Chapter IV (7)

In short, the quarrel fastened by the National Society on the committee on education is but another move of that clerical faction which is resolute to ignore the existence of laymen as part of the church, except in the capacity of mere passing thralls and bondsmen of the clergy. It is a scheme to further their peculiar views. It is another branch of the agitation which preceded and has followed the appeal to the judicial committee of the privy council in the Gorham case. It is a trick to render the church policy and theories of Philpotts omnipotent. The equivocation to evade the arrangement investing a degree of control over church schools in lay contributors to their foundation and support, by insisting upon liberty to choose an inapplicable "management clause," is transparent. So is the factious complaint against the court of appeal provided in secular matters, and the allegation that Nonconformists have no such appeal, when the complainants know that this special arrangement was conceded at their own request. The untrue averment that the committee of council have refused to contribute to the support of schools not adopting the management clauses is in proper keeping with these equivocations. Let us add that the intolerant, almost blasphemous denunciations of the council, and of all who act with it, which some advancers of these falsehoods and equivocations have uttered from the platform, are no more than might have been expected from men so lost to the sense of honesty and shame.

The position of the committee of council on education is, simply and fairly, this: They have yielded to the religious sentiment of an overwhelming majority in the nation, and have consented to the experiment of conducting the secular education of the people by the instrumentality of the various ecclesiastical associations into which the people are divided. But with reference to the church, as to all other communions, they insist upon the laity having a fair voice in the administration of those schools which are in part supplied by the public money, and which have in view secular as well as religious instruction. The clergy of only two communions seek to thwart them in this object, and to arrogate all power over the schools to themselves. The conduct of the ultra-High Church faction in the Anglican establishment we have attempted to make clear. The conduct of the Roman Catholic clergy has been more temperate, but hardly less insincere or invidious. Their poor-school committee declare that their prelates would be unwilling "to accept, were it tendered to them, an appellate jurisdiction over schools in matters purely secular;" but at the same time they claim for their "ecclesiastical authorities" the power of deciding what questions do or do not affect "religion and morals." The committee of the council, on the one hand, are exerting themselves to give effect to the desire of a great majority of the English public, that religious and moral shall be combined with intellectual education; and, on the other, to guard against their compliance with this desire being perverted into an insidious instrument for enabling arrogant priesthoods to set their feet on the necks of the laity.

We challenge for public men thus honorably and usefully discharging important duties a more frank and cordial support than it has yet been their good fortune to obtain. Several ornaments of the church, conspicuous for their learning and moderation--such men as the Bishop of Manchester, Archdeacon Hare, and the Rev. Henry Parr Hamilton--have already borne direct and earnest testimony to the temper and justice, as well as straightforward, honesty of purpose, displayed by the committee of council. It is to be hoped that the laity of the church will now extend to them the requisite support; and that the Nonconformists and educational enthusiasts, who, by their waywardness, have been playing the game of the obscurantist priests, may see the wisdom of altering this very doubtful policy.

[From the London Athenaeum.]

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.

The great philosophical poet of our age, William Wordsworth, died at Rydal Mount, in Westmoreland--among his native lakes and hills--on the 23d of April, in the eighty-first year of his age. Those who are curious in the accidents of birth and death, observable in the biographies of celebrated men, have thought it worthy of notice that the day of Wordsworth's death was the anniversary of Shakspeare's birth.

William Wordsworth was born at Cockermouth, in Cumberland, on the 7th of April, 1770, and educated at Hawkeshead Grammar School, and at St. John's College, Cambridge. He was designed by his parents for the Church--but poetry and new prospects turned him into another path. His pursuit through life was poetry, and his profession that of Stamp Distributor for the Government in the counties of Cumberland and Westmoreland: to which office he was appointed by the joint interest, as we have heard, of his friend, Sir George Beaumont, and his patron, Lord Lonsdale.

Mr. Wordsworth made his first appearance as a poet in the year 1793, by the publication of a thin quarto volume entitled "An Evening Walk--an Epistle in Verse, addressed to a young Lady from the Lakes of the North of England, by W. Wordsworth, B.A., of St. John's College, Cambridge." Printed at London, and published by Johnson in St. Paul's Church-yard from whose shop seven years before had appeared "The Task" of Cowper. In the same year he published "Descriptive Sketches in Verse, taken during a Pedestrian Tour in the Italian, Grison, Swiss and Savoyard Alps."

What was thought of these poems by a few youthful admirers may be gathered from the account given by Coleridge in his "Biographia Literaria." "During the last year of my residence at Cambridge, 1794, I became acquainted with Mr. Wordsworth's first publication, entitled 'Descriptive Sketches;' and seldom, if ever, was the emergence of an original poetic genius above the literary horizon more evidently announced." The two poets, then personally unknown to each other, first became acquainted in the summer of 1796, at Nether Stowey, in Somersetshire. Coleridge was then in his twenty-fourth year, and Wordsworth in his twenty-sixth. A congeniality of pursuit soon ripened into intimacy; and in September, 1798, the two poets, accompanied by Miss Wordsworth, made a tour in Germany.

Wordsworth's next publication was the first volume of his "Lyrical Ballads," published in the summer of 1798 by Mr. Joseph Cottle, of Bristol, who purchased the copyright for thirty guineas. It made no way with the public, and Cottle was a loser by the bargain. So little, indeed, was thought of the volume, that when Cottle's copyrights were transferred to the Messrs. Longman, the "Lyrical Ballads" was thrown in as a valueless volume, in the mercantile idea of the term. The copyright was afterward returned to Cottle; and by him transferred to the great poet, who lived to see it of real money value in the market of successful publications.

Disappointed but not disheartened by the very indifferent success of his "Lyrical Ballads," years elapsed before Mr. Wordsworth again appeared as a poet. But he was not idle. He was every year maturing his own principles of poetry and making good the remark of Coleridge, that to admire on principle is the only way to imitate without loss of originality. In the very year which witnessed the failure of his "Lyrical Ballads," he wrote his "Peter Bell," the most strongly condemned of all his poems. The publication of this when his name was better known (for he kept it by him till, he says, it nearly survived its _minority_) brought a shower of contemptuous criticisms on his head.

Wordsworth married in the year 1803 Miss Mary Hutchinson of Penrith, and settled among his beloved Lakes--first at Grasmere, and afterward at Rydal Mount. Southey's subsequent retirement to the same beautiful country, and Coleridge's visits to his brother poets, originated the name of the Lake School of Poetry--"the school of whining and hypochondriacal poets that haunt the Lakes"--by which the opponents of their principles and the admirers of the _Edinburgh Review_ distinguished the three great poets whose names have long been and will still continue to be connected.

Wordsworth's fame increasing, slowly, it is true, but securely, he put forth in 1807 two volumes of his poems. They were reviewed by Byron, then a young man of nineteen, and as yet not even a poet in print, in the _Monthly Literary Recreations_ for the August of that year. "The poems before us," says the reviewer, "are by the author of 'Lyrical Ballads,' a collection which has not undeservedly met with a considerable share of public applause. The characteristics of Mr. Wordsworth's muse are, simple and flowing, though occasionally inharmonious verse, strong and sometimes irresistible appeals to the feelings, with unexceptionable sentiments. Though the present work may not equal his former efforts, many of the poems possess a native elegance, natural and unaffected, totally devoid of the tinsel embellishments and abstract hyperboles of several contemporary sonneteers. 'The Song at the feasting of Brougham Castle,' 'The Seven Sisters,' 'The Affliction of Margaret ----, of ----,' possess all the beauties and few of the defects of this writer. The pieces least worthy of the author are those entitled 'Moods of My Own Mind.' We certainly wish these moods had been less frequent." Such is a sample of Byron's criticism--and of the criticising indeed till very recently of a large class of people misled by the caustic notices of the _Edinburgh Review_, the pungent satires of Byron, and the admirable parody of the poet's occasional style contained in the "Rejected Addresses."

His next publication was "The Excursion, being a portion of The Recluse," printed in quarto in the autumn of 1814. The critics were hard upon it. "This will never do," was the memorable opening of the review in the _Edinburgh_. Men who thought for themselves thought highly of the poem--but few dared to speak out. Jeffrey boasted wherever he went that he had _crushed_ it in its birth. "_He_ crush 'The Excursion!'" said Southey, "tell him he might as easily crush Skiddaw." What Coleridge often wished, that the first two books of "The Excursion" had been published separately under the name of "The Deserted Cottage" was a happy idea--and one, if it had been carried into execution, that would have removed many of the trivial objections made at the time to its unfinished character.

While "The Excursion" was still dividing the critics much in the same way that Davenant's "Gondibert" divided them in the reign of Charles the Second, "Peter Bell" appeared, to throw among them yet greater difference of opinion. The author was evidently aware that the poem, from the novelty of its construction, and the still greater novelty of its hero, required some protection, and this protection he sought behind the name of Southey: with which he tells us in the Dedication, his own had often appeared "both for good and evil." The deriders of the poet laughed still louder than before--his admirers too were at first somewhat amazed--and the only consolation which the poet obtained was from a sonnet of his own, in imitation of Milton's sonnet, beginning:

A book was writ of late called "Tetrachordon."

This sonnet runs as follows--

A book came forth of late, called "Peter Bell;"
Not negligent the style;--the matter?--good
As aught that song records of Robin Hood;
Or Roy, renowned through many a Scottish dell;
But some (who brook these hackneyed themes full wet
Nor heat at Tam O'Shanter's name their blood)
Waxed wrath, and with foul claws, a harpy brood
On Bard and Hero clamorously fell.
Heed not, wild Rover once through heath and glen.
Who mad'st at length the better life thy choice.
Heed not such onset! Nay, if praise of men
To thee appear not an unmeaning voice,
Lift up that gray-haired forehead and rejoice
In the just tribute of thy poet's pen.

Lamb in thanking the poet for his strange but clever poem, asked "Where was 'The Wagoner?'" of which he retained a pleasant remembrance from hearing Wordsworth read it in MS. when first written in 1806. Pleased with the remembrance of the friendly essayist, the poet determined on sending "The Wagoner" to press--and in 1815 the poem appeared with a dedication to his old friend who had thought so favorably of it. Another publication of this period which found still greater favor with many of his admirers, was "The White Doe of Rylstone;" founded on a tradition connected with the beautiful scenery that surrounds Bolton Priory, and on a ballad in Percy's collection called "The Rising of the North."

His next poem of consequence in the history of his mind is "The River Duddon," described in a noble series of sonnets, and containing some of his very finest poetry. The poem is dedicated to his brother, the Rev. Dr. Wordsworth, and appeared in 1820. The subject seems to have been suggested by Coleridge; who, among his many unfulfilled intentions, designed writing "The Brook," a poem which in his hands would surely have been a masterly performance.

The "Duddon" did much for the extension of Wordsworth's fame; and the public began to call, in consequence, for a fresh edition of his poems. The sneers of Byron, so frequent in his "Don Juan," such as,

Thou shalt believe in Milton, Dryden, Pope,
Thou shalt not set up Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey,
Because the first is crazed beyond all hope,
The second drunk, the third so quaint and mouthey;

and again in another place,

"Peddlers" and "Boats" and "Wagons." Oh! ye shades
Of Pope and Dryden, are we come to this?

and somewhat further on,

The little boatman and his Peter Bell
Can sneer at him who drew Achitophel,

fell comparatively harmless. The public had now found out (what was known only to a few before) that amid much novelty of construction and connected with some very homely heroes, there was a rich vein of the very noblest poetry throughout the whole of Wordsworth's works, such as was not to be found elsewhere in the whole body of English poetry. The author felt at the same time the truth of his own remark, that no really great poet had ever obtained an immediate reputation, or any popular recognition commensurate to his merits.

Wordsworth's last publication of importance was his "Yarrow Revisited, and other Poems," published in 1835. The new volume, however, rather sustained than added to his reputation. Some of the finer poems are additions to his Memorials of a Tour in Scotland, which have always ranked among the most delightful of his works.

In the same year Mr. Wordsworth received a pension of L300 a year from Sir Robert Peel's government, and permission to resign his office of Stamp Distributor in favor of his son. The remaining fifteen years of his life were therefore even less diversified by events of moment than any fifteen years previous had been. He seems henceforth to have surrendered himself wholly to the muse--and to contemplations suitable to his own habits of mind and to the lovely country in which he lived. This course of life, however, was varied by a tour to Italy in company with his friend, Mr. Crabb Robinson. The result of his visit, as far as poetry is concerned, was not remarkable.

On Southey's death Mr. Wordsworth was appointed Poet Laureate: an appropriate appointment, if such an office was to be retained at all--for the laurel dignified by the brows of Ben Johnson, Davenant, Dryden, Tom Warton, and Southey, had been sullied and degraded by appearing on the unworthy temples of Tate, Eusden, Whitehead, and Pye. Once, and once only, did Wordsworth sing in discharge of his office--on the occasion of Her Majesty's visit to the University of Cambridge. There is more obscurity, however, than poetry in what he wrote. Indeed, the Ode in question must be looked on as another addition to the numerous examples that we possess of how poor a figure the Muse invariably makes when the occasion of her appearance is such as the poet himself would not have selected for a voluntary invocation.

If Wordsworth was unfortunate--as he certainly was--in not finding any recognition of his merits till his hair was gray, he was luckier than other poets similarly situated have been in living to, a good old age, and in the full enjoyment of the amplest fame which his youthful dreams had ever pictured. His admirers have perhaps carried their idolatry too far: but there can be no doubt of the high position which he must always hold among British Poets. His style is simple, unaffected, and vigorous--his blank verse manly and idiomatic--his sentiments both noble and pathetic--and his images poetic and appropriate. His sonnets are among the finest in the language: Milton's scarcely finer. "I think," says Coleridge, "that Wordsworth possessed more of the genius of a great philosophic poet than any man I ever knew, or, as I believe, has existed in England since Milton; but it seems to me that he ought never to have abandoned the contemplative position which is peculiarly--perhaps I might say exclusively--fitted for him. His proper title is _Spectator ab extra_."

Mr. Wordsworth's works are rich in quotations suitable to the various phases of human life; and his name will be remembered not by his "Peter Bell," or his "Idiot Boy," or even his "Wagoner," but by his "Excursion," his "Laodamia," his "Tintern Abbey," some twenty of his sonnets, his "Daisy," and his "Yarrow _Un_visited." The lineaments of his face will be perpetuated by Chantrey's noble bust; not by the pictures of it, which in too many cases justify the description that he gave of one of them in our hearing: "It is the head of a drover, or a common juryman, or a writer in the _Edinburgh Review_, or a speaker in the House of Commons: ... as for the head of a poet, it is no such thing."

THE MOTHER'S FIRST DUTY.

I would wish every mother to pay attention to the difference between a course of action, adopted in compliance with _the authority_, and between a conduct pursued _for the sake of another_.

The first proceeds from reasoning; the second flows from affection. The first may be abandoned, when the immediate cause may have ceased to exist; the latter will be permanent, as it did not depend upon circumstances, or accidental considerations, but is founded in a moral and constant principle.

In the case now before us, if the infant does not disappoint the hope of the mother, it will be a proof, first of affection, secondly, of confidence.

Of affection--for the earliest, and the most innocent wish to please, is that of the infant to please the mother. If it be questioned, whether that wish can at all exist in one so little advanced in development. I would again, as I do upon almost all occasions, appeal to the experience of mothers.

It is a proof, also, of confidence. Whenever an infant has been neglected; when the necessary attention has not been paid to its wants; and when, instead of the smile of kindness, it has been treated with the frown of severity; it will be difficult to restore it to that quiet and amiable disposition, in which it will wait for the gratification of its desires without impatience, and enjoy it without greediness.

If affection and confidence have once gained ground in the heart, it will be the first duty of the mother to do every thing in her power to encourage, to strengthen, and to elevate this principle.--_Pestalozzi._

PHYSICAL EDUCATION.

The revival of gymnastics is, in my opinion, the most important step that has been done in that direction. The great merit of the gymnastic art is not the facility with which certain exercises are performed, or the qualification which they may give for certain exertions that require much energy and dexterity; though an attainment of that sort is by no means to be despised. But the greatest advantage resulting from a practice of these exercises, is the natural progress which is observed in the arrangement of them, beginning with those which, while they are easy in themselves, yet lead as a preparatory practice to others which are more complicated and more difficult. There is not, perhaps, any art in which it may be so clearly shown, that energies which appeared to be wanting, are to be produced, as it were, or at least are to be developed, by no other means than practice alone. This might afford a most useful hint to all those who are engaged in teaching any object of instruction, and who meet with difficulties in bringing their pupils to that proficiency which they had expected. Let them recommence on a new plan, in which the exercises shall be differently arranged, and the subjects brought forward in a manner that will admit of the natural progress from the easier to the more difficult. When talent is wanting altogether, I know that it can not be imparted by any system of education. But I have been taught by experience to consider the cases, in which talents of any kind are absolutely wanting, but very few. And in most cases, I have had the satisfaction to find, that a faculty which had been quite given over, instead of being developed, had been obstructed rather in its agency by a variety of exercises which tended to perplex or to deter from further exertion.

And here I would attend to a prejudice, which is common enough, concerning the use of gymnastics; it is frequently said, that they may be very good for those who are strong enough; but that those who are suffering from weakness of constitution would be altogether unequal to, and even endangered by, a practice of gymnastics.

Now, I will venture to say, that this rests merely upon a misunderstanding of the first principles of gymnastics: the exercises not only vary in proportion to the strength of individuals; but exercises may be, and have been devised, for those also who were decidedly suffering. And I have consulted the authority of the first physicians, who declared, that in cases which had come under their personal observation, individuals affected with pulmonary complaints, if these had not already proceeded too far, had been materially relieved and benefited by a constant practice of the few and simple exercises, which the system in such cases proposes.

And for this very reason, that exercises may be devised for every age, and for every degree of bodily strength, however reduced, I consider it to be essential, that mothers should make themselves acquainted with the principles of gymnastics, in order that, among the elementary and preparatory exercises, they may be able to select those which, according to circumstances, will be most likely to suit and benefit their children.

If the physical advantage of gymnastics is great and incontrovertible, I would contend, that the moral advantage resulting from them is as valuable. I would again appeal to your own observation. You have seen a number of schools in Germany and Switzerland, of which gymnastics formed a leading feature; and I recollect that in our conversations on the subject, you made the remark, which exactly agrees with my own experience, that gymnastics, well conducted, essentially contribute to render children not only cheerful and healthy, which, for moral education, are two all-important points, but also to promote among them a certain spirit of union, and a brotherly feeling, which is most gratifying to the observer: habits of industry, openness and frankness of character, personal courage, and a manly conduct in suffering pain, are also among the natural and constant consequences of an early and a continued practice of exercises on the gymnastic system.--_Pestalozzi._

MARRIED MEN.--So good was he, that I now take the opportunity of making a confession which I have often had upon my lips, but have hesitated to make from the fear of drawing upon myself the hatred of every married woman. But now I will run the risk--so now for it--some time or other, people must unburden their hearts. I confess, then, that I never find, and never have found a man more lovable, more captivating than when he is a married man; that is to say, a good married man. A man is never so handsome, never so perfect in my eyes as when he is married, as when he is a husband, and the father of a family, supporting, in his manly arms, wife and children, and the whole domestic circle, which, in his entrance into the married state, closes around him and constitutes a part of his home and his world. He is not merely ennobled by this position, but he is actually _beautified_ by it. Then he appears to me as the crown of creation; and it is only such a man as this who is dangerous to me, and with whom I am inclined to fall in love. But then propriety forbids it. And Moses, and all European legislators declare it to be sinful, and all married women would consider it a sacred duty to stone me.

Nevertheless, I can not prevent the thing. It is so, and it can not be otherwise, and my only hope of appeasing those who are excited against me is in my further confession, that no love affects me so pleasantly; the contemplation of no happiness makes me so happy, as that between married people. It is amazing to myself, because it seems to me, that I living unmarried, or mateless, have with that happiness little to do. But it is so, and it always was so.--_Miss Bremer._

[From the London Examiner.]

SIDNEY SMITH ON MORAL PHILOSOPHY.

_Elementary Sketches of Moral Philosophy_; delivered at the Royal
Institution, in the years 1804, 1805, and 1806. By the late Rev.
Sydney Smith, M.A. Longman and Co.

How difficult it is to discover the merits of a manuscript appears from the history of this book. Lord Jeffrey, consulted as to the expediency of its publication, while it yet existed but in pen and ink, gave a decidedly adverse opinion. But some hundred copies having been printed for private distribution, and a copy reaching Lord Jeffrey, he hastened, with his accustomed candor and sweetness of disposition, to retract his hostile verdict, after reading the book in print; and (only three days before he was attacked by the illness which terminated his valuable life) thus wrote to Sydney Smith's widow:

"I am now satisfied that in what I then said, I did great and grievous injustice to the merit of these lectures, and was quite wrong in dissuading their publication, or concluding they would add nothing to the reputation of the author; on the contrary, my firm impression is, that, with a few exceptions, they will do him as much credit as any thing he ever wrote, and produce, on the whole, a stronger impression of the force and vivacity of his intellect, as well as a _truer_ and more engaging view of his character, than most of what the world has yet seen of his writings."

One practical application of this anecdote is to enforce the importance of calligraphical studies upon authors. A hieroglyphical hand is the false medium excluding British authors from the public; In general we should say that there is no class of men whose education in this respect is so deplorably imperfect, or to whom "only six lessons" would so often be priceless.

We must confess that the book before us has taken us by surprise, notwithstanding our affectionate esteem and admiration for its writer. It has raised our estimate of the power and range of his intellect, of his insight into human character, of his well-balanced judgment, of his tolerance and charity undebased by compromise with the vicious or mean, of the vigorous play of his thoughts, of the sustained beauty of his style, of his eloquence as well as his humor, and of his profundity no less than of his wit. Hurriedly composed and unrevised though the lectures obviously are, fragmentary as the condition is in which they have been preserved, they are an invaluable addition to English literature.

Their delivery is associated with the first outbreak of a fashion ridiculed by Lord Byron in his _Beppo_ and his _Blues_. The poet's satirical touches notwithstanding, we think that those lectures at the Royal Institution were even more wanted by their fashionable auditors at the time, than the similar prelections at Mechanics' Institutes which came in vogue for less fashionable auditors some few years later. Had it only been possible to insure the services of a series of Sydney Smiths, the Institution might have gone on lecturing to the present day to the unspeakable advantage of all parties concerned. What innumerable fopperies in literature, in politics, in religion, we might thus have escaped, it is not easy to conjecture!

The "Elementary Sketches" were delivered soon after the commencement of Sydney's metropolitan career, and bear strong marks of his recent residence in Edinburgh. In their general outline they closely approximate to the course delivered from the moral philosophy chairs of Scotch Universities. The division of the subject is the same; the authorities most frequently and panegyrically cited are the same; the principles and opinions set forth are in the main the same. Sydney Smith's moral philosophy belongs undeniably to the Scotch school--to the school of Reid, Stewart, and Adam Smith. But his "sketches" do not the less indicate an original thinker, a master in the science taught, and one who can suggest to the great men we have named almost as much as he receives from them.

The book is an excellent illustration of what could be gained by engrafting the Edinburgh philosophy on a full-grown healthy English intellect. The habits of English society, and the classical tastes imbibed at an English University, preserved Sydney Smith from that touch of pedantry which characterized the thinkers of the Scotch universities, trained in a provincial sphere, and trammeled by the Calvinistic logic even after they had freed themselves from the Calvinistic theology. Without disparaging the Edinburgh school of literature, the fact must be admitted that its most prominent ornaments have generally had the advantage of a "foreign" education. Hume and Black studied in France; Adam Smith was the member of an English university; Jeffrey had become familiar with Oxford, though he did not stay there; Homer was caught young, and civilized at Hackney; and Mackintosh and Brougham, thoroughly Scotch-bred, expanded amazingly when transplanted to the south. It may be a national weakness, but it occurs to us that Sydney Smith, who was southern born as well as bred, is still more free from narrownesses and angularities than any of them.

The healthy and genial nature of the man accounts for his most characteristic excellencies, but this book exhibits much we had not looked for. The lectures on the passions evince a power of comprehending and sympathizing with what is great in the emotional part of human nature for which we were not prepared. The lectures on the conduct of the understanding, and on habit, show that the writer had studied profoundly and successfully the discipline of the mind and character. The lectures on the beautiful are pervaded by a healthy and unaffected appreciation of the loveliness of external nature. And combined with these high qualities, is that incessant play of witty and humorous fancy (perhaps the only certain safeguard against sentimental and systematic excesses, and, when duly restrained by the judgment and moral sense, the best corrective of hasty philosophizing), so peculiar to Sydney Smith. Much of all that we have mentioned is indeed and undoubtedly attributable to the original constitution of Smith's mind; but for much he was also, beyond all question, indebted to the greater freedom of thought and conversation which (as compared with the Scotch) has always characterized literary and social opinion in England.

The topics discussed in the lectures naturally resolve themselves into, and are arranged in, three divisions. We have an analysis of the thinking faculties, or the powers of perception, conception, and reasoning; an analysis of the powers of taste, or of what Schiller and other Germans designate the _aesthetical_ part of our nature; and an exposition of the "active powers of the mind," as they are designated in the nomenclature of the school of Reid, the appetites, passions, and will. All these themes are discussed with constant reference to a practical application of the knowledge conveyed. Every thing is treated in subordination to the establishment of rules for the right conduct of the understanding, and the formation of good habits. These practical lessons for the strengthening of the reason, and the regulation of the emotions and imagination, constitute what, in the language of Sydney Smith, and the school to which he belongs, is called "Moral Philosophy."

Apart from any particular school, the impression of the author left by the perusal of his lectures is that he was a man of considerable reading in books, but far more deeply read in the minds of those he encountered in society. It is in this extensive knowledge of the world, confirming and maturing the judgments suggested by his wisely-balanced powers of feeling and humor, that the superiority of Smith over the rest of his school consists. He knows men not merely as they are represented in books, but as they actually are; he knows them not only as they exist in a provincial sphere, narrowed by petty interests and trammeled by pedantic opinion, but as they exist in the freest community of the world, where boundless ambition and enterprise find full scope.

It appears to us that Sidney Smith is most perfectly at home--most entirely in his element--when discussing the "active powers" of man, or those impulses in which originate the practical business of life. Scarcely, if at all, secondary in point of excellence to his remarks on these topics, are those which he makes on the sublime and beautiful (a fact for which many will not be prepared), and on wit and humor (which every body will have expected). The least conclusive and satisfactory of his discussions are those which relate to the intellectual powers, or the anatomy of mind. With reference to this part of the course, however, it must be kept in remembrance that here, more than in the other two departments, he was fettered by the necessity of being popular in his language, and brief and striking in his illustrations, in order to keep within the range of the understandings and intellects of his auditory. These earlier lectures, too, survive in a more fragmentary and dilapidated condition than the rest. And after all, even where we seem to miss a sufficiently extensive and intimate acquaintance with the greatest and best writers on the subjects handled, or a sufficiently subtle and precise phraseology, we always find the redeeming qualities of lively and original conception, of witty and forcible illustration, and of sound manly sense most felicitously expressed.

In the general tone and tendency of the lectures there is something Socratic. There is the pervading common sense and practical turn of mind which characterized the Greek philosopher. There is the liberal tolerance, and the moral intrepidity. There is the amusement always insinuating or enforcing instruction. There is the conversational tone, and adaptation to the tastes and habits of the social circle. We feel that we are listening to a man who moves habitually in what is called the best society, who can relish and add a finishing grace to the pleasures of those portions of the community, but who retains unsophisticated his estimate of higher and more important matters, and whose incessant aim is to engraft a better and worthier tone of thought and aspiration upon the predominating frivolity of his associates. Nothing can be more graceful or charming than the way in which Sydney accommodates himself to the habitual language and thoughts of his brilliant auditory; nothing more manly or strengthening than the sound practical lessons he reads to them. Such a manual should now be invaluable to our aristocracy. Let them thoroughly embue themselves with its precepts, and do their best to act as largely as possible upon its suggestions. They can have no better chance of maintaining their position in the front of English society.

To appreciate the book as a whole--and its purpose, thought, and sentiment impart to it a unity of the highest kind--it must be not only read but studied. A few citations, however, gleaned here and there at random, may convey some notion of the characteristic beauties and felicities of thought and expression which are scattered through every page of it.

SOCRATES.

Socrates was, in truth, not very fond of subtle and refined speculations; and upon the intellectual part of our nature, little or nothing of his opinions is recorded. If we may infer any thing from the clearness and simplicity of his opinions on moral subjects, and from the bent which his genius had received for the useful and the practical, he would certainly have laid a strong foundation for rational metaphysics. The slight sketch I have given of his moral doctrines contains nothing very new or very brilliant, but comprehends those moral doctrines which every person of education has been accustomed to hear from his childhood; but two thousand years ago they were great discoveries, two thousand years since, common sense was not invented. If Orpheus, or Linus, or any of those melodious moralists, sung, in bad verses, such advice as a grandmamma would now give to a child of six years old, he was thought to be inspired by the gods, and statues and altars were erected to his memory. In Hesiod there is a very grave exhortation to mankind to wash their faces: and I have discovered a very strong analogy between the precepts of Pythagoras and Mrs. Trimmer; both think that a son ought to obey his father, and both are clear that a good man is better than a bad one. Therefore, to measure aright this extraordinary man, we must remember the period at which he lived; that he was the first who called the attention of mankind from the pernicious subtleties which engaged and perplexed their wandering understandings to the practical rules of life; he was the great father and inventor of common sense, as Ceres was of the plow, and Bacchus of intoxication. First, he taught his contemporaries that they did not know what they pretended to know; then he showed them that they knew nothing; then he told them what they ought to know. Lastly, to sum the praise of Socrates, remember that two thousand years ago, while men were worshiping the stones on which they trod, and the insects which crawled beneath their feet; two thousand years ago, with the bowl of poison in his hand, Socrates said, "I am persuaded that my death, which is now just coming, will conduct me into the presence of the gods, who are the most righteous governors, and into the society of just and good men; and I derive confidence from the hope that something of man remains after death, and that the condition of good men will then be much better than that of the bad." Soon after this he covered himself up with his cloak and expired.

PLATO.

Of all the disciples of Socrates, Plato, though he calls himself the least, was certainly the most celebrated. As long as philosophy continued to be studied among the Greeks and Romans, his doctrines were taught, and his name revered. Even to the present day his writings give a tinge to the language and speculations of philosophy and theology. Of the majestic beauty of Plato's style, it is almost impossible to convey an adequate idea. He keeps the understanding up to a high pitch of enthusiasm longer than any existing writer; and, in reading Plato, zeal and animation seem rather to be the regular feelings than the casual effervescence of the mind. He appears almost disdaining the mutability and imperfection of the earth on which he treads, to be drawing down fire from heaven, and to be seeking among the gods above, for the permanent, the beautiful, and the grand! In contrasting the vigor and the magnitude of his conceptions with the extravagance of his philosophical tenets, it is almost impossible to avoid wishing that he had confined himself to the practice of eloquence; and, in this way giving range and expansion to the mind which was struggling within him, had become one of those famous orators who

"Wielded at will that fierce democratic,
Shook th' arsenal, and fulmin'd over Greece
To Macedon and Artaxerxes' throne."

After having said so much of his language, I am afraid I must proceed to his philosophy; observing always, that, in stating it, I do not always pretend to understand it, and do not even engage to defend it. In comparing the very few marks of sobriety and discretion with the splendor of his genius, I have often exclaimed as Prince Henry did about Falstaff's bill, "Oh, monstrous! but one half-pennyworth of bread to this intolerable deal of sack!"

DR. REID.

In answer to these metaphysical lunacies, Dr. Reid has contended that, for all reasoning, there must be some first principles from whence such reasoning originates, and which must _necessarily_ be incapable of proof or they would not be _first principles_; and that facts so irresistibly ingrafted upon human belief as the existence of mind and matter, must be assumed for truths, and reasoned upon as such. All that these skeptics have said of the outer and the inner world may, with equal justice, be applied to every other radical truth. Who can prove his own personal identity? A man may think himself a clergyman, and believe he has preached for these ten years last past; but I defy him to offer any sort of _proof_ that he has not been a fishmonger all the time ... ever doubt that all reasoning _must_ end in arbitrary belief; that we must, at last, come to that point where the only reply can be, "I _am so_--this belief is the constitution of my nature--God willed it." I grant that this reasoning is a ready asylum for ignorance and imbecility, and that it affords too easy a relief from the pain of rendering a reason: but the most unwearied vigor of human talents must at last end there; the wisdom of ages can get no further; here, after all, the Porch, the Garden, the Academy, the Lyceum, must close their labors.

Much as we are indebted to Dr. Reid for preaching up this doctrine, he has certainly executed it very badly; and nothing can be more imperfect than the table of first principles which he has given us--an enumeration of which is still a desideratum of the highest importance. The skeptics may then call the philosophy of the human mind merely hypothetical; but if it be so, all other knowledge must, of course, be hypothetical also; and if it be so, and all is erroneous, it will do quite as well as reality, if we keep up a certain proportion in our errors: for there _may_ be no such things as lunar tables, no sea, and no ships; but, by falling into one of these errors after the other, we avoid shipwreck, or, what is the same thing, as it gives the same pain, the idea of shipwreck. So with the philosophy of the human mind: I may have no memory, and no imagination--they may be mistakes; but if I cultivate them both, I derive honor and respect from my fellow-creatures, which may be mistakes also; but they harmonize so well together, that they are quite as good as realities. The only evil of errors is, that they are never supported by consequences; if they were, they would be as good as realities. Great merit is given to Dr. Reid for his destruction of what is called the ideal system, but I confess I can not see the important consequences to which it has yet led.

PUNS.

I have mentioned puns. They are, I believe, what I have denominated them--the wit of words. They are exactly the same to words which wit is to ideas, and consist in the sudden discovery of relations in language. A pun, to be perfect in its kind, should contain two distinct meanings; the one common and obvious; the other, more remote; and in the notice which the mind takes of the relation between these two sets of words, and in the surprise which that relation excites, the pleasure of a pun consists. Miss Hamilton, in her book on Education, mentions the instance of a boy so very neglectful, that he could never be brought to read the word _patriarchs_; but whenever he met with it he always pronounced it _partridges_. A friend of the writer observed to her, that it could hardly be considered as a mere piece of negligence, for it appeared to him that the boy, in calling them partridges, was _making game_ of the patriarchs. Now, here are two distinct meanings contained in the same phrase; for to make game of the patriarchs is to laugh at them; or to make game of them is, by a very extravagant and laughable sort of ignorance of words, to rank them among pheasants, partridges, and other such delicacies, which the law takes under its protection and calls _game_; and the whole pleasure derived from this pun consists in the sudden discovery that two such different meanings are referable to one form of expression. I have very little to say about puns; they are in very bad repute, and so they _ought to_ be. The wit of language is so miserably inferior to the wit of ideas, that it is very deservedly driven out of good company. Sometimes, indeed, a pun makes its appearance which seems for a moment to redeem its species; but we must not be deceived by them; it is a radically bad race of wit. By unremitting persecution, it has been at last got under, and driven into cloisters--from whence it must never again be suffered to emerge into the light of the world.

IMPORTANCE OF BEING ABLE TO DESPISE RIDICULE.

I know of no principle which it is of more importance to fix in the minds of young people than that of the most determined resistance to the encroachment of ridicule. Give up to the world, and to the ridicule with which the world enforces its dominion, every trifling question of manner and appearance; it is to toss courage and firmness to the winds, to combat with the mass upon such subjects as these. But learn from the earliest days to insure your principles against the perils of ridicule: you can no more exercise your reason, if you live in the constant dread of laughter, than you can enjoy your life, if you are in the constant terror of death. If you think it right to differ from the times, and to make a stand for any valuable point of morals, do it, however rustic, however antiquated, however pedantic it may appear--do it, not for insolence, but _seriously_ and _grandly_--as a man who wore a soul of his own in his bosom, and did not wait till it was breathed into him by the breath of fashion. Let men call you mean, if you know you are just; hypocritical, if you are honestly religious; pusillanimous, if you feel that you are firm: resistance soon converts unprincipled wit into sincere respect; and no after-time can tear from you those feelings which every man carries within him who has made a noble and successful exertion in a virtuous cause.

BULLS AND CHARADES.

A bull--which must by no means be passed over in this recapitulation of the family of wit and humor--a bull is exactly the counterpart of a witticism: for as wit discovers real relations that are not apparent, bulls admit apparent relations that are not real. The pleasure arising from bulls, proceeds from our surprise at suddenly discovering two things to be dissimilar in which a resemblance might have been suspected. The same doctrine will apply to wit and bulls in action. Practical wit discovers connection or relation between actions, in which duller understandings discover none; and practical bulls originate from an apparent relation between two actions which more correct understandings immediately perceive to have none at all. In the late rebellion in Ireland, the rebels, who had conceived a high degree of indignation against some great banker, passed a resolution that they would burn his notes; which they accordingly did, with great assiduity; forgetting, that in burning his notes they were destroying his debts, and that for every note which went into the flames, a correspondent value went into the banker's pocket. A gentleman, in speaking of a nobleman's wife of great rank and fortune, lamented very much that she had no children. A medical gentleman who was present observed, that to have no children was a great misfortune, but he thought he had remarked it was _hereditary_ in some families. Take any instance of this branch of the ridiculous, and you will always find an apparent relation of ideas leading to a complete inconsistency.

I shall say nothing of charades, and such sort of unpardonable trumpery: if charades are made at all, they should be made without benefit of clergy, the offender should instantly be hurried off to execution, and be cut off in the middle of his dullness, without being allowed to explain to the executioner why his first is like his second, or what is the resemblance between his fourth and his ninth.

WIT AND PROFESSED WITS.