The better way of applying these principles will be by a brief and rapid sketch of the history of the fine arts,—in which it will be found, that the beautiful in nature has been appropriated to the works of man, just in proportion as the state of the mind in the artists themselves approached to the subjective beauty. Determine what predominance in the minds of the men is preventive of the living balance of excited faculties, and you will discover the exact counterpart in the outward products. Egypt is an illustration of this. Shapeliness is intellect without freedom; but colours are significant. The introduction of the arch is not less an epoch in the fine than in the useful arts.

Order is beautiful arrangement without any purpose 'ad extra';—therefore there is a beauty of order, or order may be contemplated exclusively as beauty.

The form given in every empirical intuition,—the stuff, that is, the quality of the stuff, determines the agreeable: but when a thing excites us to receive it in such and such a mould, so that its exact correspondence to that mould is what occupies the mind,—this is taste or the sense of beauty. Whether dishes full of painted wood or exquisite viands were laid out on a table in the same arrangement, would be indifferent to the taste, as in ladies' patterns; but surely the one is far more agreeable than the other. Hence observe the disinterestedness of all taste; and hence also a sensual perfection with intellect is occasionally possible without moral feeling. So it may be in music and painting, but not in poetry. How far it is a real preference of the refined to the gross pleasures, is another question, upon the supposition that pleasure, in some form or other, is that alone which determines men to the objects of the former;—whether experience does not show that if the latter were equally in our power, occasioned no more trouble to enjoy, and caused no more exhaustion of the power of enjoying them by the enjoyment itself, we should in real practice prefer the grosser pleasure. It is not, therefore, any excellence in the quality of the refined pleasures themselves, but the advantages and facilities in the means of enjoying them, that give them the pre-eminence.

This is, of course, on the supposition of the absence of all moral feeling. Suppose its presence, and then there will accrue an excellence even to the quality of the pleasures themselves; not only, however, of the refined, but also of the grosser kinds,—inasmuch as a larger sweep of thoughts will be associated with each enjoyment, and with each thought will be associated a number of sensations; and so, consequently, each pleasure will become more the pleasure of the whole being. This is one of the earthly rewards of our being what we ought to be, but which would be annihilated, if we attempted to be it for the sake of this increased enjoyment. Indeed it is a contradiction to suppose it. Yet this is the common 'argumentum in circulo', in which the eudsemonists flee and pursue. ...



POEMS AND POETICAL FRAGMENTS.

'Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus'. CATULLUS.

My Lesbia, let us love and live, And to the winds, my Lesbia, give Each cold restraint, each boding fear Of age, and all its saws severe! Yon sun now posting to the main Will set,—but 'tis to rise again;— But we, when once our little light Is set, must sleep in endless night. Then come, with whom alone I'll live, A thousand kisses take and give! Another thousand!—to the store Add hundreds—then a thousand more! And when they to a million mount, Let confusion take the account,— That you, the number never knowing, May continue still bestowing— That I for joys may never pine, Which never can again be mine! [1]



'Lugete, O Veneres, Cupidinesque.' CATULLUS.

Pity, mourn in plaintive tone The lovely starling dead and gone! Weep, ye Loves! and Venus, weep The lovely starling fall'n asleep! Venus see with tearful eyes— In her lap the starling lies, While the Loves all in a ring Softly stroke the stiffen'd wing.



'Moriens superstiti'.

"The hour-bell sounds, and I must go; Death waits—again I hear him calling;— No cowardly desires have I, Nor will I shun his face appalling. I die in faith and honour rich— But ah! I leave behind my treasure In widowhood and lonely pain;— To live were surely then a pleasure!

"My lifeless eyes upon thy face Shall never open more to-morrow; To-morrow shall thy beauteous eyes Be closed to love, and drown'd in sorrow; To-morrow death shall freeze this hand, And on thy breast, my wedded treasure, I never, never more shall live;— Alas! I quit a life of pleasure."



'Morienti superstes.'

"Yet art thou happier far than she Who feels the widow's love for thee! For while her days are days of weeping, Thou, in peace, in silence sleeping, In some still world, unknown, remote, The mighty parent's care hast found, Without whose tender guardian thought No sparrow falleth to the ground."

[Footnote 1: This and the following poems and fragments, with the exception of those marked with an asterisk, were communicated by Mr. Gutch. Ed.]



THE STRIPLING'S WAR SONG.

IMITATED FROM STOLBERG.

My noble old warrior! this heart has beat high, Since you told of the deeds that our countrymen wrought; Ah! give me the sabre which hung by thy thigh, And I too will fight as my forefathers fought!

O, despise not my youth! for my spirit is steel'd, And I know there is strength in the grasp of my hand; Yea, as firm as thyself would I move to the field, And as proudly would die for my dear father-land.

In the sports of my childhood I mimick'd the fight,— The shrill of a trumpet suspended my breath; And my fancy still wander'd by day and by night Amid tumult and perils,'mid conquest and death.

My own eager shout in the heat of my trance, How oft it awakes me from dreams full of glory, When I meant to have leap'd on the hero of France, And have dash'd him to earth pale and deathless and gory!

As late through the city with bannerets streaming, And the music of trumpets the warriors flew by,— With helmet and scymetar naked and gleaming On their proud trampling thunder-hoof'd steeds did they fly,—

I sped to yon heath which is lonely and bare— For each nerve was unquiet, each pulse in alarm,— I hurl'd my mock lance through the objectless air, And in open-eyed dream prov'd the strength of my arm.

Yes, noble old warrior! this heart has beat high, Since you told of thedeeds that our countrymen wrought; Ah! give me the falchion that hung by thy thigh, And I too will fight as my forefathers fought!



[*] His own fair countenance, his kingly forehead, His tender smiles, love's day-dawn on his lips, The sense, and spirit, and the light divine, At the same moment in his steadfast eye Were virtue's native crest, th' immortal soul's Unconscious meek self-heraldry,—to man Genial, and pleasant to his guardian angel. He suffer'd, nor complain'd;—tho' oft with tears He mourn'd th' oppression of his helpless brethren,— Yea, with a deeper and yet holier grief Mourn'd for the oppressor. In those sabbath hours His solemn grief, like the slow cloud at sunset, Was but the veil of purest meditation Pierced thro' and saturate with the rays of mind.



'Twas sweet to know it only possible! Some wishes cross'd my mind and dimly cheer'd it, And one or two poor melancholy pleasures, Each in the pale unwarming light of hope Silvering its flimsy wing, flew silent by— Moths in the moonbeam!— —Behind the thin Grey cloud that cover'd, but not hid, the sky, The round full moon look'd small. The subtle snow in every passing breeze Rose curling from the grove like shafts of smoke.



—On the broad mountain top The neighing wild colt races with the wind O'er fern and heath-flowers.



—Like a mighty giantess Seized in sore travail and prodigious birth, Sick nature struggled: long and strange her pangs, Her groans were horrible;—but O, most fair The twins she bore, Equality and Peace.



—Terrible and loud As the strong voice that from the thunder-cloud Speaks to the startled midnight.



Such fierce vivacity as fires the eye Of genius fancy-craz'd.



The mild despairing of a heart resign'd.



FOR THE HYMN ON THE SUN.

—The sun (for now his orb 'Gan slowly sink)— Shot half his rays aslant the heath, whose flow'rs Purpled the mountain's broad and level top. Rich was his bed of clouds, and wide beneath



FOR THE HYMN ON THE MOON.

In a cave in the mountains of Cashmeer there is an image of ice, which makes its appearance thus: Two days before the new moon there appears a bubble of ice, which increases in size every day till the fifteenth, by which time it is an ell or more in height;—then as the moon wanes, the image decreases till it vanishes away.



In darkness I remain'd;-the neighb'ring clock Told me that now the rising sun at dawn Shone lovely on my garden.



These be staggerers that, made drunk by power, Forget thirst's eager promise, and presume, Dark dreamers! that the world forgets it too!



—Perish warmth, Unfaithful to its seeming! Old age, 'the shape and messenger of death,' His wither'd fist still knocking at death's door.



—God no distance knows All of the whole possessing.

With skill that never alchemist yet told, Made drossy lead as ductile as pure gold.

Guess at the wound and heal with secret hand. The broad-breasted rock Glasses his rugged forehead in the sea.



I mix in life, and labour to seem free, With common persons pleas'd and common things, While every thought and action tends to thee, And every impulse from thy influence springs.



FAREWELL TO LOVE.

[*] Farewell, sweet Love! yet blame you not my truth; More fondly ne'er did mother eye her child Than I your form: your's were my hopes of youth, And as you shaped my thoughts, I sigh'd or smil'd. While most were wooing wealth, or gaily swerving To pleasure's secret haunt, and some apart Stood strong in pride, self-conscious of deserving, To you I gave my whole weak wishing heart; And when I met the maid that realized Your fair creations, and had won her kindness, Say but for her if aught on earth I prized! Your dreams alone I dreamt and caught your blindness. O grief!—but farewell, Love! I will go play me With thoughts that please me less, and less betray me.



[*] Within these circling hollies, woodbine-clad— Beneath this small blue roof of vernal sky— How warm, how still! Tho' tears should dim mine eye, Yet will my heart for days continue glad, For here, my love, thou art, and here am I!



Each crime that once estranges from the virtues Doth make the memory of their features daily More dim and vague, till each coarse counterfeit Can have the passport to our confidence Sign'd by ourselves. And fitly are they punish'd, Who prize and seek the honest man but as A safer lock to guard dishonest treasures.



Grant me a patron, gracious Heaven! whene'er My unwash'd follies call for penance drear: But when more hideous guilt this heart infects, Instead of fiery coals upon my pate, O let a titled patron be my fate;— That fierce compendium of Egyptian pests! Right reverend dean, right honourable squire, Lord, marquis, earl, duke, prince,—or if aught higher, However proudly nicknamed, he shall be Anathema Maranatha to me!



A SOBER STATEMENT OF HUMAN LIFE,

OR THE TRUE MEDIUM.

[*] A chance may win what by mischance was lost; The net that holds not great, takes little fish: In somethings all, in all things none are crost; Few all they need, but none have all they wish: Unmingled joys to no one here befall; Who least, hath some; who most, hath never all!



OMNIANA. 1812

THE FRENCH DECADE.

I have nothing to say in defence of the French revolutionists, as far as they are personally concerned in this substitution of every tenth for the seventh day as a day of rest. It was not only a senseless outrage on an ancient observance, around which a thousand good and gentle feelings had clustered; it not only tended to weaken the bond of brotherhood between France and the other members of Christendom; but it was dishonest, and robbed the labourer of fifteen days of restorative and humanizing repose in every year, and extended the wrong to all the friends and fellow labourers of man in the brute creation. Yet when I hear Protestants, and even those of the Lutheran persuasion, and members of the church of England, inveigh against this change as a blasphemous contempt of the fourth commandment, I pause, and before I can assent to the verdict of condemnation, I must prepare my mind to include in the same sentence, at least as far as theory goes, the names of several among the most revered reformers of Christianity. Without referring to Luther, I will begin with Master Frith, a founder and martyr of the church of England, having witnessed his faith amid the flames in the year 1533. This meek and enlightened, no less than zealous and orthodox, divine, in his "Declaration of Baptism" thus expresses himself:

Our forefathers, which were in the beginning of the Church, did abrogate the sabbath, to the intent that men might have an example of Christian liberty. Howbeit, because it was necessary that a day should be reserved in which the people should come together to hear the word of God, they ordained instead of the Sabbath, which was Saturday, the next following which is Sunday. And although they might have kept the Saturday with the Jew as a thing indifferent, yet they did much better.

Some three years after the martyrdom of Frith, in 1536, being the 27th of Henry VIII. suffered Master Tindal in the same glorious cause, and this illustrious martyr and translator of the word of life, likewise, in his "Answer to Sir Thomas More," hath similarly resolved this point:

As for the Sabbath, we be lords of the Sabbath, and may yet change it into Monday, or any other day, as we see need; or we may make every tenth day holy day only, if we see cause why. Neither was there any cause to change it from the Saturday, save only to put a difference between us and the Jews; neither need we any holy day at all, if the people might be taught without it.

This great man believed that if Christian nations should ever become Christians indeed, there would every day be so many hours taken from the labour for the perishable body, to the service of the souls and the understandings of mankind, both masters and servants, as to supersede the necessity of a particular day. At present our Sunday may be considered as so much Holy Land, rescued from the sea of oppression and vain luxury, and embanked against the fury of their billows.



RIDE AND TIE.

"On a scheme of perfect retribution in the moral world"—observed Empeiristes, and paused to look at, and wipe his spectacles.

"Frogs," interposed Musaello, "must have been experimental philosophers, and experimental philosophers must all transmigrate into frogs."

"The scheme will not be yet perfect," added Gelon, "unless our friend Empeiristes, is specially privileged to become an elect frog twenty times successively, before he reascends into a galvanic philosopher."

"Well, well," replied Empeiristes, with a benignant smile, "I give my consent, if only our little Mary's fits do not recur."

Little Mary was Gelon's only child, and the darling and god-daughter of Empeiristes. By the application of galvanic influence Empeiristes had removed a nervous affection of her right leg, accompanied with symptomatic epilepsy. The tear started in Gelon's eye, and he pressed the hand of his friend, while Musaello, half suppressing, half indulging, a similar sense of shame, sportively exclaimed, "Hang it, Gelon! somehow or other these philosopher fellows always have the better of us wits, in the long run!"



JEREMY TAYLOR.

The writings of Bishop Jeremy Taylor are a perpetual feast to me. His hospitable board groans under the weight and multitude of viands. Yet I seldom rise from the perusal of his works without repeating or recollecting the excellent observation of Minucius Felix. 'Fabulas et errores ab imperitis parentibus discimus; et quod est gravius, ipsis studiis et disciplinis elaboramus'.



CRITICISM.

Many of our modern criticisms on the works of our elder writers remind me of the connoisseur, who, taking up a small cabinet picture, railed most eloquently at the absurd caprice of the artist in painting a horse sprawling. "Excuse me, Sir," replied the owner of the piece, "you hold it the wrong way: it is a horse galloping."



PUBLIC INSTRUCTION.

Our statesmen, who survey with jealous dread all plans for the education of the lower orders, may be thought to proceed on the system of antagonist muscles; and in the belief, that the closer a nation shuts its eyes, the wider it will open its hands. Or do they act on the principle, that the 'status belli' is the natural relation between the people and the government, and that it is prudent to secure the result of the contest by gouging the adversary in the first instance? Alas! the policy of the maxim is on a level with its honesty. The Philistines had put out the eyes of Samson, and thus, as they thought, fitted him to drudge and grind

Among the slaves and asses, his comrades, As good for nothing else, no better service:—

But his darkness added to his fury without diminishing his strength, and the very pillars of the temple of oppression—

With horrible convulsion, to and fro, He tugged, he shook, till down they came, and drew The whole roof after them with burst of thunder, Upon the heads of all who sat beneath; Lords, ladies, captains, counsellors, and priests, Their choice nobility.

The error might be less unpardonable with a statesman of the continent;—but with Englishmen, who have Ireland in one direction, and Scotland in another; the one in ignorance, sloth, and rebellion,—in the other general information, industry, and loyalty, verily it is not error merely, but infatuation.



PICTURESQUE WORDS.

Who is ignorant of Homer's [Greek (transliterated): Paelion einosiphullon] Yet in some Greek manuscript hexameters I have met with a compound epithet, which may compare with it for the prize of excellence in flashing on the mental eye a complete image. It is an epithet of the brutified archangel, and forms the latter half of the verse,—

[Greek: Kerkokeronucha Satan]

Ye youthful bards! compare this word with its literal translation, "tail-horn-hoofed Satan," and be shy of compound epithets, the components of which are indebted for their union exclusively to the printer's hyphen. Henry More, indeed, would have naturalized the word without hesitation, and 'cercoceronychous' would have shared the astonishment of the English reader in the glossary to his 'Song of the Soul' with Achronycul, Anaisthaesie, &c. &c.



TOLERATION.

The state, with respect to the different sects of religion under its protection, should resemble a well drawn portrait. Let there be half a score individuals looking at it, every one sees its eyes and its benignant smile directed towards himself.

The framer of preventive laws, no less than private tutors and school-masters, should remember, that the readiest way to make either mind or body grow awry, is by lacing it too tight.



WAR.

It would have proved a striking part of a vision presented to Adam the day after the death of Abel, to have brought before his eyes half a million of men crowded together in the space of a square mile. When the first father had exhausted his wonder on the multitude of his offspring, he would then naturally inquire of his angelic instructor, for what purposes so vast a multitude had assembled? what is the common end? Alas! to murder each other,—all Cains, and yet no Abels!



PARODIES.

Parodies on new poems are read as satires; on old ones,—the soliloquy of Hamlet for instance—as compliments. A man of genius may securely laugh at a mode of attack by which his reviler, in half a century or less, becomes his encomiast.



M. DUPUIS.

Among the extravagancies of faith which have characterized many infidel writers, who would swallow a whale to avoid believing that a whale swallowed Jonas,—a high rank should be given to Dupuis, who, at the commencement of the French Revolution, published a work in twelve volumes, octavo, in order to prove that Jesus Christ was the sun, and all Christians, worshippers of Mithra. His arguments, if arguments they can be called, consist chiefly of metaphors quoted from the Fathers. What irresistible conviction would not the following passage from South's sermons (vol. v. p. 165.) have flashed on his fancy, had it occurred in the writings of Origen or Tertullian! and how complete a confutation of all his grounds does not the passage afford to those humble souls, who, gifted with common sense alone, can boast of no additional light received through a crack in their upper apartments:—

Christ the great sun of righteousness and saviour of the world, having by a glorious rising, after a red and bloody setting, proclaimed his deity to men and angels; and by a complete triumph over the two grand enemies of mankind, sin and death, set up the everlasting gospel in the room of all false religions, has now changed the Persian superstition into the Christian doctrine, and without the least approach to the idolatry of the former, made it henceforward the duty of all nations, Jews and Gentiles, to worship the rising sun.

This one passage outblazes the whole host of Dupuis' evidences and extracts. In the same sermon, the reader will meet with Hume's argument against miracles anticipated, and put in Thomas's mouth.



ORIGIN OF THE WORSHIP OF HYMEN.

The origin of the worship of Hymen is thus related by Lactantius. The story would furnish matter for an excellent pantomime. Hymen was a beautiful youth of Athens, who for the love of a young virgin disguised himself, and assisted at the Eleusinian rites: and at this time he, together with his beloved, and divers other young ladies of that city, was surprized and carried off by pirates, who supposing him to be what he appeared, lodged him with his mistress. In the dead of the night when the robbers were all asleep, he arose and cut their throats. Thence making hasty way back to Athens, he bargained with the parents that he would restore to them their daughter and all her companions, if they would consent to her marriage with him. They did so, and this marriage proving remarkably happy, it became the custom to invoke the name of Hymen at all nuptials.



EGOTISM.

It is hard and uncandid to censure the great reformers in philosophy and religion for their egotism and boastfulness. It is scarcely possible for a man to meet with continued personal abuse, on account of his superior talents, without associating more and more the sense of the value of his discoveries or detections with his own person. The necessity of repelling unjust contempt, forces the most modest man into a feeling of pride and self-consciousness. How can a tall man help thinking of his size, when dwarfs are constantly on tiptoe beside him?—Paracelsus was a braggart and a quack; so was Cardan; but it was their merits, and not their follies, which drew upon them that torrent of detraction and calumny, which compelled them so frequently to think and write concerning themselves, that at length it became a habit to do so. Wolff too, though not a boaster, was yet persecuted into a habit of egotism both in his prefaces and in his ordinary conversation, and the same holds good of the founder of the Brunonian system, and of his great namesake Giordano Bruno. The more decorous manners of the present age have attached a disproportionate opprobrium to this foible, and many therefore abstain with cautious prudence from all displays of what they feel. Nay, some do actually flatter themselves, that they abhor all egotism, and never betray it either in their writings or discourse. But watch these men narrowly; and in the greater number of cases you will find their thoughts, feelings, and mode of expression, saturated with the passion of contempt, which is the concentrated vinegar of egotism.

Your very humble men in company, if they produce any thing, are in that thing of the most exquisite irritability and vanity.

When a man is attempting to describe another person's character, he may be right or he may be wrong; but in one thing he will always succeed, that is, in describing himself. If, for example, he expresses simple approbation, he praises from a consciousness of possessing similar qualities;—if he approves with admiration, it is from a consciousness of deficiency. A. "Ay! he is a sober man." B. "Ah! Sir, what a blessing is sobriety!" Here A. is a man conscious of sobriety, who egotizes in 'tuism';—B. is one who, feeling the ill effects of a contrary habit, contemplates sobriety with blameless envy. Again:—A. "Yes, he is a warm man, a moneyed fellow; you may rely upon him." B. "Yes, yes, Sir, no wonder! he has the blessing of being well in the world." This reflection might be introduced in defence of plaintive egotism, and by way of preface to an examination of all the charges against it, and from what feelings they proceed. 1800.[1]

Contempt is egotism in ill humour. Appetite without moral affection, social sympathy, and even without passion and imagination—(in plain English, mere lust,)—is the basest form of egotism,—and being 'infra' human, or below humanity, should be pronounced with the harsh breathing, as 'he-goat-ism'. 1820.

[Footnote 1: From Mr. Gulch's commonplace book. Ed]



CAP OF LIBERTY.

Those who hoped proudly of human nature, and admitted no distinction between Christians and Frenchmen, regarded the first constitution as a colossal statue of Corinthian brass, formed by the fusion and commixture of all metals in the conflagration of the state. But there is a common fungus, which so exactly represents the pole and cap of liberty, that it seems offered by nature herself as the appropriate emblem of Gallic republicanism,—mushroom patriots, with a mushroom cap of liberty.



BULLS.

'Novi ego aliquem qui dormitabundus aliquando pulsari horam quartam audiverit, et sic numeravit, una, una, una, una; ac tum prae rei absurditate, quam anima concipiebat, exclamavit, Nae! delirat horologium! Quater pulsavit horam unam'.

I knew a person, who, during imperfect sleep, or dozing, as we say, listened to the clock as it was striking four, and as it struck, he counted the four, one, one, one, one; and then exclaimed, "Why, the clock is out of its wits; it has struck one four times over!"

This is a good exemplification of the nature of 'Bulls', which will be found always to contain in them a confusion of what the schoolmen would have called—objectivity with subjectivity;—in plain English, the impression of a thing as it exists in itself, and extrinsically, with the image which the mind abstracts from the impression. Thus, number, or the total of a series, is a generalization of the mind, an 'ens rationis' not an 'ens reale'. I have read many attempts at a definition of a 'Bull', and lately in the Edinburgh Review; but it then appeared to me that the definers had fallen into the same fault with Miss Edgeworth, in her delightful essay on 'Bulls', and given the definition of the genus, 'Blunder', for that of the particular species. I will venture, therefore, to propose the following: a 'Bull' consists in a mental juxta-position of incongruous images or thoughts with the sensation, but without the sense, of connection. The psychological conditions of the possibility of a 'Bull', it would not be difficult to determine; but it would require a larger space than can be afforded here, at least more attention than my readers would be likely to afford.

There is a sort of spurious 'Bull' which consists wholly in mistake of language, and which the closest thinker may make, if speaking in a language of which he is not master.



WISE IGNORANCE.

It is impossible to become either an eminently great, or truly pious man, without the courage to remain ignorant of many things. This important truth is most happily expressed by the elder Scaliger in prose, and by the younger in verse; the latter extract has an additional claim from the exquisite terseness of its diction, and the purity of its Latinity. I particularly recommend its perusal to the commentators on the Apocalypse.

'Quare ulterior disquisitio morosi atque satagentis animi est; humanae enim sapientiae pars est, quaedam aequo animo nescire velle'.

J. C, Scalig. Ex. 307. s. 29.

'Ne curiosus quaere causas omnium, Quaecunque libris vis prophetarum indidit, Afflata caelo, plena veraci Deo; Nec operta sacri supparo silentii Irrumpere aude; sed prudenter praeteri! Nescire velle quae magister optimus Docere non vult, erudita inscitia est'.

Josep. Scalig.



ROUGE.

Triumphant generals in Rome wore rouge. The ladies of France, and their fair sisters and imitators in Britain, conceive themselves always in the chair of triumph, and of course entitled to the same distinction. The custom originated, perhaps, in the humility of the conquerors that they might seem to blush continually at their own praises. Mr. Gilpin frequently speaks of a "picturesque eye:" with something less of solecism, I may affirm that our fair ever blushing triumphants have secured to themselves the charm of picturesque cheeks, every face being its own portrait.



[Greek: Epea pteroenta.] HASTY WORDS.

I crave mercy (at least of my contemporaries: for if these Omniana should outlive the present generation, the opinion will not need it) but I could not help writing in the blank page of a very celebrated work [1] the following passage from Picus Mirandula:-

'Movent mihi stomachum grammatistae quidam, qui cum duas tenuerint vocabulorum origines, ita se ostentant, ita venditant, ita circumferunt jactabundi, ut prae ipsis pro nihilo habendos philosophos arbitrentur'. Epist. ad Hermol. Barb.

[Footnote 1: Diversions of Purley. Ed.]



MOTIVES AND IMPULSES.

It is a matter of infinite difficulty, but fortunately of comparative indifference to determine what a man's motive may have been for this or that particular action. Rather seek to learn what his objects in general are. What does he habitually wish, habitually pursue? and thence deduce his impulses which are commonly the true efficient causes of men's conduct; and without which the motive itself would not have become a motive. Let a haunch of venison represent the motive, and the keen appetite of health, and exercise the impulse: then place the same or some more favourite dish before the same man, sick, dyspeptic, and stomach-worn, and we may then weigh the comparative influences of motives and impulses. Without the perception of this truth, it is impossible to understand the character of lago, who is represented as now assigning one, and then another, and again a third motive for his conduct, all alike the mere fictions of his own restless nature, distempered by a keen sense of his intellectual superiority, and haunted by the love of exerting power on those especially who are his superiors in practical and moral excellence. Yet how many among our modern critics have attributed to the profound author this the appropriate inconsistency of the character itself.

A second illustration:—Did Curio, the 'quondam' patriot, reformer, and semi-revolutionist, abjure his opinion, and yell the foremost in the hunt of persecution against his old friends and fellow-philosophists, with a cold clear predetermination, formed at one moment, of making L5000 a year by his apostacy?—I neither know nor care. Probably not. But this I know, that to be thought a man of consequence by his contemporaries, to be admitted into the society of his superiors in artificial rank, to excite the admiration of lords, to live in splendour and sensual luxury, have been the objects of his habitual wishes. A flash of lightning has turned at once the polarity of the compass needle: and so, perhaps, now and then, but as rarely, a violent motive may revolutionize a man's opinions and professions. But more frequently his honesty dies away imperceptibly from evening into twilight, and from twilight into utter darkness. He turns hypocrite so gradually, and by such tiny atoms of motion, that by the time he has arrived at a given point, he forgets his own hypocrisy in the imperceptible degrees of his conversion. The difference between such a man and a bolder liar, is merely that between the hour hand, and that which tells the seconds, on a watch. Of the former you can see only the past motion; of the latter both the past motion and the present moving. Yet there is, perhaps, more hope of the latter rogue: for he has lied to mankind only and not to himself—the former lies to his own heart, as well as to the public.



INWARD BLINDNESS.

Talk to a blind man—he knows he wants the sense of sight, and willingly makes the proper allowances. But there are certain internal senses, which a man may want, and yet be wholly ignorant that he wants them. It is most unpleasant to converse with such persons on subjects of taste, philosophy, or religion. Of course there is no reasoning with them: for they do not possess the facts, on which the reasoning must be grounded. Nothing is possible, but a naked dissent, which implies a sort of unsocial contempt; or, what a man of kind dispositions is very likely to fall into, a heartless tacit acquiescence, which borders too nearly on duplicity.



THE VICES OF SLAVES NO EXCUSE FOR SLAVERY.

It often happens, that the slave himself has neither the power nor the wish to be free. He is then brutified; but this apathy is the dire effect of slavery, and so far from being a justifying cause, that it contains the grounds of its bitterest condemnation. The Carlovingian race bred up the Merovingi as beasts; and then assigned their unworthiness as the satisfactory reason for their dethronement. Alas! the human being is more easily weaned from the habit of commanding than from that of abject obedience. The slave loses his soul when he loses his master; even as the dog that has lost himself in the street, howls and whines till he has found the house again, where he had been kicked and cudgelled, and half starved to boot. As we, however, or our ancestors must have inoculated our fellow-creature with this wasting disease of the soul, it becomes our duty to cure him; and though we cannot immediately make him free, yet we can, and ought to, put him in the way of becoming so at some future time, if not in his own person, yet in that of his children. The French, you will say, are not capable of freedom. Grant this;—but does this fact justify the ungrateful traitor, whose every measure has been to make them still more incapable of it?



CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD.

The ancients attributed to the blood the same motion of ascent and descent which really takes place in the sap of trees. Servetus discovered the minor circulation from the heart to the lungs. Do not the following passages of Giordano Bruno (published in 1591) seem to imply more? I put the question, 'pauperis forma', with unfeigned diffidence.

'"De Immenso et Innumerabili,"' lib. vi. cap. 8.

'Ut in nostro corpore sanguis per totum circumcursat et recursat, sic in toto mundo, astro, tellure.

Quare non aliter quam nostro in corpore sanguis Hinc meat, hinc remeat, neque ad inferiora fluit vi Majore, ad supera a pedibus quam deinde recedat:—'

and still more plainly, in the ninth chapter of the same book,

'Quid esset Quodam ni gyro naturae cuncta redirent Ortus ad proprios rursum; si sorbeat omnes Pontus aquas, totum non restituatque perenni Ordine; qua possit rerum consistere vita? Tanquam si totus concurrat sanguis in unam, In qua consistat, partem, nec prima revisat Ordia, et antiquos cursus non inde resumat.'

It is affirmed in the "Supplement to the Scotch Encyclopaedia Britannica," that Des Cartes was the first who in defiance of Aristotle and the Schools, attributed infinity to the universe. The very title of Bruno's poem proves, that this honour belongs to him.

Feyjoo lays claim to a knowledge of the circulation of the blood for Francisco de la Reyna, a farrier, who published a work upon his own art at Burgos, in 1564. The passage which he quotes is perfectly clear.

'Por manera, que la sangre anda en torno, y en rueda por todos los miembros, excluye toda duda.'

Whether Reyna himself claimed any discovery, Feyjoo does not mention;—but, these words seem to refer to some preceding demonstration of the fact. I am inclined to think that this, like many other things, was known before it was discovered; just as the preventive powers of the vaccine disease, the existence of adipocire in graves, and certain principles in grammar and in population, upon which bulky books have been written and great reputations raised in our days.



PERITURAE PARCERE CHARTAE.

What scholar but must at times have a feeling of splenetic regret, when he looks at the list of novels, in two, three, or four volumes each, published monthly by Messrs. Lane, &c. and then reflects that there are valuable works of Cudworth, prepared by himself for the press, yet still unpublished by the University which possesses them, and which ought to glory in the name of their great author! and that there is extant in manuscript a folio volume of unprinted sermons by Jeremy Taylor. Surely, surely, the patronage of our many literary societies might be employed more beneficially to the literature and to the actual 'literati' of the country, if they would publish the valuable manuscripts that lurk in our different public libraries, and make it worth the while of men of learning to correct and annotate the copies, instead of——, but it is treading on hot embers!



TO HAVE AND TO BE.

The distinction is marked in a beautiful sentiment of a German poet: Hast thou any thing? share it with me and I will pay thee the worth of it. Art thou any thing? O then let us exchange souls!

The following is offered as a mere playful illustration:

"Women have no souls," says prophet Mahomet.

Nay, dearest Anna! why so grave? I said you had no soul,'tis true: For what you are, you cannot have— 'Tis I, that have one, since I first had you.



PARTY PASSION.

"Well, Sir!" exclaimed a lady, the vehement and impassionate partizan of Mr. Wilkes, in the day of his glory, and during the broad blaze of his patriotism, "Well, Sir! and will you dare deny that Mr. Wilkes is a great man, and an eloquent man?"—"Oh! by no means, Madam! I have not a doubt respecting Mr. Wilkes's talents!"—"Well, but, Sir! and is he not a fine man, too, and a handsome man?"—"Why, Madam! he squints, doesn't he?"—"Squints! yes to be sure he does, Sir! but not a bit more than a gentleman and a man of sense ought to squint!"



GOODNESS OF HEART INDISPENSABLE TO A MAN OF GENIUS.

'If men will impartially, and not asquint, look toward the offices and function of a poet, they will easily conclude to themselves the impossibility of any man's being the good poet without being first a good man. (Dedication to 'the Fox').'

Ben Jonson has borrowed this just and noble sentiment from Strabo.

[Greek (transliterated): 'h de (haretae) poiaetou sunezeuktai tae tou anthropou kai ouch oionte agathhon genesthai, poiaetaen, mae proteron genaethenta andra agathon.] ( Lib. I. p. 33. folio.)



MILTON AND BEN JONSON.

Those who have more faith in parallelism than myself, may trace Satan's address to the sun in 'Paradise Lost' to the first lines of Ben Jonson's Poetaster:

"Light! I salute thee, but with wounded nerves, Wishing thy golden splendour pitchy darkness!"

But even if Milton had the above in his mind, his own verses would be more fitly entitled an apotheosis of Jonson's lines than an imitation.



STATISTICS.

We all remember Burke's curious assertion that there were 80,000 incorrigible jacobins in England. Mr. Colquhoun is equally precise in the number of beggars, prostitutes, and thieves in the City of London. Mercetinus, who wrote under Lewis XV. seems to have afforded the precedent; he assures his readers, that by an accurate calculation there were 50,000 incorrigible atheists in the City of Paris! Atheism then may have been a co-cause of the French revolution; but it should not be burthened on it, as its monster-child.



MAGNANIMITY.

The following ode was written by Giordano Bruno, under prospect of that martyrdom which he soon after suffered at Rome, for atheism: that is, as is proved by all his works, for a lofty and enlightened piety, which was of course unintelligible to bigots and dangerous to an apostate hierarchy. If the human mind be, as it assuredly is, the sublimest object which nature affords to our contemplation, these lines which portray the human mind under the action of its most elevated affections, have a fair claim to the praise of sublimity. The work from which they are extracted is exceedingly rare (as are, indeed, all the works of the Nolan philosopher), and I have never seen them quoted:—

'Daedaleas vacuis plumas nectere humeris Concupiant alii; aut vi suspendi nubium Alis, ventorumve appetant remigium; Aut orbitae flammantis raptari alveo; Bellerophontisve alitem

Nos vero illo donati sumus genio, Ut fatum intrepedi objectasque umbras cernimus, Ne caeci ad lumen solis, ad perspicuas Naturae voces surdi, ad Divum munera Ingrato adsimus pectore.

Non curamus stultorum quid opinio De nobis ferat, aut queis dignetur sedibus. Alis ascendimus sursum melioribus! Quid nubes ultra, ventorum ultra est semita, Vidimus, quantum satis est.

Illuc conscendent plurimi, nobis ducibus, Per scalam proprio erectam et firmam in pectore, Quam Deus, et vegeti sors dabit ingeni; Non manes, pluma, ignis, ventus, nubes, spiritus, Divinantum phantasmata.

Non sensus vegetans, non me ratio arguet, Non indoles exculti clara ingenii; Sed perfidi sycophantae supercilium Absque lance, statera, trutina, oculo, Miraculum armati segete.

Versificantis grammatistae encomium, Buglossae Graecissantum, et epistolia Lectorem libri salutantum a limine, Latrantum adversum Zoilos, Momos, mastiges, Hinc absint testimonia!

Procedat nudus, quern non ornant nubila, Sol! Non conveniunt quadrupedum phalerae Humano dorso! Porra veri species Quaesita, inventa, et patefacta me efferat! Etsi nullus intelligat, Si cum natura sapio, et sub numine, Id vere plus quam satis est.'

The conclusion alludes to a charge of impenetrable obscurity, in which Bruno shares one and the same fate with Plato, Aristotle, Kant, and in truth with every great discoverer and benefactor of the human race; excepting only when the discoveries have been capable of being rendered palpable to the outward senses, and have therefore come under the cognizance of our "sober judicious critics," the men of "sound common sense;" that is, of those snails in intellect, who wear their eyes at the tips of their feelers, and cannot even see unless they at the same time touch. When these finger-philosophers affirm that Plato, Bruno, &c. must have been "out of their senses," the just and proper retort is,—"Gentlemen! it is still worse with you! you have lost your reason!"

By the by, Addison in the Spectator has grossly misrepresented the design and tendency of Bruno's 'Bestia Triomphante'; the object of which was to show of all the theologies and theogonies which have been conceived for the mere purpose of solving problems in the material universe, that as they originate in fancy, so they all end in delusion, and act to the hindrance or prevention of sound knowledge and actual discovery. But the principal and most important truth taught in this allegory is, that in the concerns of morality all pretended knowledge of the will of Heaven which is not revealed to man through his conscience; that all commands which do not consist in the unconditional obedience of the will to the pure reason, without tampering with consequences (which are in God's power, not in ours); in short, that all motives of hope and fear from invisible powers, which are not immediately derived from, and absolutely coincident with, the reverence due to the supreme reason of the universe, are all alike dangerous superstitions. The worship founded on them, whether offered by the Catholic to St. Francis, or by the poor African to his Fetish differ in form only, not in substance. Herein Bruno speaks not only as a philosopher, but as an enlightened Christian;—the Evangelists and Apostles every where representing their moral precepts not as doctrines then first revealed, but as truths implanted in the hearts of men, which their vices only could have obscured.



NEGROS AND NARCISSUSES.

There are certain tribes of Negros who take for the deity of the day the first thing they see or meet with in the morning. Many of our fine ladies, and some of our very fine gentlemen, are followers of the same sect; though by aid of the looking-glass they secure a constancy as to the object of their devotion.



AN ANECDOTE.

We here in England received a very high character of Lord —— during his stay abroad. "Not unlikely, Sir," replied the traveller; "a dead dog at a distance is said to smell like musk."



THE PHAROS AT ALEXANDRIA.

Certain full and highly-wrought dissuasives from sensual indulgencies, in the works of theologians as well as of satirists and story-writers, may, not unaptly, remind one of the Pharos; the many lights of which appeared at a distance as one, and this as a polar star, so as more often to occasion wrecks than prevent them.

At the base of the Pharos the name of the reigning monarch was engraved, on a composition, which the artist well knew would last no longer than the king's life. Under this, and cut deep in the marble itself, was his own name and dedication: "Sostratos of Gyndos, son of Dexiteles to the Gods, protectors of sailors!"—So will it be with the 'Georgium Sidus' the 'Ferdinandia', &c. &c.—Flattery's plaister of Paris will crumble away, and under it we shall read the names of Herschel, Piozzi, and their compeers.



SENSE AND COMMON SENSE.

I have noticed two main evils in philosophizing. The first is, the absurdity of demanding proof for the very facts which constitute the nature of him who demands it,—a proof for those primary and unceasing revelations of self-consciousness, which every possible proof must pre-suppose; reasoning, for instance, 'pro' and 'con', concerning the existence of the power of reasoning. Other truths may be ascertained; but these are certainty itself (all at least which we mean by the word), and are the measure of every thing else which we deem certain. The second evil is, that of mistaking for such facts mere general prejudices, and those opinions that, having been habitually taken for granted, are dignified with the name of common sense. Of these, the first is the more injurious to the reputation, the latter more detrimental to the progress of philosophy. In the affairs of common life we very properly appeal to common sense; but it is absurd to reject the results of the microscope from the negative testimony of the naked eye. Knives are sufficient for the table and the market;—but for the purposes of science we must dissect with the lancet.

As an instance of the latter evil, take that truly powerful and active intellect, Sir Thomas Brown, who, though he had written a large volume in detection of vulgar errors, yet peremptorily pronounces the motion of the earth round the sun, and consequently the whole of the Copernican system unworthy of any serious confutation, as being manifestly repugnant to common sense; which said common sense, like a miller's scales, used to weigh gold or gasses, may, and often does, become very gross, though unfortunately not very uncommon, nonsense. And as for the former, which may be called 'Logica Praepostera', I have read in metaphysical essays of no small fame, arguments drawn 'ab extra' in proof and disproof of personal identity, which, ingenious as they may be, were clearly anticipated by the little old woman's appeal to her little dog, for the solution of the very same doubts, occasioned by her petticoats having been cut round about:—

If it is not me, he'll bark and he'll rail, But if I be I, he'll wag his little tail.



TOLERATION.

I dare confess that Mr. Locke's treatise on Toleration appeared to me far from being a full and satisfactory answer to the subtle and oft-times plausible arguments of Bellarmin, and other Romanists. On the whole, I was more pleased with the celebrated W. Penn's tracts on the same subject. The following extract from his excellent letter to the king of Poland appeals to the heart rather than to the head, to the Christian rather than to the philosopher; and, besides, overlooks the ostensible object of religious penalties, which is not so much to convert the heretic, as to prevent the spread of heresy. The thoughts, however, are so just in themselves, and expressed with so much life and simplicity, that it well deserves a place in these Omniana:—

Now, O Prince! give a poor Christian leave to expostulate with thee. Did Christ Jesus or his holy followers endeavour, by precept or example, to set up their religion with a carnal sword? Called he any troops of men or angels to defend him? Did he encourage Peter to dispute his right with the sword? But did he not say, 'Put it up'? Or did he countenance his over-zealous disciples, when they would have had fire from heaven to destroy those that were not of their mind? No! But did not Christ rebuke them, saying, 'Ye know not what spirit ye are of?' And if it was neither Christ's spirit, nor their own spirit that would have fire from heaven—Oh! what is that spirit that would kindle fire on earth to destroy such as peaceably dissent upon the account of conscience!

O King! when did the true religion persecute? When did the true church offer violence for religion? Were not her weapons prayers, tears, and patience? did not Jesus conquer by these weapons, and vanquish cruelty by suffering? can clubs, and staves, and swords, and prisons, and banishments reach the soul, convert the heart, or convince the understanding of man? When did violence ever make a true convert, or bodily punishment, a sincere Christian? This maketh void the end of Christ's coming. Yea, it robbeth God's spirit of its office, which is to convince the world. That is the sword by which the ancient Christians overcame.

The theory of persecution seems to rest on the following assumptions. 1. A duty implies a right. We have a right to do whatever it is our duty to do. 2. It is the duty and consequently the right of the supreme power in a state to promote the greatest possible sum of well-being in that state. 3. This is impossible without morality. 4. But morality can neither be produced or preserved in a people at large without true religion. 5. Relative to the duties of the legislature or governors, that is the true religion which they conscientiously believe to be so. 6. As there can be but one true religion, at the same time, this one it is their duty and right to authorize and protect. 7. But the established religion cannot be protected and secured except by the imposition of restraints or the influence of penalties on those, who profess and propagate hostility to it. 8. True religion, consisting of precepts, counsels, commandments, doctrines, and historical narratives, cannot be effectually proved or defended, but by a comprehensive view of the whole as a system. Now this cannot be hoped for from the mass of mankind. But it may be attacked, and the faith of ignorant men subverted by particular objections, by the statement of difficulties without any counter-statement of the greater difficulties which would result from the rejection of the former, and by all the other stratagems used in the desultory warfare of sectaries and infidels. This is, however, manifestly dishonest and dangerous, and there must exist, therefore, a power in the state to prevent, suppress, and punish it. 9. The advocates of toleration have never been able to agree among themselves concerning the limits to their own claims; have never established any clear rules, as to what shall and what shall not be admitted under the name of religion and conscience. Treason and the grossest indecencies not only may be, but have been, called by these names: as among the earlier Anabaptists. 10. And last, it is a 'petitio principii', or begging the question, to take for granted that a state has no power except in case of overt acts. It is its duty to prevent a present evil, as much at least as to punish the perpetrators of it. Besides, preaching and publishing are overt acts. Nor has it yet been proved, though often asserted, that a Christian sovereign has nothing to do with the eternal happiness or misery of the fellow creatures entrusted to his charge.



HINT FOR A NEW SPECIES OF HISTORY.

"The very knowledge of the opinions and customs of so considerable a part of mankind as the Jews now are, and especially have been heretofore, is valuable both for pleasure and use. It is a very good piece of history, and that of the best kind, namely, of human nature, and of that part of it which is most different from us, and commonly the least known to us. And, indeed, the principal advantage which is to be made by the wiser sort of men of most writings, is rather to see what men think and are, than to be informed of the natures and truth of things; to observe what thoughts and passions have occupied men's minds, what opinions and manners they are of. In this view it becomes of no mean importance to notice and record the strangest ignorance, the most putid fables, impertinent, trifling, ridiculous disputes, and more ridiculous pugnacity in the defence and retention of the subjects disputed." (Publisher's preface to the reader in Lightfoot's 'Works', vol. i.)

In the thick volume of title pages and chapters of contents (composed) of large and small works correspondent to each (proposed) by a certain 'omni'-pregnant, 'nihili'-parturient genius of my acquaintance, not the least promising is,—"A History of the morals and (as connected therewith) of the manners of the English Nation from the Conquest to the present time." From the chapter of contents it appears, that my friend is a steady believer in the uninterrupted progression of his fellow countrymen; that there has been a constant growth of wealth and well-being among us, and with these an increase of knowledge, and with increasing knowledge an increase and diffusion of practical goodness. The degrees of acceleration, indeed, have been different at different periods. The moral being has sometimes crawled, sometimes strolled, sometimes walked, sometimes run; but it has at all times been moving onward. If in any one point it has gone backward, it has been only in order to leap forward in some other. The work was to commence with a numeration table, or catalogue, of those virtues or qualities which make a man happy in himself, and which conduce to the happiness of those about him, in a greater or lesser sphere of agency. The degree and the frequency in which each of these virtues manifested themselves, in the successive reigns from William the Conqueror inclusively, were to be illustrated by apposite quotations from the works of contemporary writers, not only of historians and chroniclers, but of the poets, romance writers, and theologians, not omitting the correspondence between literary men, the laws and regulations, civil and ecclesiastical, and whatever records the industry of antiquarians has brought to light in their provincial, municipal, and monastic histories:—tall tomes and huge! undegenerate sons of Anak, which look down from a dizzy height on the dwarfish progeny of contemporary wit, and can find no associates in size at a less distance than two centuries; and in arranging which the puzzled librarian must commit an anachronism in order to avoid an anatopism.

Such of these illustrations as most amused or impressed me, when I heard them (for alas! even his very title pages and contents my friend composes only in air!) I shall probably attempt to preserve in different parts of these 'Omniana'. At present I shall cite one article only which I found wafered on a blank leaf of his memorandum book, superscribed: "Flattering news for 'Anno Domini' 2000, whenever it shall institute a comparison between itself and the 17th and 18th centuries." It consists of an extract, say rather, an exsection from the Kingston Mercantile Advertiser, from Saturday, August the 15th, to Tuesday, August 18th, 1801. This paper which contained at least twenty more advertisements of the very same kind, was found by accident among the wrapping-papers in the trunk of an officer just returned from the West India station. They stand here exactly as in the original, from which they are reprinted:—

Kingston, July 30, 1801.

Ran away, about three weeks ago, from a penn near Halfway Tree, a negro wench, named Nancy, of the Chamba country, strong made, an ulcer on her left leg, marked D. C. diamond between. She is supposed to be harboured by her husband, Dublin, who has the direction of a wherry working between this town and Port Royal, and is the property of Mr. Fishley, of that place; the said negro man having concealed a boy in his wherry before. Half a joe will be paid to any person apprehending the above described wench, and delivering to Mr. Archibald M' Lea, East end; and if found secreted by any person, the law will be put in force.

Kingston, August 13, 1801.

Strayed on Monday evening last, a negro boy of the Moco country, named Joe, the property of Mr. Thomas Williams, planter, in St. John's, who had sent him to town under the charge of a negro man, with a cart for provisions. The said boy is, perhaps, from 15 to 18 years of age, about twelve months in the country, no mark, speaks little English, but can tell his owner's name; had on a long Oznaburg frock. It is supposed he might have gone out to vend some pears and lemon-grass, and have lost himself in the street. One pistole will be paid to any person apprehending and bringing him to this office.

Kingston, July 1, 1801.

Forty Shillings Reward.

Strayed on Friday evening last, (and was seen going up West Street the following morning), a small bay HORSE, the left ear lapped, flat rump, much scored from the saddle on his back, and marked on the near side F. M. with a diamond between. Whoever will take up the said horse, and deliver him to W. Balantine, butcher, back of West Street, will receive the above reward.

Kingston, July 4, 1801.

Strayed on Sunday morning last, from the subscriber's house, in East Street, a bright dun He-Mule, the mane lately cropped, a large chafe slightly skinned over on the near buttock, and otherwise chafed from the action of the harness in his recent breaking. Half a joe will be paid to any person taking up and bringing this mule to the subscriber's house, or to the Store in Harbour Street. JOHN WALSH.

Kingston, July 2, 1801.

Ten pounds Reward,

Ran away

About two years ago from the subscriber, a Negro woman named

DORAH,

purchased from Alexander M'Kean, Esq. She is about 20 years of age, and 5 feet 6 or 7 inches high; has a mark on one of her shoulders, about the size of a quarter dollar, occasioned, she says, by the yaws; of a coal black complexion, very artful, and most probably passes about the country with false papers and under another name; if that is not the case, it must be presumed she is harboured about Green pond, where she has a mother and other connexions.

What a history! horses and negros! negros and horses! It makes me tremble at my own nature. Surely, every religious and conscientious Briton is equally a debtor in gratitude to Thomas Clarkson and his fellow labourers with every African: for on the soul of every individual among us did a portion of guilt rest, as long as the Slave Trade remained legal.

A few years back the public was satiated with accounts of the happy condition of the slaves in our colonies, and the great encouragements and facilities afforded to such of them, as by industry and foresight laboured to better their situation. With what truth this is stated as the general tone of feeling among our planters, and their agents, may be conjectured from the following sentences, which made part of what in England we call the leading paragraph of the same newspaper:—

Strange as it may appear, we are assured as a fact, that a number of slaves in this town have purchased lots of land, and are absolutely in possession of the fee simple of lands and tenements. Neither is it uncommon for the men slaves to purchase or manumize their wives, and 'vice versa', the wives their husbands. To account for this, we need only look to the depredations daily committed, and the impositions practised to the distress of the community and ruin of the fair trader. Negro yards too, under such direction, will necessarily prove the asylum of runaways from the country.



TEXT SPARRING.

When I hear (as who now can travel twenty miles in a stage coach without the probability of hearing) an ignorant religionist quote an unconnected sentence of half a dozen words from any part of the Old or New Testament, and resting on the literal sense of these words the eternal misery of all who reject, nay, even of all those countless myriads, who have never had the opportunity of accepting this, and sundry other articles of faith conjured up by the same textual magic; I ask myself what idea these persons form of the Bible, that they should use it in a way in which they themselves use no other book? They deem the whole written by inspiration. Well! but is the very essence of rational discourse, that is, connection and dependency done away, because the discourse is infallibly rational? The mysteries, which these spiritual lynxes detect in the simplest texts, remind me of the 500 nondescripts, each as large as his own black cat, which Dr. Katterfelto, by aid of his solar microscope, discovered in a drop of transparent water.

But to a contemporary who has not thrown his lot in the same helmet with them, these fanatics think it a crime to listen. Let them then, or far rather, let those who are in danger of infection from them, attend to the golden aphorisms of the old and orthodox divines. "Sentences in scripture (says Dr. Donne) like hairs in horses' tails, concur in one root of beauty and strength; but being plucked out, one by one, serve only for springes and snares."

The second I transcribe from the preface to Lightfoot's works. "Inspired writings are an inestimable treasure to mankind; for so many sentences, so many truths. But then the true sense of them must be known: otherwise, so many sentences, so many authorized falsehoods."



PELAGIANISM.

Our modern latitudinarians will find it difficult to suppose, that anything could have been said in the defence of Pelagianism equally absurd with the facts and arguments which have been adduced in favour of original sin, (sin being taken as guilt; that is, observes a Socinian wit, the crime of being born). But in the comment of Rabbi Akibah on Ecclesiastes xii. 1. we have a story of a mother, who must have been a most determined believer in the uninheritability of sin. For having a sickly and deformed child, and resolved that it should not be thought to have been punished for any fault of its parents or ancestors, and yet having nothing else for which to blame the child, she seriously and earnestly accused it before the judge of having kicked her unmercifully during her pregnancy.

I am firmly persuaded that no doctrine was ever widely diffused among various nations through successive ages and under different religions, (such as is the doctrine of original sin, and redemption, those fundamental articles of every known religion professing to be revealed,) which is not founded either in the nature of things or in the necessities of our nature. In the language of the schools, it carries with it presumptive evidence that it is either objectively or subjectively true. And the more strange and contradictory such a doctrine may appear to the understanding, or discursive faculty, the stronger is the presumption in its favour. For whatever satirists may say, and sciolists imagine, the human mind has no predilection for absurdity. I do not, however, mean that such a doctrine shall be always the best possible representation of the truth on which it is founded; for the same body casts strangely different shadows in different places, and different degrees of light, but that it always does shadow out some such truth, and derive its influence over our faith from our obscure perception of that truth. Yea, even where the person himself attributes his belief of it to the miracles, with which it was announced by the founder of his religion.



THE SOUL AND ITS ORGANS OF SENSE.

It is a strong presumptive proof against materialism, that there does not exist a language on earth, from the rudest to the most refined, in which a materialist can talk for five minutes together, without involving some contradiction in terms to his own system. 'Objection'. Will not this apply equally to the astronomer? Newton, no doubt, talked of the sun's rising and setting, just like other men. What should we think of the coxcomb who should have objected to him, that he contradicted his own system? 'Answer'—No! it does not apply equally; say rather, it is utterly inapplicable to the astronomer and natural philosopher. For his philosophic, and his ordinary language speak of two quite different things, both of which are equally true. In his ordinary language he refers to a fact of appearance, to a phenomenon common and necessary to all persons in a given situation; in his scientific language he determines that one position or figure, which being supposed, the appearance in question would be the necessary result, and all appearances in all situations maybe demonstrably foretold. Let a body be suspended in the air, and strongly illuminated. What figure is here? A triangle. But what here? A trapezium;—and so on. The same question put to twenty men, in twenty different positions and distances, would receive twenty different answers: each would be a true answer. But what is that one figure which, being so placed, all these facts of appearance must result according to the law of perspective?—Ay! this is a different question, this is a new subject. The words which answer this would be absurd if used in reply to the former. [1]

Thus, the language of the scripture on natural objects is as strictly philosophical as that of the Newtonian system. Perhaps more so. For it is not only equally true, but it is universal among mankind, and unchangeable. It describes facts of appearance. And what other language would have been consistent with the divine wisdom? The inspired writers must have borrowed their terminology, either from the crude and mistaken philosophy of their own times, and so have sanctified and perpetuated falsehood, unintelligible meantime to all but one in ten thousand; or they must have anticipated the terminology of the true system, without any revelation of the system itself, and so have become unintelligible to all men; or lastly, they must have revealed the system itself, and thus have left nothing for the exercise, developement, or reward of the human understanding, instead of teaching that moral knowledge, and enforcing those social and civic virtues, out of which the arts and sciences will spring up in due time and of their own accord. But nothing of this applies to the materialist; he refers to the very same facts, of which the common language of mankind speaks: and these too are facts that have their sole and entire being in our own consciousness; facts, as to which 'esse' and 'conscire' are identical. Now, whatever is common to all languages, in all climates, at all times, and in all stages of civilization, must be the exponent and consequent of the common consciousness of man as man. Whatever contradicts this universal language, therefore, contradicts the universal consciousness, and the facts in question subsisting exclusively in consciousness, whatever contradicts the consciousness contradicts the fact.

I have been seduced into a dry discussion where I had intended only a few amusing facts, in proof, that the mind makes the sense far more than the senses make the mind. If I have life, and health, and leisure, I purpose to compile from the works, memoirs, and transactions of the different philosophical societies in Europe, from magazines, and the rich store of medical and psychological publications, furnished by the English, French, and German press, all the essays and cases that relate to the human faculties under unusual circumstances, (for pathology is the crucible of physiology), excluding such only as are not intelligible without the symbols or terminology of science. These I would arrange under the different senses and powers: as the eye, the ear, the touch, &c.; the imitative power, voluntary and automatic; the imagination, or shaping and modifying power; the fancy or the aggregative and associative power; the understanding, or the regulative, substantiating, and realizing power; the speculative reason, 'vis theoretica et scientifica', or the power, by which we produce, or aim to produce, unity, necessity, and a universality in all our knowledge by means of principles, [2]'a priori'; the will or practical reason; the faculty of choice, ('Willkuehr'), and (distinct both from the moral will, and the choice), the sensation of volition which I have found reason to include under the head of single and double touch.

Thence I propose to make a new arrangement of madness, whether as defect, or as excess, of any of these senses or faculties; and thus by appropriate cases to shew the difference between;— 1. a man having lost his reason but not his senses or understanding—that is, when he sees things as other men see them,—adapts means to ends as other men would adapt them, and not seldom, with more sagacity,—but his final end is altogether irrational: 2. his having lost his wits, that is, his understanding or judicial power; but not his reason or the use of his senses,—(such was Don Quixote; and, therefore, we love and reverence him, while we despise Hudibras): 3. his being out of his senses, as in the case of a hypochondriac, to whom his limbs appear to be of glass, although all his conduct is both rational, or moral, and prudent: 4. Or the case may be a combination of all three, though I doubt the existence of such a case, or of any two of them: 5. And lastly, it may be merely such an excess of sensation, as overpowers and suspends all, which is frenzy or raving madness.

A diseased state of an organ of sense, or of the inner organs connected with it, will perpetually tamper with the understanding, and unless there be an energetic and watchful counter-action of the judgment (of which I have known more than one instance, in which the comparing and reflecting judgment has obstinately, though painfully, rejected the full testimony of the senses,) will finally overpower it. But when the organ is obliterated, or totally suspended, then the mind applies some other organ to a double use. Passing through Temple Sowerby, in Westmorland, some ten years back, I was shewn a man perfectly blind; and blind from his infancy. Fowell was his name. This man's chief amusement was fishing on the wild and uneven banks of the River Eden, and up the different streams and tarns among the mountains. He had an intimate friend, likewise stone blind, a dexterous card player, who knows every gate and stile far and near throughout the country. These two often coursed together, and the people here, as every where, fond of the marvellous, affirm that they were the best beaters up of game in the whole country. The every way amiable and estimable John Gough of Kendal is not only an excellent mathematician, but an infallible botanist and zoologist. He has frequently at the first feel corrected the mistakes of the most experienced sportsman with regard to the birds or vermin which they had killed, when it chanced to be a variety or rare species so completely resembling the common one, that it required great steadiness of observation to detect the difference, even after it had been pointed out. As to plants and flowers, the rapidity of his touch appears fully equal to that of sight; and the accuracy greater. Good heavens! it needs only to look at him! Why his face sees all over! It is all one eye! I almost envied him; for the purity and excellence of his own nature, never broken in upon by those evil looks, (or features, which are looks become fixtures), with which low cunning, habitual cupidity, presumptuous sciolism, and heart-hardening vanity, coarsen the human face,—it is the mere stamp, the undisturbed 'ectypon' of his own soul! Add to this that he is a Quaker, with all the blest negatives, without any of the silly and factious positives, of that sect, which, with all its bogs and hollows, is still the prime sun-shine spot of Christendom in the eye of the true philosopher. When I was in Germany in the year 1798, I read at Hanover, and met with two respectable persons, one a clergyman, the other a physician, who confirmed to me, the account of the upper-stall master at Hanover, written by himself, and countersigned by all his medical attendants. As far as I recollect, he had fallen from his horse on his head, and in consequence of the blow lost both his sight and hearing for nearly three years, and continued for the greater part of this period in a state of nervous fever. His understanding, however, remained unimpaired and unaffected, and his entire consciousness, as to outward impressions, being confined to the sense of touch, he at length became capable of reading any book (if printed, as most German books are, on coarse paper) with his fingers, in much the same manner in which the 'piano-forte' is played, and latterly with an almost incredible rapidity. Likewise by placing his hand with the fingers all extended, at a small distance from the lips of any person that spoke slowly and distinctly to him, he learned to recognize each letter by its different effects on his nerves, and thus spelt the words as they were uttered. It was particularly noticed both by himself from his sensations, and by his medical attendants from observation, that the letter R, if pronounced full and strong, and recurring once or more in the same word, produced a small spasm, or twitch in his hand and fingers. At the end of three years he recovered both his health and senses, and with the necessity soon lost the power, which he had thus acquired.

[Footnote 1: See Church and State. Appendix, p. 231. Ed.]

[Footnote 2: This phrase, 'a priori', is, in common, most grossly misunderstood, and an absurdity burthened on it which it does not deserve. By knowledge 'a priori', we do not mean that we can know any thing previously to experience, which would be a contradiction in terms; but having once known it by occasion of experience (that is, something acting upon us from without) we then know, that it must have pre-existed, or the experience itself would have been impossible. By experience only I know, that I have eyes; but then my reason convinces me, that I must have had eyes in order to the experience.]



SIR GEORGE ETHEREGE, ETC.

Often and often had I read Gay's 'Beggar's Opera', and always delighted with its poignant wit and original satire, and if not without noticing its immorality, yet without any offence from it. Some years ago, I for the first time saw it represented in one of the London theatres; and such were the horror and disgust with which it impressed me, so grossly did it outrage all the best feelings of my nature, that even the angelic voice, and perfect science of Mrs. Billington, lost half their charms, or rather increased my aversion to the piece by an additional sense of incongruity. Then I learned the immense difference between reading and seeing a play;—and no wonder, indeed; for who has not passed over with his eye a hundred passages without offence, which he yet could not have even read aloud, or have heard so read by another person, without an inward struggle?—In mere passive silent reading the thoughts remain mere thoughts, and these too not our own,—phantoms with no attribute of place, no sense of appropriation, that flit over the consciousness as shadows over the grass or young corn in an April day. But even the sound of our own or another's voice takes them out of that lifeless, twilight, realm of thought, which is the confine, the 'intermundium', as it were, of existence and non-existence. Merely that the thoughts have become audible by blending with them a sense of outness gives them a sort of reality. What then,—when by every contrivance of scenery, appropriate dresses, according and auxiliary looks and gestures, and the variety of persons on the stage, realities are employed to carry the imitation of reality as near as possible to perfect delusion?

If a manly modesty shrinks from uttering an indecent phrase before a wife or sister in a private room, what must be the effect when a repetition of such treasons (for all gross and libidinous allusions are emphatically treasons against the very foundations of human society, against all its endearing charities, and all the mother virtues,) is hazarded before a mixed multitude in a public theatre? When every innocent woman must blush at once with pain at the thoughts she rejects, and with indignant shame at those, which the foul hearts of others may attribute to her!

Thus too with regard to the comedies of Wycherly, Vanburgh, and Etherege, I used to please myself with the flattering comparison of the manners universal at present among all classes above the lowest with those of our ancestors even of the highest ranks. But if for a moment I think of those comedies as having been acted, I lose all sense of comparison in the shame, that human nature could at any time have endured such outrages to its dignity; and if conjugal affection and the sweet name of sister were too weak, that yet filial piety, the gratitude for a mother's holy love, should not have risen and hissed into infancy these traitors to their own natural gifts, who lampooned the noblest passions of humanity, in order to pander for its lowest appetites.

As far, however, as one bad thing can be palliated by comparison with a worse, this may be said, in extenuation of these writers; that the mischief, which they can do even on the stage, is trifling compared with that stile of writing which began in the pest-house of French literature, and has of late been imported by the 'Littles' of the age, which consists in a perpetual tampering with the morals without offending the decencies. And yet the admirers of these publications, nay, the authors themselves have the assurance to complain of Shakspeare (for I will not refer to one yet far deeper blasphemy)—Shakspeare, whose most objectionable passages are but grossnesses against lust, and these written in a gross age; while three fourths of their whole works are delicacies for its support and sustenance. Lastly, that I may leave the reader in better humour with the name at the head of this article, I shall quote one scene from Etherege's 'Love in a Tub', which for exquisite, genuine, original humour, is worth all the rest of his plays, though two or three of his witty contemporaries were thrown in among them, as a make weight. The scene might be entitled, the different ways in which the very same story may be told without any variation in matter of fact; for the least attentive reader will perceive the perfect identity of the footboy's account with the Frenchman's own statement in contradiction to it.

SCENE IV.

[Scene—Sir Frederick's Lodging.]

[Enter DUFOY and CLARK.]

CLARK. I wonder Sir Frederick stays out so late.

DUFOY. Dis is noting; six, seven o'clock in the morning is ver good hour.

CLARK. I hope he does not use these hours often.

DUFOY. Some six, seven time a veek; no oftiner.

CLARK. My Lord commanded me to wait his coming.

DUFOY. Matre Clark, to divertise you, I vill tell you, how I did get be acquainted vid dis Bedlam Matre. About two, tree year ago me had for my convenience discharge myself from attending [Enter a footboy] as Matre D'ostel to a person of condition in Parie; it hapen after de dispatch of my little affaire.

FOOTBOY. That is, after h'ad spent his money, Sir.

DUFOY. Jan foutrede lacque; me vil have vip and de belle vor your breeck, rogue.

FOOTBOY. Sir, in a word, he was a Jack-pudding to a mountebank, and turned off for want of wit: my master picked him up before a puppet-show, mumbling a half-penny custard, to send him with a letter to the post.

DUFOY. Morbleu, see, see de insolence of de foot boy English, bogre, rascale, you lie, begar I vill cutte your troate.

[Exit FOOTBOY.]

CLARK. He's a rogue; on with your story, Monsieur.

DUFOY. Matre Clark, I am your ver humble serviteur; but begar me have no patience to be abuse. As I did say, after de dispatche of my affaire, von day being idele, vich does produce the mellanchollique, I did valke over de new bridge in Parie, and to divertise de time, and my more serious toughte, me did look to see de marrionete, and de jack-pudding, vich did play hundred pretty tricke; time de collation vas come; and vor I had no company, I vas unvilling to go to de Cabarete, but did buy a darriole, littel custarde vich did satisfie my appetite ver vel: in dis time young Monsieur de Grandvil (a jentelman of ver great quality, van dat vas my ver good friende, and has done me ver great and insignal faveure) come by in his caroche vid dis Sir Frolick, who did pention at the same academy, to learn, de language, de bon mine, de great horse, and many oder tricke. Monsieur seeing me did make de bowe and did becken me to come to him: he did telle me dat de Englis jentelman had de lettre vor de poste, and did entreate me (if I had de opportunity) to see de lettre delivere: he did telle me too, it void be ver great obligation: de memory of de faveurs I had received from his famelye, beside de inclination I naturally have to serve de strangere, made me returne de complemen vid ver great civility, and so I did take de lettre and see it delivere. Sir Frollick perceiving (by de management of dis affairZ) dat I vas man d'esprit, and of vitte, did entreate me to be his serviteur; me did take d'affection to his persone, and was contente to live vid him, to counsel and advise him. You see now de lie of de bougre de lacque Englishe, morbleu.



EVIDENCE.

When I was at Malta, 1805, there happened a drunken squabble on the road from Valette to St. Antonio, between a party of soldiers and another of sailors. They were brought before me the next morning, and the great effect which their intoxication had produced on their memory, and the little or no effect on their courage in giving evidence, may be seen by the following specimen. The soldiers swore that the sailors were the first aggressors, and had assaulted them with the following words: "——your eyes! who stops the line of march there?" The sailors with equal vehemence and unanimity averred, that the soldiers were the first aggressors, and had burst in on them calling out—"Heave to, you lubbers! or we'll run you down."



FORCE OF HABIT.

An Emir had bought a left eye of a glass eye-maker, supposing that he would be able to see with it. The man begged him to give it a little time: he could not expect that it would see all at once as well as the right eye, which had been for so many years in the habit of it.



PHOENIX.

The Phoenix lives a thousand years, a secular bird of ages; and there is never more than one at a time in the world. Yet Plutarch very gravely informs us, that the brain of the Phoenix is a pleasant bit, but apt to occasion the head ache. By the by, there are few styles that are not fit for something. I have often wished to see Claudian's splendid poem on the Phoenix translated into English verse in the elaborate rhyme and gorgeous diction of Darwin. Indeed Claudian throughout would bear translation better than any of the ancients.



MEMORY AND RECOLLECTION.

Beasts and babies remember, that is, recognize: man alone recollects. This distinction was made by Aristotle.

'Aliquid ex Nihilo.'

In answer to the 'nihil e nihilo' of the atheists, and their near relations, the 'anima-mundi' men, a humourist pointed to a white blank in a rude wood-cut, which very ingeniously served for the head of hair in one of the figures.



BREVITY OF THE GREEK AND ENGLISH COMPARED.

As an instance of compression and brevity in narration, unattainable in any language but the Greek, the following distich was quoted:

[Greek (transliterated): Chruson anaer euron, helipe brochon autar o chruson, hon lipen, ouk ehuron, haephen, hon ehure, brochon.]

This was denied by one of the company, who instantly rendered the lines in English, contending with reason that the indefinite article in English, together with the pronoun "his," &c. should be considered as one word with the noun following, and more than counterbalanced by the greater number of syllables in the Greek words, the terminations of which are in truth only little words glued on to them. The English distich follows, and the reader will recollect that it is a mere trial of comparative brevity, wit and poetry quite out of the question:

Jack finding gold left a rope on the ground; Bill missing his gold used the rope, which he found.



1809—1816.

THE WILL AND THE DEED.

The will to the deed,—the inward principle to the outward act,—is as the kernel to the shell; but yet, in the first place, the shell is necessary for the kernel, and that by which it is commonly known;—and, in the next place, as the shell comes first, and the kernel grows gradually and hardens within it, so is it with the moral principle in man. Legality precedes morality in every individual, even as the Jewish dispensation preceded the Christian in the education of the world at large.



THE WILL FOR THE DEED.

When may the will be taken for the deed?—Then when the will is the obedience of the whole man;—when the will is in fact the deed, that is, all the deed in our power. In every other case, it is bending the bow without shooting the arrow. The bird of Paradise gleams on the lofty branch, and the man takes aim, and draws the tough yew into a crescent with might and main,—and lo! there is never an arrow on the string.



SINCERITY.

The first great requisite is absolute sincerity. Falsehood and disguise are miseries and misery-makers, under whatever strength of sympathy, or desire to prolong happy thoughts in others for their sake or your own only as sympathizing with theirs, it may originate. All sympathy, not consistent with acknowledged virtue, is but disguised selfishness.



TRUTH AND FALSEHOOD.

The pre-eminence of truth over falsehood, even when occasioned by that truth, is as a gentle fountain breathing from forth its air-let into the snow piled over and around it, which it turns into its own substance, and flows with greater murmur; and though it be again arrested, still it is but for a time,—it awaits only the change of the wind to awake and roll onwards its ever increasing stream:—

I semplici pastori Sul Vesolo nevoso, Fatti curvi e canuti, D'alto stupor son muti, Mirando al fonte ombroso Il Po con pochi umori; Poscia udendo gl' onori Dell'urna angusta e stretta, Che'l Adda, che'l Tesino Soverchia il suo cammino, Che ampio al mar s'affretta, Che si spuma, e si suona, Che gli si da corona!

(Chiabrera, Rime, xxviii.)

But falsehood is fire in stubble;—it likewise turns all the light stuff around it into its own substance for a moment, one crackling blazing moment,—and then dies; and all its converts are scattered in the wind, without place or evidence of their existence, as viewless as the wind which scatters them.



RELIGIOUS CEREMONIES.

A man may look at glass, or through it, or both. Let all earthly things be unto thee as glass to see heaven through! Religious ceremonies should be pure glass, not dyed in the gorgeous crimsons and purple blues and greens of the drapery of saints and saintesses.



ASSOCIATION.

Many a star, which we behold as single, the astronomer resolves into two, each, perhaps, the centre of a separate system. Oft are the flowers of the bind-weed mistaken for the growth of the plant, which it chokes with its intertwine. And many are the unsuspected double stars, and frequent are the parasite weeds, which the philosopher detects in the received opinions of men:—so strong is the tendency of the imagination to identify what it has long consociated. Things that have habitually, though, perhaps, accidentally and arbitrarily, been thought of in connection with each other, we are prone to regard as inseparable. The fatal brand is cast into the fire, and therefore Meleager must consume in the flames. To these conjunctions of custom and association—(the associative power of the mind which holds the mid place between memory and sense,)—we may best apply Sir Thomas Brown's remark, that many things coagulate on commixture, the separate natures of which promise no concretion.



CURIOSITY.

The curiosity of an honourable mind willingly rests there, where the love of truth does not urge it farther onward, and the love of its neighbour bids it stop;—in other words, it willingly stops at the point, where the interests of truth do not beckon it onward, and charity cries, Halt!



NEW TRUTHS.

To all new truths, or renovation of old truths, it must be as in the ark between the destroyed and the about-to-be renovated world. The raven must be sent out before the dove, and ominous controversy must precede peace and the olive-wreath.



VICIOUS PLEASURES.

Centries, or wooden frames, are put under the arches of a bridge, to remain no longer than till the latter are consolidated. Even so pleasures are the devil's scaffolding to build a habit upon;—that formed and steady, the pleasures are sent for fire-wood, and the hell begins in this life.



MERITING HEAVEN.

Virtue makes us not worthy, but only worthier, of happiness. Existence itself gives a claim to joy. Virtue and happiness are incommensurate quantities. How much virtue must I have, before I have paid off the old debt of my happiness in infancy and childhood! O! We all outrun the constable with heaven's justice! We have to earn the earth, before we can think of earning heaven.



DUST TO DUST.

We were indeed,—

[Greek (transliterated): panta konis, kai panta gel_os, kai panta to maeden]

if we did not feel that we were so.



HUMAN COUNTENANCE.

There is in every human countenance either a history or a prophecy, which must sadden, or at least soften, every reflecting observer.