Chapter IV (8)

I wish, after all I have said about wit and humor, I could satisfy myself of their good effects upon the character and disposition; but I am convinced the probable tendency of both is, to corrupt the understanding and the heart. I am not speaking of wit where it is kept down by more serious qualities of mind, and thrown into the background of the picture; but where it stands out boldly and emphatically, and is evidently the master quality in any particular mind. Professed wits, though they are generally courted for the amusement they afford, are seldom respected for the qualities they possess. The habit of seeing things in a witty point of view, increases, and makes incursions from its own proper regions, upon principles and opinions which are ever held sacred by the wise and good. A witty man is a dramatic performer: in process of time, he can no more exist without applause than he can exist without air; if his audience be small, or if they are inattentive, or if a new wit defrauds him of any portion of his admiration, it is all over with him--he sickens, and is extinguished. The applauses of the theatre on which he performs are so essential to him, that he must obtain them at the expense of decency, friendship, and good feeling. It must always be _probable_, too, that a _mere_ wit is a person of light and frivolous understanding. His business is not to discover relations of ideas that are _useful_, and have a real influence upon life, but to discover the more trifling relations which are only amusing; he never looks at things with the naked eye of common sense, but is always gazing at the world through a Claude Lorraine glass--discovering a thousand appearances which are created only by the instrument of inspection, and covering every object with factitious and unnatural colors. In short, the character of a _mere_ wit it is impossible to consider as very amiable, very respectable, or very safe. So far the world, in judging of wit where it has swallowed up all other qualities, judge aright; but I doubt if they are sufficiently indulgent to this faculty where it exists in a lesser degree, and as one out of many other ingredients of the understanding. There is an association in men's minds between dullness and wisdom, amusement and folly, which has a very powerful influence in decision upon character, and is not overcome without considerable difficulty. The reason is, that the _outward_ signs of a dull man and a wise man are the same, and so are the outward signs of a frivolous man and a witty man; and we are not to expect that the majority will be disposed to look to much _more_ than the outward sign. I believe the fact to be, that wit is very seldom the _only_ eminent quality which resides in the mind of any man; it is commonly accompanied by many other talents of every description, and ought to be considered as a strong evidence of a fertile and superior understanding. Almost all the great poets, orators, and statesmen of all times, have been witty, Caesar, Alexander, Aristotle, Descartes, and Lord Bacon, were witty men; so were Cicero, Shakspeare, Demosthenes, Boileau, Pope, Dryden, Fontenelle, Jonson, Waller, Cowley, Solon, Socrates, Dr. Johnson, and almost every man who has made a distinguished figure in the House of Commons. I have talked of the _danger_ of wit: I do not mean by that to enter into commonplace declamation against faculties because they _are_ dangerous; wit is dangerous, eloquence is dangerous, a talent for observation is dangerous, _every_ thing is dangerous that has efficacy and vigor for its characteristics: nothing is safe but mediocrity. The business is, in conducting the understanding well, to risk something; to aim at uniting things that are commonly incompatible. The meaning of an extraordinary man is, that he is _eight_ men, not one man; that he has as much wit as if he had no sense, and as much sense as if he had no wit; that his conduct is as judicious as if he were the dullest of human beings, and his imagination as brilliant as if he were irretrievably ruined. But when wit is combined with sense and information; when it is softened by benevolence, and restrained by strong principle; when it is in the hands of a man who can use it and despise it, who can be witty and something much _better_ than witty, who loves honor, justice, decency, good-nature, morality, and religion, ten thousand times better than wit; wit is _then_ a beautiful and delightful part of our nature. There is no more interesting spectacle than to see the effects of wit upon the different characters of men; than to observe it expanding caution, relaxing dignity, unfreezing coldness--teaching age, and care, and pain to smile--extorting reluctant gleams of pleasure from melancholy, and charming even the pangs of grief. It is pleasant to observe how it penetrates through the coldness and awkwardness of society, gradually bringing men nearer together, and, like the combined force of wine and oil, giving every man a glad heart and a shining countenance. Genuine and innocent wit like this, is surely the _flavor of the mind_! Man could direct his ways by plain reason, and support his life by tasteless food; but God has given us wit, and flavor, and brightness, and laughter, and perfumes, to enliven the days of man's pilgrimage, and to "charm his pained steps over the burning marl."

INFLUENCE OF ASSOCIATION.

I remember once seeing an advertisement in the papers, with which I was much struck; and which I will take the liberty of reading: "Lost, in the Temple Coffee-house, and supposed to be taken away by mistake, an oaken stick, which has supported its master not only over the greatest part of Europe, but has been his companion in his journeys over the inhospitable deserts of Africa: whoever will restore it to the waiter, will confer a very serious obligation on the advertiser; or, if that be any object, shall receive a recompense very much above the value of the article restored." Now, here is a man, who buys a sixpenny stick, because it is useful; and, totally forgetting the trifling causes which first made his stick of any consequence, speaks of it with warmth and affection; calls it his companion; and would hardly have changed it, perhaps, for the gold stick which is carried before the king. But the best and the strongest example of this, and of the customary progress of association, is in the passion of avarice. A child only loves a guinea because it shines; and, as it is equally splendid, he loves a gilt button as well. In after-life, he begins to love wealth, because it affords him the comforts of existence; and then loves it so well, that he denies himself the common comforts of life to increase it. The uniting idea is so totally forgotten, that it is completely sacrificed to the ideas which it unites. Two friends unite against the person to whose introduction they are indebted for their knowledge of each other; exclude him their society, and ruin him by their combination.

INDESTRUCTIBILITY OF ENJOYMENT.

Mankind are always happier for having been happy; so that if you make them happy now, you make them happy twenty years hence, by the memory of it. A childhood passed with a due mixture of rational indulgence, under fond and wise parents, diffuses over the whole of life a feeling of calm pleasure; and, in extreme old age, is the very last remembrance which time can erase from the mind of man. No enjoyment, however inconsiderable, is confined to the present moment. A man is the happier for life, from having made once an agreeable tour, or lived for any length of time with pleasant people, or enjoyed any considerable interval of innocent pleasure: and it is most probably the recollection of their past pleasures, which contributes to render old men so inattentive to the scenes before them; and carries them back to a world that is past, and to scenes never to be renewed again.

HAPPINESS AS A MORAL AGENT.

That virtue gives happiness we all know; but if it be true that happiness contributes to virtue, the principle furnishes us with some sort of excuse for the errors and excesses of able young man, at the bottom of life, fretting with impatience under their obscurity, and hatching a thousand chimeras of being neglected and overlooked by the world. The natural cure for these errors is the sunshine of prosperity: as they get happier, they get better, and learn, from the respect which they receive from others, to respect themselves. "Whenever," says Mr. Lancaster (in his book just published), "I met with a boy particularly mischievous, I made him a monitor: I never knew this fail." The _cause_ for the promotion, and the kind of encouragement it must occasion, I confess appear rather singular, but of the _effect_, I have no sort of doubt.

POWER OF HABIT.

Habit uniformly and constantly strengthens all our active exertions: whatever we do often, we become more and more apt to do. A snuff-taker begins with a pinch of snuff per day, and ends with a pound or two every month. Swearing begins in anger; it ends by mingling itself with ordinary conversation. Such-like instances are of too common notoriety to need that they be adduced; but, as I before observed, at the very time that the tendency to do the thing is every day increasing, the pleasure resulting from it is, by the blunted sensibility of the bodily organ, diminished, and the desire is irresistible, though the gratification is nothing. There is rather an entertaining example of this in Fielding's "Life of Jonathan Wild," in that scene where he is represented as playing at cards with the count, a professed gambler. "Such," says Mr. Fielding, "was the power of habit over the minds of these illustrious persons, that Mr. Wild could not keep his hands out of the count's pockets, though he knew they were empty; nor could the count abstain from palming a card, though he was well aware Mr. Wild had no money to pay him."

THE USE OF THE PASSIONS.

The passions are in morals, what motion is in physics; they create, preserve, and animate, and without them all would be silence and death. Avarice guides men across the deserts of the ocean; pride covers the earth with trophies, and mausoleums, and pyramids; love turns men from their savage rudeness; ambition shakes the very foundations of kingdoms. By the love of glory, weak nations swell into magnitude and strength. Whatever there is of terrible, whatever there is of beautiful in human events, all that shakes the soul to and fro, and is remembered while thought and flesh cling together, all these have their origin from the passions. As it is only in storms, and when their coming waters are driven up into the air, that we catch a sight of the depths of the sea, it is only in the season of perturbation that we have a glimpse of the real internal nature of man. It is then only that the might of these eruptions, shaking his frame, dissipates all the feeble coverings of opinion, and rends in pieces that cobweb vail with which fashion hides the feelings of the heart. It is then only that Nature speaks her genuine feelings; and, as at the last night of Troy, when Venus illumined the darkness, AEneas saw the gods themselves at work, so may we, when the blaze of passion is flung upon man's nature, mark in him the signs of a celestial origin, and tremble at the invisible agents of God!

Look at great men in critical and perilous moments, when every cold and little spirit is extinguished: their passions always bring them out harmless, and at the very moment when they _seem_ to perish, they emerge into greater glory. Alexander in the midst of his mutinous soldiers; Frederick of Prussia, combating against the armies of three kingdoms; Cortes, breaking in pieces the Mexican empire: their passions led all these great men to fix their attention strongly upon the objects of their desires; they saw them under aspects unknown to, and unseen by common men, and which enabled them to conceive and execute those hardy enterprises, deemed rash and foolish, till their wisdom was established by their success. It is, in fact, the great passions alone which enable men to distinguish between what is difficult and what is impossible; a distinction always confounded by merely _sensible_ men, who do not even _suspect_ the existence of those means which men of genius employ to effect their object. It is only passion which gives a man that high enthusiasm for his country, and makes him regard it as the only object worthy of human attention; an enthusiasm which to common eyes appears madness and extravagance, but which always creates fresh powers of mind, and commonly insures their ultimate success. In fact, it is only the great passions which, tearing us away from the seductions of indolence, endow us with that continuity of attention, to which alone superiority of mind is attached. It is to their passions alone, under the providence of God, that nations must trust, when perils gather thick about them, and their last moments seem to be at hand. The history of the world shows us that men are not to be counted by their numbers, but by the fire and vigor of their passions; by their deep sense of injury; by their memory of past glory; by their eagerness for fresh fame; by their clear and steady resolution of ceasing to live, or of achieving a particular object, which, when it is _once_ formed, strikes off a load of manacles and chains, and gives free space to all heavenly and heroic feelings. All great and extraordinary actions come from the heart. There are seasons in human affairs, when qualities fit enough to conduct the common business of life, are feeble and useless, and when men must trust to emotion for that safety which reason at such times can never give. These are the feelings which led the ten thousand over the Carduchian mountains; these are the feelings by which a handful of Greeks broke in pieces the power of Persia: they have, by turns, humbled Austria, reduced Spain; and in the fens of the Dutch, and on the mountains of the Swiss, defended the happiness, and revenged the oppressions of man! God calls all the passions out in their keenness and vigor for the present safety of mankind. Anger, and revenge, and the heroic mind, and a readiness to suffer; all the secret strength, all the invisible array of the feelings, all that nature has reserved for the great scenes of the world. For the usual hopes and the common aids of man are all gone! Kings have perished, armies are subdued, nations mouldered away! Nothing remains, under God, but those passions which have often proved the best ministers of His vengeance, and the surest protectors of the world.

In that, and similar passages, a sustained feeling and expression not ordinarily associated with Sydney Smith, impresses the reader with its unaffected eloquence and emotion. We close the book reluctantly, for we leave many things unquoted that had the most forcibly impressed us. In the two chapters on the conduct of the understanding, there are most masterly disquisitions on labor and study as connected with the manifestations of genius; on the importance of men adhering to the particular line of their powers or talents, and on the tendency of all varieties of human accomplishment to the same great object of exalting and gladdening life. We would also particularly mention a happy and noble recommendation of the uses of classical study at the close of the chapter on the sublime.

YOUNG POET'S PLAINT.

God, release our dying sister!
Beauteous blight hath sadly kiss'd her
Whiter than the wild, white roses,
Famine in her face discloses
Mute submission, patience holy,
Passing fair! but passing slowly.

Though she said, "You know I'm dying."
In her heart green trees are sighing;
Not of them hath pain bereft her,
In the city, where we left her:
"Bring," she said, "a hedgeside blossom!"
Love shall lay it on her bosom.

ELLIOTT.

ALEXANDER AFTER THE RETREAT FROM LUTZEN.--"The Emperor of Russia passed the night of the battle at Pegau, whither his britcka containing his papers and camp-bed had been brought; and, after having been twenty-four hours on horseback, Lord Cathcart and his staff found the bare floor of a cottage so comfortable a couch, without even the luxury of straw, that no one seemed in a hurry to rise when we were informed soon after daylight, that his imperial majesty was about to mount and depart, and that the enemy were approaching to dislodge us. The emperor slowly rode some miles toward the rear, along the Altenburg road, conversing with Lord Cathcart about the battle: he laid great stress upon the report of the commandant of artillery as to the want of ammunition, which he assigned as the principal reason for not renewing the action; he spoke of the result as a victory gained on our side; and it was afterward the fashion in the army to consider it as such, though not perhaps a victory so important in its consequences, or so decisive as could have been wished. At length the emperor observed that he did not like to be seen riding, fast to the rear, and that it was now necessary for him to go to Dresden with all expedition, and prepare for ulterior operations: he then entered his little traveling-carriage, which was drawn by relays of Cossack horses, and proceeded by Altenburg to Penig."--_Cathcart._

[From the Dublin University Magazine.]

SONNETS FROM THE ITALIAN.

UPON THE DEATH OF THE REDEEMER.

BY MINZONI.

When, in that last, loud wail, the Son of God
Rent open graves and shook the mountain's steep--
Adam, affrighted from his world-long sleep,
Raised up his head; then stark and upright stood:
With fear and wonder filled, he moved around
His troubled eyes--then asked, with throbbing heart,
Who was that awful One who hung apart,
Gore-stained and lifeless, on the curst tree bound.
Soon as he learned, his penitent hand defiled
His shriveled brow and bloodless cheeks, and tore
The hoary locks that streamed his shoulders o'er.
Turning to Eve, in lamentation wild,
He cried, 'till Calvary echoed to the cry--
"WOMAN! FOR THEE I'VE GIVEN MY LORD TO DIE!"

TWO SONNETS ON JUDAS.

BY MONTI.

I.

Down on the Temple-floor the traitor flung
The infamous bribe for which he sold the Lord,
Then in despair rushed forth, and with a cord,
From out the tree, his reprobate body hung.
Pent in his throat, the struggling spirit poured
A mingled sound of rage and wildest grief,
And Christ it cursed, and its own sin in chief,
Which glutted hell with triumphs so abhorred.
Forth with a howl at last the spirit fled.
Then Justice bore it to the holy mount,
And dipping there her finger in the fount
Of Christ's all-sacred blood, the sentence dread
Wrote on its brow of everlasting woe,
Then, loathing, plunged it into hell below.

II.

Down into hell that wretched soul she flung,
When lo! a mighty earthquake shook the ground;
The mountain reeled. The wind swept fierce around
The black and strangled body where it hung.
From Calvary at eve, the angels wending,
On slow, hushed wing, their holy vigil o'er,
Saw it afar, and swift their white wings, blending
With trembling fear, their pure eyes spread before.
Meanwhile fiends pluck the corse down in the gloom,
And on their burning shoulders, as a bier,
Convey the burden to its nameless doom.
Cursing and howling, downward thus they steer
Their hell-ward course, and in its depths restore
The wandering soul to its damned corse once more.

SONNET UPON JUDAS.

BY GIANNI.

Spent with the struggles of his mad despair,
Judas hung gasping from the fatal tree;
Then swift the tempter-fiend sprang on him there,
Flapping his flame-red wings exultingly.
With griping claws he clutched the noose that bound
The traitor's throat, and hurled him down below,
Where hell's hot depths, incessant bubbling glow
His burning flesh and crackling bones around:
There, mid the gloomy shades, asunder riven
By storm and lurid flame, was SATAN seen;
Relaxing his stern brow, with hideous grin.
Within his dusky arms the wretch he caught,
And with smutched lips, fuliginous and hot,
_Repaid the kiss which he to Christ had given._

THE CHARACTER OF BURNS.

BY EBENEZER ELLIOTT.

Perhaps no falsehood has been more frequently repeated, than that men of genius are less fortunate and less virtuous than other men; but the obvious truth, that they who attempt little are less liable to failure than they who attempt much, will account for the proverbial good luck of fools. In our estimate of the sorrows and failings of literary men, we forget that sorrow is the common lot; we forget, too, that the misfortunes and the errors of men of genius are recorded; and that, although their virtues may be utterly forgotten, their minutest faults will be sure to find zealous historians. And this is as it should be. Let the dead instruct us. But slanderers blame, in individuals, what belongs to the species. "We women," says Clytemnestra in Eschylus, when meditating the murder of her husband, and in reply to an attendant who was praising the gentleness of the sex, "We women are--what we are." So is it with us all. Then let every fault of men of genius be known; but let not hypocrisy come with a sponge, and wipe away their virtues.

Of the misfortunes of Cowper we have all heard, and certainly he was unfortunate, for he was liable to fits of insanity. But it might be said of him, that he was tended through life by weeping angels. Warm-hearted friends watched and guarded him with intense and unwearied solicitude; the kindest hearted of the softer sex, the best of the best, seems to have been born only to anticipate his wants. A glance at the world, will show us that his fate, though sad, was not saddest; for how many madmen are there, and how many men still more unfortunate than madmen, who have no living-creature to aid, or soothe, or pity them! Think of Milton--"blind among enemies!"

But the saddest incident in the life of Cowper remains to be told. In his latter days, he was pensioned by the crown--a misfortune which I can forgive to him, but not to destiny. It is consoling to think, that he was not long conscious of his degradation after the cruel kindness was inflicted on him. But why did not his friends, if weary of sustaining their kinsman stricken by the arrows of the Almighty, suffer him to perish in a _beggars'_ mad-house? Would he had died in a ditch rather than this shadow had darkened over his grave! Burns was more fortunate in his death than Cowper: he lived self-supported to the end. Glorious hearted Burns! Noble, but unfortunate Cowper!

Burns was one of the few poets fit to be seen. It has been asserted that genius is a disease--the malady of physical inferiority. It is certain that we have heard of Pope, the hunchback: of Scott and Byron, the cripples: of the epileptic Julius Caesar, who, it is said, never planned a great battle without going into fits; and of Napoleon, whom a few years of trouble killed: where Cobbett (a man of talent, not of genius) would have melted St. Helena, rather than have given up the ghost with a full belly. If Pope could have leaped over five-barred gates, he probably would not have written his inimitable sofa-and-lap-dog poetry; but it does not follow that he would not have written the "Essay on Man;" and they who assert that genius is a physical disease, should remember that, as true critics are more rare than true poets, we having only one in our language, William Hazlitt, so, very tall and complete men are as rare as genius itself, a fact well known to persons who have the appointment of constables. And if it is undeniable that God wastes nothing, and that we, therefore, perhaps seldom find a gigantic body combined with a soul of AEolian tones; it is equally undeniable, that Burns was an exception to the rule--a man of genius, tall, strong, and handsome, as any man that could be picked out of a thousand at a country fair.

But he was unfortunate, we are told. Unfortunate! He was a tow-heckler who cleared six hundred pounds by the sale of his poems: of which sum he left two hundred pounds behind him, in the hands of his brother Gilbert: two facts which prove that he could neither be so unfortunate, nor so imprudent, as we are told he was. If he had been a mere tow-heckler, I suspect he would never have possessed six hundred shillings.

But he _was_ imprudent, it is said. Now, he is a wise man who has done one act that influences beneficially his whole life. Burns did three such acts--he wrote poetry--he published it; and, despairing of his farm, he became an exciseman. It is true he did one imprudent act; and, I hope, the young persons around me will be warned by it; he took a farm, without thoroughly understanding the business of farming.

It does not appear that he wasted or lost any capital, except what he threw away on his farm. He was unlucky, but not imprudent in giving it up when he did. Had he held it a little longer, the Bank Restriction Act would have enriched him at the expense of his landlord; but Burns was an honest man, and, therefore, alike incapable of desiring and foreseeing that enormous villainy.

But he was neglected, we are told. Neglected! No strong man in good health _can_ be neglected, if he is true to himself. For the benefit of the young, I wish we had a correct account of the number of persons who fail of success, in a thousand that resolutely strive to do well. I do not think it exceeds one per cent. By whom was Burns neglected? Certainly not by the people of Scotland: for they paid him the highest compliment that can be paid to an author: they bought his book! Oh, but he ought to have been pensioned. Pensioned! Can not we think of poets without thinking of pensions? _Are_ they such poor creatures, that they can not earn an honest living? Let us hear no more of such degrading and insolent nonsense.

But he was a drunkard, it is said. I do not mean to exculpate him when I say that he was probably no worse, in that respect, than his neighbors; for he _was_ worse if he was not better than they, the balance being against him; and his Almighty Father would not fail to say to him, "What didst thou with the lent talent?" But drunkenness, in his time, was the vice of his country--it is so still; and if the traditions of Dumfries are to be depended on, there are allurements which Burns was much less able to resist than those of the bottle; and the supposition of his frequent indulgence in the crimes to which those allurements lead, is incompatible with that of his habitual drunkenness.

OF DELAYS.--Fortune is like the market where, many times, if you can stay a little, the price will fall; and again, it is sometimes like the Sibyl's offer, who at first offereth the commodity at full, then consumeth part and part, and still holdeth up the price.... There is surely no greater wisdom than well to time the beginnings and onsets of things. Dangers are no more light if they once seem light: and more dangers have deceived men than forced them. Nay, it were better to meet some dangers half-way, though they come nothing near, than to keep too long a watch upon their approaches; for if a man watch too long, it is odds he will fall asleep. On the other side, to be deceived with too long shadows--as some have been, when the moon was low and shone on their enemies, and so to shoot off before the time--or to teach dangers to come on, by an over-early buckling toward them, is another extreme. The ripeness or unripeness of the occasion must ever be well weighed; and, generally, it is good to commit the beginnings of all great actions to Argus with his hundred eyes, and the ends to Briareus with his hundred hands; first to watch, and then to speed.--_Lord Bacon._

[From the London Examiner.]

THE PARIS ELECTION.

All Paris is absorbed in the contest between the stationer Leclerc and Eugene Sue the novelist. Strange it is that the party which pretends to superior intelligence and refinement, should have put forward as their candidate merely a specimen of constabulary violence, an honest policemen, in fact; while the party accused of consisting of the mere dregs of society has selected for its representative one of the most refined and searching intellects of the day. If ever a man became a Socialist from conviction, it has been Sue; for his writings clearly show the progress and the changes of his mind. From depicting high society and influences he acquired a disgust for them; by diving among the vulgar, he discovered virtues whose existence he did not suspect. And though the conclusions he has drawn are erroneous, they would seem to be sincere.

It is remarkable indeed to observe how all the great literary geniuses of the day in France have taken the popular side. We know how boldly Lamartine plunged into it. Victor Hugo has taken the same part, and Eugene Sue. Alexandre Dumas, though in the employ of Louis Philippe in 1830, soon flung aside court livery and conservatism. Emile de Girardin, another man of first rate literary ability, is decidedly Socialist. Beranger, as far as age will permit him, is a stern republican. When a cause thus attracts and absorbs all the floating talent of a country, there is a vitality and respectability in it, more than we are at present inclined to allow to French democratic parties.

That the intellect, that is, the entire working intelligence of the country, has labored on the Democratic, and, we fear even on the Socialist side, is too evident from the fact that the opinions of the latter have gained ground, and not retrograded even in the provinces, where property is subdivided, and where there are few of the indigent classes. In no place is property more generally possessed that in the South of France; and there the results of the last two years have been certainly to strengthen democratic ideas, and to make monarchic ones decline. There is no mistaking, indeed, in what direction the current of ideas has set.

The Conservatives, or Monarchists, or the old political class, whatever one pleases to call them, begin to perceive that they are beaten in the intellectual, the argumentative struggle. They therefore make an appeal to arms. This is evident in all their acts, arguments, and movements. Their efforts are directed to crush the press, proscribe and imprison writers, and abolish meetings and speeches, except those delivered in their own clubs. They give the universities over to the Jesuits, and elect for the Assembly no longer orators, but stout soldiers. Changarnier is the Alpha, and Leclerc the Omega of such a party. Strategy is its policy. It meditates no question of political economy or of trade, but bethinks it how streets are best defended, and how towns are fortified against themselves. A War Minister, a Tax Minister, and a Police Minister--these form the head Cabinet of France. As to foreign policy, trade policy, and the other paraphernalia of government, all this is as much a sham and a humbug, as an assembly must be of which the majority is marshaled and instructed in a club, before it dares proceed to its duties of legislation.

The entire tendency is to change an intellectual and argumentative into a physical struggle. What events may occur, and what fortune prevail in a war of this kind, it is utterly impossible to foretell. For, after all, the results of war depend infinitely upon chance, and still more on the talent of the leader which either party may choose to give itself. Nor is it always the one which conquers first that maintains its ascendency to the last. A war of this kind in France would evidently have many soldiers enlisted on either side, and soldiers in that country make excellent officers. The Conservatives seem to think that the strife will be decided, as of old, in the streets of Paris; and they look to the field of battle, and prepare for it, with a forethought and a vigilance as sanguinary and destructive as it is determined. We doubt, however, whether any quantity of street-fighting in the metropolis can decide a quarrel which becomes every day more embittered and more universal. Socialism will not be put down in a night, nor yet in three days; no nor, we fear, even in a campaign.

Looking on the future in this light, it appears to us of trifling moment whether M. Leclerc or M. Sue carry the Paris election. Some thousand voters, more or less, on this side or on that, is no decision. The terrible fact is, the almost equal division of French society into two camps, either of which makes too formidable a minority to put up with defeat and its consequences, without one day or other taking up arms to advance fresh pretensions and defend new claims.

MRS. HEMANS.--She reminds us of a poet just named, and whom she passionately admired, namely, Shelley. Like him, drooping, fragile, a reed shaken by the wind, a mighty mind, in sooth, too powerful for the tremulous reed on which it discoursed its music--like him, the victim of exquisite nervous organization--like him, verse flowed on and from her, and the sweet sound often overpowered the meaning, kissing it, as it were, to death; like him she was melancholy, but the sadness of both was musical, tearful, active, not stony, silent and motionless, still less misanthropical and disdainful; like him she was gentle, playful, they could both run about their prison garden, and dally with the dark chains which they knew bound them to death. Mrs. Hemans was not indeed a _Vates_, she has never reached his heights, nor sounded his depths, yet they are, to our thought, so strikingly alike as to seem brother and sister, in one beautiful but delicate and dying family.--_Gilfillan._

THE POPE AT HOME AGAIN.

The Pope has returned to Rome, but the Papacy is not reinstated. The past can not be recalled. When Pius the Ninth abandoned the territorial seat of the Papal power, he relinquished the post that preserved to that power its place of command throughout many parts of Europe. It was the "Pope _of Rome_" to whom the many did homage, and the Pope could only be deemed to be "_of_ Rome" so long as he was _at_ Rome: for there can be no doubt that a great part of the spiritual influence possessed by the Sovereign Pontiff has been indissolubly connected with the temporal sovereignty and territorial abode of the Pontificate. Even after his dispossession, for a time, no doubt, heart might have been kept up among his more refined and cultivated followers; but the most faithful peoples have always demanded a tangible standard or beacon of their faith--a pillar of fire or a visible church. When Pius left Rome, the rock became tenantless; the mansion of St. Peter was vacant; a Pope in lodgings was no Pope of Europe. And so it was felt.

But the bodily restoration of Pius the Ninth to the capital of his states is not the restoration of the Pope to his spiritual throne. That can no more be effected. The riddle has been read, in these terrible days of reading and writing--so different from the days when a Papal rustication at Avignon disturbed the Catholic world, and verily shook the Papacy to its foundations even then. Some accounts describe the Pope's return as a triumph, and relate how the Romans submitted themselves in obedient ecstasy to his blessing: it is not true--it is not in the nature of things. It is easy to get up an array of popular feeling, as in a theatre, which shall make a show--a frontage of delight; easy to hire twelve beggars that their feet may be washed. Mr. Anderson of Drury Lane can furnish any amount of popular feeling or pious awe at a shilling a head; and the managers know these things in Rome, where labor is much cheaper than with us. Pius returned to Rome under cover of the French bayonets, to find a people cowed and sulky--contrasting their traditions with the presence of the Gaul, remembering in bitterness the days before the Papacy, and imputing this crowning finish of their disgrace to the Pope forced back upon them.

Even were the people for a moment pleased to see the well-meaning and most unfortunate old man, the days of his inscrutable power are over. Nothing can again be inscrutable that he can hold. While he was away, the tongue of Rome was let loose, and can he make the ear of Rome forget what it heard in those days of license? Can he undo the knowledge which men then attained of each other, and their suppressed ideas? Assuredly not. When he left the keys of St. Peter in his flight, men unlocked the door of the sanctuary, and found out his secret--that it was bare. Political bondage to them will be, not the renewal of pious ignorance, but the rebinding of limbs that have learned to be free.

Nay, were Rome to resume her subjection, the past has been too much broken up elsewhere for a quiet return to the old regime, even in Italy. The ecclesiastical courts have been abolished in Piedmont, and the Sardinian states henceforth stand in point of free discussion on a level with Germany, if not with France. The Pope will be fain to permit more in Genoa or Turin than the eating of eggs during Lent--to permit a canvassing of Papal authority fatal to its existence. But in Tuscany, for many generations, a spirit of free discussion has existed among the educated classes: the reforming spirit of Ricci has never died in the capital of Tuscany, and the memory of Leopold protected the freedom of thought: a sudden and a new value has been given to that prepared state of the Tuscan mind by the existence of free institutions in Piedmont. Giusti will no longer need to traverse the frontier of Italy in search of a printer. With free discussion in two of the Italian states, Milan will not be deaf, nor Naples without a whisper. Italy _must_ sooner or later get to know her own mind, and then the Bishop of Rome will have to devise a new position for himself.

Abroad, in Catholic Europe, there is the same disruption between the past and the future. The Archbishop of Cologne exposed, in his rashness, the waning sanctity of the Church; the Neo-Catholics have exposed its frangible condition. Sectarian distinctions are torn to pieces in Hungary by the temporal conflicts, and the dormant spirit of a national Protestantism survives in sullen hatred to alien rule. Austria proper is pledged to any course of political expediency which may defer the evil day of Imperial accountability, and will probably, in waxing indifferency, see fit to put Lombardy on a spiritual par with Piedmont. France is precarious in her allegiance. Two countries alone remain in unaltered relation to the See of Rome--Spain, the most bigoted of the children of Rome; and Ireland, the most faithful. But Ireland is impotent. And to this day Spain asserts, and preserves, the _national_ independence which she has retained throughout the most arrogant days of Romish supremacy, throughout the tyrant regime of Torquemada. Even court intrigue dares not prostitute the _nationality_ of Spain to Roman influence. Rome is the talk of the world, and the return of Pius to the Vatican can not restore the silent submission of the faithful. He is but to be counted among the "fashionable arrivals."--_London Spectator._

CIVIL LIBERTY DEFINED.--This is not the liberty which we can hope, that no grievance ever should arise in the commonwealth; that let no man in this world expect; but when complaints are freely heard, deeply considered, and speedily reformed, then is the utmost bound of civil liberty attained that wise men look for.--_John Milton._

[From the London Examiner.]

THE AUSTRALIAN COLONIES.

The Jutland and Sleswick pirates, who fourteen centuries ago performed the great achievement of conquering and colonizing Britain, have since, in the persons of their descendants, achieved the still greater feat of colonizing and settling, while they are in a fair way of conquering and occupying, a whole continent, to the destruction or absorption of every other race. The Anglo-Saxon population of America, in fact, constitutes, at this moment, a people more numerous and mighty than any European nation of the period when their emigration commenced. The very same people is now engaged in achieving another great, although not equally great enterprise, the colonization of another continent, Australia; and the Australian colonies, within sixty years of their first foundation, are already calling loudly for self and responsible government, which is, by more than a century, sooner than the American Colonies made a similar claim. We have not the least doubt but that it will be to the mutual and permanent advantage of both parties, that these demands of the Colonists, which are in no respect unreasonable, should be liberally and readily granted.

The better to understand our position in relation to them, let us compare the two continents alluded to. America has a greater extent of territory, and therefore more room for expansion than Australia. Its natural products are more valuable, its soil is more fertile, and its climates more varied and propitious to vegetation. Its greatest superiority over Australia, however, consists in its magnificent water communication--its great rivers, its splendid lakes, its navigable estuaries, and its commodious harbors. Finally, it possesses the vast advantage of being only one-sixth part of the distance that Australia is from the civilization and markets of Europe.

Let us now see what Australia is. It is said to contain three millions of square miles. But of this we take it that about one-half, or all of it that lies north of the twenty-fifth degree of south latitude, is unfit for our use as Europeans, and, most probably, for the profitable use of any people, on account of the comparative sterility of the land, or, what in such a situation is equivalent to sterility, the drought of the climate. But for these great and, we fear, insuperable disadvantages, the tropical portion of Australia might have been peopled from industrious and teeming China, which, with the help of steam navigation, is at an easy distance. Notwithstanding this serious deduction from its available area, Australia has extent enough for the abode of a great people, as what remains is equal to near twenty Britains, or above seven countries as large as France!

The absence of good water communication is the greatest defect of Australia. It has not one great river which at once penetrates deeply into the country and communicates by a navigable course with the sea. The best of its rivers are not equal to those of the fourth or fifth order in America, and it has no lake at all of commercial value. Another almost equally great disadvantage is frequent and long-continued droughts, even of its southern parts, which, however, as strength and wealth increase, may in time be, at least, mitigated by the erection of great works of irrigation, such as those on which the existence of whole populations depend in the warmer regions of Asia.

In salubrity of climate Australia has a great superiority, not only over America, but over every other country. For the rearing of sheep and the production of fine wool, it may be said to possess almost a natural monopoly; and in this respect, it will soon become as necessary to us, and probably as important, as America is for the growth of cotton. Its adaptation for pastoral husbandry is such, indeed, that we have often thought, had it been settled by Tartars or Arabs, or even by Anglo-Saxons of the time of Hengist and Horsa, that it would have been now thinly inhabited by nomade hordes, mere shepherds and robbers, if there was any one to rob. One immense advantage Australia possesses over America, which must not be omitted--the total absence of a servile population and an alien race. In America the bondsmen form a fourth part of the whole population, and in Australia little more than one sixtieth, speedily to vanish all together.

If the comparison between America and Australia have reference to the facility of achieving and maintaining independence, all the advantages are unquestionably on the side of Australia. It is at least six times as far away from Europe; and a military force sufficient to have even a chance of coercing the colonists could not get at them in less than four months, while the voyage would force it to run the gauntlet of the equator and both tropics. When it reached its destination, supposing its landing to be unopposed, it would have to march every step to seek the insurgents, for there is neither river nor estuary to transport it into the interior of the country. The colonists, rifle in hand, and driving their flocks and herds before them to the privation of the invader, would of course take to the bush, and do so with impunity, being without tents or equipage, or risk of starvation, having a wholesome sky over their heads, and abundant food in their cattle. With a thorough knowledge of localities, the colonial riflemen, under such circumstances, would be more than a match for regular troops, and could pick off soldiers with more ease than they bring down the kangaroo or opossum.

We should look, however, to the number and character of the Australian population. In 1828 the total colonial population of Australia was 53,000, of whom a large proportion were convicts. In 1848 it was 300,000, of which the convicts were but 6000. In the two years since, 37,000 emigrants have proceeded thither, and the total population at this moment can not be less than 350,000. It has, therefore, been multiplied in twenty-two years' time by near seven-fold; and if it should go on at this rate of increase, in the year 1872 it will amount to close on two millions and a half, which is a greater population than that of the old American colonies at the declaration of independence, and after an existence of 175 years. Such a population, or the one half of it, would, from numbers, position, and resources, be unconquerable.

Such is a true picture, we conceive, of the position in which we stand in relation to our Australian colonies. Meanwhile, the colonists are loyal, affectionate, and devoted, and (the result of absence and distance) with really warmer feelings toward the mother country than those they left behind them. It will be the part of wisdom on our side to keep them in this temper. They demand nothing that is unreasonable--nothing that it is not equally for their advantage and ours that we should promptly and freely concede. They ask for responsible government, and doing so they ask for no more than what is possessed by their fellow-citizens. They ought to have perfect power over their own resources and their own expenditure; but, in justice and fairness, they ought also to defray their own military charges; and, seeing they have neither within nor without any enemy that can cope with a company of light infantry, the cost ought not to be oppressive to them.

The Australian colonies are, at present, governed in a fashion to produce discontent and recalcitration. They are, consequently, both troublesome and expensive. The nation absolutely gains nothing by them that it would not gain, and even in a higher degree, were they self-governed, or, for that matter, were they even independent. Thus, emigration to them would go on at least in the same degree as it does now. It does so go on, to the self-governed colony of Canada, and to the country which was once colonies, and this after a virtual separation of three quarters of a century.

In like manner will our commercial intercourse with the Australian colonies proceed under self-government. In 1828, the whole exports of Australia amounted only to the paltry sum of L181,000, and in 1845, the last for which there is a return, they had come to L2,187,633, or in seventeen years' time, had been increased by above fourteen-fold, a rapidity of progress to which there is no parallel. At this ratio, of course, they can not be expected to proceed in future; for the Australians, having coal, iron, and wool in abundance, will soon learn to make coarse fabrics for themselves. The finer they will long receive from us, as America, after its long separation, still does. But that the Australian Colonies, under any circumstances, are destined to become one of the greatest marts of British commerce, may be considered as a matter of certainty. The only good market in the world, for the wool, the tallow, the train oil, and the copper ore of Australia, is England; and to England they must come, even if Australia were independent to-morrow; and they must be paid for, too, in British manufactures. Independence has never kept the tobacco of America from finding its best market in England, nor has it prevented American cotton from becoming the greatest of the raw materials imported by England.

A common lineage, a common language, common manners, customs, laws, and institutions, bind us and our Australian brethren together, and will continue to do so, perhaps longer than the British Constitution itself will last. They form, in fact, a permanent bond of union; whereas the influence of patronage, and the trickeries of Conservative legislation, do but provoke and hasten the separation which they are foolishly framed to prevent.

[From the Dublin University Magazine.]

JEWISH VENERATION.

The veneration of the Jew for the law is displayed by the grossest superstition, a copy of the Torah or Decalogue being carefully soldered into a narrow tin case, and hung over the entrance to their chambers, as old crones with us nail a horse-shoe to a door; it is even believed to avail as an amulet or charm capable of averting evil, or curing the most obstinate disease. "Ah," said a bed-ridden old Hebrew woman to me, as I visited the mission hospital in Jerusalem, "what can the doctors do for me? If I could only touch the Torah I should be made whole." Not exactly comprehending what she meant, I handed her a little tin-cased copy of the Ten Commandments; she grasped it in her emaciated hands, which trembled with anxiety, and her eyes were lit up with a transient gleam of joy. "Are you made whole?" I inquired; she made no answer, fell back on her pillow, let drop the Torah, and turned from me with a sigh.

Sitting one evening with an intelligent German Jew, who used often to pay me a visit at my lodgings, the conversation turned on Jewish religious rites and ceremonies. Alluding to the day of atonement, he assured me that on that day the Jews believe that ministers are appointed in heaven for the ensuing year: a minister over angels; one over the stars; one over earth; the winds, trees, plants, birds, beasts, fishes, men, and so forth.