence, into the unhealthy condition of living subjects when the natural evacuations are stopped ; and in the second place, the ticket-of-leave system — a system essentially false in principle in this circumstances — has greatly exaggerated the evil. We cannot, however, agree with those who give a paramount place to the latter cause. Were it to be abol- ished to-morrow, and criminals imprisoned for the shorter periods, — whether five, seven, or fourteen years, — in no case released until the close of the legitimate terms re- corded in their sentences, — the master evil would still remain. The felon, now let loose upon the public at the end of some two or three years, would in the other case not be let loose upon it until the end of five years, or of seven, or fourteen ; but ultimately he would be let loose upon it ; and, even if inclined to live honestly, he would 278 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL. Lave quite as little chance of procuiiDg the necessary em- ployment at the end of the longer as of the shorter term. There is only one way in which the master evil in the case is to be remedied. The old means of evacuation must, at whatever cost, be procured. Britain, whatever difficulties may lie in the way, must again have recourse to the scheme of penal colonies, or both life and property must continue to remain insecure. And, though difficulties do lie in the way, we do not see that they are by any means insurmount- able. Half the trouble which our ancestors had in extirpat- ing the native wolves would suffice to rid us of a greatly more formidable class of wild beasts, i=— the incorrigible criminals. It is surely not at all necessary that a penal colony sh'ould be a paradise. It was no advantage, but, on the contrary, much the reverse, that during even the healthiest state of the country the incipient felon looked with longing eyes on the representations of New South Wales given in the print-shop windows, and then went off to qualify himself by some bold act for a free passage. A penal colony should be simply a country in which the dis- charged felon could earn his bread by the sweat of his brow, just as our humbler people do at home, and in which the circumstances of the community would be such as to ren- der the life of the marauder not only a more dangerous, but also a more toilsome and difficult one than that of the honest worker who labored fairly for his bread. And a colony of this character ought not to be difficult to find. The country once heard a great deal about the Falkland Islands. Rather more than eighty years ago (1771), it was on the eve of entering, mainly on their account, into a war with France ; and on that occasion Johnson wrote his fa- mous tract to dissuade Britain from the contest, by showing that the islands were of really little value, and would be dearly purchased at such a price. But now that all dispute regarding them has ceased, — for the last quarter of a cen- tury they have been in the uninterrupted possession of this coudtry, — they might be found very valuable as a THE FELONS OP THE COUNTRY. 279 penal colony. They have an area of about thirteen thou- sand square miles; their mean temperature during the year is exactly that of Edinburgh, with summers, however, a little warmer, and winters a little colder, than our Scotch ones ; their surface is gi-een ; the grass-lands are peculiarly luxuriant, and form such a paradise for cattle that the tame breeds are becoming wild in the interior, and promise to be very numerous ; and the bays and sounds which indent the coast abound in fish. Further, so imperfectly are they colonized, that though the expense of maintaining them costs the country about six thousand pounds per annum, their entire exports fall short of four thousand. In fine, at a very slight sacrifice these islands could be converted into a hopeful penal colony, that would fully absorb the more dangerous criminals of the country for a quarter of a century to come. But while recognizing the lack of penal colonies, and the consequent accumulation of our criminals within the country, as the main causes of that increase of serious crime against both the person and property which has taken place during the last eight or ten years, we must not un- dervalue the influence of the other cause, — that ticket-' of-leave system which has let loose so many dangerous felons on society ere half their terms of punishment had expired. The principle of the system is utterly false and unsolid in all its circumstances and details. A fond mother was once heard addressing her son as follows : " Be a good, religious boy, my little Johnnie ; fear God, and honor your parents ; and I will give you two pretty red-cheeked apples." JKTor is it difficult to say what sort of a religion would be the effect of such a promise. Little Johnnie's two apples'-worth of the fear of God and the honor of parents would be a very hypocritical fear, and a very fictitious honor. And the ticket-of-leave system proceeds wholly on the same principle. Be religious and moral, it virtually says to the convict, for a ^ven time, and you will get, iirTinn it. Via« AYnirAd. t.lifi two red-cheeked annles. It has 280 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL. a grand disadvantage, too, over the scbeme of the fond mother. She might no doubt succeed in making little Johnnie a little hypocrite ;. but the two apples, when made over to him, if really good ones, might be productive of further hurt to neither himself nor the family. Not so the premium for behavior held out to the convict. The prof- fered reward bears simply to the effect that he is to be let loose on society, to prey upon it anew. There is in reality no scheme in existence by which convicts, in the mass can be dealt with as our paper-makers deal with their filth-be- grimmed rags. We cannot put them in at the one end of a penitentiary in the soiled state, and take them out white and pure at the other. True, we must not limit the grace of God. It is just possible, however improbable, that lit- tle Johnnie, notwithstanding the sad stumbling-block of the two apples, or that a convict, notwithstanding the greatly sadder stumbling-block of the ticket-of-leave system, might be in reality converted ; but neither on the apple scheme nor any other will there be any wholesale conver- sions of either the little Johnnies or the greater felons of the country. Regarded as a whole, the latter will enter the penitentiaries as felons, and as felons they will leave them ; but if, by seeming to be religious, and by exercising a degree of self-constraint in a place in which there is ex- ceedingly little to tempt, they will have the prospect held out to them of quitting their place of confinement at an early day, the men of strong wills and of self-control among them — always the moi-e dangerous class — will not fail to conform to the conditions. And thus the picked felons will be ever and anon let loose long ere their time, to rob in order that they may live, and to murder in order that their robberies may be concealed. In the brief passage which we have quoted from Sir Walter's' "Life of Field- ing," we find him remarking, that one of the less known publications of the old magistrate and novelist contained bints, some of which had beien adopted, and " some of which are worthy of more attention than they have re- THE FELONS OF THE COUNTRY. 281 oeived." And we would reckon among the latter the Lints contained in the chapter entitled, " Of the Encour- agement given to Rohbers by frequent Pardons." Pardons at the time — a consequence of the extreme severity of the English criminal code — were very numerous and very capricious, though neither so numerous nor so capricious as the ticket-of-leave system has rendered them now. And what were the effects which they produced ? Simply this, as determined by a singularly shrewd and sagacious man, who knew more of the matter than any one else, that from the hope of impunity which they created, they hanged ten times more felons than they saved from the gallows, and greatly increased the amount of crime. 24* 282 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL. XV. THE LEGISLATIVE COURT. "On the 22d of Aprile" (1532), says Calderwood, in his "Ecclesiastical History," so recently published, for the first time, by the Wodrow Society, " the CoUegde of the Judges was established in Edinburgh," " for judgment of pecuni- all and civil causes." " In the beginning," continues the historian, " many things were profitablie devised by them, and justice ministered with equitie. But the event an- swered not the expectatioun of men ; for, seeing in Scotland there be almost no lawes except the acts of Parliament, whereof manie are not perpetuall but temporarie, and the judges hinder what they may the making of such lawes, the goods of all men are committed to the arbitriement and decisioun of fyfteen men that have perpetuall power, which, in truth, is but tyranicall impyre, seeing their own arbitriements stand for lawe." Such was the objection raised by Calderwood two hun- dred years ago to the constitution and practice of the Court of Session, at a time when no case of harassing and irritating collision with the ecclesiastical courts had arisen to disturb the equanimity or cloud the judgment of the shrewd old churchman. Such, too, was the decision pro- nounced regarding it nearly a century earlier by Buchanan, whom, in this significant and very pregnant passage, the ecclesiastical chronicler has been content closely to follow, — so closely, indeed, that the passage may be deemed rather a translation than a piece of original writing. The court was comparatively in its infancy — an institution of about fifty years' standing — when it was characterized by the older historian as an arbitrary erection, opposed in THE LEGISLATIVE COURT. 283 its constitution to the very genius of freedom. And why ? " It is according to the genius of freedom that a people be governed by laws which they themselves have made. The principle is at once so obvious and fundamental that there is scarce a writer on civil liberty who has not laid it down as his very basis. And it would certainly be no easy mat- ter to conceive of aught in more direct and hostile antag- onism to such a proposition, than the proposition that a people should be governed, not by laws of their own making, but by the legislative decisions of some fifteen irresponsible judges, chosen by the monarch to " have per- petuall power," and "whose arbitriements should stand for lawe." Such were some of the grounds of Buchanan's judgment on the " Colled ge of Judges ; " and they serve to demonstrate the peculiar sagacity of the man, — a sagacity altogether wonderful when we take into account the early period in which he flourished. His reflections on the barbarous tor- ments to which the assassins of James I. were subjected has been instanced by Dngald Stewart, in his " Disserta- tion on the Rise of Metaphysical Science," as fraught with philosophy of a deeper reach than can be found in the works of any other writer of so early a period. We would place over against it — as scarce less vivaciously instinct with the philosophic spirit, and as even a still better ex- ample of that discriminating ability in the political field which enabled him to take his place as an asserter of the just principles of civil liberty so mightily in advance of his age — his remark on the constitution of the Court of Ses- sion. It serves at once to remind us of the eulogium of Sir James Macintpsh and to justify it. " The science which teaches the rights of man," says this elegant and powerful writer, " the eloquence which kindles the spirit of free- dom, had for ages been buried with the other monuments of the wisdom and relics of the genius of antiquity. But the revival of letters first unlocked only to- a few- the sacred fountain. The necessary labors of criticism 284 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL. and lexicography occupied the earlier scholars, and some time elapsed before the spirit of antiqliity was transferred into its admirers. The first man of that period who uni- ted elegant learning to original and masculine thought was Buchanan ; and he, too, seems to have been the first scholar who caught from the ancients the noble flame of republican enthusiasm. This praise is merited by his neg- lected though incomparable tract, 'De Jure Regni,' in which the principles of popular politics and the maxims of a free government are delivered with a precision, and enforced with an energy, which no former age had equalled and no succeeding has surpassed." A history of the many decisions of the Court of Session that, according to Buchanan and Calderwood, are legisla- tive, not judicial, — that, instead of explaining existing law, are in reality creations of laws which have no existence save in the decisions themselves, — would form a very cu- rious and a very useful work. It would be well, surely, to know how much of the national code is the production of the " fyfteen men that have perpetuall power, and whose arbitriements stand for lawe," and how much of it has been made by the people themselves, through the people's rep- resentatives. It would be at least particularly well to know how much of what is practically the national code is not merely law created by the " fyfteen men " where no ■ law existed before, but law created by them in direct op- position to existing laws, — law directly subversive of the law made by the people. Nor can there be any doubt that the time is coming when such a work will be imperatively' called for by the public. Scotland, through the decisions of this court, is on the eve of being placed in circumstances exactly similar to those in which the disastrous wars of five hundred years have placed Ireland. The religion of the country is on the eve of being disestablished, — disestab- lished, too, at a time when in a state of greater vigor, and more truly popular, than at any other period during the last hundred years ; and as revolutions never occur with- THE LEGISLATIVE COURT. 285 out at least awakening a spirit of inquiry regarding the causes which have produced them, the period must be inevitably at hand when tlTe legislative decisions of the Court of Session shall be examined, and that with no ordi- nary degree of attention, in the light of Calderwood and Buchanan. We have specified on several occasions decisions which, in their character as precedents, have actually become law, — that traverse, and practically abrogate, the statutoiy law of the kingdom. We adduced one very striking in- stance when setting against each other the existing mode of provision for the building and repairing of parish churches as settled by decision, and the diametrically op- posite mode as arranged and provided by enactment. According to statute, " the parishioners of parish kirks " are charged and ertipowered to "elect and chuse certain of the most honest qualified men within their parochins," to tax the parish for the expenses of the necessary erection or repair ; and in the event of the parishioners " failing or delaying to elect or chuse, through sloth or unwillingness, the power of making such choice or election of such honest qualified men falls to the ecclesiastical authorities." Such is the enacted statutory law on this head, — the people's law. But what is the actual law of precedent in the case, — the law of " the fyfteen ? " That any such election " of honest men " would be altogether illegal ; that so far are the parishioners or ecclesiastical authorities from possessing any such right of election, that, even were they to make a voluntary contribution among themselves for the repair or improvement of the parish church, they could be legally pre- vented from lifting a tool upon the building ; that, in short, the whole matter of erecting, repairing, improving, is not in the hands of the parishioners or the ecclesiastical authoiv ities, where statute has placed it, but exclusively in hands in which statute never placed it, — in the hands of the hei-itors. How very striking an illustration of the sagacity nf Bnchanan ! 286 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL. We need scarce refer to the still more striking illustration ■which our present ecclesiastical struggle furnishes, — an illustration which, we have said, will scarce fail of being appreciated over the whole empire by and by. We shall venture, however, on one remai-k. It is not according to the nature of things that the decisions of the Court of Session should traverse statutory enactments, which have originated amid the ebullitions of strong popular feeling, and are in reality embodiments of the popular will, so long as these enactments are recent, and the impulse to which they owed their existence is still predominant in the coun- try as a moving power. Nothing less probable, for in- stance, than that the court should have reversed any of the more broad and obvious provisions of the Reform Bill when Earl Grey's ministry were still in office, or any of the more thoroughly understood clauses of the Roman Catholic Emancipation Act ere it had attained to a twelve- month's standing. The state of these measures as recent — as measures which had agitated the whole country — whose meanings all the people understood, not so much in their character as statutes as in •their character as embodiments of either their own will or the will of the Roman Catholics of Ireland — would have prevented most effectually any judicial reversal of the main principles which they involved. The Court of Session might as safely declare that Ernest of Hanover, not Victoria, is the monarch of these realms, as that ten-pound freeholders have no legal right to vote in the election of members of Parliament, or that at least tea-pound freeholders have no legal right to vote in the election of members of Parliament who are Roman Catho- lics. The character of such acts, as recent, restricts our judges to the exercise of their purely judicial functions. They cannot, they dare not, reverse them. Taking this obvious principle into account, — and it is certainly not easy to say how any principle could be more obvious, — it is of vast importance to ascertain the opinions which our judges held regarding the powers and jurisdiction of the THE LEGISLATIVE COURT. 287 * church at a time when both the Revolution and the TTnion were events as fresh in men's memories as the Reform Bill and the Emancipation Act are now. Hence, in part, the great value of those views and sentiments of our older lawyers on the point, to which we have so often referred. Lord Cullen, with whose admirable tract on patronage most of our readers must be acquainted, was a grown man at the time of the Revolution. His son, Lord Prestongrange, must have remembered the Union as the great event of Scotland in that. age. The Lord President Dundas and the Lord President Forbes were lawyers of much the same standing as the latter. Karnes, Monboddo, Dreghorn, were all reared at the feet of these men ; and though all of them could, no doubt, occasionally unite to their judicial functions those legislative powers which so excited, at an earlier period, the jealousy of Buchanan, all of them must have felt that, regarding the more palpable conditions of those two great events, the Revolution and the Union, they were at liberty to exercise their judicial functions only. The fundamental conditions of these events were present to the national mind as great living principles ; they still engaged the feelings of the country ; they still exercised its reasoning faculties ; they were something other than dead statutory enactments for legislative judges to dissect at will, and on which spruce half-fledged lawyers might try their hand at an amputation, without the neces- sity of using the tourniquet. Their true meaning was as thoi'oughly exhibited in the living intellect of the country as in the statute-book itself. And hence, of necessity, the rectitude of judicial opinion regarding them. Is this view of the matter in any degree a rational one ? If so, what estimate must we form of the view taken by Lord Cuninghame in his last note ? The church has never yet disputed that the judicial sentence of the civil court may legitimately effect a separation between hee spiritu- alities and the temporalities of the state ; but this, she contends, is the utmost extent to which any such legiti- 288 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL. mate decision can effect her ; and in proof of the doctrine she nppeals not only to the statutory enactments in which it is embodied, but also to the opinions on the subject of all the Scotch lawyers and more eminent judges of the last century, — - men who lived under the direct influence of the immensely important events by which the Constitu- tion of the country had been ultimately fixed at the Rev- olution and the Union. " There appears to be little doubt," says his lordship, in reply, " that at a certain period in the last century, when ecclesiastical questions first were the subject of discussion in our courts, an opinion was enter- tained by lawyers of learning and reputation, such as Lord Prestongrange, Mr. Crosbie, and others, that such a sepa-. ration was in certain cases legitimate and competent, and admitted of no remedy in this court. But, able as the persons were, they had not the benefit of the anxious and elaborate arguments which the questions have undergone in modern times, and which have thrown a light on cases of this nature that writers at no foi'mer period enjoyed." Surely we may be permitted to exclaim, " O unhappy law- yers of the last century ! — hapless Henry Home, unlucky Duncan Forbes, unfortunate Monboddo, ill-fated Dreg- horn ! — O ye Dundases, Cullens, Crosbies, and Preston- granges ! — why were ye all born a hundi-ed years too soon? Poor blind gropers in quest of truth, men of deficient law and slender intellect, why were you not fated to imbibe wisdom from the philosophic notes of my Lord Cuningharae, and to inhale at once wit and knowledge from the lucid and sparkling speeches of my Lord Justice- Clerk Hope ? Thou, O Kames ! hadst thou but lived to see these luminaries, mightest have remained unenlightened thyself notwithstanding, like those very obstinate gentle- men of our own times, Lords Jeffrey and Moncreiff; but in taking measure of the vast intellectual stature of our Hopes and Cuninghames, thou wouldest have at least found it necessary to introduce into thy ' Sketches ' one Adam more, and he a giant. And thou, O Monboddo ! hadst THE LEGISLATIVE COUKT. 289 thou but seen the sort of persons who follow in their train, thou wouldest surely have rejoiced, whatever else thou mightest have done, in the return of the men with tails. But ah ! unhappy lawyers, ye lived an age too soon, and so must content yourselves now with just the pity of the Lord Ordinary." There is assuredly a time coming when our ecclesiastical question, viewed in the clear light of history, shall be judged one of the best possible for illustrating the charac- ter of the court in both its judicial and legislative aspects. It will exhibit the Janus-like head of this institution, with its one countenance bent tranquilly upon the past century, and its other countenance breathing war and horror on the present. It will be seen that in the last century, the court, with regard to the church, presented only its judicial aspect: we have shown why. It will be found that it is the legislative aspect which it presents with respect to the church now. And there will doubtless be some interest in marking the exact point at which the one character has been taken up and the other character laid down, with all the various causes which have led to the change. But the prejudices and prepossessions of men interfere, and prevent the question from being one of the best possible illustrations of this in, the present time. We have a case before us which at least our antagonists will recognize as happier in its application. It is a case in which the decision arrived at by the court traverses not quite so palpably the laws of the country as the fixed laws of nature. We submitted to our readers, rather more than a week since, the report of a trial which had taken place a short time previous,, before the court in Edinburgh, regarding a right to the fishing of salmon in the Frith of Dornoch, and which had gone against the defendant. We stated further that a similar case, involving a similar right to the fishing of sal- mon in the Frith of Cromarty, had been tried with a similar result a few years before. The principles of both cases may be stated in a few words. Salmon, according to th« 25 290 POLITICAL AND .SOCIAL. Statutory laws of Scotland, may be fished for in tne sea with wears, yairs, and other such fixed machinery ; but it is illegal to fish for them after this fashion in rivers. The statutes, however, which refer to the case are ancient and brief, and contain no definition of what is river or what sea. They leave the matter altogether to the natural sense of men. But not such the mode pursued by the Court of Session. In its judicial capacity it can but decide that salmon are not to be fished for in rivers after a certain manner in which they may be fished for in the sea. In its legislative capacity it sets itself to say what is sea and what river, and proves so eminently happy in its definition, that we are now able to enumerate among the rivers of Scotland the Frith of Dornoch and the Frith of Cromarty. Yes, gentle reader, it has been legally declared by that " infalli- ble civil court " to which there lies an appeal from all the decisions of our poor "fallible church," that Scotland pos- sesses two rivers of considerably greater volume and breadth than either the St. Lawrence or the Mississippi ! •Genius of Buchanan ! It is well that thou, who didst so philosophically describe the Court of Session, didst describe also, like a fine old poet as thou wert, the glorious bay of Cromarty ! Some of our readers must be acquainted with the pow- erful writing of Tacitus in his " Life of Agricola," in which he describes the Roman galleys as struggling for the first time with the tides and winds of our northern seas. The wave rose sluggish and heavy to the oars of the rowers, and they saw all around them, in the indented shores scooped into far withdrawing arms of the sea, evidences of its ponderous and irresistible force. Buchanan must have had the passage in his mind when he drew the bay of Cro- marty. He tells us how " the waters of the German Ocean, opening to themselves a way through the stupendous clifis of the most lofty precipices, expand within into a spacious basin, aflEbrding certain refuge against every tempest, and in which the greatest navies may rest secure from winds THE LEGISLATIVE COURT. 291 and waves." The Court of Session, in the wise exercise of its legislative functions, reverses the very basis of this description. The rowers of Agricola must have been mis- erably in error: the old shrewd historian must have fallen into a gross mistake. The Frith of Cromarty is not the inlet of a mighty sea ; it is merely the outlet of an incon- siderable river. It is not an arm of the German Ocean ; it is simply a prolongation of the Conon. Prolongation of the Conon I Why, we know a little of both. We have waded a hundred times mid-leg deep across the one, and picked up the large brown pearl mussels from the bottom without wetting our sleeve ; we have guided our little shal- lop a thousand times along the green depths of the other, and have seen the long sea^-line burying patch after patch, as it hurried downwards, and downwards, and downwards, til^ far below, the lead rested in the darkness, amid shells, and weeds, and zoophytes, rare indee'd so near the shore, and whose proper habitat is the profound depths of the ocean. We have seen the river coming down, red in flood, with its dark whii-ling eddies and its patches of yellow foam, and then seen it driven back by the tidal wave, within even its own banks, like a braggart overmastered and struck down in his own dwelling. We have seen, too, the frith agitated by storm, the giant waves dashing against its stately portals, to the height of a hundred feet ; and where on earth was the power that could curb or stay them? The Frith of Cromarty a prolongation of the Conon ! Were the Court of Session to put the Conon in its pocket, the Frith of Cromarty would be in every respect exactly what it is, — the noble Partus Scdutis of Buchanan, — the wide ocean bay, in which the whole British navy could ride at anchor. Is it not a curious enough circumstance, that much about the same time in which the Court of Session, in the due exercise of its legislative functions, stirred up the church to rebellion, it so laid down the law with re- spect to the Frith of Cromarty, in the exercise of exactly the same functions, that it stiiTed it up to rebellion also ? 292 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL. Yes, it is a melancholy fact, but it cannot be denied, that this splended sheet of water has been in a state of open rebellion for the last four years. In obedience to its own ocean laws, it has been going on producing its own ocean products, — its prickly sea-urchins, its sea-atiemones, its dulce, its tangle, "its roaiin' buckies," and its "dead men's fingers;" when, like a good subject, it should have been river-mouth to all intents and purposes, nor have ventured on growing anything less decidedly fluviatile than a lymnea -or a cyclas, orli freshwater polypus. It has been so utterly outrageous in some of its doings, that, albeit inclined to mercy, we are disposed to advise the court to deal with it somewhat closely. There might be trouble, perhaps, in bringing it to the bar, — more by a great deal than sufficed to bring the Presbytery of Dunkeld there ; but with the precedent of Canute on record, we do not think the court would lower its dignity much below the present level by just stepping northwards to rebuke it. It would be per- haps well, too, to select as the proper time the height of a stiflFnor'easter. For our own part, we would be extremely happy to furnish the information necessary to convict, whether geological or of any other kind. We can satisfac- torily prove, that no further back than last year, this frith gave admission, in utter contempt 6f court, to so vast a body of herrings, that all its multitudinous waves seemed as if actually heaving with life; nay, that it permitted them, by millions and thousands of millions, to remain and "spawn within its precincts. We can prove, further, that it suffered a plump of whales — vast of back and huge of fin — to pursue after the shoal, rolling, and blowing, and splashing the white spray against the sun ; and that it furnished them with ample depth and ample verge for their gambols, though the very smallest of them' was larger considerably — strange as the fact may seem — than the present Dean of Faculty. Is all this to be suffered ? The Lords of Session must assuredly either bring the rebel to its senses, or be content to leave their own legislative THE LEGISLATIVB COUKT. 293 Wisdom sadly in question. For ourselves, -we humbly pro- pose that, until they make good their authority, they be provided daily with a pail of its clear fresh water, drawn from depths not more than thirty fathoms from the surface, and be left, one and all, to make their toddy out of the best of it and to keep the rest for their tea. Nothing like river-water for such purposes, and the waters of the Conon are peculiarly light and excellent. XVI. TffE PEACE MEETINGS. It is indisputable that peace societies are becoming of importance enough to constitute one of the peculiar fea- tures of the time. "We learn from Sir Charles Lyell's recent work of travels in the United States, that they appear to be telling on the American mind, albeit naturally a war-breathing mind, combative in its propensities and fiery in its elements. The late peace meetings at Paris, London, Birmingham, and Manchester, seem to have been at once very largely attended and animated by the enthu- siasm of a young and growing cause ; and newspapers such as the "Times," the « Chronicle," the "Herald," and the "Post," and periodicals such as the " Quarterly Review," evidently deem the movement, of which they are a result, formidable enough to justify the attempt to write it down. It is certain, too, that the substratum of right feeling in which the movement has originated, and which it repre- sents in a rather exaggerated form, is vastly broader and more extensive than the movement itself. There are many thousands both in Britain and America, and not a few in France and Germany, whose judgments may be not 25* 294 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL. at all satisfied by the expedients through which the peace societies propose putting an end to national wars, that yet share deeply in that general dislike of war itself which is happily so marked a characteristic of the age. There is nothing positively new in what may be termed the main or central idea of the existing peace associations, namely, adjustment of national differences by arbitration, not arms. The true novelty presented lies in the fact that an idea restricted in the past to but single minds should now be operative in the minds of thousands. The reader may find in the works of Rousseau a treatise, originated by the Abbe de St. Pierre, but edited and remodelled by the philosopher of Geneva, entitled a " Project for a Per- petual Peace," in which the expedient of a great European Court of Arbitration for national differences is elaborately developed. We question, indeed, whether any member of the peace societies of the present day has presented to his fellows, or the public generally, the master idea of these institutions in so artistic and plausible a form as that in which it was submitted to the world by Rousseau considerably more than eighty years ago. But though it attracted some degree of notice among the rulers of nations, it failed to attract anywhere the notice of the ruled, — that class of which the great bulk of nations are composed; nor, perhaps, are all the members of peace societies aware how nearly it was realized at one time, and how it yet failed entirely, notwithstanding its plausi- bility, to work for any good purpose. Nations can, of course, only act through their govern- ments; and of the European governments in the days of Rousseau, the gi"eater number were arbitrary in their constitution. And in forming his Court of Arbitration, he had of course to admit as its members, governments represented by monarchs possessed of irresponsible power, such as the Kings of France, Spain, Portugal, Prussia, Na- ples, and Sardinia, and the Emperors of Austria and Russia. He had no other materials of which to form bis General THE PEACE MEETINGS. 295 Arbitration Court. Of the nineteeen European states in his list of arbiters, twelve were despotic, and the larger half of the remainder nearly so ; and yet, in order to secure the desiderated blessing of peace, he had to lay it down as a iundamental rule, that each state should be maintained by all the others in its internal rights and powers, and that its territories, at the time of the union, should be guaran- teed to it entire. On other principles no union of gov- ernments could have taken place. To put down war was the object of his proposed confederation, — internal as cer- tainly as foreign war ; for of what use would a peace as- sociation be under which there could arise such a war as that which raged between Great Britain and its American colonies, or between Austria and Hungary, or as that which deluged the streets of Paris with blood ? Nay, under a peace association composed of despotic and semi-despotio governments, no such invasion of one country by the troops of another could have taken place as that of England by William III., which produced the Revolution of 1688. Rousseau's project, if practicable, would have secured peace, but it would have also, of necessity, arrested progress. It would have cursed the world with a torpid, unwholesome quiet, a thousand times less friendly to the best interests of humanity than that mingled state of alternate peace and war under which, with all its disadvantages, the human species have been slowly rising in the sc^le of intelligence, and securing for themselves constitutional rights and equal laws. 'Not were there wanting men among the rulers of the world shrewd enough to see that such was the real character of the scheme ; and it was ,with rulers, not sub- jects, that that attempt originated to which we have re- ferred, to convert it from an idea into a fact. A fierce and long protracted European war had just come to a close, — a war productive of greater waste of blood and treasure than any other of modern times, — when three great monarchs met at Paris to originate a peace society on nearly the principles of Rousseau;. 296 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL. These were Alexander of Eussia, Francis of Austria, and Frederick William of Prussia. Lord Castlereagh, as the representative of his country, was cognizant of the prin- ciples of the association, and warmly approved of them j but it was found that the forms of the British Constitution were such as to prevent the King of England from becom- ing a member. The document which formed the basis of the confederation was published ; and it was found, as might, indeed, be expected from most Christian princes, to be of a greatly higher tone than that which marked the project of Rousseau. It commenced with an announce- ment of the intentions of the subscribing parties to act for the future on the principles of the gospel, defined to be those of justice. Christian charity, and peace. Then fol- lowed three articles, introduced by the scriptural command to all men to consider one another as brethren, which were to the effect, first, that the three contracting princes should remain united to each other by the bonds of a true and indissoluble fraternity ; second, that they should conduct themselves to their subjects and armies as the fathers of families ; and, third, that all other powers should be in- vited to join with them in the confederacy. The scheme was hailed throughout Europe as the precursor of a better state of thinga than the world had yet seen ; and liberal politicians everywhere, and more especially in Ger- many, were filled with the most sanguine expectations of happy results. Most of the European princes became mem- bers of this magnificent peace society ; and England, though precluded from formally joining itself to it officially, in- timated to its members that no other power could be more inclined to act upon the principles which its fundamental articles seemed necessarily to involve. It had its series of congresses ; for, curiously enough, its meetings had the same name given them as those of our present peace associations ; and at the first of these, held at Aix-laT Chapelle in 1818, there was prepared, and subsequently published by its members, a declaration to the effect that THE PEACE MEETINGS. 297 peace was its paramount object. What, asks the reader, was the name borne by this eminently good and truly Christian peace society ? Its name was the Holy Alliance, — a name that now stinks in the nostril ; and it was in effect a foul and detestable conspiracy against the progress of nations and the best interests of the human species. But such, of necessity, must be the nature and character of every peace association of which the members are gov- ernments, if a majority of these be despotic. And if the members of a peace association be not governments, they can of course possess no powers of arbitration. In vain may Joseph Sturge and his friends propose themselves as arbiters in any such quarrel as that which recently took place between Austria and the Hungarians, or between France and Rome . The reply made to the pacific Quaker, were there to be reply at all, would be exactly that made by Captain Sword to Captain Pen, — " Lei Captain Pen Bring at his back a million men, And I'll talk to his wisdom, and not tDl then .'' And, on the other hand, if governments, we repeat, take up the work of arbitration in such cases, — governments such as those of Russia, Sweden, Prussia, Austria, France, Sardinia, Naples, Spain, and Portugal, — and such are the existing elements for an Arbitration Court, — it is easy to divine how the peace of the world would be preserved : it would be preserved by the putting down of what would be termed rebellion in Hungary, and revolution in Rome. Often did Chalmers quote the emphatic words, "firstpure, then peaceable." And very emphatic words they are, and singularly pregnant with meaning. They reveal why it is that peace societies, in the present state of the world, can produce no direct results. The nations and the govern- ments must realize the purity ere they can rationally ex- pect the peace. Peace under certain limitations is no doubt a duty. " If it be possible, as much as lieth io you," 298 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL. says the apostle, « live peaceably with all men." But the qualifications of the text are very important ones, — "if it be possible," and " as much as lieth in you" — so important that they make a state of peace to be not so much a duty to be accomplished as a gift to be received. "When a man's ways please the Lord," said the wise king, " He mak- eth even his enemies to be at peace with him." Nor can peace associations alter this state of matters. They cannot by any scheme of arbitration convert the gift simply into a duty, seeing that if they take the existing governments as the elements of their arbitration courts, their plan involves of necessity merely the creation of a new Holy Alliance ; and if, on the contrary, they propose first remodelling and reforming the nations, so as to qualify their governments for arbitrating justly, they change their nature, and become revolution societies, — of course, another name for war soci- eties. But, though we can thus promise ourselves no direct results from the peace societies of the times, their indirect results may be very important. That dishke of war which good men have entertained in all ages, is, we are happy to believe, a fast-spreading dislike. It was formerly enter- tained by units and tens ; it is now cherished by thousands and tens of thousands. And of course the more the feel- ing grows in any country, which, like France, Britain, and America, possesses a representative government, the less chance will there be of these nations entering rashly into war. France and the United States have always had their senseless war pai-ties. It is of importance, therefore, that they should possess also their balancing peace parties, even should these be well-nigh as senseless as the others. Again, in our own country war is always the interest of a class largely represented in both Houses of Parliament. It is of great importance that they also should be kept in check, . and their influence neutralized, by a party as hostile to war on principle as they are favorable to it from interest. We repose very considerable confidence in the common sense THE FEAOB MEETINGS. 29d of the British people, and so have no fear that an irrational peace party should so increase in the country as to put in peril the national independence ; and, not fearing this, we must hail as good and advantageous any revolution in that opinion in which all power is founded, which bids fair to render more rare than formerly those profitless exhibi- tions of national warfare which the poet of the " Seasons " so graphically describes : — " What most showed the vanity of life Was to behold the nations all on fire. In crael broils engaged and deadly strife : Most Christian kings, inflamed by black desire, With honorable ruffians in their hire, Canse war to wage, and blood around to pour. Of this sad work when each begins to tire They sit them down just where they were before, Till for new scenes of woe peace shall their force restore." 300 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL. XVII. LITERATURE OF THE PEOPLE. « The Crock of Gold," « Toil and Trial," and a " Story of the "West End," are all little works which have been sent us for review during the last few months. " The Crock of Gold" is a story about a poor English laborer, who lived in a damp, unwholesome, exceedingly pictur- esque hovel, on eight shillings per week ; " Toil and Trial " is a story about a poor shopman and his wife, who had to toil together in much unhappiness on the long-hour, late- shutting-up system ; and a " Story of the West End " is a story about two poor needle-girls, of whom one sank into the grave under her protracted l^bor, and the other nar- rowly escaped degradation and ruin. They are all inter- esting, well-written little works ; but what we would at present remark in incidental connection with them is that very decided change of direction which our higher literature has taken during the last twenty years, and more especially during the last ten. The great-grandfathers and great- grandmothers of the present reading public could sympa- thize in the joys and sorrows of only kings and queens ; and the critics of the day gave reasons why it should be so. Humble life was introduced upon the stage, or into works of fiction, only to be laughed at ; or so bedizzened with the unnatural frippery of Pastoral, that the picture repre- sented, not the realities of actual life, but merely one of the idlest conventualities of literature. But we have lived to see a great revolution in these matters reach almost its culminating point. It is kings and queens, albeit subjected to greater and more sudden revolutions than at any former period of the world's history, that have now no place in the LITERATURE OF THE PEOPLE. 801 literature of fiction. We have our hunibler people exhibited instead ; and the reading public -are invited to sympathize in the sorrows and trials of aged laborers of an independent spirit, settling down, not without many an unavailing strug- gle, into dreaded pauperism ; overwrought artisans aveng- ing their sufferings upon their wealthy masters ; and poor, fi'iendless needle-women bearing long up against the evils of incessant toil and extreme piivation, but at length sinking into degradation or the grave. We are made ac- quainted in tales and novels with the machinery and prin- ciples of strike-associations and trades' unions, and intro- duced to the firesides of carriers, publicans, and porteps. There is a fashion in all such matters, that lasts but for a time ; and what we chiefly fear is, that the present dispo- sition on the part of the reading public to look more closely than formerly into the state of the laboring classes, and to take an interest in their humble stories, may be suffered to pass away unimproved. Wherever there exists a large demand for any species of manufacture, spurious imitations are sure to abound ; and when the supply becomes at once greatly deteriorated and greatly too ample, there com- mences a period of reaction and depression. An over- charged satiety takes the place of the previously existing interest. It is of importance, therefore, — for there are already many spurious articles in the field, — that the still unblunted appetite should be ministered to, not by the spurious, but by the real, and that only the true condition and character of those classes which must always conaprise the great bulk of mankind should be exhibited to the classes on a higher level than themselves, on whose exer- tions in their behalf so very much must depend. Nor would the advantage be all on one side ; both the high and the low would be greatly the better for knowing each other. It would tend to contract and narrow the perilous gulf which yawns, in this and in all the other countries of Europe, between the poor and the wealthy, were it mutually felt, not merely coldly acknowledged, that God has made 26 302 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL. them of one blood, and given to them the same sympathies and; faculties, and that the things in which they differ are mere superficial circumstances, the effect of accident of position. " I have long had a notion," said the late Wil- liam Thom, the Inverury poet, "that many of. the heart- burnings that run through the social "whole spring not so much from the distinctiveness of classes, as from their mu- tual ignorance of each other. The miserably rich look on the miserably poor with distrust and dread, scarcely giving them credit for sensibility sufficient to feel their own sor- row. That is ignorance with its gilded side. The poor, in turn, foster a hatred of the wealthy as a sole inheritance, look on grandeur as their natural enemy, and bend to the rich man's rule in gall and bleeding scorn. Puppies on the one side and demagogues on the other are the portions that come oftenest in contact. These are the luckless things that skirt the great divisions, exchanging all that is offensive therein. ' Man, know thyself,' should be written on the right hand; and on the left, 'Men, know each other.' " These are quaintly expressed sentences, but they are pregnant with meaning. It is no uninteresting matter to trace, in the various styles of English literature, the part assigned to the people. They cut but a poor figure in Shakspeare. The wonderful wool-comber of Stratford-on-Avon rose from among them ; but it would scarce have served the interests of the Globe Theatre in those days to have ennobled, by any of the higher qualities of head or heart, the humble peers and associates of wool-combers ; and so, wherever the people, as such, are introduced in his dramas, whether they be citizens of Rome, as in " Coriolanns," or English country folk, as in "Henry VI.," we find them represented as fickle, unthinking, and ludicrously absurd. In the works of his contemporary Spencer we do not find the people at all; but discover, instead, what for nearly two hundred years after his time occupied their place in our literature : we ai'e introduced to shepherds in abundance, Hobbinols, LITERATURE Or THE PEOPLE. 803 Diggon Davies, and Colin Clouts, and find mucb reference made to " huts where poor men lie ; " but it is the poor men of the classical Pastoral, who were in reality neither poor nor men, but mere fictions of the poets, — the inhab- itants of a Utopia filled with crooks, and pipes, and gar- lands of flowers. There have been many criticisms on the Pastoral, some of these by the first names in our literature, — Pope, Ad- dison, and Johnson ; but the trae secret of the origin of this, the least natural and interesting of all the depart- ments of poetry, we have not yet seen indicated. Like the silver mask of the veiled prophet that gleamed far amid the darkness of the night, and yet covered a countenance too horrible to be bared to the eye, it formed in the ancient literature the mask that at once concealed and represented the face of the people, — a face scarred and deformed by a cruel system of domestic slavery, and so unfit to be uncovered. In every truly national literatui'e the people must be exhibited ; and if they cannot be exhibited as they are, they must be exhibited as they are not. Hence the pastoral poetry of Rome and Greece': it was the silver mask of a veiled people ; and that of England and the other nations of Europe was simply a tame imitation of it. About the middle of the last century the Pastoral proper died out of in|anity, and the people began to be exhibitedj first in Scotland by Allan Ramsay, who, though he retained in his exquisite drama the old pastoral outlines, looked in- telligently around him, and, drawing his materials fresh from among the humble class, out of which he had arisen, gave life, and truth, and nature to the dead blank form. It was perhaps in Scotland that the people could be first represented as they really were. The vitalities of the na- tional religion had already placed them on a high moral platform, and the national scheme of education — a result of the national religion — had developed their faculties as thinking men. As the Pastoral gradually disappeared in England, the people began to be exhibited, at first very 304 POLmOAJi AND SOCIAL. inadequately and partially, but with certain lineaments of truth. Fielding and Richardson were contemporary. The first, a debauchee and a Bow Street magistrate, had an eye for but what was bad and ridiculous in the popular char- acter. If we except Joseph Andrews, — a sort of male Pamela, drawn rather to caricature Richardson than from any sympathy with good morals and right feeling in a humble hero, — there is not one of the people whom in his character as an artist he exhibits in' his works, whom in his character as a magistrate he would not punish as a scoundrel. The staple of his humbler characters is vulgar rascality. Richardson did better as a man, but not greatly better as an artist. His Pamela is rather a picture drawn in his back-parlor from his own imagination than an ex- hibition of a real character, representative of .any section of the people. There is more truth in the humbler charac- ters of Smollett ; and, though enveloped in the ridiculous, not a few of them possess what the humbler characters of Fielding want, — right feeling and a moral sense. But even of his own countrymen of the humbler order Smol- lett could do little more than portray the externals : he was ignorant of the inner life of Scotland, and of those high principles which can impart dignity to even the poor- est. A Bunyan or a Robert Burns would have constituted a phenomenon beyond his conception. It was the part of this last-named genius to assert for the people their true place in British literature, — directly, no doubt, by many of his writings, but not less efficiently by his life, and by the light which his biography has thrown on his humble compeers. It is interesting to observe in the lives of our eminent men how each brings out into full view a group of individuals of whom we would other- wise never have heard. Each, like the sun of a system, possessed in himself the effulgence which renders him vis- ible across the lapse of ages ; but that effulgence confers visibility on not only himself, but on many an attendant planet besides, that, save for the reflected light, would miss LITERATURE OF THE PEOPLE. ■ 305 being seen altogether. "We see a Cowper surrounded by the Ileskeths and Austins, the TJnwins and the Johnstones ; and a Henry Kirke White, by brothers Neville and James, the Haddocks, the Charlesworths, and the Swanns. The light which Burns cast revealed the Scottish peasantry to the literati of Britain as men of no inferior grade or stunted proportions ; and the revelation has told upon our litera- ture. Had there been no Burns, it is not very probable that the philosophic hero of the " Excursion " vrould have been represented as a peddler ; nay, we doubt if a man so tinged with Toryism as Sir Walter Scott would have dared to give, under the previous state of things, a heroine so humble as Jeanie Deans to one of his greater productions, or a hero of such lowly extraction as Halbert Glendinning to another. The surprise elicited in the mind of every intelligent man by the introduction to the Scottish people in their true character, which the life and writings of Burns secured, we find well expressed by Lord Jeffrey, in a crit- ique on " Cromek's Reliques," written more than forty years ago. " It is impossible to read the productions of Burns," says this accomplished writer, " without forming a higher idea of the intelligence, taste, and accomplishments- of the peasantry than most of those in the higher ranks are disposed to entertain. Without meaning to deny that he himself was endowed with rare and extraordinary gifts of genius and fancy, it is evident, from the whole details of his history, as well as from the letters of his brother, and the testimony of Mr. Murdoch and others to the char- acter of his father, that the whole family, and many of their associates who have never emerged from the native obscurity of their condition, possessed talents, and taste, and intelligence which are little suspected to lurk in these humble retreats. His epistles to brother poets in the rank of farmers and shop-keepers in the adjoining villages, the existence of a book-society and debating-club among per- sons of that description, and many other incidental traits in his sketches of his youthful companions, all contribute 26* 306 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL. to show that not only good sense and enlightened morality, but literature and talents for speculation, are far more gen- erally diffused in society than is generally imagined, and that the delights and the benefits of these generous and humanizing pursuits are by no means confined to those whom leisure and afB.uence have courted to their enjoy- ment. That much of this is peculiar to Scotland, and may be properly referred to our excellent institutions for paro- chial education, and to the natural sobriety and prudence of our nation, may certainly be allowed ; but we have no doubt that there is a good deal of the same principle in England, and that the actual intelligence of the lower orders will be found there also very far to exceed the or- dinary estimates of their superiors." This striking passage suggests to us what we deem the main defect of much of the modern literature in which the working classes are represented. There is no lack of a hearty sympathy on the part of the writers with the feel- ings of our humbler people ; but we are sensible of a fee- bleness of conception when they profess to grapple with their intellect. They can appreciate the hearts, but fail to estimate at the right value the heads, of those with whom they have to do. And hence pictures true but in part. The two most remarkable men who rose from among the people during the last century were Robert Bums and Benjamin Franklin ; and both have left us autobiographi- cal sketches, in which tbey refer to the associates of their early days. In what terms do they speak of their capacity ? Certainly in terms very different fi-om what the modern novelist or tale- writer would employ. Many of the humble men with whom the great poet and great philosopher came in contact were men from whom they were content to learn. A young lady of literary taste and acquirements would draw a female in the sphere of the authoress of the "Pearl of Days," as perhaps a person of just views and correct feeling ; but in describing her intellect, she would LITERATDRB OP THE PEOPLE. 307 of course feel necessitated to let herself down. But we discover, when the authoress of the " Pearl of Days " takes up the pen in her own behalf, and tells her own story, that the young literary lady might not let herself down. She might exercise all her own intellect in portraying that of her heroine, and not find the stock over-great. In like manner, were a modern tale-writer to describe a good weaver, forced by lack of employment to quit his comfort- less home, and cast himself with his wife and children upon the cold charity of the world, he might bestow upon him keen sensibilities, a depressing sense of degradation, and a feeling of shame ; but his thoughts on the occasion would scarce fail to partake of the poverty of his circumstances. When, however, the weaver Tom tells exactly such a story of himself not as a piece of fiction, but as a sad truth burnt into his memory, we find the keen sensibility and the sense of shame united to thinking of great power, heightened in efiect by no stinted measure of the poetic faculty. Now, from our knowledge of such cases, and from a felt want, in our modern fictitious narratives, of what we shall term the inner life of the working classes, what we would fain recommend is, that the working classes should themselves tell their own stories. A series of auto- biographies of working-men, produced, like the Sabbath Essays, on the competition principle, and rendered, by judicious selection, representative of the various manual trades of the country and its several districts, would form one of perhaps the most valuable, and certainly not least interesting, "Miscellanies," which the enterprise of the " Trade " has yet given to the country. It would consti- tute, too, a contribution to the domestic history of the period, the importance of which could not be very easily over-estimated. It were well, surely, that the appetite which exists for information regarding the true state and feelings of the working classes should be satisfied with other than mere pictures of the imagination. A series of 308 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL. cheap volumes, such as we desiderate, would furnish many an interesting glimpse into the lives of the laboring poor, and deepen the interest in their welfare already so gen- erally felt. And we are sure the scheme, if attempted by some judicious bookseller, would scarce fail to remunerate. LITEEAEY AND SCIENTIFIC. I. IMPRESSIONS OF THE GREAT EXHIBITION. FIRST AETICLE. Thk Exhibition closed upon Saturday last ; and one of the most marvellous and instructive sights which the world ever saw now survives only as a great recollection, — as a lesson unique in the history of the species, which has been fairly given, but which, upon the same scale at least, we need scarce hope to see repeated. I spent the greater part of last week amid its long withdrawing aisles and galleries, and, without specially concentrating myself on any one set of objects, artistic or mechanical, set my thoughts loose among the whol?, to see whether they could not glean up for future use a few general impressions, better suited to remain with me than any mere recollections of the partic- ular and the minute. The memory lays fast hold of the sum total in an important calculation, and retains it ; but of all the intermediate sums employed in the work of reduc- tion or summation it takes no hold whatever ; and so, in most minds, on a somewhat similar principle, general results are remembered, while the multitudinous items from which they are derived fade into dimness and are forgotten. Like every other visitor, I was first impressed by the gi-eat building which spanned over the whole, having ample 310 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC. room in its vast areas for at once the productions of a world and the population of a great city. I was one of a hundred and eight thousand persons who at once stood under its roof; nor, save at a few points, was the pressure incon- veniently gi-eat. If equally spread over the building, all the present population of Edinburgh could, without the displacement of a single article, have found ample standing room within the walls. And yet this greatest of buildings did not impress me as great.' In one point at least, where the airy transept raises its transparent arch seventy feet over the floor, and the sunlight from above sported freely amid the foliage of the imprisoned trees and on the play of crystal fountains, it struck me as eminently beautiful; but the idea which it conveyed everywhere else was simply one of largeness, not of greatness. There are but two great ideas in the architecture of the world, — the Grecian idea and the Gothic idea; and though both de- mand for their full development a certain degree of magni- tude, without which they sink into mere models, very ample magnitude is not demanded. York Minster and St. Paul's united would scarce cover one fourth the space occupied by the Crystal Palace, and yet they are both great buildings, and it is not. Hercules, the son of the most potent of the gods, was great ; whereas the earthborn giants that he conquered and slew were simply bulky. And in works of art so much depends, in like manner, on lineage, that things of plebeian origin, however large they may eventually become, rarely if ever attain to greatness. Two or three centuries ago, some lover of flowers and shrubs bethought him of shielding his more delicate plants from the severity of the climate by a small glass-frame, consisting of a few panes. In course of time, the idea em; bodied in the frame expanded into a moderate-sized < hot- house, then into a green-house of considerably larger size, then into a tall palm-house ; and, last of all, an ingenious gardener, bred among groves of exotics protected by huge erections of glass and iron, and familiar with the necessity IMPRESSIONS OF THE GREAT EXHIBITION. 311 of adding to the size of a case as the objects which it had to contain multiplied or were enlarged, bethought him of expanding the idea yet further into the Crystal Palace of the Exhibition. And such seems to be the history and lineage of perhaps the largest of all buildings: it is simply an expansion of the first glass-frame that covered the first few delicate flowers transplanted from a warmer to a colder climate, and, notwithstanding its imposing proportions, is as much a mere case as it was. And were its size to be doubled, — if, instead of containing two hundred miles of sash-bars and nine hundred thousand superficial feet of glass, it were stretched out so as to contain four hundred miles of bars and eighteen hundred thousand feet of glass, — it would be of course a larger building than it is, but not a greater. Nay, I should perhaps rather remark that it would be impossible by addition to render it not only more, but even less great than it is, — in itself a mark of inferiority. To a truly great building it would be impossible to add ; for unity, as a whole, forms the very soul of all great edifices. He would be a bold man who would attempt making a^ single addition to St. Paul's, — one tower more would ruin it; whereas the length or breadth of a railway terminus may be increased of natural history at the Royal Mu- seum of Stuttgardt, had contributed to the show " groups of stuffed animals and birds, nests of birds of prey, hawks pouncing upon owls," etc., etc. ; and certainly nothing could be more natural and true than these groups. They were made to represent, with all the energy of life, the scenes so frequently enacted in the animal world. It was not, how- ever, to the purely natural that the Exhibition owed its interest, but to the introduction of an idea long familiar to the poet and the fabulist, and which painting and sculp- ture, in at least some of their humble departments, have borrowed from literature, but which, to at least the bird and animal stuffer, seems to be new. Most of Mr. Plouc- quet's groups, though animals are the actors, represent 326 LITEEART AND SCIENTIFIC. scenes, not of animal, but of human life. The " Batracho- maomachia " of Homer, in which frogs and mice enact the part of the heroes of the Trojan war, and " make an Iliad of a day's campaign," furnished merriment to the old Greeks, ^sop and his numerous imitators followed in the same wake ; until at length the representation of men under the forms, and bearing the characters of animals, became one of the commonest of literary ideas. And from literature it found its way, as we have said, into painting and sculpture. But the introduction of the animals themselves into such scenes seems to be anew, and, judgingfrom the great pop- ularity of Ploiicquet's figures, a most successful idea. It is interesting, and really not uninstructive, to mark how thoroughly the animal physiognomy can be made to express at least the lower passions and more earthy moods of the human subject. One of the stories illustrated by the in- genious German is an eminently popular one on the Con- tinent, — that of Reynard the Pox. " Among the people," says Carlyle, " it was long a house-book and universal best companion. It has been lecturedon in universities, quoted in imperial council-halls, lain on the toilets, of princes, and been thumbed to pieces on the bench of artisans." Rey- nard bears, of course, in the story, his character of consum- mate cunning and address ; and in the opening scene, where a bona fide fox is introduced, lolling at his ease on a sofa, with his hind legs set across, his tail issuing from between them and curled jauntily round his left fore-paw, and his head reclining upon his right, there is an expression of cool, calculating cunning, as strongly, we had almost said as artistically marked, as in the Lovat or the John Wilkes of Hocarth. CRITICISM FOR THE UNINITIATED. 327 II. GRITIGISM FOR THE UNINITIATED. riEST AETICLE. We have just been spending a few hours for the first time among the pictures of the Exhibition of the Royal Scottish Academy, and spending them very agreeably. A good picture is inferior in value to only a good book ; ani3 in one important respect at least bad ones are better thar inferior books, seeing one can determine their true charaC' ter at scarce any expense of time. There are no seconc and third pages to turn after perusing the first ; and if then be nothing to strike or nothing to please, this negative quality of the piece, as fatal surely to a picture as to a book is discovered at a cost proportioned to its value. The eoU' noisseur, like the critic, has his rules of art and his vocab' ulary ; but though some eyes are doubtlessly more prac tised than others, and some judgments better informed, ] do not deem the art itself of very difiicult attainment. Tc please is the grand end of the painter ; and he can attaif his object in only two different ways, — by either a clos« imitation of the objects he represents, or by the choice of objects interesting in themselves. Now, it needs nt whatever to decide whether or no he has succeeded ii first and simpler department, — the faithful represents of what he intended to delineate. The birds that pe at the grapes of the ancient painter ; the countryman attempted to scale the painted flight of stairs ; Ihe artisi who stretched his hand to draw aside the well-simulatec curtain which seemed to half-conceal the work of his rival, — all these were equally skilful judges. ^Even the decisior 328 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC, of the birds themselves was such a decision as no connois- seur would have dared dispute; and many an ingenious piece of criticism has the memory of it survived. In the same way, the mastiff who came running up to his master's portrait waging his tail was a perfectly qualified judge of its fidelity. The other department of the art — the choice of subjects — requires higher qualities in the con- noisseur ; but it is not exclusively in picture-galleries that his skill is to be acquired. KTay, I am mistaken if it may not be acquired outside of the picture-gallery altogether, and in utter ignorance of the technicalities of the art. Take landscape, for instance. Who can doubt that Shenstone, who had of all men the most exquisite eye for the real scenes of nature, must have had an eye equally exquisite for those very scenes when transferred to canvas? He was more than a great connoisseur : he was also a gi'eat artist, — an artist who dealt in realities exclusively, and planted his thickets and formed his waterfalls with all the exquisite perception and inventive originality of high genius. No one can suppose that Shenstone's taste and skill would not have served him in as good stead amid a collection of pictures as at Hagley or in the Leasowes; or that, however unskilled in the connoisseur's vocabulary, he would have proved other than a first-rate connoisseur. The "poet's lyre," says Cowper, "must be the poet's heart ; " he must feel warmly before he can express strongly. I suppose nearly the same remark may be applied both to the painter and the men best qualified to appreciate the painter's productions. An intense feeling of the beautiful and a nice perception of it invariably go together ; and unless a person has experienced this feeling, in the first instance, amid the delights of the original nature, there is no virtue in rules or phrases to convey it to him from the painter's copy. I am not aware that Professor Wilson knows anything of these rules or phrases. Certain I am, however, that this master of gorgeous description, who makes the reader more than see the scene he paints, for he CRITICISM FOR THE UNINITUTED. 329 makes him feel it too, must have an exquisite eye for land- scape, whether it be on or off canvas. He is one of the born connoisseurs. And what this man of genius possesses in so great a degree is possessed as really, though in im- mensely varied gradations, by almost all. Akenside de- scribes the untaught peasant lingering delighted amid the glories of a splendid sunset, intensely happy, and yet scarcely able to say why. Assuredly that same peasant would be quite qualified to distinguish between a daub and a fine picture. Imagine him passing homeward, after " his long day's labor," in one of those exquisite evenings of early June that live with a " sunshiny freshness in mem- ory," as Shelley finely expresses it, long after they have passed. There is a splendid drapery of clouds in the west, tinted by those hues of heaven which can be fully expressed by neither the words nor the colors of earth, — those hues of exquisite glory — of gold, and flame, and pearl, and amber — which the prophets describe as encircling the chariot of Deity. The sun rests in the midst, less fiercely bright than when he looked down from the middle heavens, but dilated apparently in size, and more glorious to the conception, because more accessible to the eye. The land- scape below is soft and pastoral. There is a dim undulat- ing line of blue hills on the one hand, and the far-off sea on the other. A light, fleecy cloud hangs over the distant village, and seems a bar of pale silver relieved against the wooded hill behind. A lonely burying-ground, surrounded by ancient trees, and with the remains of an old time-shat- tered edifice rising in the midst, occupies the foregrc We see the white tombstones glittering to the sun, an( alternate bars of light and shadow that mark more d the sepulchral ridges of yellow moss which rise so th; over the sward ; while beyond, on the side of a ■? spreading acclivity, there is a quiet scene of fields, and hedgerows, and clumps of wood, with here and there a group of white cottages, all basking in the red light. And mark the loiterer, — one of the intellectual peasants of our 28* 330 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC, own country, — a well-selected specimen of the class which, in at least thought, feeling, and power, has found its meet type.:and representative in "Him who walked in glory and in joy, Following his plough upon the mountain-side." How his steps become gradually fewer and more slow ! and how at length, unconscious .of aught except what Aken- side exquisitely describes as the " form of beauty smiling at his heart," he stands still, to lose, in the happiness of the present, every gloomier recollection of the past, and every darker anticipation of the future ! Undoubtedly that un- taught peasant is a connoisseur of the higher class. The birds peck the grapes, the mastiff recognizes the portrait,; but the peasant can judge of more than mere likeness, — he can exquisitely feel the .beautiful ; and he is perfectly qualified to say that the work of art which can reawaken in him this feeling is assuredly a work of genius. But why all this wild radicalism, this lowering of the aristocracy of criticism, this breaking down of the fictitious distinctions of connoisseurship ! In the first place, I am merely mak- ing my apology for having derived very exquisite pleasure -from even a first visit to the pictures of the Academy; and, in the second, for daring to do what I am just on the eve of doing, — for daring to assure the reader, that, if he has an eye and a heart for nature, he may go there, however unskilled in the rules of the vocabulary of criticism, and derive much pleasure from them too. I am merely stand- ing up, as Earl Grey and Cobbett have expressed it, for my order, — the uninitiated. I have spent some of my happiest hours amid exhibitions of a difierent kind from the Exhibition in the Academy; and some of my most vivid recollections refer to scenes redolent of the wild and the sublime of nature, and to the emotions which these have awakened. May I venture to describe the feeling in connection with one sweet scene — a wooded dell in the far north — in which I have perhaps CRITICISM FOR THE UNINITIATED. 3* oftenest experienced it, and which came rushing into n mind as I lingered in front of one of the richest landscap of the Exhibition ? It is a recess of deepest solitude ; b the sweet Highland stream that comes winding through passing alternately from light to shadow and from motii to repose, irflparts to it an air of life and animation, ai we do not feel that it is lonely. Man is so little an ai mal, says Rousseau, that he is as effectually shelter( by a tree twenty feet in height as by one of sixty. Trui but his ideas are much larger than himself, and he has ti close a sympathy with nature not to experience an amp] expansion of feeling under the loftier than under the low cover. In this solitary dell, the banks, which on eith hand, at every angle and indentation, advance their gras ridges or retire in long, sloping hollows, partake perha rather of the picturesque than of the magnificent ; bat t trees which rise along their sides, and which for the Is century have been slowly lifting themselves to the fre air of the upper region, look down from more than t higher altitude instanced by Rousseau. Often, when t evening sun was casting its slant red beams athwart tht topmost branches, and all beneath was brown in the shac I have sauntered along this little stream, lost in delicio musings, whose intermingled train of" thought and feelii I have no language to convey. I have felt that the cc itative faculty in these moods had not much of activit but then, though it wrought slowly, it wrought willing and unbidden ; and around every minute thought the would swell and expand an atmosphere of delightftil ' ing, w;hich somehow seemed to owe its origin as mu( the magnitude as to the quiet beauty of the surroundin jects, and which has reminded me fancifully, but strong! that minutest of all the planets, — of the asteroids ra — whose atmosphere rises over it to more than ten tim the height of the atmosphere of our own planet ; I ha' looked up to the branches that twisted and iuterlaci themselves so high over head, and the leaves that seemc 332 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC. sleeping in the light;! have seen the deep blue sky far beyond ; I have caught glimpses through the chance vistas of little open spaces, shaggy with a rank vegetation, and which I have loved to deem the haunts of a solitude still deeper. than that which surrounded me; I have marked the varieties of beauty which distinguish the' several deni- zens of the forest, — the ash, with his long massy arms, that stoot off from the trunk at such acute angles, and his sooty blossoms spread over him as if he wore mourning ; the elm, with his trunk gnarled and furrowed like an Egyptian column, and his flake-like foliage laid on in strips that lie nearly parallel to the horizon ; the plane, with his dark green leaves and dense, heavy outline, like that of a thunder-cloud ; the birch, too, a tree evidently of the gen- tler sex, with her long flowing tresses falling down to her knee ; — and as I looked above and around, I felt my heart swelling with an exquisite emotion, that feasts on the • grand and the beautiful as its proper food ; and surely that mind must be chilled and darkened by the pall of a death- like scepticism, that does not expand with love and grati- tude,; under the influence of so exquisite a feeling, to the great and wonderful Being who has imparted so much of good and fair to the forms of inanimate nature, and has bestowed on the creature such a capacity of enjoying them. SECOND AETICLE. In. the middle of the second exhibition-room, on the west side, there is a picture of Allan's which almost every visitor stands to study and admire ; and we observed not a few who, like ourselves, came back a second and a third time to look at it again and again. Let criticism say what it please, this is praise of the very highest order. The piece represents one of the first heroes and greatest men CRITICISM FOR THE UNINITIATED. 333 of Scotland, — Robert the Bruce ; and represents him when greatest and noblest, — uniting to a-courage truly heroic the tenderness and compassion of a gentle and affectionate nature. It embodies with exquisite truth Barbour's affect- ing story of the king and the " poore lavender." The scene, as all our readers must remember, is laid in Ireland. The redoubtable hero of Bannockburn had been compelled to retreat before the immensely superior- forces of the English and their Irish allies. Both the retreating and the pursuing army had been resting for the night, — the one in a valley, the other on an adjoining hill ; but the pursuers were early astir, and their long array had been seen from the Scottish encampment stretching far into the background on the ridge of the neighboring height, and all in full advance. The Scotch, too, had been preparing for a hasty retreat ; Edward Bruce and the Black Douglas had mounted their war-horses, and the warriors behind were all on foot and in marching column, when they were suddenly arrested by the voice of the king- He had heard a woman shrieking in despair when just on the eve of mounting his horse, and had been told by his attendants, in reply to a hurried inquiry, that one of the female follow- ers of the army, a " poore lavender " (that is, laundress}, mother of an infant who had just been born, was about to be left behind, as being too weak to travel, and that she was shrieking in utter terror at thoughts of falling into the hands of the Irish, who were accounted very cruel. We quote the words of Sir Walter, who softens, with a *^'^* and delicacy worthy of study, the less tasteful, the scarcely less powerful, narrative of the metrical histo " King Robert was silent for a moment when he heard story, being divided betwixt the feeling of humanity c sioned bythe poor woman's distress, and the dangertow a halt would expose his army. At last he looked round his officers with eyes which kindled like fire. ' Ah, gen- tlemen, never let it be said that a man who was born of a woman, and nursed by a woman's tenderness, should leave 334 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC. a mother and an infant to the mercy of barbarians. In the name of God, let the odds and the risk be what they, will, I will fight Edmund Sutler rather than leave these poor crea- tures behind me. ' " The painter haa chosen the moment of this noble excla- mation for fixing the scene on his canvas. King Robert occupies the centre, — a wonderfully perfect transcript of Sir Walter's exquisite description in the " Lord of the Isles," and one of the most commanding figures we have ever seen. There is a strength more than Herculean in the deep broad chest and the uplifted arm, — the very arm which clave Sir Henry Bohun to the teeth through the steel headpiece ; but, to employ the language of Lava- ter, " it is not the inert strength of the rock, but the elastic strength of the spring." The ease is admirable as the force ; the figure possesses the blended power of an Achil- les, alike unmatched in the race and the combat. His look is raised to heaven, — a look intensely eloquent, for it unites the indomitable resolution of the unmatched war- rior with a devout awe for the Being in whose strength he has determined to abide the battle. The features, too, grave and rugged like those of his countrymen, possess that beauty of expi-ession, far surpassing the beauty of mere form, which a mind conversant with high thoughts and noble emotions can alone impart to the countenance. The painter has drawn the Bruce, mind and body, — the master- spirit of the time, and through -whom, under Providence, Scotland at this day is a country of free men, not of de- graded helots, like at least two thirds of the unfortunate Irish. On the left of the warrior-king is the new-made mother with her infant ; she is a poor young creature, of simple beauty, — such a one as the Mary of Burns or the. Jessie of Tannahill. It would really have been a great pity to have left her to the barbarous, pitiless Irish, — the ruthless savawes who, even in the times of the first Charles, could 60 cruelly destroy the Protestant females of the country, CRITICTSM FOR THE DJflNITIATED. 835 — quite as unable to resist, and quite as unoffending, as the " poore lavender." There is something very admirable in the air of lassitude which invests the, whole figure : one hand barely sustains the infant, which, in the midst of danger and-extreme weakness, she evidently regards with all the intense, though but newly-awakened, affection of the mother; the other.finely-formed arm I had almost said supports her in hev half-reclining position ; but it is by much too weak for that, and tells eloquently its story of utter exhaustion and recent suffering. There is much good taste, too, shown in the painter's selection of the surrounding attendants ; in the old woman, and in the girl, who half-compassionates the mother, half-admires the child ; in the aged monk, too, evidently a good, benevolent man, who in all probability directed the devotions of his countrymen when they knelt at Bannockburn, and who is particularly well pleased that the Bruce has determined rather to fight Edmund Butler than to desert the " poore lavender." On the king's right are his brother Edward Bruce, and James, Lord of Douglas, mounted, as we have said, on their war-steeds. Edward is well-nigh as perfect a concep- tion as his brother the king. It needs no Lavater to tell us, from the speaking countenance, that the warrior on the right cannot be other than the frank, fearless, rashly- spoken, affectionate man, who hastily wished Bannockburn unfought because his friend had been killed in the battle. His whole figure is instinct with character. There he stands, a capital man-at-arms, first in the charge and ''-'- in the retreat; especially good at a light joke too, pj ularly when matters come to the worst ; but not a to be trusted as a leader. He is right well pleased or occasion with brother Robert. " Fight Edmund Bu ay, ten Edmund Butlers, if they choose to come; bu. .. . can't leave the poor woman." Possibly enough, however, the poor woman would have .been left had Edward been first in command, — not certainly from any indifference, 336 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC. but out of sheer thoughtlessness. Edward would never have thought of asking what the cry meant. We are not quite so satisfied with the Black Douglas. He is a stalwart warrior, keen and true in the hour of danger as his steel battleaxe; but the tenderness of the character is wanting. The painter has given us rather the; Black Douglas 6f Sir Walter as drawn in his last melan- choly production, " Castle Dangerous," when the mind of our greatest master of character was more than half gone, than the good Lord James of Barbour. Barbour devotes an entire page to the personal appearance of the Douglas, and certifies his description by assuring the reader that he had derived his information solely from men who had seen him with their own eyes. His metrical history was given to the country rather less than half a century after the death of, his hero. He describes him as tall and im- mensely powerful, and with a "visage some dele gray;" and the painter, true to the description, has made him just gray enough. The expression, however, was peculiarly soft, modest, and pleasing ; and, in accordance with his appearance, he spoke with a slight lisp, *' which set him wonder well." He was a mighty favorite, too, we are told, with the ladies of King Robert's company, the Queen, and her attendants^ — he was so gentle and so amusing ; and when, early in the king's career, they were hard beset among the mountains, no one exerted himself half so much as the Douglas in supplying all their little and all their great wants, — in providing them with venison from the hillside and fish from the river, or, as the Arch-Dean quite as well expresses it, " in getting them meit." After dwelling, however, on all his amiabilities of character and expression, and particularly the latter, the historian tells us in his happiest manner, — " Bat who in baittle mocht him ^ee, Another countenance had hee." Old James Melville gives us nearly a similar description of CRITICISM FOR THE UNINITIATED. 337 Kircaldy of Grange, " Anelyon in the fend,and ane lambe in the hous ; " and what does not quite please us in the Doug- las of the picture, because it runs somewhat counter to oui associations, is, that, though the spectator of a scene sd moving, he should yet have got on his battle countenance. We have the lion, not the lamb. This, however, is not intended for criticism. The picker of minute faults in works of great genius reminds us always of the philosophei in Wordsworth's epitaph, — the " man who could peep and botanize upon his mother's grave." There is another point in the picture of great interest, and very admirably brought out. It is at once exquisitely true to nature, and illustrates finely one of the most mas- terly strokes in Barbour. We are told by the ancient poet, that when the king, single-handed, had defended the rocky pass beside the ford against the troop of Galloway men, and had succeeded in beating them back, after " dotting the upgang with slain horse and men," his followers, just awakened from the slumbers in which he had been watch- ing them so sedulously, came rushing up to him. They found him sitting bareheaded beside the ford, " for he was het," and had taken off his helmet, to breathe the more freely after his hard exercise. The exploit had gone far beyond all they had ever seen him accomplish before. He had defended them against " a hail troop, him alone ; " and they came crowding round to get a glimpse of him. The very men who were with him every day, and who saw him al- most every minute, were actually jostling one another, that they might look at him. Now, this is surely exquis- ite nature ; and the idea is as happily brought out by , Allan as by Barbour himself. The men are crowding to see their king ; and never were there countenances more eloquent. There is love and admiration in every feature ; and we feel that such a general with such followers could be in no imminent danger of defeat, after all, from the multitudes of Edmund Butler. The minor details of the picture seem to be finely managed. There is a clear, gray 29 338 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC. light; tlie sun has not yet risen, but it is on the eve of rising ; all is seen clearly that any one wishes to see, and the rest is thrown into the soft, bluish, tinted shade pecu- liar to the hour. Randolph appears in the middle distance ; and no person acquainted with the strictly just but stem- hearted warrior would desire to *See him brought a step nearer. He would merely have come to say, with that severe face of his, that he really thought there was too much ado about a poor washerwoman ; but that, if Ed- mund Butler was to be met with, why, he would just meet with him. Edmund Butler, however, was not met with on this occasion. The wary leader knew that Robert the Bruce was the first general of his age ; and that when he halted to offer battle, it could not be without some hidden rea- son, which rendered it no safe matter to accept the chal- lenge which the halt implied. And so the English leader halted too, until the king resumed his march ; and thus the " poore lavender " was saved at no actual expense to her countrymen. The story is one of those which deserve to live ; nor is it probable that what Allan has painted, and Sir Walter described, " the country will willingly let die." We felt, when standing in front of this admirable picture, that the art of the painter, all unfitted as it is for serving devotional purposes, may yet be well employed in giving effect to a moral one. THIRD AETICLB. In estimating the real strength ofa country, one has always to take into account its past history. The statistics of its existing condition are no doubt very important. It is well to know the exact amount of its population, and the extent of its resources. It is a great deal more impor- tant, however, to ascertain what its people were doing a CRITICISM FOR THE UNINITIATED. 839 century or two ago, — what the nature of their contests and their success in them, and what the issue of their bat- tles. It is not enough to count heads, or to calculate, on the mere physical power of a certain quantum of thews and sinews. If the country's history be that of an en- slaved and degraded race, who took their law from every new invader, neither its physical strength nor the great- ness of its revenues matters anything : it is utterly weak and powerless. I^ on the contrary, its battles were hard- fought, and terminated either in signal victory on the part of its people, or in a defeat that led merely to another bat- tle, — if, in all its struggles, however protracted, the enemy was eventually borne down, and the object of the struggle secured, — depend upon it, that country, whether it reckon its population by thousands or by millions, is rich in the elements of power. The national history in these cases is more than a test of character; — it is also an ingredient of strength. The past breathes its invigorating influences upon the present ; the battles won centuries before become direct guarantees, through the enthusiasm which they awaken, for the issue of battles to be fought in the future ; the names of the brave and the good among the ancestors become watchwords of tremendous efficacy to the descend- ants ; the children " honor their fathers," and " their days, therefore, shall be long in the land." But what has all this to do with criticism? A great deal. As you enter the second exhibition-room, turn just two steps to the left, and examine the large picture before you. It is one of the masterpieces of Harvey, — "The Covenanters' Communion ; " and very rarely has the same extent of canvas borne the impress of an equal amount of thought or feeling. The Covenanters themselves are be- fore us, and we return to the times of which, according to "Wordsworth, the " echo rings through Scotland till this hour." Not in vain did these devoted people assemble to worship God among the hills ; not in vain did these vener- able men, these delicate women and tender maidens, un- 340 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC. hesitatingly lay down their lives for the cause of Chiist and his church. Their solitary graves form no small portion of the strength and riches of the country. They retain a vivifying power, like the grave of Elisha, into which when the dead man was thrown he straightway revived. Those opponents of the church who assert, in the present struggle, that the cherished memory of our martyrs serves only to foster a spirit of fanatical pride among the people, are as opposed to right reason as devoid of true feeling. It fos- ters a truly conservative spirit, which it is well and wise to cherish ; and one of the eminently wholesome effects of the present struggle is the reciprocity of feeling, if we may so express ourselves, which it awakens between the past and the present. The determination of the present revives the memory of the past, and the memory of the past gives tenfold force and effect to the determination of the present. Martrys never die in vain. We doubt not there is a time coming when even the memory of the noble Spaniards of the sixteenth century who perished unseen, for their adher- ence to Protestantism, in the dungeons of the Inquisition, and that of the noble Venetians of the same dark period who were consigned at midnight, and in chains, for the same sacred cause, to the depths of the Adriatic, will yet awaken among their countrymen, as an animating spirit to urge them on with double vigor to the attack, when Baby- lon is to be utterly destroyed. Most assuredly, Scotland at least has not yet reaped the entire benefit which she is to derive from the blood of her martyrs. The commonest seeds retain their vitality for centuries ; the seed of the church retains its vitality for centuries too. I shall attempt a description of Harvey's exquisite pic- ture, for the sake of such of my readers as live at a distance. The locale of the scene represents one of those wild upland solitudes so common among our lower mountain ranges,— one of those hollows amid the hills known only to the shepherd a,nd the huntsman, which are shut out by the surrounding summits^ from the view of the neighboring CRITICISM FOR THE UNINITIATED. 341 country, and which, rising high over the reign of corn, and almost over that of wood, presents only a widespread bar- renness. There is a solitary fir bush in the background, which at a lower elevation would have been a tree ; and its stunted and dwai"f-like appearance tells of the ungenial climate and the unproductive soil. All else up to the very hill-tops is dark with heath ; and there is a sky well-nigh as dark beyond ; for there is scarce transparency enough in the accumulated masses of heavy clouds, that betoken a night of tempest, to relieve the outline. But there is a light in the foreground. The previous service of the day has been protracted for many hours ; there has been a long " action sermon " on the wrestlings of the Kirk, and a long, impressive prayer ; and the sun at his setting is throwing his last red gleam on the group, with one of those striking fire-light effects which only nature and genius ever succeed in producing. The rays reach not beyond, but are absorbed in the heath ; and there is truth in this too : one of the most striking efiects of the moon when just rising, or the sun when just setting, is, that the light seems to be looking at darkness, and the darkness abiding the look. These, however, are but the minor features of the picture. The congregation is but a small one ; the fierce persecu- tion has been long protracted, and all the chaff has blown off. The battle of Bothwell has been fought and lost: many have laid down their lives on the scaffold, and many on the hillside. The flower of the country is wasting in dungeons, or toiling in chains in the colonies. There is no hope of deliverance from man ; and we have in the group before us a mere remnant, tried in the very ext ity of suffering, and found faithful and true. There is than a Sabbath-day sacredness impressed upon the s( and the utter poverty in which the solemn feast is brated adds powerfully to the effect. A cottage bencn, barely large .enough to bear the "communion elements," serves for the long, low table ; but, in the recollection of other days, they have covered it with a white linen cloth. 29* 342 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC. The flagon is evidently not of silver, nor yet the plate which bears the bread ; but the cups are : they have been carefully secreted from the spoiler, and devoutly reserved in the midst of extreme want, and though the fines of Mid- dleton and Lauderdale have fallen ruinously heavy on the recusants, for the service of the sanctuary. The commu- nicants are ranged on the heath on both sides. Three rev- erend elders are standing in front of the table, — grave, strong-featured men, well stricken in years, with high, thoughtful foreheads, and in both form and countenance so thoroughly Scotch that the spectator is convinced at a glance they could belong to no other country in the world except our own. Had I met them in the north of Scotland, I would have said they were three of the men, and that I was very sure they could all speak judiciously to the ques- tion. There is an air of reasoning sagacity about them. Their very type of forehead is metaphysical, high, full, erect. They could not have stopped short of Calvinism, even had they wished it. The clergyman stands alone on the opposite side, with his back to the setting sun, and the pale reflected light from the linen cloth thrown upon his face. I have striven to read the expression. The spare figure and the attenuated hands tell at once their story ; but the countenance yields its full meaning more slowly, and, I would almost say, more doubtfully. But it has evi- dently much to tell. What was the character of the latter divines of the covenant, — its Camerons, Pedens, Renwicks, and Oai-gills, — the men who excommunicated in the Tor- wood that " man of blood, Charles Stuart," for his " cruel slaughter of the saints of God," — the men who, when the persecution waxed hotter and hotter, became only the more determined to resist, but who, though the will re- mained unsubdued and unshaken, experienced, in the in- tensity of their distress,' something approaching to aber- ration in the other faculties, and in their more unsettled moods did battle in lonely caves with shades of darkness from the abyss, or saw in their waking visions the events CRITICISM FOR THE UNINITIATED. 343 of the future rising up thick before them. Well did Solo- mon say that persecution maketh even wise men mad. The spectator has but to think of the character which the coun- tenance really should express, and he will find it no easy matter to conceive how the painter could have expressed it differently. There is an air of intense melancholy that tells almost of a weariness of life, mingled with what, for want of a better word, I must term a ghostly expression. There is the appearance, too, of fatigue and exhaustion, and the impi-ession of a strangely-mixed feeling, that hov- ers, as it were, between the visible and the spiritual world. The whole figure and countenance, in short, gives us the idea of human nature tried over-severely, and the "willing spirit " failing through the " weakness of the flesh." On the spectator's left hand there is a group of the com- municants thrown much into the shade. There are two stern-looking men among the others, who have evidently perused with great satisfaction the chapter in the " Hind Let Loose "-" Concerning owning tyrants' authority," and the other equally .emphatic chapter, — " Defensive arms vindicated." The one rests upon his broadsword ; and there is a powder-horn and carabine lying beside the other. The group on the right is decidedly the most exquisite I ever saw, either on or off canvas. It is instinct with char- acter, and rich in beauty. The communicants have just partaken of the bread ; and never was the devotional feeling — the awe and reverence proper to the occasion — more truthfully expressed. One of the men, young in years but old in sufferings, still retains the bread in his hand. His air has all the solemnity of prayer. A young girl sits be- side him, the very beau-ideal of a beautiful Scotch female in humble life, — simple, modest, devout, — a very Jeanie Deans, too, in quiet good sense, only a great deal hand- somer than Jeanie. I could not look at her without think- ing of the young and delicate female, her contemporary and countrywoman, whom the cruel dragoons bound to a stake below flood-mark, while the tide was rising, and S44 IITEEARX AND SCIENTIFIC. whom they urged, as the water rose inch by inch, to abjure her church and close with " black Prelacy," but who, faith- ful to the last, chose rather to perish amid the waves of the sea. There is a still younger girl beside her, who has evidently not yet been admitted into full communion with the chui'ch, and with whose deep seriousness there mingles an air of' dejection. An old woman, on the extreme edge of life, is seated in the middle of the group ; and there is perhaps some exaggeration in the figure, but the mind and the feeling with which it is animated triumphs over the defects. It is not the thin, sharp features, and the almost skeleton arm, that attract our attention ; it is the all-per- vading intensity of ^he devotional feeling. The old man who sits beside her with his face covered is admirably in keeping with the rest. Such is an imperfect description of a picture which must not oqly be seen, but also carefully perused, ere its excellence can be adequately appreciated. The gentleman who criticized it in our last, rates it consid- erably lower than I have done ; and there are other pic- tures which he estimates highly that lie perhaps beyond the reach of my sympathy. I am unable to understand tbem. I therefore again remind the reader that I pretend to no critical skill, and that my. only criterion of mei'it in a picture is simply the amount of pleasure which I derive from it, and the quantum of thought which I find embodied in it. I have literally to feel my way along the canvas. Allan's picture of the Bruce reads a high moral lesson. What is the moral taught by Harvey's Communion? It is a controversial picture on the side of the church. It sets before us, with all the truth of impartial history, the rebels and outlaws of the bloody and dissolute reign of Charles II., and teaches powerfully the useful truth that these offend- ers against the majesty of the law were in reality the pre- serving salt of the age, — that these dwellers in dens and caves were the meet representatives for the time of the dwellers in dens and caves described by the apostle, and of whom the " world was not worthy." The dissolute Mid- CKITICISM FOR THE UNINITIATED. 345 dieton, the crafty Rothes, the brutal Lauderdale, the bloody- Mackenzie, were the judges and law authorities of the time. A gross and profligate atheist, bribed against his own peo- ple by foreign gold, sat upon the throne. His court was a sty of licentiousness and impurity. Wickedness had bro- ken loose in those " evil days ; " and for twenty-eight years together the people of God were hunted upon the hills. But a time of retribution came ; the wicked died " even as the beast dieth,* and went to their place leaving names behind them that sound like curses in the ears of posterity. , The reigning family — those infatuated and low-thoughted Stuarts, who, in their short-sighted an^ debasing policy, would have rendered men faithful to'their princes by mak- ing them untrue to their God — were driven from their high places and their country to wander homeless under the curse of Cain, — to bring disaster on every nation that sheltered them, and deatl^and ruin on every adhei'ent that espoused their cause. And at length, when the spectacle pf their misery and degradation was fully shown to the kingdoms of the earth, the last vial of wrath was poured upon their heads, and they passed into utter extinction. But the names of the persecuted survive in a different savor ; their sufferings have met with a different reward ; the noble constancy of the persecuted, the high fortitude of the martyr, still live ; a halo encircles their sepulchres ; and from many a solitary grave and many a lonely battle- field there come voices like those which issued from behind the veil, — voices that tell us how this world, with all its little interests, must pass away, but that for those who fight the good fight there abideth a rest that is eternal. I heartily thank this man of genius and right feeling for the lesson which his pencil has taught. Such pictures more than please, — they powerfully instruct. 346 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC. FOURTH ARTICLE. At the further end of the first exhibition-room, on the left hand, there is a moonlight scene by M'Culloch, — " Deer Startled," — which only a man of genius could have transferred from nature to the canvas. It is actually what it professes to be, — a landscape lighted up by the moon ; and the scene itself, a deep Highland soUftude, is full of a wild and yet quiet poetry. The mind of every man has its picture-gallery, — scenes _ of beauty or magnificence, or of quiet comfort, stamped indelibly upon his memory. More than half the exile's recollections of home are a series of landscapes. The poor untaught Highlander carries with him to Canada pictures enough in the style of M'Culloch to store an exhibition- room, — pictures of brown solitary moors, with here and there a gray cairn, and here and there a sepulchral stone, — pictures, too, of nai-row, secluded glens, each with its own mossy stream that sparkles to .the light like amber, and its shaggy double strip of hazel and birch, — of hills, too, that close around the valleys, and vai-y their tints, as they re- tire, from brown to purple, and from purple to blue. He carries them all with him to the distant country. The gloomy forest rises thick as a hedge on every side of his wooden liut ; the huge stumps stand up abrupt and black from amid his corn, in the little angular patch which his labor has laid open to the air and the sunshine. These are the objects which strike the sense ; but the others fill the mind ; and when year after year has gone by, and he sits among his children's children a wornout old man, full of narratives about the brown moors and the running streams of his own Scotland, his eyes moisten as the scenes rise up before him in more than their original freshness ; and he tells the little folk, as they press around him, that there is no place in the world that can be at all compared with the Highlands, and that no plant equals the heather. CRITICISM FOR THE UXINITIATED. 347 One of Wordsworth's earliest lyrics, a sweet little poem which he gave to the world at a time when the world thought very little of it, though it has become wiser since, embodies a similar thought. The poet represents a poor girl — originally from a rural district, who had been both happier and better ere she had come to form a unit in the million of London — passing in the morning along Cheapside, when a bird, caged against the sunny wall, breaks out in a sudden burst of song. Her old recollec- tions are awakened at the sound; the street disappears, and the dingy houses ; she sees the meadow tract, with the overhanging trees, where she used to milk her cows; she sees, too, the cattle themselves waiting her coming ; and, in the words of the lyric, " a river flows down through the breadth of Cheapside." Poor Susan ! " Her heart is stirred," and her eyes fill. Every human mind haS*its pictures. Were it otherwise, who would care anything for the art of the painter? When standing in front of M'Culloch's exquisite landscape, I was enabled to call up some of my own, — moonlight scenes of quiet and soothing beauty, or of wild and lonely grandeur. I stood on a solitary seashore. A broken wall of cliffs, more than a hundred yards in height, rose abruptly behind, — here advancing in huge craggy tow- ers, tapestried with ivy and crowned with wood, there re- ceding into deep, gloomy hollows. The sea, calm and dark, stretched away league after league in front to the far horizon. The moon had just risen, and threw its long fiery gleam of red light across the waters to the shore. A solitary vessel lay far away, becalmed in its wake. I could see the sail flapping idly against the mast, as she slowly rose and sank to the swell. The light gradually strength- ened; the dark bars of cloud, that had shown like the grate of a dungeon, wore slowly away; the white sea birds, perched on the shelves, became visible along the cliffs ; the advancing crags stood out from the darkness ; the recesses within seemed, from the force of contrast, to 348 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC. deepen their shades ; the isolated spire-like crags that rise thick along the coast, half on the shore, half in the sea, flung each its line of darkness inwards along the beach. A wide cavern yawned behind me, rugged with spiracles of stalactites, that hung bi'istling from the roof like icicles at the edge of a waterfall ; and a long rule of light that penetrated to the innermost wall, leaving the sides en- veloped in thick obscurity, fell full on what seemed an ancient tomb and a reclining figure in white, — sports of nature in this lonely cave. There was an awful grandeur in the scene : the deep solitude, the calm still night, the huge cliffs, the vast sea, the sublime heavens, the slowly rising moon, with its broad, cold face ! I felt a half-super- stitious feeling creep over me, mingled with a too oppress- ive sense of the weakness and littleness of man. Pride is not one of the vices of solitude. It grows upon us among our fellows ; but alone, afld at midnight, amid the sublime of nature, we must feel, if we feel at all, that we ourselves are little, and that God only is great. The scene passed, and there straightway arose another. I stood high in an open space, on a thickly-wooded ter- race, that stretched into an undulating plain, bounded with hills. The moon at full looked down from the mid- dle heavens, undimmed by a single cloud ; but far to the west there was a gathering wreath of vapor, and a lunar rainbow stretched its arch in pale beauty across a secluded Highland valley. A wide river rolled at the foot of the wooded terrace ; but a low silvery fog had risen over it, bounded on both sides by the line of water and bank ; and I could see it stretching its huge snake-like length adown the hollow, winding with the stream, and diminishing in the distance. The frosts of autumn had dyed the foliage of the wood ; the trees >rose around me in their winding- sheets of brown and crimson and yellow, or stretched, in the more exposed openings, their naked arms to the sky. Thei'e was a dark moor beyond the fog-covered river, that seemed to absorb the light ; but directly under the nearest CRITICISM FOR THE UNINITIATED. 349 hill, which rose like a pyramid, there was a tall solitary ruin standing oat from the darkness, like the sheeted spectre of a giant. The distant glens glimmered indistinct to the eye ; hut the first snows of the season had tipped the Upper eminences with white, and they stood out in bold and prominent relief nearer, apparently, than even the middle ground of the landscape. The whole was exquisitely beautiful, — a scene to be once seen and ever remembered. I must attempt a description of the picture of M'CuUoch. The moon is riding high over head in a cloudy and yet a quiet sky. There is a greenish transparency in the piled and rounded masses. Even where most dense, the thinner edges are light and fleecy ; and the whole betokens what White of Selborne would have termed a mild and delicate evening. There is a lonely moor in front, a piece of water, and a stunted fir tree. The light falls strongly both upon the water and where the heathy bank shelves gradually toward it on the right, while the middle ground of the picture, with its scattered trees, lies more in the shade. The clouded sky tells us, however, that the whole country on such an evening cannot be other than checkered with a carpeting of alternate light and shadow. There is a screen of hills behind, dim and yet distinct; and a few startled deer — startled we know not why — are grouped in front. Such are the main features of the picture ; but it is one thing merely to tell these over as in a catalogue, and quite another to convey an adequate idea, of the wild and yet simple poetry which they express. The extreme loneliness of the scene, the calm beauty of the evening, the unknown cause of fright among these untamed deni- zens of the moors and mountains, — what can they have seen ? what can they have heard ? It is night, and deep solitude. Are the spirits of the dead abroad ? M'CuUoch has another very sweet picture in the exhibi- tion of this year, — "A Highland Solitude with Druidical Stones." We find it in the large middle room, on the left 30 850 MTBRART AND SCIENTIFIC. hand as we pass inwards. It is, though equally Highland, an entirely different scene from the other ; and yet, in de- scribing it, — for the pen has Jio such variety ,pf shades as the pencil, and no such pliant flexibility of outline, — I must employ some of the same words. I must repeat, for instance, that there is a heathy moor in the foreground, and a screen of hills behind, and that a sky checkered with clouds has dappled the landscape with sunshine and shadow. There is a transient shower sweeping gloomily along a narrow glen, while the hills to the right are smil- ing in purple to the sun. The Druidical stones rise gi"ay in the Inid-ground ; and the smoke, apparently of a shep- herd's fire, is ascending slantways from among them, be- fore a light breeze. It is, as I have said, a sweet picture, but inferior in feeling to the other, and perhaps not alto- gether what its name would have led us to expect. I question, however, whether that blended feeling of the sublime and the solemn, with which it is natural to con- template the monuments of an antiquity so remote that they lie wholly beyond the reach of history, and which form the sole and yet most doubtful memorials of unknown rites and usages, and X)f tribes long passed away, can be reawakened by the imitations of the painter. I have felt it strongly on the scene of some forgotten battle sprinkled with cairns and tumuli, and where the stone-axe and the flint-arrow are occasionally turned up to the light, to tes- tify of a period when the aborigines of the country were making their first rude essays in art, and when the man had not yet risen over the savage. I have felt it when, standing where some ancient burial mound had been just laid open, I saw the rude unglazed sepulchral urn filled with half-burned fragments of bone, or with rudely-formed ornaments of jet or amber, fashioned evidently ere the discovery of iron. I have felt it, too, amid the Druidical circle, and beside the tall unshapen obelisk. But I did not feel it when standing before M'Culloch's second pic- ture : and I auestioned whether in what he had failed any CRITICISM FOR THE UNINITIATED. 351 Other could have succeeded. With what Johnson terms the " honest desire of giving pleasure," I shall briefly at- tempt a desci-iption of the scene in which I have felt it most strongly, a scene to be visited in the gray of the evening, or by the light of the moon. ■ There is a soft pastoral valley, formed by the river Nairn, not much more than a mile to the southwest of the field of Culloden. Low-swelling eminences rise on either hand. The view is terminated, as we look downward, by a prom- inent rounded hill, on which are the remains of one of those ancient earthen forts or duns — combinations of green mounds and deep angular fosses — which seem to have constituted in our own country, like the hill-forts of New Zealand in the present day, the very first efforts of ingenuity in defensive warfare, — the very first inventions of the weaker party in their attempts to withstand the stronger. As we look up the glen towards the west, we see the view shut in by another rounded hill, and it also bears its ancient stronghold, — one of those puzzles of the antiquary, — a vitrified fort. The low rude wall all around the top of the eminence has been fixed into one solid mass by the force of fire ; and we marvel how the rude savage who applied the consolidating agent, all unacquainted as he was with mortar, and unfurnished with tools, should have been so expert a chemist. He was a glassmaker on a large scale, probably before the discovery of the Phoeni- cian merchants. It is in the valley below, however, on a level meadow-plain beside the winding Nairn, known as the plain of Clava, that we find most to interest and to astonish. It is a city of the ancient dead, thickly mottled in its whole extent with sepulchral cairns, standing stones, and Druidical temples. Detached columns of undressed stone, shaggy with moss and spotted with lichens, rise at wide intervals apparently in lines, as if to unite the other structures in one general design." There are cairns beside cairns, and circles within circles ; and there rose high over the rest only a few years ago, but they have since been 852 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC. injured by some carious excavator, three accumulations of stone, immensely more huge than the others, and more artificially constructed, that seemed to mark out the rest- ing-place of the kings or chieftains of the tribe. The bases of these larger caima were hemmed in by circular rings of upright stones ; and a wider ring, of larger masses, en- circled the outside. A dark, low-roofed, circular chamber occupied the space within. Its walls were constructed of upright stones ; and uncemented flags, overlapping each other untU., they closed atop, formed the rude, dome-like roof. In the fat, unctuous earth which composed the floor there were found unglazed earthen urns, as rudely fashioned as the surrounding building, and filled with ashes and half-calcined bones. It is a carious fact, that, even so late as the close of the last century, Highlanders in the neigh- borhood buried amid these ancient tombs such of their children as died before baptism.. For, according to a su- perstition derived from the Church of Rome, and in some remote localities not yet worn out, unbaptized children were deemed unholy ; and in this belief their remains were consigned to the same unconsecrated ground which (Contained the dust of their remote pagan ancestors. It is another striking fact, — a fact fall of poetry, — that near the western end of the plain of Clava there are the remains of an ancient Christian chapel, which still bears the name of the clachan, or church ; and a traditional be- lief survives in the district that it was planted in this cit- adel of idolatry by the first Christian missionaries. Would that we were acquainted with its story ! and yet it would probably be merely another illustration of the fact that the religion that most inculcates humility and self-denial is of all animating principles the most daring and heroic. CRITICISM FOR THE UNINITIATED. 353 FIFTH ARTICLE. What sort of painters, think you, do the Scotch promise to become ? Why, painters equal to any the world ever produced, if the national mind be only suffered to get into a national track, and our artists have sense and spirit enough, however much they may admire the pictures of other countries, not to imitate them. The genius of our countrymen, as shown*in their literature, is eminently of a pictorial character. The national feeling is vividly de- scriptive. As early even as the days of James IV., old Gavin Douglas, and his contemporary Will Dunbar, could fill page after page with splendid descriptions, as minutely faithful as the descriptions of Cowper in his " Task," and scarcely less poetical. The " Seasons " of Thomson form a series of landscapes ; and never, surely, were there land- scapes more felicitously conceived or more exquisitely finished. It has become the fashion of late to decry M'Pherson ; but rarely has Europe seen a mightier master of description. The scenery of Burns is nature itself. Who ever excelled Grahame in pictures of quiet beauty, OT Professor Wilson in the wild and the sublime of Alpine landscape ? And, last and greatest, we stake Sir Walter Scott for the vividly graphic, for strength of outline and beauty of color, against every painter of every school, and all the writers of the world. The people whose litera- ture exhibits such powers have, if they wish to become painters, only to try. But let them beware of imitation. The straight-nosed beauties of Greece were no doubt very great beauties, and its historical characters very fine char- acters indeed. There is something very admirable, too, in the genius of Italy. No people ever excelled the Italians in drawing legendary saints, with glories of yellow ochre round their heads, or angels mounted on the wings of pigeons. But what of all that ? It is not by painting the straigtt-nosed beauties of Greece or the winged angels of 31* 354 LITERARY AND SCIBNTrPIO. i Italy that the Scotch artist need expect to confer honor on either Scotland or himself. Let him do what was done by Thomson and Burns and Sir Walter Scott, and what Wilkie and Allan and Harvey are employed in doing, — let him walk abroad into nature, and study the history of his country. The mere imitative faculty is one of the lowest ; the Chinese possess it in perfection, and so does the chimpanzee. But am I not evincing a barbarous and Gothic disregard of the classical ? Very far from it.* I have read all Cow- per's" Homer" and Dryden's "Virgil" again and again. I could almost repeat that portion of the Odyssey in which the wanderer of Ithaca is described sitting apart in his own hall, a poor, despised beggar, when his enemies are expending their strength in vain attempts to bend his bow ; and I have felt my heart leap within me, when, scorning reply to their rude taunts, he leaned easily forward on the well-remembered weapon, and, bending it with scarce more of eflfort than the musician employs in straightening the strings of his harp, sent the well-aimed arrow through all the rings and the double planks of the oaken gate be- yond. I have luxuriated, too, over the exquisite descrip- tions of the jEneid, — amid the horrors of the burning town, for instance, till I almost saw the pointed flames shooting far aloft into the darkness, and almost heard the ■ tramplings and shouts of the enemy in the streets, -r— amid the terrors, too, of the tempest, when the fierce surge rolled resistless over the foundering vessel, and the scattered fleet labored heavily amid the- loud dash of the billows and the wild howl of the wind. And when I looked for the first time on Laocoon and his children crashed in the ruthless coil of the serpent, — a too faithful allegory of the human race, — the story of Virgil rose at once before me, and I felt the blended genius of the poet and the sculptor breathing in an intense human interest from the group. But what classical artists and authors were born CRITICISM POR THE UNIKITIATEa). 355 ever became great, nor ever will, by servilely following in their track. The more an author or artist copies them, the less is he like them ; for the imitative turn, which de- lights in catching their manner, is altogether incompatible with the originality of their genius. And hence it is that our modem classics, whether painters or sculptors, or man- ufacturers of unreadable epics, rank invariably among the men of neglected merit. They overshoot those sympathies of a common humanity to which their masters could so powerfully appeal in the past, and which their contempo- raries are scarcely less successful in awakening in the pres- ent, each in a track of his own opening. The sculptors of Great Britain were classical and imitative ibr a whole century ; and all they produced in that time, in conse- quence, was a lumbering mass of unreadable allegories in stone, which no one cares for ; groups of Prudences with fine necks ; of Mercies, too, with well-turned ankles ; and of Cupids looking sly ; and, had they been employed in cutting them in white-sugar or gingerbread, all would have now agreed that the choice of the material mightily heightened the value of the work. Among the rising painters of our country, I know no artist whose productions better serve to corroborate the truth of remarks such as these than the pictures of Thomas Duncan. Brown justly reckons the principle of contrast, or contrariety, among the causes which suggest and connect ideas. One of Duncan's living pictures — " Prince Charles and the Highlanders entering Edinburgh after the battle of Preston," a picture exquisitely Scotch, instinct with character and rich in interest — shows more powerfully, on this principle, the folly of toiling in the dead school of classical imitation, than even the effete of the artists who irrecoverably lose themselves within its precincts of death. I spent two full hours before his picture, and regretted I could not spend four. Tlie morning sun has risen high over the Old Town of Edinburgh, and the beams fall clear and bright through a 356 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC. cloudless autumn sky, on half the high-piled, picturesque tenements of the Canongate, and half the street below. The other half lies gray in the shade. I saw, just in front, on the sunny side, the castellated jail of the burgh, with its blackened turrets and its Flemish-looking clock-house. The barred windows are thronged with faces ; and a few disarmed, half-stripped, forlorn-looking soldiers, huddled together on an outer staircase, show that the incarcerated crowd are military prisoners from the field of Preston. The street lies in long perspective beyond, house rising over house, and balcony projecting beyond balcony. Every flaw and weather-stain has the mark of truth ; every pe- culiarity «f the architecture reminded me of the scene and the age. A dense crowd occupies the foreground. The Highlanders, after totally routing the superior numbers of Cope, have entered the city with their Prince at their head, and have advanced thus far on their march to Holyrood House. The apparently living mass seems bearing down upon the spectator. There is a mischievous-looking, ragged urchin, half-extinguished by the cap of some luckless gren- adier, who has possibly, no further use for it, scampering out of the way ; and an unfortunate barber, the very type of Smollett's Strap, has got himself fast jambed between a projecting outside stair and the brandished war-axe of a half-naked and more than half-savage gillie, who is exert- ing himself with tremendous vigor in clearing a passage, and who, as if to add to the poor barber's distress and pei-il, is looking in another direction. There are other strokes of the comic in the piece. In one corner a Jaco- bite laird, UirC fou, is threatening destruction with un- sheathed whinyard to all and sundry who will not drink the Prince's health. In another, two pipers are marching side by side. The one, a long-winded young fellow, cast in the Herculean mould of his country, and proud of his strength and his music, is adjusting the drone of his pipe with a degree of self-complacency that might serve even the Dean of Faculty himself. The other, an old man of CEITICISM FOR THE XJNINITIATED. 357 at least seventy-five, with features fiercely Celtic, and an expression like a thunder-cloud, is evidently enraged at the better breath of his opponent ; but, collecting his strength for another efibrt, he seems determined rather to die than give in. The Prince rides in the centre on a noble steed, that seems starting out of the canvas. We recogmze him at once, not only from his prominent place and princely bearing, but from the striking truth of the portrait, — one of the most spirited, perhaps, that has yet appeared, and most like the man when at his best. Has the reader never noticed the striking resemblance which the better portraits of Prince Charles bear to those of his remote ancestress, Queen Mary ? I was first struck by it when, in glancing my eye over a bookseller's window, I saw side by side the frontispieces of " Chambers' History of the Rebellion " and the " Life of Mary Queen of Scots," — both numbers of "-Constable's Miscellany ; " and I have had since repeated opportunities of verifying the remark. It is, I believe, no uncommon matter for resem- blances of this kind to reappear in families at distant in- tervals. Sir Walter, no ordinary observer of whatever pertained to the nature of man, whether physical or intel- lectual, has repeatedly embodied the fact in his inventions ; but I do not know a more striking instance of it in real history than the one adduced. All the more celebrated heroes of the rebellion are grouped round the Prince, full, evidently, of a generous enthusiasm, in which the spectator can hardly avoid sym- pathizing. There was little of moral worth or of true kingly dignity in the latter Stuarts ; and I could not for- get that the " gallant adventurer," who, with at least all the courage of his ancestors, threw himself upon the gen- erosity of the devoted and warm-hearted Highlanders, was in reality a cold, selfish man, who sunk in after life into a domestic tyrant and a besotted debauchee. And yet I could not avoid sharing in the well-expressed excitement of the Prince's gallant adherents, as they drink in his ?58 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC. looks with all the intense and rapturous exultation of a loyalty which has passed from the earth with the genera- tion that cherished it. No such' pervading love or deep devotion awaits the kings or princes of the present time. Behind the Prince rides Clanranald, the chief of Clan- Colla. His Highlanders take precedence of the other clans, for the Bruce had assigned them their place of honor in the right when they fought at Bannockburn. Young Clanranald, a tall, handsome youth, and his cousin Kinloch Moidai-t, have advanced in front ; old Hugh Stewart, a rugged, deep-chested veteran of the Black Watch, who fought in all the battles of Charles, and whose portrait is still preserved, presses on behind them ; and the gigantic miller of Inverrahayle's Mill, a tremendous specimen of the wild mountaineer, is still more conspic- uous among a group of clansmen on the left. There is a dense crowd behind, and what seems a thick wood of spears and axes, with here and there a banner, — among the rest, an English standard taken from the dragoons at Preston. A heap of other trophies lies in front, over which Hamish M'Gregor, the son of the celebrated outlaw Rob Roy, keeps watch. An intensely interesting group occupies the left. There we see Lord George Murray, the cool-headed, far-seeing statesman of the expedition, who dared honestly to tell his Prince disagreeable truths, and who was liked none the better because he did so; the gallant Loohiel, too, who in his devoted loyalty joined in tife enterprise with his brave Camerons, even though he had anticipated from the first that the result would be disastrous. There also is the Marquis of Tullibarden, the original of Sir Walter's Baron of Bradwardine, a fine old Lowland cavalier, dressed, in honor of the Prince', in a birthday suit, half-covered with lace, and of a fashion at least twenty years earlier than the time. There is a galaxy of high-born dames beside him, relatives of the family, — one of them at least r\f avrm\aii-a T^oQn+.w QnrI oil r^f 1r\\t^m Tirliat. /ilovoi" sii't.ict.fl An CRITICISM FOR THE UNINITIATED. 359 not invariably succeed in painting, even when they try most — ladies. Their countenances seem lighted up with the triumph of the occasion; and the children of the family, sweet little things, worth all the cupids that the imitators ever chiselled or painted, are employed in strew- ing white roses in the path of the Prince. The opposite side of the picture is occupied by a group of a different but not less interesting character. On an outer stone stair, on the shady side of the street, — one of those appendages characteristic of the Scoto- Flemish style of domestic architecture, — there is a group .of citizens. Professor Maclaurin, the celebrated mathe- matician, the man who first brought down the philosophy of Newton to the level of common minds, and whose sim- ple, unpretending style rises in some passages to the dig- nity of the sublime, purely from the force and magnitude of his thoughts, leans calmly over the rail. The good zealous Whig had proposed to the magistrates his well- laid scheme for fortifying and defending the city, and had exerted himself in carrying it into effect ; but the neces- sary courage to carry out his measures was lacking on the part of the people, and so he has had just to fall back and rest him on his philosophy. John Home, the author of " Douglas," and one of the first historians of the Rebellion, stands beside him. He, too, though a mere youth at the time, had bestirred himself vigorously in the same cause, and is now evidently bearing the reverse of his party as he best can. But the figure behind them, one of the most masterly in the picture, is instinct with a sterner spirit. Had there been five hundred such men in the city to back the philosopher, the Highlanders, with all their valor, would have been kept outside the wall. He stands at the stair-head, scowling at the enemy and all their array of spears and battleaxes, — one of the followers of Richard Cameron, girt with a buff belt, from which his Andrea Ferrara hangs suspended, and bearing a heavy Bible. De- pend on it, had that man fought at Preston, he would 860 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC. have stood beside the good and gallant Colonel Gardiner unmoved in the midst of rout and panic, and have left, like him, a gashed and mangled corpse to mark where the tide of the battle had turned. Such is a meagre out- line of Duncan's exquisite picture. It is said to have cost the almost continuous labor of two years ; and the antici- pated expense of multiplying it by the graver — and never was there a picture more worthy — is calculated at about three thousand pounds. The pictorial history of Scotland promises to excel all its other histories, and it does not contain a more brilliant page than that contributed by Duncan. Gallant Highlanders, men of warm hearts and tender feelings, and spirits that kindle as the danger comes, the phantom of mistaken loyalty deludes you no longer ; you have closed with a better faith; and, while the strength of the character still remains unbroken, all its fierceness is gone. I have lived amid the quiet solitude of your hills, and, as I have passed your cottages at the close of evening, have heard the voice of psalms from within. I have sat with you at the humble board, to share your proffered hospitality, — the hospitality of willing hearts, that thought not of the scanty store whence the supply was derived. I have marked your untaught courtesy, ever ready to yield to the stranger, and have laid me down in secui-ity at night amid your hamlets, with only the latch on the door. I have seen you pouring forth your thousands from brown distant moors and narrow glens, to listen with devout attention to the words of life from the lips of your much- loved pastors, and to worship God among your mountains in the open air. I know, too, the might that slumbers amid your gentleness of nature ; and that, when the day of battle comes, " and level for the charge your arms are laid," desperate indeed must that enemy be, and much in love with death, that awaits the onset. A day may yet arrive, should Socialism and Chartism, with their coward oitir ir,nnAat.a sop.ifit.v in i.he nlains. when we mav look ^I'li^il t_ir CKITICISM FOR THE UNINITIATED. 361 to your hills for succor ; but that day has not yet come. Tou tell us that, though little able to assist the church with the pen or on the platform in her present troubles, your hearts are all with us ; and that, should the worst come to the worst, we may reckon on the Highlanders of Scotland as thirty thousand fighting men. And we know what sort of fighting men you are, and what sort of hearts you bear. But reserve your strength, brave conillrj'men, for another day and a different quarrel. Should the church which you love fall prostrate before her adversaries, and wickedness rush unchecked over the land to trample and destroy, your swords may be required, not to protect her fiiends from her enemies, but to protect both her friends and her enemies too. SIXTH AETICXE. Immediately below one of Wilkie's admirable pictures, — " The Spanish Posado," — there is a painting, not par- ticularly showy, and which might possibly enough come to be overlooked among productions of less merit and more glitter, but which is at once so simple, unaffected, and true to nature, that it bears the formidable neighborhood won- derfully well. It is the work of a young and rising artist, Tavernor Knott, — a gentleman who, at the age of twenty- two, has learned to compress a large amount of just thought and fine feeling within a few square feet of canvas, and who, I am convinced, will be better known to his country- folks in the future than he is at present. I do not know whether his subject might not have prejudiced me in his favor, — "A Scotch Family Emigrating ; " but I have cer- tainly derived much pleasure from an attentive perusal of his picture, and it has served to recall to my recollection a good many similar scenes from real life, of a half-pleasing, half-melancholy character. I have never yet seen a party 31 862 LITBRAET AND SCIENTIFIC. of emigrants quitting their country forever, half-broken- hearted, as they almost always are, without forgetting all my political economy, and sympathizing with them in their regret. Hazlitt says, very truly though somewhat quaintly, that when men compassionate themselves, other men com- passionate them too. Wp admire the fortitude of the stoic, but we never pity his sufferings. But a kindly, manly Scot, proud of his country, and attached to his friends, and yet compelled by stern necessity to part from both, and parting from them with a swelling heart and wet eyes, — we must pity the poor fellow, and feel sorry that he is leaving us, let population increase as it may. I know of scenes which have taken place in the Highlands of Scot- land which I hope neither Malthus nor M'Culloch could have contemplated with a dry eye ; and I shall instance one of them. All the Highlanders of an inland district in Sutherlandshire wei-e ejected from their homes by the late Duke a good many years ago, to make way for a few sheep- farmers. The poor people, a moral and religious race, bound to their rugged hills with a strength of attachment hardly equalled in any other country, could not be made to believe the summonses of removal real. Their fathers had lived and died a,mong these very hills for thousands of years. They had spent their blood, and had laid down their lives of old, for the good Earls of Sutherland. Nay, when their Countess, in her maiden years, had expressed a wish to raise a regiment among them for the service of the country, a regiment had risen at the bidding of their chief's daughter, and had marched off to the war. Every man among them brought his Bible with him, and the enemy never bore them down in the charge. And now could it be possible that they were to be forced out of their own country 1 They at first thought of resistance ; and, had they carried the thought into action, it would have af- forded perilous employment to a thousand armed men to have ejected every eight hundred of them; but they had read their New Testaments, and they knew that the Duke. CRITICISM FOR THE UNINITIATED. 363 had become proprietor of the soil ; and so the design dropped. Shall we write it ? — some of their houses were actually fired over their heads, and yet there was no blood- shed! Convinced at length that no other alternative remained for them, they gathered in a body in the church- yard of the district to take leave of their country for ever, and of the dust of their fathers last. And there, seated among the graves, men and women, the old and the young, with one accord, and under the influence of one feeling, ■ they all " lifted up their voices and wept." This tract of the Highlands is now inhabited by sheep. Mr. Knott's picture represents rather a Lowland than a Highland scene. There is a humble cottage, half over- shadowed by trees, in the foreground, surrounded by a level country. The sea spreads beyond. We see the ship in the distance which is to bear away the emigrants ; and the loaded wagon in the middle ground is evidently con- veying their effects to the shore. The group stands in front of the cottage. There are a few supplementary fig- ures introduced into the scene, partly for the sakp of height- ening the effect by the force of contrast, — for they have no direct interest in it, — and partly to bring out its minor details; for, though little moVed by it, they are yet all employed in it. One, an elderly man, with spectacles on, is painfully scrawling out a direction-card for a box ; there is a rough, thick-set, sun-burned sailor from the beach, who is leaning over him, evidently criticising the penmanship^ but satisfied, apparently, that it may just pass; and a tall stripling stands directly in front, prepared with a coil of cord to bear the box away. In an opposite corner there is a boy of the family parting with a favorite dog, which he is handing over, bound in a string, to a companion. The poor little fellow is much dejected, and not at all likely soon to forget Scotland, nor his dog either. The stroke is a fine one; but there is a still finer stroke in the same part of the group. A barefooted, simple-looking lassie, of about fifteen, who has been living with the family, taking 364 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC!. care of the child, a sweet, chubby thing, is kissing her charge, not dry-eyed, and bidding it farewell ; and baby, though it does not exactly know what is the matter, is quite disposed to return the caress. A vigorous man, in the prime of early manhood, — the father of the boy and the infant, and of two little girls in the foreground, — has turned round in a half-absent mood to the shut door. He has been bearing up, with apparent fortitude, for the sake of the others, and under a high sense of what constitutes the firm and the manly in char- acter. The present, however, is a moment of partial for- getfulness ; the assumed firmness is laid down, and his thoughts are hovering in sadness, as he looks back on his humble dwelling, between the enjoyments of the past and the uncertainties of the future. His wife, a woman of great beauty, — not merely that of feature and complexion, which may exist wholly "disjoined from all that we most value in the sex, but that of expression and character also, -^ is leaning on the arm of her father-in-law, a venerable old man. Unlike her husband, she has had no part to act on the occasion, nor has she simulated the fortitude or the indLfference which she does not possess nor feel. . She is drowned in tears. The sweet little girl who holds on by her gown, and the girl beside grandpapa, are both too young to participate in the general regret ; and yet they, too, have an air of absence and nnhappiness about them, caught, as it were, by sympathy from the others. The old man, the patriarch of the family, is one of the most striking figures in the picture. Wilkie himself has rarely produced anything more characteristically Scotch. There is a deep seriousness impressed on the somewhat rugged features, blent with a dash of sadness ; for he, too, feels that he is leaving his home and the country of his fathers. But he has thought of another and more certain home ; and the consolations which he is pressing on his daughter-ia-law, whose hand he is afiectionately grasping in his own, are evidently of the highest character. Venerable old man ! CRITICISM FOR THE UNINITIATED. 365 Divested of hopes and beliefs such as yours, the aged emi- graut would be of all men the most unhappy. It has been well said by Goldsmith, that " a mind long habituated to a certain set of 'objects insensibly becomes fond of seeing them, visits them from habit, and parts from them with reluctance ; " and it is chiefly from such objects that age derives its pleasures. It cannot give to novelty the feelings appropriated by recollection ; and must fare ill, therefore, in a foreign land, in the midst of what is strange, and what, from its very nature, cannot become otherwise, — in the midst, too, of hardships and privation. The old man in such circumstances must be either like the cottar of Burns, — the " priest-like father " of the family, — or he must be by much the unhappiest member of it. Such is an imperfect description of Mr. Knott's picture, as I have been enabled to read it. It has no doubt its faults, like every other ; but these seem mostly to be mere faults of execution, from which no young artist can be wholly free, whatever his genius, — not :&ults of concep- tion. The foliage of the trees which half-embosom the cottage does not repose in the softened sunshine with per- haps all the grace of nature, and the tiled cottage does not strike as characteristically Scottish. A roof of heath, or fern, or straw, with here and there a patch of stone-crop, and here and there a tufb of grass or a cluster of house- leek, would better repay the painter's study. But these are very minute matters ; and he would be a connoisseur worth looking at who would place such things in the bal- ance against the large amount of thought and feeling dis- played in the group. The painter who can impart character to men and women, both national and individual, can well afford to leave a tree or a cottage without much to dis- tinguish them, and be a superior painter still. Of all the figures of the piece, the old man pleases me the best, though the female, his daughter-in-law, is also very exquisite. I have perused with deep interest the let- ters of an aged emigrant, who quitted the north of Scot 31* 366 LITBRARr AND SCIENTIFIC. land for Upper Canada about eight years ago. He was one of the excellent though now fast diminishing body known in Ross-shire and the neighboring districts by the name of the men ; and, though marked perhaps by a few eccentricities, he was by no means a low specimen of the class. He settled among some of the outer townships, — I forget which, — where there were no ministers and no churches ; and he saw for the first time, in his seventieth year, the Sabbath rise over the wild and trackless woods of America, all unmarked from the other days of the week. But John Clark had brought his Bible with him, and no superficial knowledge of its contents ; and, regularly as the day came round, be assembled his family, like one of the Pilgrim fathers of old, for the purpose of religious worship, and to press upon them the importance of religious truth. Some of the neighbors learned to drop in. His fervent prayers, and his homely but forcible expositions, full of masculine thought, had the true popular germ in them ; and John's log cottage became the meetinghouse of the thinly-peopled district ; until at length the accumu- lating infirmities of a period of life greatly advanced in- terfered with his self-imposed duties, and set him aside. He is still alive, however, at least he was so a few months ago ; and at that time, in the midst of gi-eat bodily de- bility, far removed from all his Christian friends of the same stamp or standing with himself, and with the near prospect of laying down his worn-out frame, to mingle with the soil in some gloomy recess of the wild forest, thousands of miles from the lonely Highland churchyard where the remains of his fathers and of some of his children are laid, with those of the wife of his youth, John was yet more than resigned ; lie was rejoicing, — will our readers guess for what? He had just heard of the revival at Kilsyth, and of the attitude assumed by the Church of Scotland in behalf of the rights of the Christian people and of the Headship of her Divine Master. What, I CRITICISM FOR THE UNINITIATED. 367 marvel, does infidelity propose giving to such men in exchange for their religion ? lam impressed by the absolute necessity which exists for emigration. Circumstances have settled the point. Whatever the sacrifice of feeling, it has ceased to be an open question whether or no our countrymen should leave us for other fields of exertion. The population of the country is already redundant in a degree which occasions much distress among the working classes, and much consequent bad feeling ; for the true cause of the evil is misunderstood ; and this already redundant population is increasing at the portentous rate of nearly a thousand per day. Besides, it is according to the design of Providence that the human race should spread forth as they multiply. The Scotch are only doing for Canada and the insular regions of the far south what the Celtsa and the Scanditia- vians did for Scotland three thousand years ago ; and is it not well that the process should be so different now from what it was when the Goths and the Vandals oyerwhelmed the Roman empire? It is civilization and the arts that are advancing on the regions of barbarism, and sending out their pickets and their advanced guards far into the waste, — not barbarism that is bursting in, as of old, to bear down civilization and the arts. But we can at once recognize these principles, — principles, indeed, too obvious not to be recognized, — and yet regret cases of what we may term wholesome emigration none the less. Nothing can be more healthy than the drain on a redundant town or country population : it is blood-letting to an apoplectic patient ; and the emigrating thousands are as little missed as water withdrawn from the ocean. " The crowds close in, and all's forgotten." Very different is the case, how- ever, when the population of upland districts have been torn up root and branch, and uninhabited wildernesses formed where a simple-hearted but surely noble race lived contented in times of quiet, and constituted the strength of their country in the day of war. There have been S68 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC. cottages on many a hillside emptied of their iilhabitants ■within the last twenty years, which shall never again be gladdened by the domestic circle ; and the heath is creep- ing slowly in lonely dells and sweeping acclivities, over many a narrow range of meadow, and many a little field whose flattened and sinking furrows shall never again yield to the plough. The contemplation of such scenes amid the depopulated solitudes o.f the Highlands has always inclined me to sadness, especially in the inland districts which, as they nad no dependence on the fluctuations of trade, were little exposed to those extreme depressions which have borne so heavily of late years on the inhabi- tants of the islands and the sea-coasts, and in which, I know from experience, much happiness has been enjoyed, and an intense love of country cherished. Rather more than twelve years ago I was led into the central Highlands of the north. I first lieft behind me the comparatively level fields of the low country, with their hedgerows and intervening belts of planting, and then the upper skirting of forest, which waved mile after mile on the lower declivities of the hills. I next passed on a half- obliterated path along the upper ridges, rising and de- scending alternately, — now shut out from the widening landscape in some brown moory hollow, roughened with huge fragments of rock, now on a swelling eminence that, overtopping the previously surmounted height, blended in one vast prospect the region of moor, of forest, and of corn, and, far beyond, the widely extended sea. The last eminence was at length surmounted, and a broad tract of table-land, slightly depressed toward the middle, bounded on the opposite side by low craggy hills, with here and there an inky pool and here and there a gloomy morass, spread out for miles before me in black and unvaried ster- ility. I toiled drearily across, and reached the opposite boundary of hill. It overlooked a deep pastoral valley of considerable extent. A wild Highland stream, skirted on either bank by a straggling row of alders, went winding CEinciSM FOR THE UNINITIATED. 369 through the midst. On either side there were patches of vivid green, encircled hy the brown heath, like islands by the ocean, which had once been fun-owed by the plough. Ab I advanced I saw the ruins of deserted cottages. All was solitary and desolate. Roof-trees were decaying within mouldering walls. A rank vegetation had covered the si- lent floors, and was waving over hearths the fires of which had been forever extinguished. A solitary lapwing was screaming over the ruins, rising and falling in sadden starts, darting oflf along the ground, now to the right, now to the left, and then turning abruptly round in mid air, and almost brushing me as she passed. She had built her nest within some deserted cottage, and was employing her every instinct to lure me away. A melancholy raven was ■ croaking on a neighboring eminence. There was the faint murmur of the stream, and the low moan of the breeze ; but every sound of man had long passed from the air ; and the bright sunshine seemed to fall idly on the brown slopes and greener levels of this uninhabited and desolate valley. I have rarely been more impressed. I was re- minded of what I had read of eastern armies, whose track may be followed years after their march by ruined villages and a depopulated country, — of scenes, too, described by the prophets, — lands once populous "grown places where no man dwelleth, or son of man passeth through." 370 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC. III. GEOLOGY VERSUS ASTRONOMY. It was remarked early in the last century by a Freneli wit, who was also 'an astronomer, that when the potentates of earth ceased to quarrel about their sublunary territories, they would in all likelihood begin to dispute about the plains and mountain, ranges of the moon. They would give, he said, their own names to its peaks and craters, and fall to blows for the nominal possession of some of its» more prominent eminences or profounder hollows. The prediction, however, seems to be as far from its fulfilment as ever. The present war with Russia shows that the quar- rels of rulers respecting their earthly territories, so far from being at an end, or nearly so, are as serious and irreconcil- able as at any former period ; and hitherto, at least, kings and princes have left all disputes about the nomenclature of the moon's geography to be settled by the moon's ge- ographers. The celestial map-makers have already had their quarrels on the subject. One of -them named the places on the moon's surface after philosophers eminent in all the various departments of mind ; another named them after the terrestrial seas and mountains which they seemed to resemble ; a third, interposing, strove to give them back to the philosophers again, but struck off the former list all philosophers save the astronomical ones ; and now the moon's surface bears, in the maps at least, marks of all the three combatants. It has its Alps and its Apennines and its Caucasus, its Sea of Serenity and its Sea of Storms, its Aristarchus and its Plato, its Tycho and its Coper- nicus. There is, as we may perceive, no danger of a too unbroken peace on earth regarding the condition of the GEOLOGY VERSUS ASTRONOMY. 371 moon, or of any of the other heavenly bodies, even though neither Napoleon nor Nicholas should interfere in the quarrel. In fine, every department of science has its controver- sies ; and if Is well that it should be so. It saves the world from all danger of connivance to deceive it, on the part of scientific men, — a thing which the world is some- what prone to suspect, — and proves, on the whole, the best mode of eliciting truth. There are certain stages, too, in the course of discovery, when controversy becomes inevi- table. "Tempests in the state are commonly greatest," says Bacon, " when things grow to equality, as natural tempests are greatest about the equinoctia." And we find that it is so in science also. When comparatively new •sciences rise, in certain departments specially their own, to assert an equality with old ones, that, when they stood alone, had been extended beyond their just limits, contro- versies almost always result from the new-born equality in the disputed province. In the middle ages, for instance* there existed but one great science, — theology ; and, pressed far beyond its just limits, it impinged on almost every province of physical research and every department of mind. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries — pecu- liarly the ages of maritime discovery — geography rose into importance ; and after a prolonged controversy, which at one time had well-nigh crushed Columbus, it was finally established, in opposition to the findings of St. Augustine and Lactantius, that the world is round, not flat, and that it has antipodes. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centu- ries astronomy became a great and solid science ; and, after a still fiercer controversy than that of the geographers, it asserted a supremacy in its own special walk against popish theologians such as Caccini and Bellarmine, and against Protestants such as Turretine. We have seen a similar controversy carried on in the present century — which has witnessed the rise of geology, just as the fif- teenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries witnessed that 372 UTEKAEY AND SCIENTIFIC. of geography and astronomy, — feetween theologians who were also geologists, such as Chalmers, Sedgwick, and Sumner, and theologians who were wholly ignorant of geology, such as Granville Pen, Eleazor Lord, and Moses Stuart. And, as in astronomy and geography^ the contro- versy may now be regarded as ultimately settled in favor of the new science, within at least the new science's own proper province. There are, however, other controversies than theological ones, wich rise when, according to Bacon, "things grow to equality;" and that equality to which geology has attained with astronomy during the last fifty years may be properly regarded as the real cause of the very interesting controversy carried on at the present time between the author of the " Essay on the Plurality of Worlds," understood to be one of the distinguished or- naments of English science, and our great countryman Sir David Brewster, — a philosopher who, while supreme in his own special walk, is perhaps of all living men the most extensively acquainted with the general domain of physi- cal science. The English writer, though he presses his argument by much too far, may be regarded as representa- tive of the geological side ; Sir David of the astronomical. There are, we have said, certain stages in the course of discovery at which controversy becomes inevitable ; and it seems demonstrative of the fact that the new arguments in which these controversies originate arise much about the same time, without concert or communication, in minds engaged in the same or similar pursuits. Had they not been originated by the man who first made them known, they would have been originated almost contem- poraneously by some one else. Almost all discovery has a similar course. Adams and Le Verrier were engaged at the same time in calculating the irregularities of Uranus, and inferred fi-om them the existence and position of the great planet, actually discovered almost simultaneously, shortly after, by Dr. Galle and Professor Challis ; and it is a known fact that Mr. Lassel and Professor Bond discov- GEOLOGY VERSUS ASTRONOMY. 873 ered on tbe same evening the eighth moon of Saturn, though the Atlantic flowed between them at the time. And we lind a resembling simultaneousness of inference and conclu- sion exemplified by the work which has given occasion to the present controversy. The argument which it ampli- fies and expands, and, as we think, carries by much too far, and into conclusions not legitimate, was first given to the world seven years ere the appearance of this English volume, in the columns of a Scotch newspaper, and full six years in a separate work, published and rather exten- sively circulated both in Britain and America. And in glancing over the first edition of the " Essay on the Plu- rality of Worlds," we had expected — not, perhaps, taking sufficiently into account that simultaneity of fought at certain stages of acquirement to which we refer — that some acknowledgment ought to have been made to the writer who had originated the argument so long before. We ascertain, however, from the second edition of the English work now before us, that its author had framed his argument for himself, independently altogether of the previously-published one. "I have no wish," he says,. " to lay any stress upon the originality of the views pre- sented in the Essay. I now know that, several years ago (in 1849), Hugh Miller, in his ' First Impressions of Eng- land ' (chap, xvii), presented an argument from geology very much of the nature of that which I have employed ; and that the Rev. Mr. Banks, in a little tract published in 1850, urged the very insecure character of the doctrine that the planets and stars are inhabited. These coincidences with my views I did not know till my Essay was not only written but printed. As to myself the views which I have at length committed to paper have long been in my mind." There is an error in the date given here. The argument to which the author of the Essay refers as " much of the nature " of his own was first published, not in 1849, but in October, 1846, when it appeared in the columns of the " Witness " as part of one of the chapters 32 374 LITERARY AND SCIEIITIFIC. of « First Impressions,"— a work which was published in the collected form as a volume early in the following year. Essentially, however, the reference is perfectly satisfactory and, mayhap, not wholly uninteresting, as corroborative of our position, that at certain periods, after a certain amount of fact in some new department has been ac- quired, inferences never drawn before come to be drawn simultaneously by minds cut off by circumstances from all intercourse with each other. The argument, as originally stated in the " Witness," we shall take the liberty to re- peat, slightly abridged, not only from its bearing on one of the most curious controversies of modern times, but as it may also serve to indicate what we deem the just de- gree in which the inferences of astronomers regarding the inhabitability of the planets are to be qualified by the facts of the geologist. " There is a sad oppressiveness in that sense of human littleness which the great truths of astronomy have so direct a tendency to inspire. Man feels himself lost amid the sublime magnitudes of creation, — a mere atom in the midst of infinity ; and trembles lest the scheme of revelation should be found too large a manifestation of the divine care for so tiny an ephemera. Now, I am much mis- taken if the truths of geology have not a direct tendency to restore him to his true place. When engaged some time since in perusing one of the sublimest philosophic poems of modem times, — the ' Astronomical Discourses ' of Dr. Chalmers, — there occurred to me a new argument that might be employed against the infidel objection which the work was expressly written to remove. The infidel points to the planets ; and, reasoning from an analogy which on other than geologic data the Christian cannot challenge, asks whether it be not more probable that each of these is, like our own earth, not only a scene of creation, but also a home of rational, accountable creatures. And then follows the objection, as fully stated by Dr. Chalmers, ' Does not the largeness of that field which astronomy lays open to the view of modern science throw a suspicion over the truth of the gospel his- tory ? .and how shall we reconcile the greatness of that wonderful movement which was made in heaven for the redemption of fallen man with the comparative meanness and obscurity of our species?' GEOLOGY VERSUS ASTRONOMY. 375 . Geology, when the Doctor wrote, was in a state of comparative in- fancy. It has since been largely developed; and we have been introduced, in consequence, to the knowledge of some five or six different creations of which this globe was the successive scene ere the present creation was called into being. At the time the ' Astro- nomical Discourses ' were published, the infidel could base his analogy on his knowledge of but one creation ; whereas we can now base our analogy on the knowledge of at least six creations, the various productions of which we can handle, examine, and compare. And how, it may be asked, does this immense extent of basis affect the objection with which Dr.'Chalmers has grappled so vigorously ? It annihilates it completely. You argue, may not the geologist say to the infidel, that yonder planet, because apparently a scene of crea- tion like our own, is also a home of accountable creatures like our- selves. But the extended analogy furnished by geologic science is full against you. Exactly so might it have been argued regarding the earth during the early creation represented by the Silurian system, and yet the master-existence of that extended period was a crustacean. Exactly so might it have been argued regarding the earth during the term of the creation represented by the Old Red Sandstone ; and yet the master-existence of that scarce less extended period was a fish. During the creation represented by the Carboniferous period, vrith all its rank vegetation and green-reflected light, the master- exbtence was a fish still. During the creation represented by the OoUte, the master-existence was a reptile, a bird, or a marsupial animaL During the creation of the Cretaceous period, there was no further advance. During the creation of the Tertiary formation, the mastei^existence was a mammiferous quadruped. It was not until the creation to which we ourselves belong was called into existence that a rational being, born to anticipate a hereafter, was ushered upon the scene. Suppositions such as yours would have been false in at least five out of six instances ; and if in five out of six consecutive creations there existed no accountable agent, what shadow of reason can there be for holding that a different arrange- ment obtains in five out of six contemporary creations ? Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus may have all their plants and animals, and yet they may be as devoid of rational, accountable creatures, as were the creations of the Silurian, Old Red Sandstone, Carboniferous, Oolitic, Cretaceous, and Tertiary periods. They ttiav be merelv some of the ' manv mansions ' prepared in the 376 UTERART AND SCIENTIFIC, in the Father's own image, to whom this little world forms but the cradle and the nursery. " But the eflfect of this extended geologic basis nlay be neutralized, the infidel may urge, by extending it yfet a .little further. Why, he may ask, since we draw our analogies regarding whatobtains in the other planets from what obtains in our own, — why not conclude that each one of them has also had its geologic eras and revolutions, — its Silurian, Old Red Sandstone, Carboniferous, Oolitic, Creta- ceous, and Tertiary periods ; and that now, contemporary with the creation of which man constitutes the mastei^existence, they have all their Mly-matured creations, headed by rationality ? Why not carry the analogy thus far? Simply, it may be unhesitatingly urged in reply, because to carry it so far would be to carry it beyond the legitimate bounds of analogy ; and because analogy pursued but a single step beyond the limits of its proper province is sure always to land the pursuer in error. Analogy is not identity A saga- ^ cious guide in its own legitimate field, it is utterly blind and senseless in the precincts that lie beyond. It is nicely correct in its generals, perversely erroneous in its particulars ; and no sooner does it quit its proper province — the general for the particular — than there start up around it a multitude of solid objections, sternly to challenge it as a trespasser on grounds not its own. How infer, we may well ask the infidel, — admitting, for the argument's sake, that all the planets come under the law of geologic revolution, —how infer that they have all, or any of them save our own earth, arrived at the stage of stability and ripeness essential to a fiiUy developed creation, with a reasoning creature as its mastei^existence ? Look at the immense mass of Jupiter, and at that mysterious mantle of cloud, barred and streaked in the direction of his irarfe-winds, that forever conceals his face. May not that dense robe of cloud be the ever- ascending steam of a globe that, in consequence of its vast bulk, has not sufficiently cooled down to be a scene of life at all ? Even the analogue of our Silurian creation may not yet have begun in Jupiter. Look, again, at Mercury, where it bathes in a flood of light, en- veloped within the sun's halo, like some forlorn smelter sweltering beside the furnace mouth. A similar state of things may obtain on the surface of that planet, from a different though not less adequate cause. But it is unnecessary to deal further with an analogy so palpably overstrained, and whose aggressive place and position in a province not its own so many unanswerable objections start up to elucidate and fix." GEOLOGY VERSUS ASTRONOMY. 377 Such, virtually, is the argument which has been repro- duced and greatly expanded in the " Essay on the Plurality of Worlds." We think, however, that the ingenious and accomplished author of that work has pressed it too far, and forgotten that, though it introduces into the reason- ings of the astronomer, regarding the existence of rational inhabitants in the planets, the modifying dement of time, it does not affect his general conclusions. It merely shows, from the extended experience of the earth's history which geology furnishes, that these conclusions may not refer to the now of the planetary universe, but to some period in a perhaps very remote future. For the argument of the as- tronomer, in a condensed form, let us draw on Fontenelle, — a man who wrote ere geology had yet any existence as a science. It is thus he makes his philosopher reason with his lady friend the Marchioness, in a general summary: "We cannot pretend to make you see them [the inhab- itants of the planets]; and you cannot insist upon demon- stration here, as you would in a mathematical question ; but you have all the proofs you could desire in our world, — the entire resemblance of the planets with the earth which is inhabited, the impossibility of conceiving any other use for which they were created, the fecundity and magnificence of nature, the certain regards which she seems to have had to the necessities of the inhabitants, as in giv- ing moons to those planets remote from the sun, and more moons still to those yet more remote ; and, what is still very material, there are all things to be said on one side, and nothing on the other. In short, supposing that these inhabitants of the planets really exist, they could not de- clare themselves by more marks, or by marks more sensi- ble." Such is the statement of Fontenelle ; and, though it can be no longer affirmed that nothing can be said on the opposite side, seeing that we have now a very ingenious volume written on the opposite side, by not merely a clever, but also a highly scientific man, it will be found that in 378 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC. ened than weakened. Let us take, for instance, the por- tion of it founded on the existence and distribution of moons. It was known when Fonteuelle wrote his " Con- versations on the Plurality of Worlds," that the earth had one moon, Jupiter four moons, and Saturn five. It is now further known that Saturn has eight moons, and Uranus also eight ; and if only one has yet been detected revolving round Neptune, it must be taken into account that the latter planet is twice further distant from our earth than Saturn, and so dimly discernible that it is still a question whether it possesses a ring or no, — that our earliest acquaintance with it is not yet more than eight years old, — that even Saturn's eighth moon was discov- ered only six years ago, — and that not only not a few of the moons of Neptune, but even some of the moons of Uranus, may be still to find. The general fact still holds good, that in proportion as the larger planets most distant from the sun require, in consequence, moons to light them, the necessary moons they have got; just as on our own earth the animals who live most distant from the sun, and require, in consequence, thicker protective coverings to keep them warm, have got these necessary protective cov- erings, whether of fatty matter or of fur. But the argu- ment derivable from the light and heat of the sun himself seems scarce less strong. Let us avail ourselves of it, as condensed by Sir David Brewster, from Sir Isaac Newton's first letter to Dr. Bentley. " He [Sir Isaac] thought it inexplicable by natural causes, and to be ascribed to the counsel and contrivance of a voluntary agent, that the matter [of which the solar system is formed] should divide itself into two sorts, part of it composing a shining body like the sun, and part an opaque body like the planets. Had a natural and blind cause, without contrivance and design, placed the earth in the centre of the moon's orbit, and Jupiter in the centre of his system of satellites, and the sun in the centre of the planetary system, the sun would have been a body like Jupiter, and the earth that GEOI.OaT VERSUS ASTRONOMY. 379 is, without light and heat; and, consequently, he [Sir Isaac] knew no reason why there is only one body qual- ified to give light and heat to all the rest, but because the Author of the system thought it convenient, and because one was sufficient to warm and enlighten all the rest." " To warm and enlighten all the rest ! " Newton recog- nizes the hand of the Divine Designer in that peculiar collocation of matter through which the lamp and furnace of the system is placed in its centre, and the opaque objects to be warmed and heated arranged at certain dis- tances around it. But why the application of light and heat to masses of dead matter ? Light and heat, in a lesser or greater degree, are necessary to the existence of all organisms, plant and animal, but not to the exist- ence of matter not organized. A lamp is necessary in a railway carriage that travels by night, if there be passen- gers within, but not in the least necessary to the carriage itself, if there be only the empty seats to shine upon. And i^ of all the planets that not only revolve round the central lamp and furnace, but have also special lamps of their own, the earth be the only inhabited one, not only is the waste most enormous, but the argument of design, so prop foundly deduced by Sir Isaac, must be pronounced to be of no force in more than thirty cases for one, that is, in the cases of all the supposed uninhabited planets in which there exists nothing capable of being benefited by being either lighted or warmed. Or, to avail ourselves of Sir David's happy illustration, the Creator of a solar system with many uninhabited planets, and only a single inhabited one, would resemble some " inighty autocrat who should establish a railway round the coasts of Europe and Asia, and place upon it an enormous train of first-class carriages, impelled year after year by tremendous steam-power, while there was a philosopher and a culprit in a humble van, attended by hundreds of unoccupied carriages and empty trucks." And, of course, were the unoccupied carriages 380 LITERART AND SCIENTIFIC. the passengers which they had not, and were these lamps to be fewer or more numerous in each case in meet pro- portion with the degree of darkness to be encountered, and as the necessities of actual passengers would require, the puzzle involved in the why and wherefore of the whole concern would be still increased. The old argument for the inhabitancy of the planets, regarded as an argument of ultimate design, still remains unaffected by the discov- eries of the geologist. But, on the other hand, let not the modifying influence of these discoveries be denied. ' Such is their effect on the argument, that, though we may receive it in full as truly solid, we may yet, in perfect consistency with its conclu- sions, deem it a moot point whether there be at tJie present time a single inhabited world in the system save our own. We cannot express, either by figures or by algebraic signs, save by the signs that express unknown quantity, the ge- ologic periods. We only know that they were of enormous extent. Let us, however, for the argument's sake, repre- sent the period during which man has been upon earth by the sum 5000, the periods during which the successive plant-and-animal-bearing systems of the geologist were in being by the sum 1,000,000, and the earlier death periods, during which the gneiss, the older quartz rock, the mica schist, and the non-fossiliferous clay slate were formed, by the sum 500,000 ; and let us then suppose that some intel- lectual being, wise as a Newton, and reasoning on exactly his principles and those of Sir David Brewster, had existed during all these terms, converted into years, at a distance from the earth as great as that which separates the earth from the planets Mars or Venus ; further, lot us suppose that once in every five thousand years for the first half- million, the query had been propounded to him by the Creator, as the Creator questioned Job of old, — " Intel- lectual being, is yonder planet inhabited, or no ? " and that during the million of years that followed, the query should be repeated after the same intervals in the modified form. GEOLOGY VERSUS ASTRONOMY. 881 — "Is yonder planet inhabited by rational, accountable creatures, or no ? " Now, nothing can be more clear than that, reasoning on Sir Isaac's and Sir David's premises, the reply would be given in- each instance in the affirma- tive. It would be seen by the reasoning creature that the distant earth-planet was lighted up and heated by the great central furnace and lamp, the sun ; that it had its clouds, and therefore its atmosphere ; that it had its grate- ful interchange of day and night, of summer and winter, autumn and spring ; and, further, that it had its attendant moon, to stir up its seas with purifying tides, and to light up its nights. And yet most probable it is that the first hundred answers to the query — those which related to the existence of mere animal being — would have been false ones ; and most certain it is that the next two hun- dred answers to the query — those which related to the existence of natural life — would be false also. Not until after the lapse of a million and a half of years, when the question would come to be put for the three hundred and first time, would it elicit the true response. And let us remember that whatever was may be ; and that what were the first states of our own planet may be the present states of the various planets that revolve with it round the central furnace and lamp. Here again we cannot cast our argument into an exact geometrical or arithmetical shape. We cannot even say, founding on the assumption of pro- portionate periods already given, that as our earth was for three hundred periods of five thousand years each without rational inhabitants, and possessed of such an inhabitant during only the three hundred and first period of that length, so it is probable that of three hundred and one contemporary planets only one is a scene of rational ex- istence, and the others either not inhabited at all, or in- habited by but sentient iiTationality. We cannot give the argument any such exact form, seeing that an unreckoned but possible, nay, probable element, comes in to destroy 382 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC. hood, have been ripening as certainly as our own, and the period of rational inhabitancy may have arrived in not a few of them. Quite as perilous, however, would it be to argue from the particular analogy furnished by the history of the earth, that all, or even the greater part of them, had so ripened. Why, even the fruit of one season, whether apples or apricots, does not all ripen at the same time on the same tree ; far less do the fruits of different trees ripen at the same time. And we are suflSciently acquainted with the planets to know that, with certain general resem- blances, they are very different fruit indeed from our own earth. Even supposing Jupiter, for instance, to be in every respect save size a second earth (which, by the way, demonstrably he is not), he would take, on the soberest calculations of the geologist, many hundred times more time to ripen than our small planet. And so may it be predicted of Saturn and Uranus, and Neptune also, and most probably, from the different circumstances in which they are placed, of the smaller planets Mercury and Venus. But while this geological question, in relation to the pres- ent time of ripe or unripe, must be now brought in to qualify the reasonings of the astronomer, let us not forget that these reasonings have, with reference to ultimate re- sults, a value as positive as ever. From the crustaceous eyes of many facets that existed during the times of the Silurian period, and the ichthyic eyes of but one facet or capsule that existed during the times of the Old Red Sand- stone, the geologist infers that during these periods there existed light; while the astronomer, taking up the con- verse of the argument, infers that where there is light (joined, of course, to the other necessary conditions of life, such as planetary matter existing in the twofold form of solid nucleus and surrounding atmosphere) there must be eyes, — eyes, therefore light, solar or 'lunar, etc., — light, solar or lunar, therefore eyes. And just as the geologic argument is noways invalidated by the fact that there are animals in the foetal state famished with eyes darkly GEOLOGY VERSUS ASTRONOMY. 383 veiled in the womb, for which light does not yet exist, it iu no degree invalidates the astronomical argument that there have been, and most probably now axe,foet Norway and its Glaciers visited in 1851, etc. By James D. Forbes, D.C.L., F.K.S., Sec. E.S., Ed., etc. etc., and Professor of Natural Philosopliy in tlie University of Edinburgli. NORWAY AND ITS GLACIERS. 405 snow-fields and its great glaciers, that are in the present day casting up their moraines, lateral and ti'ansverse, and grooving and rounding the rocks beneath, just as our own country had them in some remote and dateless age, ere, mayhap, the introduction of man upon our planet. There are other respects in which it is representative rather of the past than of the present of Scotland. It still retains its original forests, and presents, over wide areas, an ap- pearance similar to that which was presented by the more mountainous parts of our own country ere the formation of our great peat-mosses. The range of the Grampians, when first seen by Agricola, must have very much resem- bled in its woody covering the southern Highlands of Norway at the present day. Professor Forbes, on nearing the Norwegian coast, was struck, on first catching sight of the land, by the striking resemblance which it bore to some of the gneiss tracts of the mainland of Scotland and the Hebrides. The gneiss islands of Tyree and Coll first occurred to his mind ; and " doubtless," he says, " tl\,e same causes have produced this similarity of character, acting in like circumstances. Both belong to that great gneiss formation so prevalent in Norway, and also in Scotland, with which few rooks can compare in their resistance to atmospheric action and mechanical force. In both cases they have been subjected for ages to the action of the most tremendous seas which wash any part of Europe ; and ' they have probably been abraded by mechanical forces of another kind, which have given the rounded outlines to even their higher hills." As, however, the Professor ap- proached the shore, he became sensible of a grand distinc- tion between the mountain scenery of Norway and the Scotch Hebrides. It was the Scotland of eighteen hun- dred years ago on which he was looking. " On closer observation," he says, " I perceived that the low, rounded,' and rocky hills which I had at first believed to be bare were almost everywhere covered, or at least dotted ovcf, with woods of pine, which, descending almost to the shore, 406 LITERARY AND SCIKNTIPIC. gave a peculiarity of character to the scenery, at the same time that it afforded a scale by which to estimate its mag- nitudie." The low hills which had at first rather disap- pointed him were now, he found, a full thousand feet in height. There are several respects in which Norway may be re- garded as a country still in its green youth. These prime- val forests are of themselves demonstrative of the fact. Humboldt well remarks, that " an early civilization of the ' human race sets bounds to the increase of forests ; ". for " nations," he says, " in their change-loving spirit, gradu- ally destroy the decorations which rejoice our eye in the jiorth, and which, more than the records of history, attest the youthfulness of our civilization." There are other evi- dences that at least the northern portions of both Norway and Sweden were unappropriated by man during the earlier ages of British and Continental history. It is a curious fact, adverted to by Mr. Robert Chambers in his " Tracings of the North of EuropCj" that in the great Museum of Antiquities at Copenhagen, the relics of the stone period have been furnished by only Denmark and the southern provinces of Sweden and Norway. They are not to be found in the far provinces of the north ; and the only district beyond the Baltic in which they occur in the ordinary proportions of the south and middle portions of Europe, is the low;-lying, comparatively temperate prov- ince of Scania. It is doubtless an advantage, in some respects, at least for a wild and mountainous country to be still in its youth. Large tracts of the more ancient Scottish Highlands lie sunk in the hopeless sterility of old age. In many of their so-called foi'ests, that are forests without a living tree, — such as the Moin in Sutherland- shire, or that tract of desert waste which spreads out around Kingshouse in Argyleshire, — the traveller sees, in the sections opened by the winter torrents, two periods of death represented, with a comparatively brief period of life intervening between. There is first, reckoning from NORWAY AND ITS QLAOIERS. 407 the rock npwai'd, a stratum of gray angular gravel, formed of the barren primary rocks, and identical with the angu- lar gravels still in the course of forming under the attrition of the glaciers of Norway and the Alps. And it speaks of the ice-period of death,, when the country had its per- manent snow-fields and its great glaciers. Next in order immediately over the dead gravel, there occurs usually a thin stratum of mossy soil, bearing its tier of buried stumps — the representatives of an age of vegetable life when the Highlands were what Norway is now, — a scene of wide- spreading forests. And then over all, to the depth often of six or eight feet, we find, as representative of a second and permanent period of death, a cold, spongy, ungenial peat-moss, in which nothing of value to man finds root, save, perhaps, a few scattered spikes of deer-grass, that, springing early, furnish the flocks of the shepherd with a week or two's provision, just as the summer begins. But for every agricultural purpose these mossy wastes are in their effete and sterile old age, and the yearly famines show how the poor settlers upon them fare. Man failed to appropriate them during their cheerful season of youth and life ; and over wide tracts they are dead — past resuscitation now. In Norway, with all its bleakness, the chances in favor of the people are better. The Norwegians have escaped the curse of clanship ; and the country, still in the vigor of youth, is parcelled out among many proprietors, who till the lands which they inherit. Even in its wild animals, Norway is a larger Scotland, post-dated some ten or fifteen centuries. It has the identical beaver, bear, and wolf still living in its forests, whose remains are occasionally found in our mosses and marl-pits. In another respect,' however, Norway resembles our country at a greatly earlier time than that of the primeval forests. Its long line of western coast, with its many islands and long-withdrawing fiords, presents everywhere the appearance of a land not yet fairly arisen out of the sea. Thq islands are simply the tops of great mountains. 408 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC. that at once sink sheer into deep water; and the fiords, great glens, like Glen Nevis and Glencoe, that have not yet raised themselves out of the sea. One may voyage for many miles along this bold coast without finding a bit of shore on which to land ; and such must have been very much the appearance of our "Western Highlands in the old ice-ages, when the sea stood from five hundred to a thou- sand feet higher along our steep hillsides than it does now, or rather the land sat from five hundred to a thousand feet lower. Both Professor Forbes and Mr. Chambers refer to the great freshness of the raised terraces which stretch at various heights along the coast, as if to show where the surf had beat during prolonged intervals in the course of upheaval; and the latter gentleman seems to have been particularly struck by the freshness of the- sea-shells that occur at great heights, and by their identity with those which now live in the neighboring seas. Professor Keilhau showed Mr. Chambers serpulae on a rock-face, scarce a mile from the busy city of Christiania, still firmly adhering to the spot on which the creatures that inhabited them had lived and died. And yet that rock is now one hun- dred and eighty-six feet over the level of the sea. The great abundance and freshness of the shells found on some of the raised beaches of the country is of itself an object of wonder. " Uddwalla," says Mr. Chambers, in his " Trac- ings," " is a name of no small interest in science, because of a great bed of ancient shells found near it. The effect was novel and startling, when, on the hill-face o'erlooking the £ord, and at the height of two hundred feet above its waters, I found something like a gi'oup of gravel-pits, but containing, instead of gravel, nothing but shells I It is a nook among the hills, with a surface which had originally been fliat in the line of the fiord, though sloping forward toward it. We can see that the whole space is filled to a great depth with the exuviae of marine molluscs, cockles, mussels, whelks, etc., — all of them species existing at this time in the Baltic, — with only a thin covering of vegetable NORWAY AND ITS QLACIEES. 409 mould on the surface. I feel sure that some of these ex- cavations are twenty feet deep ; yet that is not the whole thickness of the shell-bed." In the fact of the identity of these shells with those that still live in the neighboring sea, we have an evidence of the comparative recentness of the upheaval ■ of the land. In our own country, it is only those shells that lie embedded in the terrace which underlies the old coast-line that are identical, in at least the group, with the existing ones of the littoral and lamin- arian zones beyond. The higher-lying shells, not yet ex- tinct, which occur in Britain at various heights, from fifty to fourteen hundred feet over the present sea-line, are, as a group, sub-arctic, and belong to the ice-age. In one important circumstance, however, Norway and our own country must have had an exactly similar history. In both, the climate has been greatly more mild since at least the historic ages began than it was in an earlier time. When Scotland had its glaciers and snow wastes, Norway seems to have been enveloped in ice ; whereas its climate is now one of the finest in the world for the same lines of latitude. That great gulf stream which casts so liberally on the northern shores of Europe the tepid water of the tropics, is no doubt one of the main causes of this superi- ority in the climate of both Norway and our own country over all other countries in the same parallels. "It has been calculated," says Professor Forbes, "that the heat thrown into the Atlantic Ocean by the gulf-stream in a winter's day would suffice to raise the temperature of the part of the atmosphere which rests upon France and Great Britain from the freezing point to summer heat." And such are the eflFects on the distant coast of Norway, that, under the Arctic circle, or at least the sea-coast, the mercury rarely sinks beneath zero. The absence of the great gult stream would of course leave both countries to the olimatal conditions proper to their position; it would insure to Scotland the severe and wintry climate of Labrador, and to Norway the still severer climate of northern Greenland. 35 410 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC. Nor, as has been shown of late by Professor Hopkins, would it require a very considerable depression of the cen- tral parts of North America to rob northern Europe of the signal advantages of the gulf-stream. A greatly less considerable sinking of what is now the vast valley of the Mississippi, atfd of the lake distiiot beyond, than that of which we have the evidence in our own country, would divert its waters into Hudson's Bay and the arctic seas be- yond ; and both Great Britain and Norway would be left to the severe climatal conditions of their latitudinal position on the globe. Nor is it in the least improbable that such, during the glacial ages, was the actual state of things. North America, as certainly as our own country, gives evidence of extensive submei'gence during the period of the existing plants and shells. We must add, that Professor Forbes's volume is remark- ably well written, and not less rich in the picturesque and the poetic than in the severely scientific. There has been a mighty improvement in this respect in what may be termed the pure literature of science during the last cen- tury ; and at the present time some of the severest thinkers of the age take their place also among its best writers. Humboldt, the late Arago, Sir David Brewster, and Sir John Herschel, far excel, in the purely artistic department of authorship, most of our mere litterateurs. We have exhausted our space ; but, referring our reader to Professor Forbes's interesting volume for his more scientific facts and observations, we must be permitted to show by the follow- ing extract how graphically he describes : — " We are at the head of the Narsedal, one of those singular clefts common in Norway, bounded on either side by cliffs usually perpen- dicular, to a height of perhaps fifl;een hundred or even two thousand feet; the bottom flat and alluvial, and terminating abruptly at the head of a steep but not precipitous slope. Down the slope the road is conducted by a series of zigzags, or rather coils, in a masterly manner, through a vertical height of eight hundred feet, — a very striking waterfall rushing down on either hand, and rendering tha NORWAY AND ITS GLACIERS. 411 ■view in the opposite direction wonderfully grand. It Is generally agreed that no more genuine specimen exists of Norwegian scenery than the Narsedal. ^ From the foot of the descent to Gudvangen, on the banks of the Narae-fiord, the road is nearly level, the whole descent on several miles being little more than three hundred feet. The mountains, however, preserve all their absolute elevation on either side, so that the ravine, though not quite so narrow, is deeper. The masses of rock on the right rise to five thousand or six thousand feet, and a thread of water forming the Keel-foss de- scends a precipice estimated at two thousand feet. The arrival at Gudvangen takes one by surprise. The walls of the ravine are un- interrupted ; only the alluvial flat gives place to the unruffled and nearly fresh waters of this arm of the sea, which reaches the door of the inn. After dining, and procuring a boat and three excellent rowers, we proceeded to the navigation of the extensive Sogne-fiord, of which the Narse-fiord, on which we now were, is one of the many intricate ramifications. The weather, which had fortunately cleared up for a time, was now again menacing, and a slight rain had set in when we embarked. The clouds continued to descend, and settled at length on the summits of the unscalable precipice which for many miles bound this most desolate and even terrific scene. I do not know what accidental circumstances may have contributed to the impression, but I have seldom felt the sense of solitude and isola- tion so overwhelming. My companion had fallen into a deep sleep ; the air was still damp and calm ; the oars plashed with a slow mea- sure into the deep, blank, fathomless abyss of water below, which was bounded on either side by absolute walls of rock, without, in general, the smallest slope of debris at the foot, or space enough anywhere for a goat to, stand, and whose tops, high as they indeed are, seemed higher by being lost in clouds,- which formed, as it were, a level roof over us, corresponding to the watery floor beneath. Thus shut in above, below, and on either hand, we rowed on amidst the increasing gloom and thickening rain, till it was a relief when we entered on the wider though still gloomy Aurlands-fiord." 412 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC. VII. THE AMENITIES OF LITERATURE. The love of literature amounts, with those who enter- tain it most strongly, to an engrossing passion ; and there are few men of cultivated qiinds, however much engaged with other pursuits, who do not derive from it a sensible pleasure. Even when politics ran highest, and first-class periodicals, such as the "Edinburgh Review" and the " Quarterly," were toiling in the front of their respective parties, none but the most zealous partisans could deem their literary articles second in interest to their political ones ; and to the great bulk of their readers, however sin- cere as Whigs or hearty as Tories, the literary ones always took the first place. They were read with avidity imme- diately on the delivery of the numbers which contained them, while the more serious disquisitions had to wait. Literature, in fine, was the sweetened pabulum in which the political principle of these works was conveyed to the public ; and had the pabulum been less palatable in itself, or less generally suited to the public taste, the medicine would have failed to take. It has the advantage, too, of being so general a pebulum, that men of all parties and professions, if of equal acquirement and cultivation, take an equal interest in it. It is the most catholic of predileC' tions, and neutralizes, more than any other, the bias of caste, church, and party. The Protestant forgets, in 'hit admiration of their writings, that Pope aed Dryden wert Papists ; the High Churchman luxuriates over Milton ; oldi Samuel Johnson is admired by the Lib«iral and the Scot ; and the Tory forgets that Addison wa«} a Whig. In this, as in other respects, a love of literature is one of the hu- THE AMENITIES OF LITERATURE. 413 manizing principles, and in ages of controversy and con- tention its tendencies are towards union. It gives to men who differ in other matters a common ground on which they can meet and agree, and has led to many friendships and acts of forbearance and good-will between men who, had they been devoid of it, would have been bitter antag- onists and personal enemies. There have been mutual respect and admiration from this cause between partisans on the opposite sides of very important questions. Swift and Addison still called each other friend, at a time when the point at issue between their respective septs was vir- tually the Protestant Succession ; and Scott and Jeffrey were on fair terms when Whigs and Tories were engaged in a death-grapple, with the Reform Bill looming in the distance. Doubtless one of the causes of the often-re- marked circumstance that while fifth and sixth rate parti- sans are almost always bitter in the feelings with which they regard their opponents, and ungenerous towards them in their resentments, the leaders of parties are compara- tively tolerant and humane, may be traced in part to a community of tastes and sentiments in this important de- partment, and in part to that superior tone of thought and feeling which it is one of the great functions of literature to foster and develop. Many of our readers must have had opportunity of remarking how pleasant it is, after one has been shut up for months, mayhap, in some country sol- itude, or engaged in some over-busy scene, without intelli- gent companionship, to meet with an accomplished, well- read man, with whom to beat over all the literary topics, and settle the merits of the various schools and authors. It is not less pleasant to turn to one's books after some period of close-engrossing engagement, and to clear off, among the masters of thought and language, all trace of the homely cares and narrow thinking which the season of hard labor had imperatively demanded. And it is so with peoples as certainly as with individuals. During the war so happily terminated, the nation was too busy and too 35* 414 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC. much engrossed to listen patiently to disquisitions, how- ever ingenious, on literature and the belleslettres. Leaders and articles on the state of the army and the prospect of the campaign, or the nai-ratives and descriptions of " cor- respondents " in the Crimea, formed the staple reading of the time ; and some of our most respectable booksellers could tell very feelingly, on data furnished by their bal- ance-sheets, how little, in comparison, was the interest that attended reading of any other kind, The roar of war drowned the voice of the muses. Now, however, the country has got a breathing time ; its period of all-engross- ing occupation is over for the present ; and works of gen- eral literature will once-more form the staple reading of its more cultivated intellects. Good books will begin to sell better, when, at least, the publishing season commences, than they have done for the last two years ; and by their measure of success they will certify respecting' the tastes and leisure-hour occupations of that great and influential portion of the people which constitutes the reading public. And we recognize in a work now before us — " Essays, Biographical and Critical, chiefly on English Poets," by Professor David Masson,^ which has just issued from the Cambridge press — one of the class of books which, in the circumstances of the time, this portion of the public will delight to read, and be the better and happier for reading. Professor Masson is -a high representative of a class of literary men peculiar to the age, — men who a century ago would have stood prominently forward in the ranks of authorship as the writers of elaborate volumes, but who, in the altered circumstances of a more hurried age than any of those which preceded it, are engaged mainly in provid- ing the reading public with its daily bread, and, for the sake of present influence and usefulness, are content in some degree, so far as they themselves are concerned, to subordinate the future to the passing time. Almost all the > Essays, Biographical and Critical, chiefly on Eoglisb Poets. By David UassoD, A.M., Fiofefsor of Eogiisb Literature ia Unirersity College, London. THE AMENITIES OF LITBRATtlllE. 415 •writing produced in our first-class newspapers, however distinguished for ability or influential in directing opinion, passes away with the day, or at least with the week, in which it has been produced. Like those ephemeridse which, born in the morning, deposit" their eggs and die before night, it makes its nidus in the public mind, and then drops and disappears. Co&tributions, however, to the higher quarterlies and first-class magazines have a better chance of life ; and we have already a class of works drawn fl'om these sources which bid as fair to live as almost any of the more elaborate authorship of the age. Such are the collected critiques of Jeffrey and Sydney Smith, the phi- losophic papers of Macintosh, the brilliant essays of Ma- caulay, and the soberer contributions of Henry Rogers. And to this class the Essays of Professor Masson belong ; nor are they unworthy of being ranked among the vwry foremost of their class. There are essays in this volume which, for the minute knowledge of English literature which they display, and their nice appreciation of the dis- tinctive and characteristic in our higher writers, we would place side by side with the chef cPoeuvres of JeflErey. Though consisting chiefly of contributions to the quarter- lies, written at various times, and published in different periodicals, the pieces which compose the work have been so arranged that they form, with but few gaps, — which are more than compensated for by at least as many happy epi- sodes, — a history of English literature from the early days of Milton down to those of Wordsworth. Nor are there backward glances wanting, which bring before the reader the primeval English literature of the times of Chancer and Spencer. There are just two blanks in the work, which we could wish to see filled in some future edition, — a blank representative of that period which intervened between the times of Swifb and of Chatterton, during which old Samuel Johnson gave law to the world of letters, and was well-nigh all that Dryden had been for the decade that preceded and the decade which succeeded the Revo- 416 LITEKARY AND SCIENXII'IO, lution ; and a second, though lesser blank, representative of the times during which Burns and Cowper flourished, and in which the school of Pope gave place to a more national, natural, and less elaborate school. Among what may be termed the episodes of the work, we would spe- cially instance a dissertation on what we may term the boundary limits of prose and poetry, which,/ we deem by far the ablest and most satisfactory which we have yet seen on the subject. Much has been written on what may be termed the conterminous limits of the two provinces ; and the suits have been many that have originated in an erroneous drawing of the line. As in the famous case be- tween Dandy Dinmont and Jack Dawson of the Cleugh, one party affirms that " the mai'ch rins on the tap o' the hill, where the wind and water sheers ; " while another "contravenes that, and says that it hands down by the auld drove road ; and that makes an unco difference ; " — some critics so draw the line, that, like Bowles in his con- troversy with Campbell, they almost wholly exclude poets such as Pope and Dryden from their own proper domains ; while others affirm that there exists no line between the two domains at all, but that whatever in thought or feeling finds ex,pression in verse, may with equal propriety be ex- pressed in prose. Byron's terse cotiplet on Wordsworth, whom it describes as a writer " Who, both by precept and example, shows That prose is verse, and verse is only prose," has, though in a somewhat exaggerated form, made this special view better known than even the men who assert it. Certainly there ai'e broad grounds common to both prose and verse ; and such is the groundwork of truth in Byron's satirical couplet, though in a widely different sense from that which the satirist himself intended, that there is not much in even the highest flights of the poetry of Words- worth to which prose might not attain. We know not, for instance, a single passage in his greatest poem, " The Ex- THE AMENITIES OP LITEEATUBE. 417 cursian," that might not find adequate expression, not only in the magnificent prose of Milton, or Raleigh, or Jeremy Taylor, but, so far at least as the necessary expression is required, in even that of Dryden or of Cowley. The same may be said of the poetry of Scott. The flights in "Mar- mion " or the « Lady of the Lake " rise no higher than those in Waverley or Ivanhoe. And yet, as Professor Masson well shows, there certainly is verse under whose burden the highest prose would utterly sink. We have remarked, in travelling through the Highlands of Scotland, that almost all the first-class hills of the country take the char- acter of hills of the average size, with other hills placed, as if by accident, on the top of them ; and there is a very lofty poetry that attains to its greatest elevation on a sim- ilar principle. The imagination, in the plenitude of its power, is ever piling, like the giants of old, mountain on the top of mountain. Let us draw our illustration from Milton. After comparing the arch-fiend, as he " lay float- ing many a rood " on the burning lake, to the old Titanian monster that warred on Jupiter, the poet rushes into an- other and richer ciamparison : he compares him to " That sea-beast LeTiathan, which God of all his works Created hngest that swim the ocean stream." And here, on the ground common to prose and verse, the comparison should stop. But the imagination of the great poet has been aroused ; the glimpse of the huge sea- beast so fascinates him that he must look again; and a picture is the consequence, invested with circumstances of poetic interest, and finished with a degree of .elaboration far beyond the necessities of the comparison : — " Him haply slumherlng on the Norway foam, The pilot of some small night-foundered skiff ^ Deeming some island, oft, as seamen tell, With fixed anchor In his scaly rind. Moors by his side, under the lee^ while night Invests the sea, and wished mom delays." 418 IITERAET AND SCIENTIFIC. What a pile of imagery I Mountain cast on the top of mountain, — a feat for the greatest of the giants, and far beyond the reach of the most poetic prose-man, or the capabilities of prose itself Our other example, though of a more homely character, will be found scarce less illustra- tive of this piled-up style, peculiar to the higher poesy. Burns, in his decidedly anti-teetotal "Earnest Cry and Prayer,'' after adverting to the deteriorating eflPects of the wines of southern Europe on the nerves and framework of the Continental soldiery, describes a Scottish soldier an- imated for the contest by the inspiration of usquebagh : — " But bring a Scotsman frae his hill, Clap in his cheek a Highland gill, Say, Such is royal George's will, An' there's the foe : He has nae thought but how to kill Twa at a blow.'.' N"ow, here is a vigorous stanza, — terse, clear, epigram- matic, and charged with thought equally fitted to do service either as prose or verse. But the poet catches a glance of the Highland soldier, the poetic blood gets up, and it be- comes impossible, for the time, to arrest in his career either soldier or poet : — " Nae cauld faint-hearted doubtiugs tease him; Death comes; wi' fearless eye he sees him; Wi' bloody han' a welcome gi'es him; An' when he fa's, *■ His latest draught o' breathin' lea's him In faint huzzas." • Here, again, we find the hill piled on the top of the hill after a different manner, but as decidedly as in Milton, and alike -beyond the necessities or the reach of prose. This peculiar region of poetry seems to have formed a sort of inextricable wilderness to the more prosaic class of crit- ics. Lord Karnes, though a coarse, was an eminently sen- sible man ; and his " Elements of Criticism " is a work that THE AMENITIES OP LITERATURE. 419 contains many striking things. What, however, the French critic termed " comparisons with a tail," seem fairly to have puzzled him. He could no more understand why similes should have caudal appendages, than his brother Judge, Lord Monboddo, could understand why men should want them. And so he instances as a mere " phantom simile, that ought to have no quarter given it," the very exquisite one which Coriolanus employs in describing Va- leria, — " The noble sister of Pophlicolai The moon of Borne; chaste as the icicle That's curdled by the frost from purest snow. And hanga on Dian's temple." The shrewd magistrate, who, to employ the delicate periphrase of Hector in the " Antiquary," used to address his learned compeers on the bench by the name ordinarily used to designate " a female dog," could not understand why the temple of Dian should be introduced into this comparison, or what right the icicle had in it at a,ll ; and so he ruled that it was palpably illegal for Shakspeare to write what he, a judge and a critic, could not intelli- gently read. The conclusion of Professor Masson on the respective provinces of poesy and prose is worthy of being carefully pondered by the reader : — " In the whole vast field of the speculative and the didactic," says the Professor, — "a field in ■which the soul'of man may win triumphs nowise inferior, let ilKterate poetasters babble as they will, to those of the mightiest sons of song, — prose is the legitimate monarch, receiving verse but as a visitor and guest, who will carry back hits of rich ore, and other specimens of the land's produce ; in the great business of record also, prose is preeminent, verse but volun- tarily assisting ; in the expression of passion, and the work of moral stimulation, verse and prose meet as coeqnals, prose under- taking the rougher and harder duty, where passion intermingles with the storm of current doctrine, and with the play and conflict of social interest's, — sometimes, when thus engaged, bursting into such str:uns of irregular music that verse takes up the echo and prolongs 420 LITBKARY AND SCIENTIFIC. it in measured modulation, leaving prose rapt and listening to hear itself outdone ; and, lastly, in the noble realm of poetry or imagination, prose also is capable of all exquisite, beautiful, and magnificent effects, but that by reason of a greater ease with fancies when they come in crowds, and of a greater range and arbitrariness of combination, verse here moves with the more royal gait. And thus prose and verse are presented as two circles or spheres, not en- tirely separate, as some would make them, hut intersecting and interpene- trating through a large portion of both their bulks, and disconnected only in two crescents outstanding at the right and left, or, if you adjust them differently, at the upper and lower extremities. The left or lower crescent, the peculiar and sole region of prose, is where we labor amid the sheer didactic, or the didactic combined with the practical and the stern. The right or uppit crescent, the peculiar and sole region of verse, is where pathesis, at its utmost thrill and ecstasy, interblends with the highest and .most darting /imesis." This is vigorous thinking and writing ; and the Profes- sor's volume contains many such passages. We would in especial instance the Essays on the " Literature of the Restoration," on " Wordsworth," and on " Scottish Influ- ence on British Literature." But the longest and finest composition of the work — a gem in literary biography — is its " Chatterton, a Story of the Year 1770." There is, perhaps no name in British poetry, of the same frequency of occurrence, that is so purely a name, as that of " The marvellous boy, — The sleepless soul that perished in his pride." Such of his poems as were written in modern English, and in his own proper name and character, are not pleasing, and, sooth to say, not more than clever; while his poems written in the character of Rowley are locked up in what is virtually a dead tongue, considerably different from that of Chaucer or the " King's Quair," or, in short, from any other tongue ever written by any other poet. And as there is but little temptation to master a language, and that, too, a language which never was spoken, for the sake of a few THE AMENITIES OF LITERATCRE. 421 poems, however meritorious, most men are content to take the fame of the Rowley writings on trust, or at least to determine by brief specimens that they are in reality the wonderful compositions which the critics of the last age pronounced them to be. And so Chatterton is now very much a bright name associated with a dark story. Further, of the story, little more survived in the public mind than would have furnished materials for an ordinary newspaper paragraph. Chatterton had not been very fortunate in his biographers ; and it was but known, in consequence, that, living in an age not unfamiliar with literary forgery, — it is unnecessary to give instances within sight of the great Highland mountains, — he had fabricated, a volume of old English poems greatly superior to any old English poems ever written, with the single exception of those of Chau- cer; that, quitting his native place, where he had succeeded in earning not more than the modicum of honor which prophets ordinarily achieve for themselves when at home, he had gone to force his upward way among the wits of London ; and that there, in utter destitution and neglect, he had miserably destroyed himself. Such was all that was generally known of Chatterton, even by men of read- ing. Professor Masson's singularly interesting and power- ful biography fills up this sad outline as it was never filled up before ; and shows how deep a tragedy that of the poor boy was, who, after achieving immortality, "perished in his pride," at about the age when lads who purpose pur- suing the more laborious mechanical professions are pre- paring to enter on their apprenticeships. Further, without aught approaching to formal apology for the oflfenoes and shortcomings of the hapless lad, it shows us what a mere boy he was, in all except genius, at the time of his death. Sir Walter, in referring, in his « Demonology," to the young rascals on whose extraordinary evidence so many old women were burnt as witches in Sweden, has some very striking, and, we think, very just remarks, on the obtuse- ness of the moral sense in most children, especially boys. 36 422 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC. " The melancholy truth, that the ' human heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked,' is by nothing proved so strongly," we find him saying, " as by the imper- fect sense displayed by children of the sanctity of- moral truth. Both gentlemen and the mass of the people, as they advance in years, learn to despise and avoid falsehood, -7- the former out of pride, and from a remaining feeling, derived from the days of chivalry, that the character of a liar is a deadly stain on their honor ; the other, from some general reflection upon the necessity of preserving a char- acter for integrity in the course of life, and a sense of the truth of the common adage that ' honesty is the best policy.' But these are ^acquired habits of thinking. The child has no natural love of truth, as is experienced by all who have the least acquaintance with early youth. If they are charged with a fault while they can hardly speak, the first words they stammer forth are a falsehood to excuse it. Nor is this all. The temptation of attracting attention, the pleasure of enjoying importance, the desire to escape from an unpleasing task, or accomplish a holiday, will at any time overcome the sentiment of truth, — so weak is it within them." A sad picture, but, we fear, a true one ; and in reading the tragic story of Chatterton, we were oftener than once reminded of it. We see in almost every stage of his progress the unripe boy, — pre- cocious in intellect, and in that only. But with the follow- ing powerful passage, taken from the closing scene in the sad drama, we must conclude, — meanwhile recommending Professor Masson's work to oar readers as one of singular interest and ability : — " ' He called on me,' is Mr. Cross's statement, ' about half-past eleven in the morning. As usual, he talked about various matters ; and at last, probably just as he was going away, he said he wanted some ar- senic for an experiment.' Mr. Cross, — Mr. Cross, — before you go to your drawer for the arsenic, look at that boy's face I Look at it steadily ; look till he quaila ; and then leap upon him and hold him 1 Mr. Cross does not look. He sells th© arsenic (yes, sells, for somehow THE AMEXITIES OP LITERATtFRB. 423 during that walk, in which he hag disposed of the bundle [of manu- scripts], he has procured the necessary pence), and lives to repent it. Chatterton, the arsenic in his pocket, does not return to his lodging immediately, but walks about, God only knows where, through the Tast town. ' He returned,' continued Mrs. Angell, ' about seven in the evening, looking very pale and dejected, and would not eat any- thing, but sat moping by the fire with his chin on his knees, and muttering rhymes in some old language to her. After some hours he got up to go to bed, and he then kissed her, — a thing he had never done before.' Mrs. Angell, what can that kiss mean ? Detain the boy ; he is mad ; he is not fit to be left alone ; arouse the whole street rather than let him go. She does let him go, and lives to repent it. ' He went up stairs,' she says, ' stamping on every stair as he went slowly up, as if he would break it.' She hears him reach his room. He enters, and locks the door behind him. " The devil was abroad that night in the sleeping city. Down narrow and squalid courts his presence was felt, where savage men clutched miserable women by the throat, and the neighborhood was roused by yells of murder, and the barking of dogs, and the shrieks of children. Up in wretched garrets his presence was felt, where solitary mothers gazed on their infants, and longed to kill them. He was in the niches of dark bridges, where outcasts lay huddled together, and some of them stood up from time to time, and looked over at the dim stream below. He was in the uneasy hearts of un- discovered forgers, and of ruined men plotting mischief. He was in prison cells, where condemned criminals condoled with each other in obscene songs and blasphemy. What he achieved that night in and about the vast city came duly out into light and history. But of all the spots over which the Black Shadow hung, the chief, for that night at least, was a certain undistinguished house in the narrow street, which thousands who now dwell in London pass and repass, scarce observing it, every day of their lives, as they go and come along the thoroughfare of Holborn. At the door of one house in that quiet street the Horrid Shape watched ; through that door he passed in, towards midnight ; and from that door, having done his work, he emerged before it was morning. " On the morrow, Saturday the 25th August, Mrs. Angell noticed that her lodger did not come down at the time expected. As he had lain longer than usual, however, on the day before, she was not alarmed. But about eleven o'clock, her husband being then out, and Mrs. Wolfe having come in, she began to fear that something 424 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC. might be the matter ; and she and Mrs. Wolfe went up stairs and knocked at the door. They listened awhile, but there was no answer. They then tried to open the door, but found it locked. Being then thoroughly alarmed, one of them ran down stairs, and called a man who chanced to be passing in the street to come and break the door open. The man did so ; and on entering they found the floor lit- tered with small pieces of paper, and Chatterton lying on the bed, , with his legs hanging over, quite dead. The bed had not been lain in. The man took up some of the pieces of paper ; and on one of them he read, in the deceased's own handwriting, the words, ' I leave my soul to its Maker, my body to my mother and sisters, and my curse to Bristol. If Mr. Ca ' : the rest was torn off. ' The man then said,' relates Mrs. Angell, 'that he must have killed him- self; which we did not think till then. Mrs. Wolfe ran immediately for Mr. Cross, who came, and was the first to point out a bottle ou the window containing arsenic and water. Some of the bits of ar- senic were between his teeth, so that there was no doubt that he had poisoned himself.' " BUT TRUE. 425 VIII. A STRANGE STOBT, BUT TRUE.^ It is now nearly forty years since an operative mason, somewhat dissipated in his_habits, and a little boy, his son, who had completed his twelfth year only a few weeks pre- vious, were engaged in repairing a tall, ancient domicile, in one of the humbler streets of Plymouth. The mason was employed in re-laying some of the roofing ; the little boy, who acted as his laborer, was busied in carrying up slates and lime along a long ladder. The afternoon was slowly wearing through, and the sun hastening to its set- ting ; in little more than half an hour, both father and son would have been set free from their labors for the eve- ning, when the boy, in what promised to be one of his concluding journeys roofwards for the day, missed footing just as he was stepping on the eaves, and was precipitated pn a stone pavement thirty-five feet below. Light and slim, he fared better than an adult would have done in the circumstances ; but he was deprived of all sense and rec- ollection by the fearful shock ; and, save that he saw for a moment the gathering crowd, and found himself carried homewards in the arms of his father, a fortnight elapsed ere he awoke to consciousness. When he came to himself in his father's house, it was his first impression that he had outslept his proper time for rising. It was broad daylight ; and there were familiar forms round his bed. He next, I Memoirs of Dr. John Kitto, D.D., T.S.A., Editor of the " Fictorial Bible " and the " Cyclopaedia of Biblical Literature," Author of" Daily Bible lilustra- tiODB," etc. Compiled chiefly from his Letters and Journals. By J. E. Kyland, U.A. With a Critical Estimate of Dr. Kitto's Life and Writings. By FroiieEBor Eadie, D.D., LL.D., Glasgow. 36* 426 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC. however, found himself grown so weak that he could scarce move his head on the pillow ; and was then struck by the profound silence that prevailed around him, — a silence which seemed all the more extraordinary from the circumstance that he could see the lips of his friends in motion, and ascertain from their gestures that they were addressing him. But the riddle was soon read. The boy, in his terrible fall, had broken no bone, nor had any of the vital organs received serious injury ; but his sense of hear- ing was gone forever ; and for the remainder of the'half- century which was to be his allotted term on earth he was never to hear more. Knowledge at one entrance was shut out forever. As is common, too, in such circum- stances, the organs of speech become affected. His voice assumed a hollow, sepulchral tone, and his enunciation be- came less and less distinct, until at length he could scarce be understood by even his most familiar friends. For al- most all practical purposes he became dumb as well as deaf. Unable, too, any longer to assist in the labors of his dis- sipated father, he had a sore struggle for existence, which terminated in his admission into the poor-house of the place as a pauper. And in the workhouse he was set to make list-shoes, under the superintendence of the beadle. He was a well-conditioned, docile, diligent little mute, and made on the average about a pair and a half of shoes per week, for which he received from the manager, in rec- ognition of his well-doing, a premium of a weekly penny, — a very important sum to the poor little deaf pauper. Darker days were, however, yet in store for him ; he was not a little teased and persecuted by the idle children in the workhouse, who made sport of his infirmity ; his grand- mother, to whom he was devotedly attached, and with whom he had lived previous to his accident, was taken from him by death ; and, to sum up his unhappiness at this time, he was apprenticed by the workhouse to a Plymouth shoemaker, — a brutal and barbarous wretch, who treated him with the most ruthless indignity and cruelty, — threw A STRANGE STORY, BUT TRUE. 427 shoes at his head, boxed him on the ears, slapped him on the face, and even struck him with the broad-faced ham- mer used in the trade. Such of our readers as are ac- quainted with Crabbe's powerful but revolting picture of Peter Grimes, the ruffian master who murdered his appren- tices by his piecemeal cruelties, would scarce fail to find the original of the sketch in this disreputable wretch, — with this aggravation, too, in the actual as set off against the fictitious case, that the apprentices of Peter Grimes were not poor, helpless mutes, already rendered objects of commiseration to all well-regulated minds "through the visitation of God." And who could anticipate a different end for the sadly-injured and sorely-misused boy than that which overtook Peter's apprentices as they dropped in succession into the grave ? Were it to be seen, how- ever, that the deaf little fellow, apparently so shut out from the world, could record his sufferings at this time in very admirable English, the hope might arise that there was some other fate in store for one who had mind and energy enough to triumph over circumstances so unprece- dentedly depressed and depressing. The following are ex- tracts from a journal which he kept while under the brute master : — "*0 misery, thou art to be my only portion ! Father of mercy, forgive me if I wish I had never been born 1 Oh that I were dead, if death were an annihilation of being ; but as it is not, teach me to endure life : to enjoy it I never can. . Mine is indeed a severe and cruel master. .... Threw this morning a shoe in my face : I had made a wrong stitch Struck again Again. I could not bear it : a box on the ear, — a slap on the face. I did not weep in April [when his grandmother died], but I did at this unkind usage. I did all in my power to suppress my inclination to weep, till I was almost suffocated : tears of bitter anguish and futile indignation fell upon my work, and blinded my eyes. I sobbed convulsively. I was half mad vrith myself for suffering him to see how much I was affected. Fool that I was ! Oh that I were again in the workhouse 1 He threw his pipe in my face, which I had accidentally bro- ken ; it hit me on the temple, and narrowly missed my eye I 428 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC. held the thread too short : instead of telling me to hold it longer, he struck me on the hand with the hammer (the 'iron part). Mother can bfear witness that it is much swelled ; — not to mention many more indignities I have received, — many, many more. Again, this morning, I have wept. What's the matter with my eyes ! " Alas, poor boy ! ^ And all this took place in proud Eng- land, — the land of liberty and of equal rights and laws ! Flogging is not a punishment for men, but a very suitable one for brutes ; and had the brute master in this case been tied up to the halberts and subjected to a round hundred, he would be a squeamish reformer indeed who could have objected to so just and appropriate a use of the lash. Suddenly, however, this dire tyranny came to a close. A few excellent men connected with the management of the Workhouse had been struck by the docility and intel- ligence of the young mute. One of them, Mr. Burnard, a gentleman who still survives, struck by his powers of thought and expression, had furnished him with themes on which to write! He had shown him aitention and kind- ness, and the lad naturally turned to him as a friend and protector ; and, stating his case to- him by letter, the good man not only got him relieved from the dire thraldom of his tyrannical master, but, by interesting a few friends in his behalf secured for him the leisure necessary to prose- cute his studies, — for,, even when his circumstances were most deplorable, the little deaf and dumb boy had been dreaming of making himself a name in letters, by produc- ing -books which even the learned would not despise, — and, by means of a liberal subscription, he was now en- abled to go on reading and writing, with — wonderful change for him whose premium pence used to be all spent in the purchase of little volumes ! — the whole books of a subscription library at his command. It is customary to laugh at the conceit and egotism of the young, as indica- tive of a mere weakness, which it is the part of after years of sober experience to dissipate or cure. There are oases, however, in which the apparent weakness is real strength. A STRANGE STORY, BUT TRUE. 429 — a moving power, without which, in very depressing cir- cumstances, there would be no upward progress, for there would be no hope and no motive to exertion ; and so the poor mute boy's estimate of himself, while yet an inmate of the workhouse, though it may provoke a smile, may be deemed not uninteresting, as in reality representative of an undei'current in the character, destined to produce great results. "■Dec. 5th, 1821. — Yesterday I completed my sixteenth year; and 1 shall take this opportunity of describing, to the best of my ability, my person. I am four feet eight inches high ; my hair is stiff and coarse, of a dark brown color, almost black ; my head is very large, and, I believe, has a tolerable good lining of brain within ; my eyes are brown and large, and are the least exceptional part of my person ; my forehead is high, eyebrows bushy, nose large, mouth very big, teeth well enough, and limbs not ill-shaped You have asked me why I have in many places used the expression, ' When I am old enough in other people's opinion.' The customs of this coun- try have declared that man is not competent to his own direction until he has attained the age of twenty-one. Not so I. I never was a lad. From the time of my fall, deprived of many external sources of occupation, I have been accustomed to find sources of occupation within myself, — to think as I read, as I worked, or as I walked. While other lads were employed with trifles, I have thought, felt, and acted as a man. At ignominious treatment, at blows, I have sup- pressed my indignation and my tears till I have felt myself almost choked. I have, however, felt also the superiority of genius, which would not allow ignorance to triumph. I have walked hours on hours in the most lonesome lanes I conld find, abstracted in melancholy musing ; or, with a book in my hand« I have sat for hours under a hedge or tree. Sometimes, too, sheltered from observation by, a rock, I have sat in contemplation by the riverside. At such times I have felt such a melancholy pleasure as I have not known since I have been in the hospital. O Nature ! why didst thou create me with feel- ings such as these ? Why didst thou give such a mind to one in my condition ? Why, O Heavens ! didst thou enclose my proud soul within such a casket ? Yet, pardon my murmurs ; I will try to be convinced that ' whatever is is right.' Kind Heaven, endue me with resignation to thy will, and contentment with whatever situation it is thy pleasure I should fill." 430 LITERACY AND SCIENTIFIC. Such was tlie estimate formed of himself by the deaf •workhouse boy, and such his mode of expressing it. De- pressed as hia circumstances might at this time seem, and little favorable, apparently, to the development of mind, they were yet not without their peculiar balance of advan- tage. Lads bom deaf and dumb rarely master in after life the grammar of the language ; for, though they acquire a knowledge of the words which express qualities and senti- ments, or which represent things, they seem unable to attain to the right use of those important particles, adverbs, conjunctions, and prepositions, which, as the smaller stones in a wall serve to keep the larger ones in their places, give in speech or writing order and coherency to the others. But the deaf lad had not been born deaf: he had read and conversed, and even attempted composition, previous to his accident ; so that his grandmother could boast of the self-taught boy, not without some shadow of truth, that her " Johnnie was the best scholar in all Plymouth." And now, writing having become his easiest and most ready mode of communication, the speech by which he communicated his ideas, he had attained to a facility in the use of the pen, and a command of English, far from common among even university-bred youths, his seniors by several years. He had acquired, too, the ability of looking at things very intently. It has been well said by the poet, "That oft when one sense Is suppressed, It but retires into the rest." And it would seem as if the hearing of this deaf lad had retreated into his eyes, which were ever after to exercise a double portion of the seeing function. All this, however, could not be at once understood by his friends. There seemed to be but few openings through which the poor deaf and dumb lad could be expected to make his way to independence, and what is termed respectability ; and it was suggested that he should set himself to acquire the art of the common printer, and attach himself to a mission of A STRANQE STORY, BUT TRUE. 431 the English Church, — still, we believe, stationed in Malta, — that sends forth from its press many useful little books, chiefly for distribution in the East. Accordingly, in a comparatively short time the deaf lad did acquire the art of the common printer, — nay, more, he became skilful in setting the Arabic character ; and, having a decided turn for acquiring languages, though unable to speak them, he promised, judging from his me- chanical and linguistic abilities, to be a useful operative to. the mission. Unfortunately, however, — for such was the estimate of the mission's conductors, — he was not content to be a mere operative : his instincts drew him strongly towards literature ; and, ere quitting England for Malta, he had such a quarrel on this score with some very excel- lent men, that he threw up his situation, which, however, through the mediation of kind friends, he was again in- duced and enabled to resume. But at Malta, where the poor deaf lad suffered much from illness, and much from wounded affections, — for, shut out though he was from his fellows, he had yet had his affair of the heart, and tha course of true love did not run smooth in bis case, — the quarrel was again resumed, and he received a reprimand from the committee of the mission in England, which was vii-tually a dismissal. " The habits of his mind," said the committee, " were likely to disqualify him from that steady and persevering discharge of his duties which they con- sidered as indispensably requisite." And to this harsh resolution the late excellent Mr. Bickersteth, by whom it was forwarded, added the following remark : — " You are aware our first principles as Christians are the sacrifice of self-will and self-gratification. K you can rise to this, and steadily pursue your work, as you engaged to do, you may yet fill a most important station, and glorify our Great Master. But if you cannot do this, it is clear that the So- ciety cannot continue in its service those who will not devote themselves to their engagements." The deaf, soli- tary man felt much aggrieved. He said, and said truly, 432 LITBRAEY AND SCIENTIFIC. "I gave the Society a pledges which there does not live a man who could prove to an impartial person that I have not redeemed. "When, after the labors of eight or nine hours, the office was closed for the day, I felt that I was at liberty to partake of some mental refreshment. This is the ground of my dismissal. Even if my attach- ment to literature were an evil, it might be tolerated whilst it did not (and it did not) interfere with my defined duties." It is not now difficult to adjudicate between the poor deaf man and this learned and influential Missionary Soci- ety. No ordinary master printer in Edinburgh, or else- where, would think of treating one of his journeymen, or even one of his apprentices, after this fashion. The limits of a printer's work are easily ascertained. Nine tenths of the printers of Great Britain and Ireland are employed by the piece, the others are placed on what is known as a set- tlement,' and, under either scheme, there is a portion of their time which is not sold to their masters, and with which, therefore, a master cannot honestly interfere. But the grand mistake of the committee, and of worthy Mr. Bickersteth, in this not uninstructive case, seems to have been founded on a certain goody sentiment, from which missionaries such as the brethren of the Society of Jesus would have been saved by their sagacious discernment of the capabilities and spirits of men, and the ordinary master printer, by his knowledge of the proper tale of work which an operative ought to furnish, and his full recognition of the common business rule, that the time is not the master's, but the operative's own, for which the master does not pay. The committee and Mr. Bickersteth evidently held, on the othei" hand, that the deaf lad, being a missionary printer, ought to have his heart and soul in the missionary printing, and in nothing else ; that the work of writing and trans- lating was a work to be done by other heads and hands than his, — heads and hands trained, mayhap, at Cambridge or Oxford ; and that the literary studies pursued by the A STRANGE STORY, BUT TRUE. 438 lad after office-hours were over were mere works of " self- will " and " self-gratification," and not suited to " glorify the Great Master." In order to glorify the Great Master, it was necessary, they held, that the deaf lad should give his heart exclusively to the printing of the mission. Alas ! the good men were strangely in error. The Great Master had, we noy know, quite other work for the deaf lad. "We are ignorant of what the Oxford and Cambridge men of the Malta Mission have done, — what they could, we dare say, and we are sure they think it all too little ; but their labors will scarce ever be brought into competition with those of the greatest Biblical illustrator of modern times. What Dr. Chalmers used to term his Biblical library con- sisted of four great standard works ; and of these select four. Dr. Kitto's "Pictorial Bible" was much a favorite. " I feel quite sure," we find him saying, in his " Daily Scrip- ture Readings," " that the use of the sacred dialogues as a school-book, and the pictures of Scripture scenes which interested my boyhood, still cleave to me, and impart a peculiar tinge and charm to the same representations when brought within my notice. Perhaps when I am moulder- ing in my coffin, the eye of my dear Tommy [his grandson] may light upon this page ; and it is possible that his rec- ollections may accord with my present anticipations of the eflfect that his delight in the 'Pictorial Bible' may have in endearing still more to him the holy Word of God." In the peculiar walk in which Dr. John Kitto specially ex- celled all other writers, the great Chalmers was content to accept him as his teacher, and to sit at his feet ; and the poor, friendless, deaf lad, who so ofiended the committee of the Maltese Mission by devoting to literature the time which was indisputably his own, not theirs, was this same John Kitto, — a name now scarce less widely known, though in a different walk, than that of Chalmers himself. Dismissed from his situation, he returned to England with but forlorn prospects. There was, however, work for him to do ; and an unexpected opening, which provi- 37 434 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC. dentially occurred shortly after his arrival, served greatly to fit him for it. A missionary friend, bound for central Persia, engaged him to accompany him on the journey as tutor to his two boys, — a charge for which his previous studies, pursued under the direst disadvantages, adequately fitted him ; and, with his eyes all the more widely open from the circumstance that his ears were shut, Jje travelled through Russian Europe into Persia, saw the greater and lesser Ararats, passed through the Caucasian range of mountains, loitered amid the earlier seats of the human family, forded the Euphrates near its source, resided for about two years in Bagdad, witnessed the infliction of war, famine, and pestilence, and then — his task of tuition com- pleted — journeyed homeward by Teheran, Tabreez, Treb- izond, and Constantinople, to engage in his great work. His quiet life was not without its due share jof striking in- cident. We have referred to a story of wounded affection. On his return to England, he found that she who had de- ceived and forsaken him had deeply regretted the part she had acted, and was now no more ; and for years after, he bore about with him a sad and widowed heart. In his second return he had a companion, a young man in deli- cate health, who, when detained with him in quarantine at the mouth of the Thames, sickened and died. The de- scription of the quarantine burying-ground, in which his remains were deposited, is suited to remind the reader of some of the descriptions of similar places given by Dickens. " We went," says Kitto, in his journal, "in a boat of the vessel, to a kind of low island devoted to the burial of persons dying in quar- antine. The coffin was plain, without a plate, and with pieces of ropes for handles, but had the honor of being covered with the ensign of the doctor's ship as a pall. The grave-place, overgrown with long, reedy grass, was not more than a few paces from the water's edge ; and its uses were indicated only by what the captain calls ' wooden tombstones,' of which there are only two, both dated 1832, and all of wood, painted of a stone color, the first I have seen in England. S r- was carried to his last home by the sailors of our vessel. A STRANGE STORY, BUT TRUE. 435 On arriving at the grave, we found it of dark clay, with water at the bottom ; a wet ditch being near, above its level. It was also too small, and we had to wait till it was enlarged ; and then, the cofBii being brought to the side, ready to be let down, the doctor's head servant took out a prayer-book, and, all uncovering, read a part of the burial service. We waited till the grave was filled up and banked over ; and then, with a sigh, not the last, returned to the boat. On our return, the flags, which had hitherto been floating half-mast high, were raised to their usual position." Kitto's fellow-traveller, whose dust he saw thus con- signed to the dark, obscure burial-yard at the mouth of the Thames, had been engaged to a young lady, on whom, after his release from quarantine, the deaf man waited, to communicate to her the fate of her lover. The two wid- owed hearts drew kindly together; and in course of time the lady became Mrs. Kitto, — a match from which her husband, now entering on a literary life of intense labor, derived great comfort and support. Never did literary man toil harder or more incessantly. His career as an author commenced in 1833, and termi- nated at the close of 1853 ; and during that period he prodaced twenty-one separate works, some of them of profound research and gi-eat size. Among these we may enumerate the "Pictorial Bible," the "Pictorial History of Palestine," the " History of Palestine from the Patri- archal Age to the Present Time," the "Cyclopaedia of Bib- lical Literature," the "Lost Senses," "Scripture Lands," and the " Daily Bible Illustrations." And in order to pro- duce this amazing amount of elaborate writings. Dr. Kitto used to rise, year after year, at four o'clock in the morning, and toil on till night. But the overwrought brain at length gave way, and in his fiftieth year he broke down and died. Could he have but retained the copyright of his several works, he would have been a wealthy man ; he would at least have left a competency to his family. But commencing without capital, and comiDelled, by the inev- itable expense of a growing family, to labor for the book- 436 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC. sellers, he was ever engaged in "providing," according to Johnson,- « for the day that was passing over him," and died, in consequence, a poor man. And his widow and family have, we understand, a direct interest in the sale of the well-written and singularly interesting biographic work to which we are indebted for the materials of our article, and which we can recommend with a good con- science to the notice of our readers. We know not a finer example than that which it furnishes of the « pursuit of knowledge under difficulties," nor of a devout and honest man engrossingly engaged in an important work, in which he was at length to affect the thinking of his age, and to instruct and influence its leading minds. It may be in- teresting to remark how such a man received the first decided direction in his course of study; and so the fol- lowing extract, with which we conclude, of a letter on the subject from a gentleman much before the public at the present time, from his, we believe, honest and fearless report on the mismanagement of our leading officers in the Crimea during the campaign now brought happily to a close, may be regarded by our readers as worthy of perusal : — " My first meeting with Kitto," says Sir John M'Neill, " was at Tabreez, in 1829. He was going with Mr. and Mrs. Groves and their two sons to Bagdad, where Mr. Groves intended to estabUsh himself as a missionary. Kitto was then acting as tutor to the two boys, who were lively and intelligent ; and I was struck with the singularity of his position, as the deaf and almost dumb teacher of boys who were very far from being either deaf or dumb. This cir- cumstance, and the loneliness of mind which was a necessary conse- quence of his inability to communicate with the persons whom he was thrown amongst at Tabreez, led me to put some questions to him in writing, with the view of drawing him into conversation ; but I found great difficulty in comprehending his answers, in consequence of the peculiarity of his voice and enunciation. With the assistance of his pupils, however, who spoke with great rapidity on their fingers, and appeared to have no difficulty In understanding what he said, I succeeded In engaging him in such conversation as could be so carrieJ A STRANGE STORY, BUT TR0E. 437 on. I found his intelligence and his information vastly greater than I had anticipated. He had evidently the greatest avidity for informa- tion ; but was restrained from pressing his inquiries, apparently by his modesty, and the fear-of being considered obtrusive or troublesome. Finding hint well read and deeply interested in the Scriptures, I di- rected his attention to the many incidental allusions in the Bible to circumstances connected with Oriental habits and modes of life, which had become intelligible to me only after I had been for some time in the East I remember he was particularly interested in something I had said in illustration of the importance attaching to the fact that ' Jacob digged a well.' I had explained to him, that, in arid coun- tries, where cultivation could only be carried on by means of irriga- tion, the land was of no value unless when water could be brought to irrigate it ; and that in Persia the theory of the law still is, that he who digs a well in the desert is entitled to the land which it will irrigate. He came to me more than once for fuller information upon this subject, and was greatly delighted with some illustrations of Scripture which I pointed out to him in ' Morier's Second Journey to Persia.' I refer to these circumstances because I believe that they relate to the first steps of that inquiry which he prosecuted so assiduously and successfully during the remainder of his life, and to which he constantly recurred almost every time I met him afterwards, either in Asia or in England." 37* 438 LITBRARY AND SCIBNTIFIO. IX. THE IDEALISTIO SCHOOL. ' It is not often in these latter days that a metaphysical question is forced on the notice of the public. The muse of abstract thought — the genius that asserts as her special province the region of " being and knowing" — has been dozing for at least an age in a state of partial hybernation, sucking her paws in closets and class-rooms, and getting so marvellously thin and spiritual under the process, that her attenuated form has long since failed to make any very distinct impression on the retina of the community. The case was widely different once. During the latter half of the last century no other class of questions 4)os- sessed half so great an interest in Scotland as metaphysical ones. Metaphysical had succeeded to theological disqui- sition, and was pursued with equal earnestness ; partly, no doubt, because the metaphysics of the age had set the theology of the age that had gone before virtually on its trial, but in great part also because the largest minds of the time had given themselves to the work; and, further, because the limited" character of that cycle in which the mental philosophy is doomed to expatiate was not yet known. Early in the present century the interest had in some degree begun to flag, and the keen eye of Jeffrey was one of the first to detect the slacking of the tide. And in his ingenious critique on " Stewart's Life of Reid," he attempted to render a reason for it. The age had al- ready started forward in that course of natural, physical, and mechanical experiment in which such distinguished trophies have since been won, and which have given its THE IDEALISTIC SCHOOL. 439 peculiar character to the time ; and it had become impa- tient, said the critic, of barren, non-productive observation. And it was a grand distinction, he held, between the physical and the metaphysical walks, that, while experiment reigned paramount in the one, and formed the all-potent key by which man could lay open at will the arcana of nature, and arm himself with her powers, obseroation only could be employed in the other, — a mere passive faculty, that had an ability of seeing, but none whatever of con- trolling. Hence, he argued, the unproductive character of metaphysical science, and the natural preference which the public had begun to manifest, on ascertaining such to be its character, for pursuits through which solid benefits were to be secured. " In the proper experimental philos- ophy," he said, " every acquisition of knowledge is an in- crease of power, because the knowledge is necessarily de- rived from some intentional disposition of materials, which we may always command in the same manner. In the philosophy of observation, it is merely a gratification of our curiosity. The phenomena of the human mind are al- most all of the latter description. We feel, and perceive, and remember, without any purpose or contrivance of ours, and have evidently no power over the mechanism by which those functions are performed. "We cannot decom- pose our perceptions in a crucible, nor divide our sensations by a prism ; nor can we by act and contrivance produce any combination of thoughts or emotions besides those with which all men have been provided by nature. No metaphysician expects by analysis to discover a new power, or to excite a new sensation, in the i^iind, as a chemist dis- covers a new e^rth or a new metal ; nor can he hope by any process of synthesis to exhibit a mental combination different from any that nature has produced in the minds of other persons." Certainly metaphysical found in physical science at the beginning of the present century a formidable rival, that could reward her followers much more largely than she 440 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC. could; and even ere the retirement of Dngald Stewart, her decline in interest and influence, which the keen eye of Jeffrey had remarked at an earlier period, might be seen by all. The genius of Thomas Brown created a diversion in her favor ; but he sank and died in middle life, and his science in Scotland might be said to die with him. His successor in th* moral philosophy chair of our university was at least his equal -in genius ; but the bent of Wilson was literary, not scientific ; and the enthusiasm which he excited among his pupils was an enthusiasm for the sensu- ous, not the abstract. But while all must agree in the fact remarked by Jeffrey, many may fail to acquiesce in the cause which he assigns for it. Pursuits not more prof- itable than metaphysical ones have been eminently popu- lar in the age just gone> by, and are so still. We know not that we should instance theology, seeing that on theo- logical truth man's most important interests may be re- garded as suspended ; but we surely may instance that department of philosophic criticism in which Jeffrey him- self won his laurels. We may instance, besides, at least two of the natural sciences, astronomy and geology, neither of them more rich of dowry than metaphysical science it- self, and which cannot be advantageously prosecuted save at a much greater expense. And yet both have been zeal- ously cultivated, especially the laiter, in the age during which metaphysics have been neglected. We must look for some other cause ; nor do we think it ought to be diffi- cult to find. Metaphysical pursuit fell into abeyance in this country, not because it rested on a mere basis of ob- servation, not experiment, or because it led to no such tan- gible results as the pursuit of the physipal sciences ; but simply in consequence of a thorough divorce which .took place, through the labors of some of the most acute and ingenious metaphysicians the world ever saw, between the deductions of the science, and the conclusions of fiommon sense. Reid, who raised one of the most vigorous protests ever made on the other side, has well remarked that "it is THE IDEALISTIC SCHOOL. 441 genius, and not the want of it, that adulterates philosophy, and fills it with error and false theory." And certainly none but very superior men could have run their science BO high and dry upon the beach, that, with all the interest which attaches to its objects, men have preferred leaving it there to taking the trouble of getting it afloat again. We have before us Brown's " Philosophy of the Human Mind," open at one of the most ingenious portions of the work, that on the phenomena of simple suggestion, and would cite one of his views by way of example. Hume had previously shown that there is no other visi- ble connection between cause and effect than that of inva- riable contiguity. Cause and efiect were Siamese twins persistently seen together, but with the connecting liga- ment, if any such really existed, invariably concealed. And Brown, following close in the wake of the elder dialectician, deliberately erased the very words from his metaphysic vocabulary, and substituted antecedent and consequent in- stead. The very terms cause and effect vanished from his speculations, and with the terms the doctrine they in- volved ; and he taught, instead, that power is nothing more than the relation of one object or event as antecedent to another object or event, its immediate and invariable con- sequent. Hume, whose vigorous common-sense was ever raising protests against his ingenuities, and in whose ever- recurring asides, if we may so speak, the germ of the Scotch philosophy may be found, had stopped short when he showed that no known argument existed by which it could be proved that effects were the necessary results of causes, and that it could only be shown instead, and thus simply as a matter of experience, not reason, that they were always associated with causes, — always tagged to them in the exhibiting areas of space and time, as the cart is tagged to the horse, or as a train of railway carriages" is tagged to. the engine. And in summing up these links of the associative faculty, which keeps up the ever-moving train of thinking in the human mind, and constitutes one 442 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC. thought master of the ceremonies in introducing another, he enumerated, as distinct and separate, first, the link of contiguity in time and place ; and, second, the link of cause and effect. And well he might. Let a misemployed ingenuity compound them as they may, they are wide as the poles asunder. They are separated by the entire breadth of the human intellect ; nay, by the entire breadth of the brute and human intellect united. The prevailing link of association in the mind of the highest philosopher is the link of causation. ' It was the link that connected the sublime thoughts of Newton, when, sitting in his arbor, he saw the apple fall from the tree, and traced in profound meditation the effect of the great law to which it owed its fall, from the earth to the moon, and from thence to the sun and all the planets. And, on the other hand, the link of mere contiguity is the prevailing link in those minds in which intellect is feeblest; it was the link on which the ideas of Dame Quickly were suspended. Her recollections hung upon the parcel-gilt goblet, the sea-coal fire, and the chance visit of goodwife Keech, the butcher's wife. Nay, even the inferior animals are not too low to be under its influence. The horse quickens his pace when some contiguous object reminds him of the neighborhood of his stable, with its corn and hay ; and the cat learns to associate the dinner-bell with the dinner which it precedes. And yet we find one of the most ingenious of the idealistic metaphysicians fusing these two widely-distant links of association into one, — the prevailing Newtonian link into the prevailing link of the cat and horse ; or, as he himself expresses it, suppressing the link of causation as superfluous, and leaving instead, in conformity with his adoption of the doctrine of Hume (though Hume himself avoided the absurdity), only the link oT contiguity in time and space. The "olde polde-headed manne," who held that Tenter- den steeple was the cause of the Goodwin Sands, because the steeple had been built in their neighborhood, he said, just immediately before they began to form, has been a THE IDBALISTIG SOHOOL, 443 standing joke in English literature for the last four hun- dred years. He made the mistake of substituting conti- guity in time and place for causality, and has become a jest in consequence. But what shall be said of a scheme of metaphysics that does deliberately and knowingly, in order to preserve the consistency of a foregone conclusion, what the " polde-headed manne " did in his simjilicity and igno- rance ? The shrewd natural philosopher who saw in the slow deposition of a few particles of earth or mud in still water, formed by the opposing action of two cuiTents, a future sandbank, and, reasoning from cause to eifect, was reminded, through the associative link thus furnished, of the brown wastes of the Goodwin Sands strewed with wrecks, and with the white surf beating over them, and the garrulous old woman to whom a print of Tenterden steeple suggested the contiguous sand-pit along whose margin she had been accustomed to pick up bits of broken planks for her fire, would be, on the showing of Dr. Brown, under the influence of identical suggestions ; for contiguous cause and contiguous steeple he has virtually placed in the same category. Is there any wonder that a busy age should leave philosophers who argued after such a fashion, however nice their genius or however excessive their in- genuity, to milk their rams unheeded (we borrow the old illustration), and that only a few ill-employed students should be found idle enough to hold the pail ? And yet, such is no exti-eme illustration of the idealistic philosophy. It is, in truth, the grand objection to this philosophy, that it sets itself in direct opposition to mind engaged in all the practical walks. Let us adduce another instance. It is one of the fundamental principles of an ingenious met- aphysician of the present time, a principle in which he is virtually at one with Berkeley, that being is to be regarded as tantamount to knowing ; and that whatever is not an object of consciousness cannot be regarded as existent. Berkeley held that the absolute existence of unthinking beings, without any relation to their being perceived, was 444 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC, wholly unintelligible ; and we at once grant that a bar of metal kept in the fire until it glows a bright red has no consciousness of redness, that the caloric with which it is charged has no sense of heat, and, farther, that the bar itself has no feeling whatever of expansion or solidity. Redness, heat, expansion, and the idea of solidity are all impressions of sentient existence, — accidents or qualities to be seen, felt, or conceived of But it does not follow, that, because a heated bar of iron is not conscious of heat, solidity, or redness, it is not therefore a heated bar of iron ; or that because the senses can testify to its existence only as the senses of the living can testify of the existence of what is non-vital and non-sentient, it has therefore no existence as a non-vital, non-sentient substance. The leap in the logic seems most extraordinary, from the fact of the non-sentient character of the heated bar to the non-exist- ence of the heated bar. And yet such virtually was the conclusion of Berkeley. "Some traths are so near and obvious to the mind," he said, "that a man need only open his eyes to see them. And such," he added, "I take this important one to be, namely, that all the choir of heaven and furniture of earth — in a word, all those bodies which compose the mighty framework of the world — have not any substance without a mind ; that their being is to be perceived or known : to be convinced of which, the reader need only reflect and try to separate in his own thoughts the being of a sensible thing from its being perceived." In this last sentence the sophism seems to lie. It confounds conceiving with existing, light with eye and the optic nerve, and caloric and solidity with feel- ing and the tactile sense. It would date the beginning of the sun, not from that early period during which the sun influenced the yearly motions of our planet, but from the long posterior period during which eyes began to exist. And such essentially is the philosophy of that other in- genious metaphysician of our own time to which we refer. "He" also "goes so far as to aflBrm," says Mr. Cairns, THE IDEAUSTIC SCHOOL. 445 in his admirable pamphlet, " that thought ana existence are identical. Knowledge of existence, he says, — the apprehension of one's self and other things, — is alone true existence." Yes, true rational existence ; but, judged by the common-sense of mankind, it would be an emi- nently irrational existence that would deny the reality of existence of any other kind, — that would recognize the honafide being of an Edinburgh professor, but deny, in an argument four hundred pages long, that the university in which he lectured had any being whatever. And if, while such a teacher of moral philosophy, seated in its logic chair, mayhap, was lecturing in one room on the general nonentity of things, there was a professor of natural science demonstrating in another, on evidence which no ingenuous mind could resist, that, during immensely pro- tracted periods, this old earth of ours had moved round the sun in a state so nearly approximating to the incan- descent, that its diurnal motion propelled outward its mat- ter at the meridian, so that its equatorial diameter still exceeds its polar one, in consequence, by about twenty-six miles, — that for periods more than equally protracted, when it became a home of sentient existence, its highest creatures were in succession but trilobites, fishes, reptiles, birds, and mammals, and that not until comparatively of yesterday did its rational existence come into being, — we could not regard such neighborhood as other than formidable to the logician to whom this brief latter day would be the only one recognized as a reality. It would be such a neighborhood as that of a disciple of Newton busied in weighing and measuring the planets or calculat- ing the return of a comet on the parallax of a fixed star, to an old sophist engaged in showing his lads, on what he deemed excellent grounds, that if a tortoise which crept a hundred yards in an hour had got the start by a few fur- rows' breadth of Achilles, who ran a mile in five minutes, the fleet warrior might be engaged for ever and ever in vain attempts to come up with it. 38 446 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC. One of two things would of necessity occur in a state of matters so little desirable, — either the pupils of the lo- gician would become such mere triflers in argument as the Jack Lizard of Steele's essay, who, when his mother scalded her fingers, angered the honest woman by assuring her there was no such thing as heat in boiling water ; or they would learn to despise both their professor and his science. It gives us sincere pleasure to find that the Edinburgh University is in no such dangei*. So long as the logic chair remained vacant, we purposely abstained from making any allusion to the subject, in the fear that any expression of opinion, even in a matter so impersonal as the respective merits of two schools of philosophy, might and would be misinterpreted. But we are in no such danger now ; and we must be permitted to express our sincere pleasure that the election of Tuesday has resulted in the selection of an 'asserter of the Scotch school of philosophy to teach in the leading Scotch university. Nor are we influenced by any idle preference for the mere name Scotch. We know not that so large an amount of ingenuity has yet been expended on that common-sense school of which Reid was the founder, and Beattie, Hamilton, and Dugald Stewart the exponents, as on the antagonistic school, which at least equally dis- tinguished Scotchmen, such as Hume and Thomas Brown, have illustrated and adorned. George Primrose, in the " Vicar of Wakefield," found that the best things remained to be said on the wrong side ; and so, in the determination of astonishing the world, he set himself to dress up his three paradoxes. And, unquestionably, the paradoxes of the idealistic philosophy have been admirably dressed. But the Scotch philosophy has at least this grand advan- tage over the opponent school, that all its principles and deductions can be brought into harmony with those of all the other departments of science. It is not a jarring discord in the great field of mental exertion, — a false bar, to be slurred over or dropped in the general concert, — but a well-toned and accordant part, consistent with the bar- THE IDEALISTIC SCHOOL. 447 mony of the whole. It was acknowledged by Hume, that it was only in solitude and retirement that he could yield any assent to his own philosophy. Nor was he always tiMie to it even in solitude ; for in solitude he wrote his > admirable political essays, and his " History of England." And the Scotch school is simply an appeal, on philosophic grounds, from Hume the metaphysical dreamer, wrapped up in the moonshine of sceptical speculation, to Hume the practical politician and shrewd historian. And we know no man better fitted to be an exponent of this true and solid school, or whose mind partakes more of the character of that of its founder Beid, than the gentleman on whom the choice of the council has fallen. We trust he has a long career of usefulness before him ; and have every reason to hope that his expositions will be found not unworthy of the chair of Hamilton, nor of a philosophy destined ultimately, we cannot doubt, to give law in the regions of mental philosophy, at a time when the inge- nuities of its opponents shall have shared the fate of the paradoxes of George Primrose. 448 LITERABT AND SCIENTIFIC. X. THE POEST OF INTELLECT AND FANCY. It has been well said of singing a song, — in reference, of course, to the extreme commonness of musical accom- plishment in a low degree, and its extreme i-arity in a high one, — that it is what every one can do, and not one in a thousand can do well. A musical ear is, like seeing and hearing, one of the ordinary gifts of nature, just because music was designed to be one of the ordinary delights of the species ; but while the class capable of being delighted is a very large one, the class capable of delighting is one of the smallest. A not large apartment could contain all the first-class singers in the world ; and, mayhap, judged by men of the highest degree of taste, a closet roomy enough to contain Jenny Lind might be found sufficient to accommodate for a time its preeminent musical talent. And it is so as certainly with poetry as with music. There are a few men in every community wholly destitute of both the musical and the poetic sense, just as in every community there are a few men born blind and a few more born deaf; but, with these exceptions, all men have poetry and music in them, — music enough, if their education has not been wholly neglected, to derive pleasure from music, and poetiy enough to derive pleasure from poetry. And in due accordance with this fact, we find that in what man's Creator appointed from the beginning to be the commonest of all things, religion,, he has made large use of both. Every church has its music, and a large portion of the divine revelation has been made in poetry. But if the great musicians who can exquisitely delight be few, the great poets are still fewer. There is but one Jenny THE POESY OF INTELLECT AND FANCY. 449 Lind in the world ; but then the world has not had a Shakspeare for the last two hundred and fortyyears ; and, though greatly more than a century has elapsed since Dryden took tale, in his famous epigram, of all the great epic poets, and found them but three, no one has since been able to add a fourth to the list. Of all rare and admirable gifts, the poetic faculty in the high and perfect degree is at once the most admirable and the most rare. It may, however, be very genuine and exquisite, though not full-orbed, as in a Homer or a Milton. Nature, when she makes a poet of the first class, adds a powerful imag- inative faculty, and a fancy of great brilliancy, to an un- derstanding the profonndest ; she takes all that makes the great philosopher and all that is peculiar to the true poet, and, adding them together, produces, once in a thousand years or so, one of her fully-rounded and perfect intellects. But a man may have much though he may not have all ; nay, a very few faculties, if of a rare order and wisely employed, may well excite admiration and wonder. Tan- nahill could achieve only a song ; but as the songs which he did achieve were very genuine ones, with the true faculty in them, Scotland seems to be in no danger of forgetting them. Beranger, the gi-eatest of living song- writers, is a man of similar faculty with Tannahill. He is known as a song-writer, and as that only ; but never had France such songs before, and France knows how to value them. The one thing which Beranger can do, no other man can do equally well; and not a few of the fairest names among the poets of antiquity are those of poets equally limited, apparently, in what they were fitted to produce, but also equally exquisite in the quality of their productions. Anacreon has left only little odes, and Pin- dar only great ones ; but scholars tell us that it is almost worth while acquiring Greek in order to be able to read them. Ancient Rome has immortalized her Lucretius for his single faculty of transmuting not very goOd philosophy into very noble verse, and modern Italy her Petrarch for 38* 450 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC. his i-are skill in turning a sonnet. In short, almost all tlio poets of the second order have been poets, not full-orbed in their brightness, like the sun or the great outer planets of the system, but, like the inner planets, and like the moon ere her full term has come, mere segments and cres- cents of glory. There can be no very adequate division made of these partially orbed poets ; and yet they naturally enough divide into two classes, — a class in whom intellect is comparatively strong and genius weak, and, vice versa, a class in whom intellect is comparatively weak and genius strong. Pure intellect dissociated from the poetic faculty can of course accomplish but little in the fields of poesy. And yet, such is the power of determination, diligence, and high culture, that a little it has accomplished. If it has not produced brilliant poems, it has at least produced pointed stanzas and pleasing stories, narrated in easy and elegant verse. We greatly question whether Hayley was born a poet ; but his " Triumphs of Temper," though they triumphed over the temper of Byron, certainly did not tri- umph over ours. On the contrary, we found the piece, in its character as a metrical tale, at least as readable as if it had been written in good prose ; and there are even some of its stanzas which we still remember. The few lines in whioh the father of the heroine is described may not be poetry, but they are nearly as good as if they were. There are not many characters better hit off in a few lines, in the whole round of English verse, than that of "The good Sir Gilbert, to his country true, A faitliful Whig, who, zealous for the state, In freedom's service led the loud debate; Tet every day, by transmutation rare, Turned to a Tory in his elbow-chair. And made his daughter pay, howe'er absurd, Passive obedience to his sovereign word." But of all the achievements of the prose men in the prov- ince of verse, that of Swift is the greatest. Dryden was THE POESY OF INTELLECT AND FANCY. 451 quite in the right when he said that the young clergyman was no poet ; and yet the " no poet " has so fixed his name in the poesy of the country that in no general biography of the English poets do we find his life omitted, and in no general collection of English poetry do we fail to find his verses. The works of a class of writers not certainly so devoid of poetry as Swift and Hayley, but who were rather men of fine taste and vigorous intellect than of high poetic genius, represent in large measure the common staple of English poesy during the earlier and middle part of the last century. Not only the Broomes, Fentons, and Lytteltons, but even the Armstrongs and Akensides, be- longed to this class. The men who assisted Pope in trans- lating the " Odyssey ; " the man who wrote that work on the Conversion of St. Paul which still maintains its place in what may be termed the higher literature of the " Evidences ; " in especial, the men who produced the "Pleasures of the Imagination" and the "Art of Pre- serving Health," — had all very vigorous minds. Akenside would have made a first-class metaphysical professor, par- ticularly in the SBsthetic department ; and Armstrong could have effectually grappled with very severe and rugged subjects ; but the poetic faculty that was in them was very subordinate to their intellect. It was true so far as it ex- tended, but embroidered only thinly and in a threadbare way the strong tissue of their thinking. And yet both the " Art of Preserving Health " and the " Pleasures of the Imagination " are noble poems. The latter is the better known of the two: Thomas Brown used to repeat almost the whole of it every season in his class, as at once good poetry and good metaphysics. But the former deserves to be known as well. The man who could transmute such a subject into passable poetry, and render his composition readable as a whole, — and much of the poetry is more than passable, and the piece as a whole eminently reada- ble," — must be regarded as having accomplished no ordi- nary achievement. It is, however, from the strong intellect 452 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC. displayed in the staple texture of the piece, rather than from its poetic emhroidery, that it derives its merit. The second class — the class composed of men whose poetic genius overrode their intellect — is not so largely represented in English poetry as the other. It may be safely said, however, that in the writings of men of the last century, such as Collins, Chatterton in his Rowley poems, and perhaps Meikle, we find more of poetry than of pure intellect ; and in writings of men of the present century, such as those of Keats, Wilson, and perhaps Leigh Hunt, we find much more. In the writings of Wil- son there is often scarce tissue enough to support the load of gorgeous embroidery that mantles over it. In especial in his "Isle of Palms" do we find the balance of the poetry preponderately cast against the intellect. It is, as a poem, in every respect the antipodes of the " Art of Preserving Health." In Keats the preponderance is also very marked. What a gorgeous gallery of poetic pictures that " Eve of St. Agnes" forms, and yet how slim the tis- sue that lies below ! How thin the canvas on which the whole is painted ! For vigorous sense, one deep-thoughted couplet of Dryden would make the whole kick the beam. And yet what can be more exquisite in their way than those pictures of the young poet ! Even the old worn-out gods of Grecian mythology become life-like when he draws them. They revive in his hands, and become vital once more. In ""Rimini" we detect a similar faculty. A man of profound, nay, of but rather strong intellect, would scarce have chosen such a repulsive story for poetic adorn- ment ; but, once chosen, only a true poet could have adorned it so well. Such are specimens of the class of poets which we would set off against that to which the Lytteltons, Akensides, and Armstrongs belonged, and at whose head Pope and Dryden took their stand. And it is a class that, compar- atively at least, — the sum total of the poetic stock taken into account, — is largely repi'esented at the present time. THE POESY OF INTELLECT AND FANCY. 453 We shall not repeat the nickname which has been era- ployed to designate them ; for, believing, whatever may be their occasional aberrations, that they possess " the vis- ion and the faculty divine," we shall not permit ourselves to speak other than respectfully of them. We could fain wish that they oftener rejected first thoughts, and waited for those second ones which, according to Bacon, are wiser: we could fain wish that what was said of Dryden — " Who either knew not, or forgot. That greatest art, — the art to blot," — could not be said so decidedly of them. But we must not forget that their compositions, though not without fault in their character as wholes, and often primed in, as a painter might say, on too thin a groundwork, contain some of the most brilliant passages in the wide range of modern poetry. To this school Gerald Massey, a name already familiar to most of our readers, has been held to belong. He has less of its peculiar faults, however, than any of its other members, with certainly not less of its peculiar beau- ties. With all the marked individuality of original genius, he reminds us more of Keats than of any other English poet ; but with the same rare perception of external beauty, and occasionally the same too extreme devotion to it, he adds a lyrical power and a depth of feeling which Keats did not possess. And from these circumstances we augur well of his future. It is ever the tendency of genuine feel- ing to pass from the surface of nature to its depths; and though, as we see exemplified in the songs of Burns, the true lyrist may find in description adequate employment for his peculiar powers, it is always in preparation for some burst of sentiment, or by way of garnishing to some strik- ing thought. Mr. Massey's new poem" Craigcrook Castle" furnishes admirable illustrations of the various phases of his genius. The plan of the work is one. of which our literature has furnished many examples, from the times of the " Canterbury Tales " down to those of the " Queen's 454 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC. "Wake," and which is taken up year after year in the Christ- mas stories of the writers connected with the "Household Words." There is a meeting of friends at the hospitable board, over which Jeffrey once presided, and at which a man of similar literary tastes and feelings presides now ; and each guest, in passing the evening, brings forward his contribution of song or story. The introduction, with none of the cadences of Eeats, reminds us in every line of that poet's delight in sensuous imagery and influences, and of the crust of rich thought, if we may so express ourselves, that mantled over the surface of his poetry. The advent of the morning at Craigcrook we find thus described : — " The meek and melting amethyst of dawn Blushed o'er the blue hills in the ring o' the world; Up purple twilights come the shining sea Of sunlight breaking in a silent surge, Whence morning, like the birth of beauty, rose; While at a rosy touch, the clouds, that lay In sullen purples round the hills of Fife, Adown her pathway spread their paths of gold. * * * * " Sweet lilies of the valley, tremulous fair. Peep through their curtains, clasped with diamond dew By fairy jeweller's working while they slept; The arch laburnum droops her budding gold From emerald fingers with such taking grace; The fuchsia fans her fairy chandelry. And flowering current crimsons the green gloom; The pansies, pretty little puritans. Come peering up with merry, elvish eyes; At summer's call the lily is alight; Wallflowers in fragrance bum themselves away With the sweet season on her precious pyre; Pure passionate aromas of the rose. And purple perfume of the hyacinth. Come like a color through the golden day." There is much of Keats in this passage, and yet Keats was not in the mind of the writer: the similarity of result is an effect, evidently, not of imitation, but of a similarity TUB POESY OF INTELLECT AND FANCY. 455 of genius. The following passage, much in the same vein, has been greatly criticized, and yet none but a true poet could have produced it. It is a remarkable picture of a remarkable man, with points about it which might easily be laid hold of in a mocking spirit, but which impart not a little of its character and individuality to the portrait. We quote from the second edition : — " We gathered all within the house, and there Shook off the purple silence of the night. Cried one, Come, let us a symposium hold. And each one to the banquet hring their best In song or sfoiy : all shall play a part. So, for a leader simple and grand, we chose Our miracle-worker in midwifery, — he Who wrestled with the fiend of corporal pain. And stands above the writhing agony Like Michael with the dragon 'neath his heel; Who is in soul Love riding on a lion; In body, a Bacchus crowned with the head of Jove: The keen life looks out in his lighted face So fulgent, that the gazer brightens too; He bravely towers above our fume and flet, Like the old hills, whose feet are in the surge. And on their lifted brows the eternal calm; For he is one of those prophetic spirits That, ere the world's night, dreams of things to come." There may be faults here, as the reviewers suggest, — nay, it maybe all fault; but it certainly does remind us of those aberrations of genius specially described by the poet as " glorious faults, that critics dare not mend." In illus- tration of the lyrical spirit and deep tenderness, of Mr. Massey, we give the following extracts from a ■series of simple triplets on the death of a beloved child : — " Within a mile of Edinburgh town We laid our little darling down, — Our first seed in " God's acre " sown. " The city looketh solemn and sweet; It bares a gentle brow to greet The mourners mourning at its feet. 456 UTERAEY AND SCIEITriFIC. . " The sea of human life breaks round This shore o' the dead with softened sound; Wild flowers climb each mossy mound To place in resting hands their palm. And breathe their beauty, bloom, and balm, Folding the dead in fragrant calm. « * « « " Lone mother, at the dark grave-door She kneeleth, pleading o'er and o'er; But it is shut for evermore. " She toileth on — the monmfUlest thing — At the vam task of emptying The cistern where the salt tears spring. * * * * " The spirit of life may leap above, But in that grave her prisoned dove Lies cold to th' warm embrace of love; " And dark though all the world Is bright. And lonely with a city in sight. And desolate in the rainy night. "Ah, God I when in the glad life-cnp The face of Death swims darkly up. The crowning flower is sure to droop ! " And so we laid our darling down, When summer's cheek grew ripely brown ; And still, though grief has milder grown, Unto the stranger's land we cleave, Like some poor birds that grieve and grieve Round the robbed nest, so loth to leave." There are one or two obscurities of figure here that crave a second thought to unlock them ; but nothing can be more sadly tender than the whole, and there is poetry in every stanza. Gerald Massey is still a young man, and much of his time in the past must have been spent in shaking off the stiff soil that clogs round for a time the thoughts and expres- sions of untutored genius. A man still under thirty, who never_ attended any school save a penny one for a brief period, and who at eight years of age was sent to toil in a THE UNTAUGHT POETS. 457 silk manufactory from five o'clock in the morning till half- past six at night, may well be regarded as still but partially developed ; and we are convinced the world has not yet seen his best. He has but to give his intellect as full scope as his fancy and imagination, and to bestow upon his pieces that elaboration and care which high excellence demands from even the happiest genius, in order to become one of the enduring lights of British song. XI. THE UNTAUGHT POETS. Ix more than one respect the untaught poets of England have fared better than those of our own country. In the first place, Southey, perhaps the raciest English writer of his day, wrote their history, and made not a few of them known who had succeeded but indifferently in making known themselves ; and in the second, we find from his nar- ratives that, with few exceptions, their poetry served them as a sort of stepping-stone, by which they escaped upwards from the condition of hard labor and obscurity, to which they seemed born, into a sphere of comparative affluence and comfort. For one of the first of their number, John Taylor, the "Water Poet," — a man who was certainly not a water-poet in the teetotal sense, — nothing could have been done. He wSs a bold, rough, roystering fellow, quite as famous for his feats and wagers as for his rhymes. On one occasion he navigated his cockle-shell of a wherry all the way from London Bridge to York ; on another, he rowed it across the German Sea from London to Ham- burg; on yet another, in 1618, he undertook to travel from London to Edinburgh, and thence into the Highlands, 39 458 LITEBARY AND SCIENTIFIC. " not carrying money to or fro, neither begging, borrowing,- nor asking meat, drink, or lodging ; " and what he under- took to do he did, and bequeathed to us, in his history of his "Pennyless Pilgrimage," the best account extant of hunting in the Highlands by the " Tinckhell," and of the " wolves and wild horses " which, at even that compara- tively recent period, abounded in the ruder districts of Scotland. It would have been scarce possible to elevate such a man, even had a very generous patronage been the order of the age ; but Taylor had all his days enough to eat and drink, and died the keeper of a thriving public house, much frequented, during the times of the Common- wealth, ^y the cavaliers. And no sooner did men of this class arise, to whom a judicious patronage could be ex- tended, than they were admitted to its benefits. Stephen Dick, the " Thresher," was rather a small poet, but he was an amiable and conscientious man ; and, mainly through the exertions of the Rev. Mr. Spence, Professor of Poetry in the University of Oxford, he obtained orders in the English Church, and was preferred to a not uncomfortable living. Dodsley, still known by his " King and Miller of Mansfield," was elevated, through the exercise of a genial patronage, from his original place as a table-boy, to be one of the most respectable London booksellers of his day, — a man whose name still imparts a recognizable bibliograph- ical value to the works to which it is attached. The shoe- maker Woodhouse, and the tobacco-pipe-maker Bryant, were also fortunate in their patrons ; Gifford was eiliinently so ; all seems to have been done for Ann Tearsley, the poeti-^ cal milkwoman, that her own unhappy temper allowed ; and in our own times, John Clare was kindly and liberally dealt with ; though not more in his case than in that of his predecessor Duck could the degree of favor with which he was treated ward off the cruel mental malady that darkened his latter years. With, in short, the exception of one of the best, and in every respect most meritorious and deserving of the class, — poor Robert Bloomfield, who THE UNTAUGHT POETS. 459 was suffered to die in great poverty, — we know not a single untaught English poet who gave evidence of the possession of the true faculty, however narrow its scope, and had at the same time character enough to be capable of being benefited by a liberal patronage, that failed to re- ceive the encouragement which he deserved. And we find Southey laying down very admirably, in combating a remark of the elder Sheridan, — whom he terms an ill- natured, perverse maif, — the generous principle on which this had been done. "Wonder," says the "author of the first " Pronouncing Dictionary," — a man whom the greater lexicographer, Johnson, described as not only nat- urally dull, but as also rendered, through dint of immense effort on his own part, vastly duller than nature had made him, — " wonder, usually accompanied by a bad taste, looks only for what is uncommon ; and if a work comes out under the name of a thresher, a bricklayer, a milkwo- man, or a lord, it is sure to be eagerly sought after by the million." " Persons of quality," remarks the poet-laureate, " require no defence when they appear as authors in these days ; and, indeed, as mean a spirit may be shown in tra- ducing a book because it is written by a lord, as in extolling it beyond its deserts for the same reason. But when we are told that the thresher, the milkwoman, and the tobac- co-pipe-maker did not deserve the patronage they found, when it is laid down as a maxim of philosophical criti- cism that poetry ought never to be encouraged unless it is excellent in its kind ; that it is an art in which infe- rior execution is not to be tolerated, a luxury, and must therefore be rejected unless it is of the very best, — such reasoning may be addressed with success to cockered and sickly intellects, but it will never impose upon a healthy understanding, a generous spirit, or a good man. .... If the poet be a good and amiable man," continues Southey, "he will be both the better and the happier for writing verses. ' Poetry,' says Landon, ' opens many sources of tenderness that lie forever in the rock without 460 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC. it The benevolent persons who patronized Stephen Duck did it, not with the hope of rearing a great poet, but for the sake of placing a worthy man in a station more suited to his intellectual endowments than that in which he was born. Bryant was befriended in a manner not dissimilar, for the same reason. In the case of Wood- house and Ann Yearsley the intention was to better their condition in their own way of life. And the Woodstock shoemaker was chiefly indebted for the patronage which he received to Tj'homas Warton's good nature ; for my predecessor Warton was the best-natured man that ever wore such a wig." There is the true English generosity of sentiment here, — a generosity which, in such well-known cases as^hat of Henry Kirke White and John Jones, was actually exemplified by Sonthey himself; and his remark regarding the humanizing influence of poesy on*even its humbler cultivators wi^U scarce fail to remind some of our readei's of the still happier one which our countryman Mackenzie puts into the mouth of "old Ben Silton." " There is at least," said the stranger, " one advantage in the poetical inclination, that is an incentive to philan- thropy. There is a certain poetic ground on which a man cannot tread without feelings that enlarge the heart. The causes of human depravity vanish before the romantic en- thusiasm he professes ; and many who are not able to reach the Parnassian heights may yet approach so near as to be bettered by the air of the climate." The untaught poets of Scotland have fared much more hardly than those of the sister country. Some of them forced their way through life simply as energetic, vigorous men. Allan Ramsay throve as a tradesman, and built for himself a house in Edinburgh, which continues to attract the eye of the stranger by its picturesqueness, and which few literary men of tha present day could aflford to pur- chase. And Falconer, though he died a sailor's death in the full vigor of his prime, had first risen from the fore- castle to the quarter-deck as a bold and skilful seaman. THE UNTAUGHT POETS. 461 Allan Cunningham, too, made his way good as a hard- working business man. But, if unable to help themselves after the manner of Falconer, Cunningham, and Ramsay, the untaught poets of Scotland received but little help from the patronage of their countrymen. The aristocracy of Scotland made Burns a gauger, and employed one of the noblest intellects which his country ever produced in "searching," as he himself in bitter mirth expressed it, " auld wives' barrels." And neither Alexander Wilson nor poor Tannahill ever received even the miserable measure of patronage that gave Burns seventy pounds a year, and demanded, in return, that he should waste three fourths of his time in a half-reputable and uncongenial employ- ment. Poor Tannahill, the harmless, the gentle, the affec- tionate, was left to perish unhappily when he was but little turned of thirty ; and Wilson, a stronger, though not a finer spirit, quitted his country in disgust, and made himself an enduring fame in the United States as a nat- uralist, by the great work which Prince Charles Lucien Bonaparte did not disdain to complete. -We cannot point to a single untaught poet in the literary history of our country that ever eryoyed a pension. Pensions were re- served for the friends and relatives of the statesmen to whom Toryism in Edinburgh and elsewhere built senseless columns. But though the -untaught poets of Scotland fared thus differently from those of England, it was cer- tainly not because they deserved less. On the contrary, if we except Shakspeare, — one of those extraordinary minds that, according to Johnson, " bid help and hinder- ance alike vanish before them," — our untaught Scotchmen have been men of larger calibre, and greater masters of the lyre, than the corresponding class in England. Pass- ing over the John Taylors and Ned Wards as deserving of no special remark, we would stake Ramsay with his " Gentle Shepherd " agpnst his brother poet and brother bookseller Dodsley with his " Miller of Mansfield " and his " Toy Shop," taking odds of ten to one any day ; Bloom- 39* 462 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC. field, though a worthy personage, and possessed of the true faculty, was a small man compared with Robert Barns ; and the Ducks, Woodhouses, Bryants, and Ben- nets were slim and stunted of stature comj)ared with the Falconers, Tannahills, Wilsons, Allail Cunninghams, and Hoggs. In this, as in other walks, though English genius of tbe highest class takes the first place in the literature of the world, its genius of the second class fails to equal second-class genius in Scotland. There have been poets among our countrymen whose lives no one thinks of writ- ing, and whose verses have failed to attract any very large share of notice who possessed powers greatly superior to most of the authors enumerated by Southey in his Essay on the Uneducated Poets, and who, had they written in England, would have been extensively known. To one of these, still among us, we find pleasing reference made in the correspondence of Jefirey. " The greater part of your poems," we find him saying, in a note to the self- taught poet Alexander Maclagan, "I have perused with singular gratificaUon. I can remember when the appear- ance of such a woi'k would have produced a great sensa- tion, and secured to its author both distinction and more solid advantages." And in another note, written in ref- erence chiefly to a second and enlarged edition of Mr. Maclagan's poems, and which occurs in the volume of " Correspondence," edited by Lord Cockburn, we find the distinguished critic specifying the pieces which pleased him most. " I have already," says his lordship, " read all [the poems] on the slips, and think them, on the whole, fully equal to those in the former volume. I am most pleased, I believe, with that which you have entitled ' Sisters' Love,' which is at once very touching, very graphic, and very elegant. Tour ' Summer Sketches ' have beautiful passages in all of them, and a pervading joyousness 'and kindliness of feeling, as well as a vein of grateful devotion, which must recommend them to all good minds. The ' Scorched Flowers,' I thought the most picturesque." THE USTATJGHT POETS. 463 We have read over Mr. Maclagan's works, — both the volume of poems which so gratified the taste of Jeffrey,'' and an equally pleasing volume, of subsequent appearance, dedicated to the Rev. Dr. Guthrie, and devoted to the cause of ragged schools.^ The general strain of both is equally pleasing ; though we know not whether we do not prefer the simplicity and pathos of some of the " Ragged School Rhymes " to even those compositions of the earlier volume on which Jeffrey has stamped his imprimatur. Let us, however, ere quoting from the latter work, submit to the reader a few stanzas of the piece which most pleased the critic. It is a younger sister that thus addresses — in strains that, for their quaint beauty, remind us of some of the happier pieces of Marvell — a sister older than her- self, but still young, that had been to her, in, her state of orphanage, as a mother. " Lo! whilst I fondly look npgn Thy lovely face, drinking the tone Of thy sweet voice, my early known, — My long, long loved, — my dearest grown, — I feel thou art A joy, — apart Of all I prize in soul and heart. " Sweet guardian of my infancy. Hast thou not been the blooming tree Whose soft gi-een branches sheltered me From withering want's inclemency 1 No cloud of care Kor bleak despair Could blight me 'ncath thy branches fair. " And thou hast been, since that sad day We gave our mother's clay to clay, The morning star, the evening ray, That cheered me on life's weary way, — A vision bright, rilling my night Of sorrow with thy looks of light. > Sketches from Nafcro, and other Poems. By Alexander Mnelngan. > Bagged School Ifehj'mes. By Alexander Maolagau. 464 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC. " Yet there were hours I'll ne'er forget Ere sorrow and thy soul had met, — Ere thy young cheeks with tears were wet, Or griefs pale seal was on them set, — Ere hope declined, And cares unkind Threw sadness o'er thy sunny mind. " In glorious visions still I see The village green, the old oak tree, The sun-hath ed banks where oft with thee I've hunted for the blaeberrie. Where oft we crept. And sighed and wept. Where our dead linnet soundly slept. " Again I see the rustic chair In which you swung me through sweet air. Or twined fair lilies with my hair. Or dressed my little doll with carej In fancy's sight Still rise its bright Blue beads, red shoes, and boddjce white. " And at the sunsets in the west, And at my joy when gently prest To the soft pillow of thy breast. Lulled by thy mellow voice to rest, Sung into dreams Of woods and streams, Of lovely buds, and birds, and beams. " When wintry tempests swept the vale. When thunder and the heavy hail And lightning turned each young cheek pale. Thine ever was the Bible tale Or psalmist's song The wild night long, Fresh from the heart where faith is strong. " Now summer clouds, like golden towers, Fall shattered into diamond showers : Come, let us seek our wildwood bowers. And lay our heads among the flowers; Come, sister dear. That we maj' hear Our mother's spirit whispering near." THE UNTAUGHT POETS. 465 These stanzas are, as the great Scotch critic well re- marked, at once "touching," "graphic," and "elegant," and certainly exhibit no trace of what Johnson well terms the « narrow conversation " to which untaught men in humble circumstances " are inevitably condemned." But regarding the difficulties with which Mr. Maclagan has had to contend, we must quote from himself : " That a working-man," we find him saying, "should write and publish a volume of verse, is no phenomenon : many of the brightest lights of literature in all countries have toiled for years at the press, the plough, the loom, and the ham- mer. That wealth and education in themselves have never made a true minstrel, is proverbial; nevertheless, they are powerful allies in his favor. Take, for instance, a youth from school, ten years of age, and bind him at thirteen or fourteen to a laborious trade. See him work- ing ten hours a day for years without intermission, strug- gling to unravel, meanwhile, the mysteries of literature, science, and art, without assistance or encouragement, and you will find that he has many bard battles to fight before he can hope to attain even standing-room in the literary arena. Such, literally, has been the position of the author of the present volume." Let us remark, however, that untaught men possessed of the true poetic faculty are usually, in one important respect, happier in their genius than untaught men whose intellect is of the reflective cast, and their bent scientific. The poets are developed much earlier, and lose less in life. Ramsay began to publish his poems; in detached broad-sheets, in his five-and-twentjeth year; Burns in his twenty-sixth yeai- had written the greater part of his Kilmarnock" volume, including his " Twa Dogs," " Halloween," and the " Cottar's Saturday Night ; " Alexander Wilson produced his " Watty and Meg" at the same age ; and the writings of both Tanuahill and Allan Cunningham saw the light ere either writer was turned of thirty. But self-taught men of science have usually to undergo a much longej.' probationary period ere they can 466 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC. elevate themselves into notice. James Ferguson was nearly forty before he began to give public lectures on his favorite subjects, astronomy and mechanics. Franklin was in his forty-third year ere he had demonstrated the iden- tity of lightning with the electric spark ; and not until he had attained the same age did Sir William Herschel render himself known as a great astronomer and the discoverer of a new planet. Both in national and individual history, poetry is of early and science of late growth. The self- taught poet is not unfreqnently developed at as early an age as men of a similar cast of genius who have enjoyed all the advantages of complete culture ; judging from the experience of the past, he need not lose a single year of life ; whereas the self-taught man of science may deem himself more than usually fortunate if he does- not lose at least ten. We have said that in some respects we prefer Mr. Mac- lagan's second publication, the " Ragged School Rhymes," to his first. It is, in the main, a more earnest, and, in the poetic sense, more truthful work. When the poet, in his earlier volume, sings, as he does at times, though rarely, of drinking " cronies " and usages, we know that he is catching but the dying . echoes of a bypast time, when there was not a little staggering on the top of Parnassus, and Helicon used to run at times, like a town cistern on an election day, whiskey punch by the hour. But there is none of this in the other volume. The distress which it exhibits, the sympathy which it expresses, the views of nature which it embodies, are all realities of the present day. The earlier volume, however, contains more think- ing ; and the possession of both are necessary to the man desirous of rightly appreciating the untaught poet Mac- lagan. We find some little difficulty in selecting from the "Ragged School Rhymes" an appropriate specimen, not from the poverty, but from the wealth, of the volume. We fix, however, on the following, as suited to remind the reader of that passage in one of the larger poems of THE UNTAUGHT POETS. 467 Langhorne which, according to Sir Walter Scott, power- fully elicited the sympathy of Burns, though we are pretty certain Mr. Maelagan had not the passage in his eye when he wrote. Indeed, the latter part of his poem could have been written in only the present age : — THE OUTCAST. " And did you pity me, kind sir? Say, did you pity me? Then, oh how kind, and oh how warm. Tour generous heart must bel For I have fasted all the day. Ay, nearly fasted three. And slept upon the cold, hard earth, And none to pity me; And none to pity me, kind sir. And none to pity me. " My mother told me I was born On a battlefield in Spain, Where mighty men like lions fought. Where blood ran down like rain! And how she wept, with bursting heart. My father's corse to see, When I lay cradled 'mong the dead. And none to pity me ; And none to pity me, kind sir, And none to' pity me. " At length there came a dreadful day, — My mother too lay dead, — And I was sent to England's shore To beg my daily bread, — To beg my bread; bat cruel men Said, Boy, this may not be, So they locked me in a cold, cold cell. And none to pity. me; And none to pity me, kind sir. And none to pity me. 468 LITEEART AND SCIENTIFIC. "They whipped me, — sent mo hungry forth; I saw a lovely field Of fragrant beans; I plucked, I ate : To hunger all must yield. The farmer came, — a cold, a stern, A cmel man was he; He sent me as a thief to jail. And none to pity me; And none to pity me, kind sir, And none to pity me. " It was a blessed place for me. For I had better fare; It was a blessed place for me, — Sweet was the evening prayer. At length they drew my prison bolts, And I again was free, — Poor, weak, and naked in the street. And none to pity me; And none to pity me, kind sir, And none to pity me. " I saw sweet children in the fields. And fair ones in the street, And some were eating tempting fruit. And some got kisses sweet; And some were in their father's arms. Some on their mother's knee; I thought my orphan heart would break. For none did pity me; For none did pity me, kind sir, For none did pity me. " Then do you pity me, kind sir? Then do you pity me? Then, oh how kind, and oh how warm, Your generous heart must be I For I have fasted all the day. Ay, nearly fasted three. And slept upon the cold, hard ground. And none to pity me; And none to pity me, kind sir, And none to pity me." .OTJB NOVEL LITERATURE. 469 XII. OUR NOVEL LITERATURE. What are the most influential writings of the present time, — the writings that tell with most eflfeet on public opinion ? Not, certainly, the graver or more eleaborate productions of the press. Some of these in former times exerted a prodigious influence. There were four great works, in especial, that appeared at wide intervals during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, — the last of their number about eighty years ago, — that revolutionized, on their respective subjects, the thinking of all Europe ; and these were, the "Laws of Peace and War," the " Essay on the Human Understanding," the " Spirit of Laws," and the " Wealth of Nations," — all works of profound elabo- ration, that contain the thinking of volumes condensed into single pages. At an earlier period there were theological works that stirred men's minds to their utmost depths, and changed the political relations of states and kingdoms over all Christendom. Such was the influence exerted by the treatises of Luther, whose written " words were half- battles ; " and by those " Institutes of Calvin " that gave form and body to the thinking of half the religious world. But whether it be that we live in an age too superficial to produce, or too busy too read, such works, or at once su- perficial and busy both, without either the works to read or the time to read them in, it is certain that almost all power has passed away from the grave and the elaborate to the light arid the clever, and that what would have been pronounced about a century ago the least influential kinds of writing must now be recognized as by -far the most influential. Had one said to a literary man in the 470 LITEEART AND SCIENTIFIC. early days of Johnson, " Pray, what do you regard as the least important departments of your literature, both in themselves and their effects, and that tell least on the public mind?" the reply would probably have been, " Why, the writing in our newspapers and our novels." And now the same reply would serve at least equally well to indicate the kinds of writing that are most telling and influential. None others exert so great a power over the general mind of the community as novels and newspaper articles. And the mode of piecemeal publication recently resorted to by our more popular novelists gives to the effect proper to their compositions as pictures of great genius and power the further effect of pamphlets or mag- azines: they are at once novels and newspaper articles too. Considerably more than a century has passed, however, since a judicious critic might have seen how very influ- ential a class of compositions well-written novels were to become. "The Life and Adventures of Eobinson Crusoe" appeared as far back as the year 1719, and at once rose to the popularity which it has ever since maintained. But it failed to attract the notice of the critics. The men who sat in judgment on the small elegances of the wits of the reign of George I., and marked how sentences were bal- anced and couplets rounded, could not stoop to notice a composition so humble as a novel, more especially a novel written by a self-taught man. But his singularly vivacious production forced a way for itself, leaving the fine sen- tences and smart couplets to be forgottien. In a short time it was known all over Europe ; several translations appeared simultaneously in France, much about the period when Le Sage was engaged in writing, in one of the smaller houses of one of the most neglected suburbs of Paris, his "Gil Bias " and his "Devil on Two Sticks;" and such was the rage of imitation which it excited in Germany, that no fewer than forty-one German novels were produced that had Robinson Crasoes for their heroes, OUR NOVEL LITERATURE. 471 and fifteen others, that, though equally palpable imitatioDS, had heroes that bore a different name. Eight years after the publication of Defoe's great work, there appeared an English novel of a more extraordinary form, and of higher literary pretensions, in the " Travels of Gulliver ; " and it too at once attained to a popularity which has never since flagged or diminished. Thirteen years more elapsed, and Richardson had produced his "Pamela," and, shortly after, Fielding his " Joseph Andrews." Smollett came upon the scene with his " Roderick Random " in eight years more. There followed in succession, after the lapse of about ten other years, the " Rasselas " of Johnson and the " Candide " of Voltaire, — both works which spread over the world ; and in yet seven other years Groldsmith's " Vicar of Wake- field " appeared, and attained to even a more extensive popularity than either. And yet still, after the teaching of nearly half a century, — nay, after nearly two centuries had elapsed since a novel was recognized as the most pop- ular and influential of all the works ever produced by Spain, — grave and serious people continued to speak of novels as mere frivolities, that were to be in every case eschewed by the young, but were scarce of importance enough to be heeded by the old at all. Nor even yet, — after the novels of Scott have, if we may so express our- selves, taken possession of the world, — after the most po- tent work of Germany, the " Wilhelm Meister " of Goethe, has appeared, like that of Spain, in the form of a novel, — after the modem novels of France have been measuring lances with even its priesthood, and approving themselves, in at least the larger towns, the mightier power of the two, — and after, in our own country, it has been accepted altogether as a marvel that history, in the case of Macau- lay's, should have its thirty thousand subscribers, but as quite an expected and ordinary thing that fiction, in Dick- ens's current work, should have at least an equal number, — the old estimate in the minds of many has been suffered to remain uncorrected, and the novel is thought of rather 472 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC. as a light, though not always very laudable toy, than as a tremendously potent instrument for the origination or the revolutionizing of opinion. Some of our great lawyers could make sharp speeohesj about two ye'ai-s ago, against what they termed the misrepresentations of" Bleak House," evidently' regarding it, as they well might, as the most formidable series of pamphlets against the abuses of chancery, and the less justifiable practices of the legal profession, that ever appeared. We are by no means sure, however, that the church is as thoroughly awake to the tendencies of his present work as niembers of the legal faculty, wise in their generation, were to the design of his last. Most of the novelists have been hostile to virtue of a high or severe kind in general; and there were few of eminence produced in our own country that did not leave on record their dislike of evangelism in particular. We are afraid Byron was in the right in holding that Cervantes laughed away the chivalry of Spain : 'Spain produced no he- roes after the age of Don Quixote. As for Le Sage, Vinet is at least as just in his criticism as Byron in his, when he says that "his novels do not contain a single honest char- acter, — nothing but knaves and weaklings, and even the very weaklings are far from being honest." " In a word," we find the critic again remarking, " ' Gil Bias ' is but a paraphrase of the celebrated maxim of Rochefoucauld, — 'Virtue is only a word; it is nowhere found on the earth; and we must be resigned." Most of the modern novelists of France stand on a still lower level than that of their great master, Le Sage. He did not inculcate virtue, and they teach positive vice. Ifor is Goethe a safer guide. The "Sorrows of Werter" and "Wilhelm Meister's Ap- prenticeship" are both very mischievous books. The nov- elists of our own country have been more mixed in their character. Defoe we must regard as, with all his faults, a well-meaning man, who had been an object of persecution himself, and had learned to sympathize with the persecu- OUR NOVEL LITERATURE. 473 ted. The Scotch were very angry with him for the part he took in the Union ; but that did not prevent his doing justice, in his history, to their long struggles for ecclesias- tical independence ; and religion never comes across him in his novels, — some of them quite loose enough, — but he has always a good word to say in its behalf. He was no very profound theologian : Friday, in the dialogue parts of " Crusoe," is nearly as subtle a divine as his master ; and when poor Olivia Primrose instances, as a proof of her large acquirements in controversy and her consequent abil- ity of converting 'Squire Thornhill, that she had read all the " Religious Courtship," — another of Defoe's works, — wo at once agree that the worthy doctor, her father, did quite right in sending her off to " help her mother in making the goosebeiTy pie." Swift, clergyman as he was, mani- fested, however, a very different spirit from that of Defoe : in proportion as he knew more he reverenced less ; and there is perhaps nothing in our literature hiore essentially ■profane than his essay on the " Mechanical Opei-ation of the Spirit," and his « Tale of a Tub." Richardson, no doubt, deemed himself a friend to virtue and religion. He patronized both after a sort, and many good ladies and clergymen were moved, in consequence, to patronize him ; and yet, as Vinet pointedly says of the general literature of France in that age, his " very morality was in fact im- moral." We know not whether we would not give " Tom Jones " as readily into the hands of a young person as the virtuously written " Pamela." There is more of a whole- some, generous, unselfish spirit about the scapegrace, than in the demure, designing girl, who, after behaving herself well for a time, sets her cap to catch her master, and is at length rewarded with a fine house, a fine coach, and Mr. Booby. And yet Fielding, like his hero, was a sad scape- grace. He had a respect for what he deemed religion. We see it in his novels even. Of the few thoroughly honest men he ever drew, — and, unlike Le Sage, he did occasionally draw honest men, — two are clei-gymen, — 474 LITERAEY AND SCIENTIFIC. Dr. Harrison in " Amelia," and the world-renowned Parson Adams in "Joseph Andrews;" and both are represented, though in the case of the latter with many a ludicrous accompaniment, as at least as good and sincere Christians as Fielding could make them. Nay, curiously enough, one of the novelist's last works, a work which he did not live to finish, was a defense of religion against Bolingbroke, and a very ingenious one. But alas for a Christianity such as that of Whitefield when it came across him ! If the devoted missionary could have been annoyed by any- thing, it would have been by the ruthless humor with which his brother and his brother's wife are introduced by name into "Tom Jones," as the landlord and landlady of the Bell public house in Gloucester ; and the terms in which the lady is spoken of as " a very sensible person," who, though at first the preacher's " documents " made so much impression on her "that she put herself to the ex- pense of a long hood in order to attend the extraordinary movements of the Spirit," got tired of emotions, " which proved to be not worth a farthing," and at once " laid by the hood, and abandoned the sect." Smollett was of a similar spirit. We know nothing better on the subject in our language than the essay in which he argues against Shaftesbury that ridicule is not the test of truth ; but no little ridicule does he himself heap on Methodism in his " Humphrey Clinker." There is no bitterness in his exhibition ; his untaught Methodist preacher is not a disagreeable fool, like the Rev. Mr. Chad- band, or a greedy rogue, like the Methodist preacher in " Pickwick," whom old Weller treats to a ducking; but, on the contrary, a thoroughly honest fellow, and, in his own proper sphere, a sensible and useful one. He is, in short, no other than the faithful Clinker himself. But he never associates religion of any earnestness save with characters of humble parts and acquirements, and always accompanied with points of extreme ludicrousness. Gold- smith was of a more genial temperament than Smollett. OUR NOVEL LITERATURE. 475 His Vicar is one of the most thoroughly honest men that ever lived, and has all the religion that poor Goldie could give him. It was not until a later time, however, and in Scotland too, — for we need not reckon on the now forgotten novel of Mrs. Hannah More, — thaf religious characters were most largely introduced into our novel literature. Scott, Lockhart, Wilson, Gait, Ferrier, have all brought religion in review before the public in their novels, — some of them with great power, some with con- siderable truth, some with truth and with power too ; and at least one novelist of considerable ability, the excellent authoress of " Fsrther Clement," made it her leading sub- ject. They all at least knew more of religion than the earlier novelists ; and, save when carried away, as in the case of Scott, by Jacobite predilections, or in that of Lock- hart, by moderate ones, did it more justice. Even in some of Scott's pictures there is wonderful truth. The few words in which poor Nanty Ewart is made, in his remorse, to describe his father, are those of a great master of char- acter. " There was my father (God bless the old man !), a true chip of the old Presbyterian block, walked his parish like a captain on the quarter-deck, and was always ready to do good to rich and poor. Off went the laird's hat to the minister as fast as the poor man's bonnet. When the eye saw him, — Pshaw! what have I to do with that now? Yes, he was, as Virgil hath it, ' Vir sapientia et pietate gravis?" Still more distinctive is he, however, when he speaks of him in connection with two' charitable ladies of the Roman Catholic Church. " These Misses Arthciret," says Nanty, " feed the hungiy and clothe the naked, and such like acts, which, my poor father used to say, loere filthy rags ; but he dressed himself out with as many of them as .most folk." There is not such a stroke as this in all Dickens. The writer who could draw such a feature with a single dash of the pencil well knew what he was about. But it would be easy to multiply remarks such as these 476 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC. on the novelists. The fact of their mighty influence on opinion cannot, we think, be challenged ; and so it is of great importance that the influence should be a good one, or at least so far negatively good as not to be hurtful. We are aware that there are very excellent people who would altogether taboo this class of works ; they would fain render them the subject of a sort of Maine law, make the open perusal of them unlawful, and severely punish all smuggling. But their attempts hitherto have been at- tended with but miserable success. "We have often had occasion to know, that, even among their own children, they succeeded with only the very stupid ones, who have no turn for reading ; and that model-grown men or women of their training, ignorant of our novel literature, are usu- ally scarce less ignorant of literature of any other kind, and yet not a whit better than their neighbors. Besides, even were the case otherwise, — even were they to be really successful in their own little spheres, — the great fact of the influence and popularity of the genuine novel would still remain untouched. Dickens would have his thirty thousand subscribers for every new work, and at least his half million of readers ; and the proprietor of the Scott novels would continue to sell sixty thousand volumes yearly. Further, the novel ^er se, the novel regarded sim- ply as a literai'y form, is moraUy as unexceptionable as any other literary form whatever, — as unexceptionable as the epic poem, for instance, or the allegory, or the parable. The "Vicar of Wakefield," as a form, is as little blamable as the " Deserted Village," or " Waverley " as " Marmion " or the " Lay of the Last Minstrel." And so we must hold, that, on every occasion in which the form is made the ve- hicle of truth, ; — truth of external nature, truth of character, historic truth in at least its essence, and ethical truth in its bearings on the great problem of society, — it should be received with merited favor, — not frowned upon . or rejected. We have been much pleased, on this principle, with the novels of a writer to whom we ought to have OUR NOVEL LITERATURE. 477 referred approvingly long ago, — the authoress of " Mrs. Margaret Maitland," — one of the most thoroughly truth- ful writers of her class, and one of the most pleasing also. We have now before us what may be regarded as a contin- uation of her first work, — in " Lilliesleaf,"^ a concluding series of passages in the life of " Mrs. Margaret Maitland." It is, of course, a formidable matter to introduce a second time to the public any character that had on its first ap- pearance engaged and interested it. Shakspeare could do it with impunity. Falstaff, on even his third appearance, — an appearance, however, which, had the great dramatist been left to himself, he would never have made, — is Fal- staff still. But even Scott has been but partially success- ful in an attempt of the kind. The Coeur de Lion of the " Talisman " is not at all so interesting a personage as the Coeur de Lion of " Ivanhoe." And so we took up these new volumes with some little solicitude regarding Mrs. Margaret. The old lady has, however, acquitted herself admirably, — in some passages more admirably, we will venture to say, in the face of an opposite opinion which we have seen elsewhere expressed, than on her first ap- pearance. In the early part of the first volume we were, indeed, sensible of an air of languor, and the narrative moved on too slpwly, — Mrs. Maitland seemed to have grown greatly older than when we had last seen her ; though even in this part of the work we found some very admirable things, — among the rest, a true life-picture of the ancient dowager lady of Lilliesleaf, with her broken health and failed understanding, ever carping and fault-finding ; and, while beyond the reach of all advice herself, always obtruding her worse than useless advices on other people, who did not want them, and could not take them, and had no need of them. As the work goes on, however, the interest increases ; there are new characters introduced, truthful glimpses of the Scotch people given, the incidents thicken, and the narrative, though always quiet, as becomes the grave and gentle narrator, gathers headway, and grows 478 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC. more rapid. We know few things more masterly than the character of Rhoda, a wild, clever, ill-taught girl, brought up by a reckless, extravagant father, who, after utterly neglecting her himself, introduces her into the house of her half-sister, an excellent but somewhat proud and cold woman, who evinces but little sympathy for her provoking and haughty but very unhappy relation. Mrs. Margaret, however, after encountering many a rebuff, at length wins her ; and there are few things finer in our novel literature than the scene in which she does so : — " Ag I was going to my bed, I tarried in the long gallery, where Miss Bhoda's door opened into, to look .at the bonnie harvest moon mounting in the sky, the which was so bright upon the fields and the garden below the window, that I could not pass it by without turn- ing aside to glance upon the grand skies, and the warm earth with all routh and plenty yet upon her breast, that were both the handi- work of the Lord. I bad put my candle upon a table at the door of my own room ; and as I was standing here, I heard a sound of crying and wailing out of Miss Bhoda's room. It was not loud, but for all that it was very bitter, as if the poor bairn was breaking her heart Now, truly, when I heard that, I never took two thoughts about it, nor tarried to ponder whether I would be welcome to her or no ; but hearing that it was her voice, and that she was in distress, I straightway turned and rapped at the door. " The voice stoppit in a moment ; so quick I- scarce could think it was real ; and then I heard a rustling and motion in the room. I thought she might be feared, seeing it was late ; so I said, ' It is me, my dear ; will you let me speak to you ? ' It was all quiet for a moment more, and then the door was opened in an impatient way, and I entered in. Khoda was there, turning her back upon me ; and there was no light but the moonlight, which made the big room, eerie though it was, so clear that you could have read a book. The curtains of the bed were drawn close, as Ceey had drawn them when she sorted the room for the young lady, and Khoda's things were lying about on the chairs ; and through the open door of the small room that was within there was another eerie glint of the white moonlight ; and pale shadows of it, that, truly, I liked not to look upon, were in the big mirror that stood near. It was far OTIR NOVEL LITERATURE. 479 from pleasant to me, — and I was like to be less moved by fancy than a young thing like Bhoda, — the look this room had. " ' My dear bairn,' said I, being more earnest than I ever was with her before, ' will you let me hear what ails you ? I ken what trouble is myself; and many a young thing has told her trouble to me. And you are lone and solitary and motherless, my poor bairn ; and I am an aged woman, and would fain bring you comfort if it was in my power. Sit down here, and keep no iU thought in your heart of me ; for I ken what it is to be solitary and without friends mysel.' " " She stood awhile, and would not mind what I said, nor the hand I put upon her arm. And then she suddenly fell down upon her knees in a violent way, and laid her face upon the sofa, and cried. Truly, I kent not of such tears. I have shed heavy ones, and have seen them shed ; but I kent not aught like the passion and anger and fierceness of this. " ' I can't tell you what grieves me,' she said, starting up, and speaking in her quick way, that was so strange to me, — ' a hundred thousand things — everything 1 I should like to go-and kill myself — I-should like to be tortured — oh I anything — anything rather than thisl' " ' My dear, is it yourself yon are battling with ? ' ssud I ; 'for that is a good warfare, and the Lord will help you if you try it aright. But if it is not yourself, what is it, my bairn ? ' " She flung away out of my hand, and ran about the room like a wild thing. Then she came, quite steady and quiet, back again. ' Yes,' she said, ' I suppose it is myself I am fighting with. I am a wild beast, or something like it ; and I am biting at my cage. I wish you would beat me, or hurt me, — will you ? I should like to be ill, or have a fever, or something to put me in great pain. For you are a good old lady, I know, though I have been very rude to you. No, I am sure I cannot tell you what grieves me ; for I cannot fight with you. It is all papa's fault, — that is what it is ! He persuaded me that people would pay attention to me here. But I am nobody here, — nobody even takes the trouble to be angry with me I And I cannot hate yon all, either, though I wish I could. Oh 1 — old lady, go away 1 ' « ' Na, Miss Rhoda,' said I ;' I am not going away.' " * That ridiculous Scotch, too 1 ' cried out the poor bairn, with a sound that was meant for laughter. ' But I can't laugh at it ; and sometimes I want to be friends with you. How do you know that I 480 LITERARY AND SCIBNTIIIC. never bad a mother ? for it is quite trae I never had one, — never from the first day I was in the world. And I love papa with my whole heart, though he is not good to me ; and I hate every one that hates him ; and I will not consent to live as you live here, however good you may pretend to be.' " ' But, Miss Khoda,' said I, ' what ails you at the way we live here ? ' " ' It is not living at all,' said the poor bairn. ' I never can do anything very well when I try ; but I always want to be something great. I cannot exist and vegetate as you quiet people do. What is the good of your lives to you ? I am sure I cannot tell ; but it win kUl me.' " ' You have never tried it, my dear,' said I ; ' so whether it will kill you or no, you can very ill ken. But till me how you would like to be great.' " ' Why should I speak of such things ? You would not under- stand me,' said Rhoda. ' I would like to be a great writer, or a great painter, or a great musician, — though I never would be a ser- vant to the common people, and perform upon a stage. I know I could do something, — indeed, indeed, I know it 1 And you would have me take prim walks, and do needlework, and talk about schools and stuff, and visit old women. Such things are not for me.' " ' Such things have been fit work for many a Daint in heaven, my dear,' said I ; ' but truly I ken no call that has been made upon you, either for one thing or another. Great folk, so far as I have heard, £tre mostly very well pleased with the common turns of this life to rest themselves withal ; and truly it is my thought, that the greater a person is, the less he will disdain a quiet life, and kindness, and charity. But it has never been forbidden you. Miss Bhoda, to take your pleasure ; and I wot well it never will be.' " This surely is powerful writing, — so entirely worthy of Mrs. Margaret Maitland, that we know not whether we could quite equal it by any extract of the same length from her former work. There is much quiet power, too, in the sketches given of external nature in the present volumes, and much originality of observation. We know not that we ever before met in books with what we may term the echo of that peculiar sound characteristic of a furzy moor under a hot sun which is so well described as in OXIR NOVEL LITERAinRE. 481 the following passage. All our readers must remember the incessant " crack, crack, crack," which they have so often heard when the sun was hot and high, mingling, amid the long broom or prickly whins, with the chirp of the grass- hopper and the hum of the bee : — " Naw, we had scarce ended our converse, when, looking out at the end window, I saw Khoda coming her lane along the road ; and, seeing she might be solitary in her own spirit among such a meeting of near friends, I went out to the door to bring her in myself. It was a very bonny day, as I have sEud, and, the bairns being round upon the lawn at the other side, there was but a faroff sound of their voices, and everything else as quiet as it could be under the broad, warm, basking sun, — so quiet, that you heard the crack of the seed husks on a great bush of gorse near at hand, — a sound that ever puts me in mind of moorland places, and of the very heart and heat of sunny days. Rhoda, poor bairn, was in very deep black) as it be- hoved her to be, and was coming, in a kind of wandering, thoughtful way, her lane down the bright sandy road, and below the broad branches of the chestnut trees, that scarce had a rustle in them, so little air was abroad ; and the bit crush of her foot upon the sand was like to a louder echo of the whins, and made a very strange kind of harmony in the quietness." This wholesome and very interesting novel is calculated to exert a salutary influence, and to yield, besides, much pleasure in the perusal. Like all the other works of its authoress, it is thoroughly truthful : there is no exaggera- tion of character or incident ; events such as it narrates occur in real life ; and the men and women which it por- trays may be met in ordinary society, though the better ones are unluckily not very common. And yet a wild romance, full of all sorts of marvels and monstrosities, could scarce amuse so much even a youthful reader, far less readers of sober years. In nothing, however, has the work more merit than in its representations of the religions character. Here, also, there is no exaggeration. The nat- ural temperament is exhibited as exerting its inevitable influence. Rhoda's half-sister, Grace, for instance, though 41 • 482 LITERAKT AND SCIENTIFIC. one of the excellent, is not at all so lovable a person as Mrs. Margaret} just because in her religion was set on ■what was originally a more wilful and less loving nature ; and we find this thoroughly truthful distinction maintained throughout. In short, this latest production o^ Mrs. Mar- garet Maitland is a book which may be safely placed in any hands ; and, seeing that novels must and will exist, and must and will exercise prodigious influence, whether the religious world gives its consent or no, we think the good people should by all means try whether they cannot conscientiously patronize the good ones. XIII. EUGENE SUE. It is not from the formal histories of a country, as his- tory has hitherto been written, that the manner and moralf of its people may best be learned. Its works of fiction, if they have been produced by the hand of a master, and have dealt with the aspects of contemporary society, are vastly more true to the lineaments of its internal life than its works of sober fact. Smollett's " History of the Reign of George II." is a dull record, that bears on its weary series of numbered paragraphs no distinguishable impress of the character of the age ; whereas Smollett's " Humph-^ rey Clinker " is one of the most admirable pictures of Eng? lish society during that reign which anywhere exists. The severe hist<3ry, with all its accuracy of names and dates, wants truth ; the amusing novel, that seems but to play with ideal characters, is, in all its multitudinous lights and, shadows, a true portraiture of the time. And the rule seems general. Does the student wish to acquaint himself. EUQKNB SUE. 483 with the aspect of English society in the days of our great grandfathers ? — he will gain wondeifully little by poring over heavy sections in the " Annual Registers" of Dodsley, but a very great deal in the study of the graphic sketches of Richardson and Fielding. The « Waverley " of Scott 18 truer beyond comparison to the real merits of the Re- bellion of 1741 than the authentic history of Home, though Home was himself an actor in many of the scenes which he describes. It is- partly at least from a consideration of this kind that we have placed at the head of our article the name of one of the most popular French novelists of the present day, — a writer whose fictions have been introduced nearly as ex- tensively to the people of London, through the medium of cheap translations, as to those of Paris in the original French, and which are widely circulated over the Conti- nent generally. His novels, with all their extravagances, give a striking picture of the state of society among at least the city-reared masses of France, and are singularly efficient vehicles in spreading over Europe the contagion of their principles. We find in them more of the philoso- phy of the late movement in Switzerland against the Jesuits, though they contain not a single allusion to that event, than in any of the narratives of the outbreak which we have yet seen. They serve to show how opinion among the anti-Jesuit party came first to be formed, the nature, too, of that opinion, and how it happens that they are not merely an anti-Jesuit, but also an anti-evangelistic and anti-tolerant party. Their views and principles are exactly those of Eugene Sue ; and their numbers bid fair to increase over Europe, wherever the influence of his writing shall be found to prevail. But a brief sketch of some of the lead- ing characters in one of his latest and most characteristic works — thfe " Wandering Jew," of which we perceive a cheap English translation has just appeared — may better serve to show what his fictions teach than a general refer- ence to their tendency or eflFects. Rome, in the course of 484 LITERAKY AKD SCIENTIFIC. its history, has been signally damaged by two great revo- lutions in religious opinion, — the Reformation of Luther, and the great revolt of Voltaire. The revived Christianity of the New Testament was the formidable antagonist with which it had to deal in the one case, and a singularly enthu- siastic and fanatical infidelity the enemy with which it had to contend in the other ; and, for a time, the injury which it received seemed in both cases equally severe. But they were in reality very different in their nature. The wound dealt by infidelity was a flesh wound, and soon healed ; whereas the blow dealt by the revived Christianity ampu- tated the members on which it took effect, and separated them forever from the maimed and truncated carcass. In- fidelity dips its idle bucket into the sea of superstition, and labors to create a chasm, where, in the nature of things, no chasm can exist ; there is a momentary hollow formed, but the currents come rushing in from every side, and fill it up. But evangelism not only scoops out the hollow, but also occupies it, leaving no vacuum for aught else to flow in. France, in less than an age after the canonization of her atheists, had again become popish ; the tides flowed in, nud the vacuum was annihilated : whereas evangelistic Scotland is as little popish now as she was two centuries ago ; for in her that perilous space which must be.oecupied either by ■religion or superstition was thoroughly filled by the doc- trines of the N"ew Testament. The remark bears very directly on the natu^ of the warfare waged on Rome and the Jesuits "by Eugene Sue. His labors, like those of Vol- taire, serve but to create a vacuum, abhorrent to the nature of man. The chief group in his recent novel, round which all its other groups are made to revolve, and on whose designs their destiny is made to hang, is the Society of the Jesuits. We see them pursuing their schemes of ambition and aggrandizement undeterred by any sense of justice, and without any feeling of pity or remorse. And the picture, we are afraid» is scarce exaggerated. As exhibited in this ETJGENE SUE. 485 work of fiction, there is no part of it so black as to be with- out its counterpart in real history. There are two grand circumstances which have conspired to render the Jesuits what they are, — the specific nature of their principles, and their generic character as a society. An able man, possessed of much power, who held by the principles of the Jesuits, and cared not what means he employed in eflfecting his ends, would be eminently dangerous. Their principles are, in fact, the principles of the great bad man, who subordi- nates to his designs whatever is venerable in morals or sacred in religion, and regards the end as justifying the means. The Machiaevel-taught despot, whether he" be a Charles I. or a Louis XIV., is, to the extent of his principles, a Jesuit on his own behalf. But then the individual bad man has what the bad society has not, — he has human feelings ; and these often cneate a diversion against his principles in favor of his suffering fellows. Even a Nero cpuld weep. But societies have no tears : they are abstract embodiments of their principles ; and if their principles be bad, it is in vain to look for protection against them to their feelings. They don't feel. Even when their prin- ciples are not ostensibly bad, — when the cord by which fhey are united is a mere love of gain, — it is too much their tendency, as well described by Cowper, to become cruel and unjust : — " Man in society is like a flower Blown in its native bed : 'tis there alone His faculties, expanded in full bloom, Shine out, — there only reach their proper use. But man associated and leagued with man By regal warrant, or self-joined by bond For interest's sake, or swarming into clans Beneath one head, for purposes of war. Like flowers selected ftom the rest, and bound And bundled close, to fill some crowded vase. Fades rapidly, and, by compression marred, _ Contracts defilement not to be endured." But when their end is not vulgar gain, but power, however 41* 486 LITEBABT AND SCIENTIFIO. attained, and the aggrandizement of a false and bloody church, — when their principles, untrue to the first laws of morals, strike at the very foundations of all justice, and are, in short, what Pascal has so well described, — and when to all this the inevitable lack of human feeling is added, — the result is, not a corporation of ordinary and every-day iniquity, but a society without parallel in the annals of the world, — the Society of the Order of Jesus. And so Eugene Sue has not done them less than justice in his fiction. Moliere, in one of his dramas, introduces a character who, after he had been guilty of almost every criihe, — after he had abandoned his wife, cheated his friends, deceived and insulted his father, and made an open profession of his atheism, — completes the climax of his infamy by becoming hypocrite. Eugene Sue, in holding up the Jesuits to abhorrence, improves on the design. Such is the character which he gives to but the second worst Jesuit in the piece. In early life the Jesuit had been a traitor to his country, and had. fought against it ; he had been the ungenerous enemy of a brave and honest man who abhorred his treachery, and had pursued with bitter hatred his unprotected wife and defenceless children. His prevailing passion was a vulgar love of power ; and in order to obtain it, there was no intrigue too mean for him to stoop to, no crime too atrocious for him to perpetrate; but, with all his baseness and villany, he is drawn as not wholly devoid of human feeling : his mother on her death- bed enjoins that he should' visit her; and it is with re- luctance, and hesitatingly, that he sets aside the dying injunction, and sets out in an opposite direction on some business of the Society ; and this one touch of inoperative human feeling is rendered a sufficiently grave fault in the hands of the novelist to reduce him from a first to a second place in the community of Loyola. The first place is assigned to a wretch whom we recognize as actually a man and not a demon, when we find that be has a frame which can be acted upon by poisSn and the cholera, but not be= EUGENE SDH. 487 fore. In the development of the plot, we see the mach- inations of the Society involving in ruin all that is good and lovable among the dramatis personcB of the piece : the just, the generous, the honorable, — the unsuspecting maiden, the kind master, the attached father, the devoted friend, — all become, in turn, the victims of the meanest and basest villany ; and Jesuitism, devoid of all tinge of pity and remorse, exults over them as they perish. We do not wonder how the admirers of such a work should learn to hate the Jesuits. It seems suited to accomplish, amid the superficiality of the present age, in the innumer- able class of French novel-readers, the effects which were produced in a higher order of minds, rather more than a century and a half ago, by the « Provincial Letters of Pascal." The English reader who has read the "Wan- dering Jew " will be better able to estimate from the pe- rusal than before the intense hatred of the Jesuits which animated, in their late outbreak, the insurgent Switzers of Vaud and Argovia. But we can see no elements of permanency in the prin- ciples marshalled against them, either as embodied in the characters of Eugene Sue, or as illustrated from time to time by the minute portions of passing history. The con- troversy does not lie between truth and error, but between antagonist errors. The determined assailants of priestly superstition and villany are themselves the asserters of principles which, if reduced to practice, would subvert all public morals ; and for the false belief which they would 80 fain extinguish, they would substitute an unnatural vacuum, into which other false beliefs would assuredly crowd. Nay, in the fictions of Eugene Sue we already see the phantoms of a false faith crowding into the gap. All the honest devotees which he draws are exhibited as weak in proportion to the strength of their religious feelings. Their religion is represented as forming a mere handle by which they are converted into the tools of designing hypocrites; and yet, in the supernatural machinery of 488 LITERARY AND SOIBNTIPIC. the piece, we see, as in the athestic poetry of Shelley, the elements of a new religion coming into view, and embody- ing, in an incipient state, not a few of the worst errors of Rome. One of the leading characters in the novel — a young lady of high birth and talent, whose destruction the Jesuits at length effect, and are rendered detestable by effecting — is represented as adorned by qualities the most generous and lovable. We must select one trait of many, not merely as a specimen of the character, but of the art also with which the novelist addresses himself to the independent feelings of the French people, which have been so prominently developed since the Revolution. The heroine of the following passage is, as we have said, a lady of birth and fortune ; and it is a poor journeyman mechanic, of spirit and talent, however, who is the second actor in the scene: — " When Adrienne entered the saloon, Agricola was examining a magnificent silver vase, which bore the words, ' Jean Marie, working- chaser, 1823.' Adrienne trod so lightly, that she had approached the blacksmith without his being aware of it. " ' Is not that a handsome vase, sir ? ' she said, in a silver-toned voice. " Agricola started, and replied, in confusion, ' Very handsome, mademoiselle.' " ' Yon see that I am an adnurcr of what is just and right,' said Adrienne, pointing to the words engraved on the vase. ' A painter puts his name to a picture, a writer to his book ; and I hold that a workman who distinguishes himself in his trade should put his name to his workmanship. When I bought this vase it bore the name of a wealthy goldsmith, who was astonished at my fantasies, for I caused him to erase it, and to insert that of the maker of this wonderful piece of art ; so that if the workman lack riches, his name at least will not be forgotten. Is this just, sir ? ' " ' As a workman, mademoiselle, I feel sensible of this act of justice.' " ' A skilM artisan merits esteem and respect. But take a seat, sir.' " This is a fine trait, and the character of Adrienne is EUGENE SUB. 489 mainly composed of such ; but the author takes particular care to inform us that she is not a Christian ; and when we come to learn her views on marriage, we find that they are exactly those of Mary Wolstonecraft. The sentiments which she is made to expressi in the following ^cene are not unworthy of bein_g examined. They are not simply those of a writer of fiction, struck out at a sitting, and then ^ven to the world merely to amuse it, and keep up the interest of his work : they are, on the contrary, widely dis- seminated over the cities of Europe, and very extensively acted upon. Socialism in our own country ostensibly adopts them as its own ; and there are many not Socialists, who, though the usages of society prevent their acting upon them, have not hesitated to adopt them. We need scarce remind' the reader that the subject is one upon which the Saviour has authoritatively spoken, and that if he be Truth, the modern theory is a lie : — " ' Something is wanting to consecrate our union ; and in the eyes of the world there is only one way, — by marriage, which is binding for life.' " Djalma looked at the young girl with surprise. " • Yes, for life ; and yet who can answer for the sentiments of a whole life ? A Deity able to look into futurity could alone bind irrevocably certain beings together for their happiness. But, alas I the future is impenetrable to us ; therefore we can only answer for our present sentiments. To bind ourselves indissolubly is a foolish, selfish, and impious action, — is it not ? ' " ' That is sad to think of,' said Djalma, after a moment's reflection, 'but it is true.' He then regarded her with an expression of increas- ing surprise. " Adrienne hastily resumed, in a tender tone, — ' Do not mistake my meaning, my friend. The love of two beings who, like ourselves, after a patient investigation of heart and mind, have found in each other all the assurances of happiness, — a love, in short, like ours, is so noble, so divine, that it must be consecrated frdm above. I am not of the religion of my venerable aunt ; but I worship God, from whom we derive our ardent love. For this he must be piously adored. It is therefore by invoking his name with deep gratitude 490 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC. that we ouglit to promise not to love each other forever, — not to remain always together.' '"What ! ' cried Djalma. " ' No,' resumed Adrienne, ' for no one can take such an oath with- out falsehood or folly ; but we can, in the sincerity of our hearts, swear to do faithfully everything in our power to preserve our love. Indissoluble ties we ought not to accept "; for if we should always love each other, of what use are they ? and if not, our chains are then only an instrument of odious tyranny. Is it not so, my friend ? ' " Djalma did not reply ; but with a respectful gesture he signed to the young girl to continue. " ' And, in fine,' resumed she, with a mixture of tenderness and pride, ' from respect to your dignity as well as my own, I would never promise to observe a law made by man against women with brutal selfishness, — a law which seems to deny to woman mind, soul, and heart, — a law which she cannot obey without being a slave or a perjurer, — a law which deprives her of her maiden name, and de- clares her, as a wife, in a state of incurable imbecility, by subjecting her to a degrading state of tutelage ; as a mother, refuses her all right and power over her children ; and as a human being, subjects her son even to the will and pleasure of another human being, who is only her equal in the sight of God. You know how I honor your noble and valiant heart ; I am not, therefore, afraid of seeing you employ those tyrannical privileges against me ; but I have never been guilty of falsehood in my life, and our love is too holy, too pure, to be subjected to a consecration which must be purchased by a double perjury.' " Such are the principles of this Parisian heroine, and such are some of the plausibilities with which she defends them. There are two other female characters in the work,' twin sisters, of great beauty, whom the Jesuits also succeed in destroying ; and they, too, are devoid of religion. Unlike Adrienne, however, they are not intellectually infidel, — they have simply never heard of Christianity ; and when they pray, it is to their deceased mother. Yet another of the female characters, a poor seamstress, possessed, however, of a cultivated mind and a noble heart, finds no time to attend to the duties of religion ; and when, through the machinations of the Jesuits, she becomes destitute and EUSESE SXJE. 491 wretched, she proposes to go out of the world by her own aot, as convinced that she is in the right in doing so, as i^ wearied and overcome by sleep, shehad prepared to go to bed. She is joined in the purpose of death by her sister ; and the scene throws light on the acts of social suicide so common in France, and of which we have had a few instances of late years in our own country. " The sisters embraced each other for some minutes amid a pro- found and solemn silence. " ' O heavens,' cried Cephysi, ' how cruel, to love each other thus, and be compelled to part forever ! ' " ' To part I ' exclaimed the Mayeux, while her pale face was sud- denly lighted up with a ray of divine hope ; — 'to part I Oh no, sister, no : what makes me so calm is, that I feel certain we are going to another world, where a happier life awaits us. Come, hasten ; come where God reigns alone, and where man, who on this earth brings about the misery and despsur of his fellow-creatures, is noth- ing. Come, let us depart quickly, for it is late.' " The sisters, having laid the charcoal ready for lighting, proceeded with incredible self-possession to stop up the chinks in the door and windows ; and during this sinister operation, the calmness and mournful resignation of these two unfortunate beings did not once forsake them." We had intended referring to several other points in this mischievous work of fiction, which at once serves to exhibit the opinions entertained by no inconsiderable proportion of the anti-Jesuit party on the Continent, and to spread, these opinions more widely. Wherever we find the devo- tional feeling introduced, some disaster- is sure always to follow. One of the best characters in the novel is a highly intellectual and generous manufacturer, 'more bent on ministering to the happiness of his workmen than on thet accumulation of gain. He provides them with comfortable dwellings, extends their leisure hours, gives them a share in the profits of his trade, — conducts his manufactory, in short, on the model of the philanthropic economist ; and all this when he is an avowed Freethinker; but, falling 492 LITEKAUT AND SCIENTIFIC. into bad health, and meeting with a crushing disappoint- ment, he becomes a devotee, loses all his interest in the welfare of his workmen, becomes enfeebled in body and mind, and the Jesuits ruin him. The wife of a brave and faithful soldier, a thoroughly excellent man, but devoid of all sense of religion, has also the misfortune, though a very honest and good sort of person, to be devout ; and the weakness, like the dead fly in the apothecary's ointment, imparts a dangerous taint to the whole character. And thus the lesson of the tale runs on. We see in it the secret of the hostility entertained to~evangelism by the insurgents of Vaud and Argovia, and which rendered them not less tolerant of a vital Protestantism than even the Jesuits whom they so determinedly opposed. We see in it, too, the grand error of Voltaire repeated, — miserable attempts to create a blank where, in the nature of things, no blank can exist ; and an utter ignorance of the great fact, that the religion of the New Testament is the only efficient antidote against superstition, and a widely-circulated Bible the sole permanent protection against the encroachments of an ambitious priesthood. It would be bold to conjecture what the rising crop of opinion, so thickly sown over Europe, is ultimately to produce. There exists a widely-extended belief that Popery, when its final day has come, is to have infidelity for its executioner. Do we see in works such as those of Eugene Sue the executioner in training? or is the old cycle again to revolve, and the blank formed by infidelity to be filled up by superstition ? We would fain see a safer eaiposi of the Jesuits than the fiction of the in- sidious novelist, — an expose at once so just to the order that they could raise no efiectual protest against it, and so true to the interests of religion and the nature of man that it could contain no elements of reaction favorable to the body it assailed. When are we to have a translation of the ',' Provincial Letters " at once worthy of Pascal and of the existing emergency? THE ABBOTSFORD BARONETCT. 493 XIV. THE ABBOTSFORD BAMONETOT. The intimation in oar last of the death of Lieutenant- Colonel Sir Walter Scott, and the extinction of the Ab- botsford baronetcy, must have set not a few of our readers' athinking. The lesson of withered hopes and blighted prospects which it reads is, sure enough, a common one, — a lesson for every-day perusal in the school of experience, and which the history of every day varies with new in- stances. But in this special case it reads with more than the usual emphasis. The literary celebrity of the great poet and novelist of Scotland, — the intimate knowledge of his personal history which that celebrity has induced, and which exists coextensive with the study of letters, — the consequent acquaintance with the prominent foible that stood out in such high relief in his character from the gen- eral groundwork of shrewd good sense and right feeling, — have all conspired to set the lesson, as it were, in a sort of illuminated framework. Sir Walter says of Gawin Douglas, — in his picture of the " noble lord of Douglas blood," whose allegorical poem may still be perused with pleasure, notwithstanding the veil of obsolete language- which mars its sentiment and obscures its imagery, — that it " pleased him more " " that in a barbaroas age He gave rude Scotland Virgil's page, Tban that beneath his rule he held The bishopric of fair Dunkeld." Not such, however, was the principle on which Sir Walter estimated his own achievements or prospects. It pleased 42 494 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC. him more to contemplate himself in the character of the founder, as seemed likely, of a third-rate border family, — of importance enough, however, to occupy its annual line in the almanac, — than that his name should be known as widely as even Virgil's own. And the ambition was one to which he sacrificed health, and leisure, and peace of mind, with probably a few years of life itself, and undoubt- edly the very wealth which for this cause alone he so anxiously strove to realize. Never was there one who valued money less for its own sake ; but it flowed in upon him, and, save for his haste to be rich that he might be a landholder on his family's behalf, Sir "Walter would have died a man of large fortune, quite able to purchase three such properties as that of Abbotsford. And in last week's obituary we see the close of -all he had toiled and suffered for, in the extinction of the family in which he had n so fondly hoped to live for hundreds of years. One is reminded by the incident of some of the more melancholy strokes in his own magnificent fictions. He describes, for instance, in the introduction to the " Monastery," a weather-wasted stone fixed high in the wall of an ancient ecclesiastical edi- fice, and bearing a coat-of-arms which no one for ages before had been able to decipher. Weathered as it was, however, it was all that remained to testify of the stout Sir Halbert Glendinning, who had so bravely fought his way to a knighthood and the possession of broad lands, but whose wealth and honors, won solely by himself, he had failed to transmit to other generations, and whose extinct race and name had been lost in the tomb for centuries. Henceforth the honors of the Abbotsford baronetcy will be exhibited on but a hatchment whitened with the painted tears of the herald. A sepulchral tablet in Drybufgh Abbey will form, ' if not their only record, as in the imaginary case of the knight of Glendinning, at least their most striking memo- rial. It is a curious enough fact, that Shakspeare, like Sir Walter Scott, cherished the ambition of being the founder THE ABBOTSFOHD BARONETCY. 495 of a family. "All his real estate," says one of his later biographers, Mr. C. Knight, « was devised to his daughter, Susanna Hall, for and during the term of her natural life. It was then entailed upon her first son and his heirs-male ; and, in default of such issue, on her second son and his heirs-male ; and so on, in default of such issue, to his grand- daughter, Elizabeth Hall ; and, in default of such issue, to his daughter Judith and her heirs-male. By this strict entailment," remarks the biographer, "it was manifestly the object of Shakspeare to found a family ; but, like many other such purposes of short-sighted humanity," it is added, "the object was not accomplished. His elder daughter had no issue but Elizabeth, and she died childless. The heirs-male of Judith died before her. And so the estates were scattered after the second generation ; and the de- scendants of his sister were the only transmitters to pos- terity of his blood and lineage." We see little of the great poet's own character in his more celebrated writings ; he was too purely dramatic for that ; and, like the " mirror held up to nature " of his own happy metaphor, reflected rather the features of others than his own. It is, however, a curious fact, that in the portion of his writings which do most exhibit him — his sonnets — there is no pleasure on which he dwells half so much as the pleasure of living in one's posterity. And, in urging the young friend to whom these exquisite compositions are addressed to marry, he rings the changes on this motive alone throughout twenty sonnets together. We rather wonder how the circumstance should have escaped the thousand and one critics and commentators who have written on Shakspeare, but cer- tain it is that an intense appreciation of the sort of pro- spective, shadowy immortality that posterity confers on the founder of a family forms one of the most prominent fea- tures of the poetry in which he most indulged his own feelings, and that with this marked appreciation the pro- visions of his will thoroughly harmonize. He tells his friend that the sear leafless autumn of old age, and the 496 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC. " hideous winter " of death, draw near, when beauty " shall be o'ersnowed," and « bareness left everywhere ; " and that unless the odors of the summer flowers continue to survive, distilled by the art of the chemist, they shall be as if they had never been, — things without mark or memorial. " Then, were no summor'a distillation left A liquid prisoner, pent in walls of glass. Beauty's effect with beauty were bereft, Nor it, nor no remembrance what it was: But flowers distilled, though they the winter meet, Leese but their show; their substance still lives sweet." And then the poet, with the happy art in which he. excelled all men, applies the figure by urging his young and hand- some friend to live in his posterity, as the vanished flowers live in their distilled odors ; and expatiates on the solace of enduring throughout the future in one's oflipring : — " Be it ten for one, Ten times thyself were happier than thou art. If ten of thine ten times re-figured thee; Then, what could Death do, if thou shouldst depart. Leaving thee living in posterity ? Bo not self-willed, for thou art much too fair To be Death's conquest, and make worms thine heir." What strange vagaries human nature does play in even the greatest minds! Shakspeare was thoroughly aware that his verse was destined to immortality. We have his own testimony on the point to nullify the idle conjectures of writers who have set themselves to criticize his works, without having first taken, as would seem, the necessary precaution of reading them. He tells us in his sonnets, that " not marble, nor the gilded monuments of princes," would outlive "his powerful rhime." And, again, address- ing his friend, he says : — " I'll live in this'poor rhime While Death insults o'er dull and speechless tribes; And thou in this shalt find thy monument, When tyrants' crests and tombs of brass are spent." THE ABBOTSPORD BARONETCY. 497 And yet again, with still greater beauty, if not greater energy, he says : — " Tour life from hence immortal life shall have, Though I, once gone, to all the world must die. The earth can yield me but a common grave, WhUe you entombed in men's eyes shall lie. Tour monument shall be my gentle verse. Which eyes not yet created shall o'er-read, And tongues to be yonr being shall rehearse. When all the breathers of this world are dead; Yon still shall live (such virtue hath my pen) Where breath most breathes, — e'en in the mouths of men." And yet this great poet, so conscious of the enduring vitality that dwelt in his verse, could find more pleasure in the idea of living in future ages in his descendants, — ^ a sort of pleasure in which almost every Irish laborer may indulge, — than in being one of the never-dying poets of his country and the world. What may be termed the human instinct of immortality, — the natural sentiment which, when rightly directed, rests on that continuity of life in the individual in which the dark chasm of the grave makes no break or pause, — may be found, though wo- fully misdirected, both in the sentiment that rejoices in the prospect of posthumous celebrity, always so shadowy and unreal, and the sentiment that gloats over the fancied, delusive life which one lives.in one's descendants. Shak- spear^felt himself sure of posthumous celebrity; and find- ing it, like every sublunary good, when once fairly secured, valueless and unsatisfactory, he fixed his desires with much solicitude on the other earthly immortality, and sought to live in his ofispring. It would have been well had the instinct been better directed, both in Sir Walter and his gi'eat prototype the dramatist of Avon. It would be also well, with such significant lessons before us, to be reading them aright. They tell us that the longings after immor- tality, in which it is the nature of man to indulge, are not to be~ satisfied by the world-wide, ever-enduring fame of 42* 498 LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC. the poet, and that the humbler and not less unsubstantial shadow of future life which one lives in one's, children and their descendants is at least not more satisfying in its na- ture, and that it lies greatly more open than the other to the blight of accident and the influence of decay. Judging from the history of the past, there is no class of men less entitled to indulge in the peculiar hope of Shak- speare and Sir Walter Scott than the greater poets, — men whose blow of faculty, ratiocinative and imagiijative, has attained to the fullest development at which, in the human species, it ever arrives. Has the reader ever bethought him how exceedingly few of the poets of the two last cen- turies have bequeathed their names to posterity through their descendants ? No doubt by much the greater part of them — ill-hafted in society, and little careful how they guided their course — were solitary men, who, without even more than their characteristic imprudence, could not have grappled with the inevitable expense of a family. Thus it was that Cowley, Butler, and Otway died child- less, with Prior and Congreve, Gay, Phillips, and Savage, Thomson, Collins, and Shenstone, Akenside, Goldsmith, and Gray. Pope, Swift, Watts, and Cowper were also un- mated, solitary men; and Johnson had no child. Even the poets in more favorable circumstances, who could not say, in the desponding vein of poor Kirke White, — '■' I sigh when all my happier friends caress, — They laugh in health,, and future evils brave; Them shall a wife and smiling children tless. While I am mould'riug in the silent grave," — even of this more fortunate class, how very few were happy in their oflFspring ! The descendants of Dryden, Addison, and Parnell did not pass into the second generation ; those of Shakspeare and Milton became extinct in the second and the third. It would seem as if we had an illustration, in this portion of the literary history of our country, of Doubleday's curious theory of population. THE ABBOTSFORD EAEONETCT. 499 The human mind attained in these remarkable men to its full intellectual development, as the rose or the carnation, under a long course of culture, at length suddenly stocks, and doubles, and widens its gorgeous blow of a thousand petals ; and then, when in its greatest perfection, transmis- sion ceases, and there is no further reproduction of the variety thus amplified and expanded to the full. Nature does her utmost, and then, stopping short, does no raoi'e. Abbotsford, a supremely melancholy place heretofore, will be henceforth more melancholy still. Those associa- tions of ruined hopes and blighted prospects which cling to its picturesque beauty will now be more numerous and more striking than ever. The writings of Scott are the true monuments of his genius ; while Abbotsford, on which he rested so much, will form for the future a memorial equally significant of his foibles and his misfortunes, — of bright prospects suddenly overcast, and sanguine hopes quenched in the grave forever. Is the reader acquainted with the poem in which the good Isaac Watts laments the untimely death of his friend Gunston, — a man who died childless, in the vigor of early manhood, just as he had finished a very noble family seat ? The verse flows more stiffly than that of Shakspeare or Sir Walter Scott, for Watts was not always happiest when he attempted most ; and there is considerable more poetry in his hymns for children than 'm\\s "Pindaric Odes" or his "Elegies," Still, however, his funeral poem on his friend brings out not unhappily the sentiment which must breathe for the future from the deserted halls of Abbotsford : — " How did he lay the deep foundations strong, Marking the bounds, and reared the walls along, Solid and lasting, where a numerous train Of happy Gunstons might in pleasure reign. While nations perished and long ages ran, — Nations unborn and ages unbegan; Nor time Itself should waste the blest estate. Nor the tenth race rebuild the ancient seat. How fond our fancies arc I * * * 600 LITERARY AND BCIENTIPIC. And must this building, then, — this costly frame, — Stand here for strangers 1 Must some unknown name Possess these rooms, the lahors of my friend ? Why were these walls raised for this hapless end. Why these apartments all adorned so gay. Why his rich fancy lavished thus away? The unhappy house looks desolate and mourns, And every door groans doleful as it turns." We find we cannot better conclude our desultory re- marks than in the words of the London " Morning Herald," whom we find thus referring to the death of the Lieu- tenant-Colonel, Sir Walter : — " The deceased Baronet was the last of a family which it cost one precious life to create, and for whose perpetuation its founder would have accounted no purchase too dear, and reckoned no sacrifice too costly. It was not sufficient for the head of that house, whose last memher has so recently quitted the earth, that he stood foremost in the ranks of celebrated men during life, — that he secured immor- tality upon his departure. Beyond the prodigal gifts of Heaven he esteemed the factidous privileges of earth, and treated Ughtly an imperishable wealth, for the sake of dross as poor as it was passing. The memoirs of the first Sir Walter — albeit penned by no unlov- ing hand — leave painful impressions upon the minds of all who have made for themselves the character of the great ma^cian, as far aa it was possible, from his undying works. If the history teaches anything at all, it is one of the saddest lessons that can be brought home to humanity, — that of gigantic powers ill used, of insatiable though petty ambition derided and destroyed. The vocation of Sir Walter Scott was to enlighten and instruct mankind : lie believed it was to found a family, and to become a great landed proprietor. To achieve the ignoble mission, the poet and the novelist embarked the genius of a Shakspeare, and the result is now before us. The family is extinct ; the landed proprietor was a bankrupt in his prime. Who that has read the life of Sir Walter but has wept at his misfor- tunes, and marvelled at the sacrifices heaped upon sacrifices, freely made, in furtherance of a low and earthly seeking ? Heaven pointed one way, human frailty another. 'Be mighty amidst the great,' said the former j ' be high amongst the small,' whispered the latter. He obeyed the latter, and lo the consequence ! The small know THE ABEOTSFORD BARONETCY. 501 him not : amidst the great he still continues mighty. The history of Scott is the history of mankind. We cannot violate the will, expressed or understood, of Heaven, and be happy. We cannot sinfully indulge a single passion, and not be disappointed. The spiritual and moral laws which regulate our life are as constant and ■ invariable as any to be found in matter. Had Scott not enlisted every hope, thought, and energy in his miserable aim at power and position, he would in all probability have been alive to-day. He was a hale and hearty man when the failure of the booksellers com- pelled him -to those admirable and superhuman exertions which crushed and killed hii^ That failure would have been nothing to the poet, if he had not involved himself in trade in order the more rapidly to secure the purpose which he had at heart, — for which he wrote and lived. ' The spirits of the wise sit in the clouds and mock us.' All that Scott bargained for at the outset of life he possessed for an instant before he quitted it He cared not to be renowned, — he wbhed to be rich. To be spoken of as the master of prose and verse was nothing, if the term could not be coupled with that of master of Abbotsford. The dream was realized. Money came in abundance, and with it lands and increadng possessions. The mansion of the laird rose by degrees, and child after child promised to secure lands and house, as the founder would have them, in the immediate possession of a Scott. Then came, as if to com- plete the fabric and to insure, the victory, honors and titles fresh from 'the hand of Majesty itself. Nothing was wanting; all was gained, and yet nothing was acquired. The gift melted in the grasp ; the joy passed away in the possession. With his foot on the topmost step of the ladder, Scott fell. His ambition was satisfied, but Prov- idence was avenged. All that could be asked was given, but only to show how vain are human aspirations, — how less than childish are misdirected aims. Scott lived to see his property, his house and lands, in the hands of the stranger ; we have lived to see his children one by one removed. Is there no lesson here ? " fl^e #nb. (ZlTSSAXr.) TEE PURITANS; or, the Court, Church, and Parliament of England. B> Samubl Hopkihs. 8 Tole., 8to, cloth. E18T0RICAL EVIDENCES OF TBE TRUTH OF THE SCRIPTURK RECORDS, STATED ANEW, with Special Reference to the Doubts and Discoveries of Modem Times. Bampton Lecture for 1859. 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Animal of Seientillo Discovery. Knight's Knowledge is Power. Krumxaaolier's Suffering Saviour, Banvard's Anxerioan Histories. Th.e Aimwell Stories. KewcoaVs W-orks. Tweedie's Works. Chambers's Works. Harris" Works. Kltto'B Cyclopsedia of Biblioal Iiiterature. ' SCrs. Knight's Life of Montgomery. Kitto's History of Palestine, WTiewell's Work. Wayland's Works. Agassiz'a Works. AKS!M^r^^ Williams* Works. Ouyot's Works. ThompBOU's Better Land. Kimball's Heaven. Valuable Works on MissioiiBt Haven's Mental Philosophy. Buchanan's Modem Atheism. Cruden'a Condensed Concordance. Badie's Analytical ConoordanoBit The Psalmist : a Collection of Hymns. Valuable School Books, Works for Sabbath Schools. Memoir of Amos Lawrence. Poetioal Works of Milton, Cowper, Scott, Blegant Miniature Volumes. Arvine's Cyolopeedia of Anecdotes. Bipley's Notes on Gospels, Acts, and Bomana. Bpragne'a Buropean Celebrities, Marsh's Camel and the Hallig. B.oget*s Thesaurus of Bnglish Words. Hackett's Kotes on Acts. 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