BULLER. Another Herman Boaz!-Bless my eyes, there is Kilchurn! It must bethere is no other such huge Castle, surely, at the head of the Loch-and no other such dizing as that other whole place-the hesi- | Here it is-I was laughing at you-in my tation of Jupiter whether he shall VIOLATE sleeve. FATE, in order to save his own flesh and blood from its decreed stroke-the consolatory device of Juno (in remonstrating and dissuading) that he shall send Apollo to call Death and Sleep-a God-messenger to God-mountainsministers to bear the dead body from the battle-field to his own land and kin for due obsequies. And, lastly, those drops of blood which fall from the sky to the earth, as if the heart-tears of the Sire of all the worlds and their inhabitants. BULLER. You are always great, sir, on Homer. But, pray, have you any intention of returning to the αυταρκεια ? NORTH. You promised solemnly, sir, not to say a single word about Loch Awe or its appurtenance, this Evening-so did every mother's son of us at your order-and 'twas well-for we have seen them and felt them all-at times not the less profoundly-as the visionary pomp keeps all the while gliding slowly by-perpetual accompaniment of our discourse, not uninspired, perhaps, by the beauty or the grandeur, as our imagination was among the ideal creations of geniuswith the far-off in place and in time-with generations and empires. "When dark oblivion swallows cities up, SEWARD. In the declining light I wonder your eyes can see to read print. NORTH. My eyes are at a loss with Small Pica-but veritable Pica I can master, yet, after sunset. Indeed, I am sharpest-sighted by twilight, like a cat or an owl. BULLER. Have you any more annotations on Alison? NORTH. Ha! Buller-do you speak? I have not wandered from it. But since you seem to think I have, think of Patroclus lighting a fire under a tripod with his own hands, to boil meat for Achilles' guests-of Achilles himself helping to lay the ransomed body of Hector on the car that was to take it away. This last is honorific and pathetic. Ministrations of all degrees for themselves, in their own affairs, characterize them all. From the least of these to Achilles fighting the River-God-which is an excess-all holds together-is of one meaning-and here, as everywhere, the least, and the familiar, and most homely, attests, vouches, makes evident, probable, and facile to credence, the highest, most uncouth, remote, and difficult otherwise of acceptation. Pitching the speculation lower, plenitude of the most robust, ardent, vigorous life overflows the Iliad-up from the animal to the divine -from the beautiful tall poplar by the riverside, which the wheelwright or wainwright fells. Eating, drinking, sleeping, thrusting through with spears, and hacking the live flesh off the bone-all go together and help one another-and make the " Majesty and Dignity" or what not-of the Homeric Epos. But I see, Buller, that you are time-aged the Loch, you said a few words-pering me and I am ashamed to confess that I have exceeded the assigned limit. Gentlemen, I ask all your pardons. BULLER. Timeing you-my dear sir! Look 'tis only my snuff-box-your own gift with your own haunted Head on the lid-inspired work of Laurence Macdonald. NORTH. Give it me-why there-thereby your own unhappy awkwardness-it has gone-gone-to the bottom of the deepest part of the Loch! BULLER. I don't care. It was my chronometer! The Box is safe. NORTH. And so is the Chronometer. NORTH. Many. The flaws are few. I verily believe these are all. To elucidate his Truths-in Taste and in Morals-would require from us Four a far longer Dialogue. Alison's Essays should be reprinted in one Pocket Volume-Wisdom and Goodness are in that family hereditary-the editing would be a Work of Love-and in Bohn's Standard Library they would confer benefit on thousands who now know but their name. SEWARD. My dear sir, last time we voy haps you may remember it-about those philosophers-Alison-the "Man of Taste," Thomas Campbell loved to call him—assuredly is not of the number-who have insisted on the natural Beauty of Virtue, and natural Deformity of Vice, and have appeared to place our capacity of distinguishing Right from Wrong chiefly, if not solely, on the sense of this Beauty and of this Deformity NORTH. I remember saying, my dear Seward, that they have drawn their views too much from the consideration of the state of these feelings in men who had been long exercised in the pure speculative contemplation of moral Goodness and Truth, as well as in the calmness and purity of a tranquil, virtuous life. Was it so? SEWARD. It was. NORTH. In such minds, when all the calm faculties of the soul are wedded in happy union to the image of Virtue, there is, I have no doubt, that habitual feeling for which the term Beauty furnishes a natural and just expression. But I apprehend that this is not the true expression of that serious and solemn feeling which accompanies the understanding of the qualities of Moral Action in the minds of the generality of men. They who, in the midst of their own unhappy perversions, are visited with knowledge of those immutable distinctions, and they who, in the ordinary struggles and trials incident to our condition, maintain their conduct in unison with their strongly-grounded principles and better aspirations, would seldom, I apprehend, employ this language for the descrip: tion of feelings which can hardly be separated from the ideas of an awful responsibility involving the happiness and misery of the acountable subjects of a moral order of Government. SEWARD. You think, sir, that to assign this perception of Beauty and Deformity, as the groundwork of our Moral Nature, is to rest on too slight a foundation that part of man's constitution which is first in importance to his welfare? NORTH. Assuredly, my dear friend, I do. Nay, I do not fear to say that the Emotion, which may properly be termed a Feeling of Beauty in Virtue, takes place at those times when the deepest affection of our souls towards Good and Evil acts less strongly, and when the Emotion we feel is derived more from Imagination-and SEWARD. And may I venture to suggest, sir, that as Imagination, which is so strong a principle in our minds, will take its temper from any prevalent feelings, and even from any fixed and permanent habits of mind, so our Feeling of Beauty and Deformity shall be different to different men, either according to the predominant strength of natural principles, or according to their course of life? NORTH. Even so. And therefore this general disposition of Imagination to receive its character will apply, no doubt, where the prevailing feelings and habits are of a Moral cast; and hence in minds engaged in calm intellectual speculation, and maintaining their own moral nature rather in innocence and simplicity of life than in the midst of difficult and trying situations and in conflict with passions, there can be no doubt that the Imagination will give itself up to this general Moral Cast of Mind, and feel Beauty and Deformity vividly and uniformly in the contemplation of the moral quality of actions and moral states of character. SEWARD. But your words imply-do they not, sir? that such is the temper of their calmer minds, and not the emotion which is known when, from any great act of Virtue or Crime, which comes suddenly upon them, their Moral Spirit rises up in its native strength, to declare its own Affection and its own Judgment? NORTH. Just so. Besides, my excellent friend, if you consider well the feeling which takes possession of us, on contemplating some splendid act of heroic and selfdevoting Virtue, we shall find that the sort of enthusiastic transport which may kindle towards him who has performed it, is not perfectly a moral transport at all; but it is a burst of love and admiration. Take out, then, from any such emotion, what Imagination, and Love, and Sympathy have supplied, and leave only what the Moral Spirit recognizes of Moral Will in the act, and you will find that much of that dazzling and splendid Beauty which produced the transport of loving admiration is removed. SEWARD. And if so, sir, then must it be very important that we should not deceive ourselves, and rely upon the warmth of emotion we may feel towards generous and heroic actions as evidence of the force of Moral Principle in our own breasts, which requires to be ascertained by a very different test NORTH. Ay, Seward; and it is important also, that we should learn to acknowledge and to respect, in those who, without the capacity of such vivid feelings, are yet conscientiously faithful to the known Moral Law, the merit and dignity of their Moral Obedience. We must allow to Virtue, my dearest Seward, all that is her due-her countenance beautiful in its sweet serenity-her voice gentle and mild-her demeanor graceful-and a simple majesty in the flowing folds of her stainless raiment. So may we picture her to our imagination, and to our hearts. But we must beware of making such abstractions fantastic and visionary, lest we come at last to think of emotions of Virtue and Taste as one and the same-a fatal error indeed-and that would rob human life of much of its melancholy grandeur. The beauty of Virtue is but the smile on her celestial countenance—and may be admired-loved-by those who hold but little communion with her inner heart-and | wonder and will worship. Think how Poet, it may be overlooked by those who pay to is dumb and Sculptor lame, who foreknows her the most devout worship. that what he would sing, what he would carve, will neither be felt nor understood. plauds. TALBOYS. And Religion affords to the Artist in Words or Forms the highest Forms of Thought-sublime, beautiful, solemnwithal the sense of Aspiration—possibly of Inspiration. TALBOYS. Methinks, sir, that the moral emotion with which we regard actions great- BULLER. The Religion of a people furly right or greatly wrong, is no transport;nishes the sympathy which both pays and apit is an earnest, solemn feeling of a mind knowing there is no peace for living souls, except in their Moral Obedience, and therefore receiving a deep and grateful assurance of the peace of one soul more, in witnessing its adherence to its virtue; and the pain which is suffered from crime is much more allied to sorrow, in contemplating the wilful departure of a spirit from its only possible Good, than to those feelings of repugnance and hate which characterize the temper of our common human emotion towards crimes offering violence and outrage to humanity. NORTH. I believe that, though darkness lies round and about us seeking to solve such questions, a feeling of deep satisfaction in witnessing the adherence to Moral Rectitude, and of deep pain in witnessing the departure from it, are the necessary results of a moral sensibility; but taken in their elementary simplicity, they have, I think, a character distinct from those many other emotions which will necessarily blend with them, in the heart of one human being looking upon the actions of another" because that we have all one human heart." TALBOYS. Who can doubt that Religion infuses power and exaltation into the Arts? The bare History teaches this. In Greece, Poetry sang of Gods, and of Heroes, in whose transactions Gods moved. Sculpture moulded forms which were attempted expressions of Divine Attributes. Architecture constructed Temples. De facto the Grecian Arts rose out of Religion. And were not the same Arts, of revived Italy, religious? BULLER. They all require for their foundation and support a great pervading sympathy --some Feeling that holds a whole national breast. This is needed to munificently defraying the Costlier Arts-no base consideration at bottom. For it is a life-bond of this life, that is freely dropped, when men freely and generously contribute their means to the honor of Religion. There is sentiment in opening your purse. SEWARD. Yes, Buller-without that sentiment no man can love noble Art. The true, deep, grand support of Genius is the confidence of universal sympathy. Homer sings because Greece listens. Phidias pours out his soul over marble, gold, and ivory, because he knows that at Olympia united Greece will NORTH. And it guards Philosophy-and preserves it, by spiritual influence, from degradation worse than death. The mind is first excited into activity through the impressions made by external objects on the senses. The French metaphysicians-pretending to follow Locke-proceeded to discover in the mind a mere compound of Sensations, and of Ideas drawn from Sensations. Sensations, and Ideas that were the Relics of Sensations--nothing more. TALBOYS. And thus, sir, by degrees, the Mind appeared to them to be nothing else than a product of the body-say rather a state of the body. Мовтн. A self-degradation, my friend, which to the utmost removes the mind from God. And this Creed was welcome to those to whom the belief in Him was irksome. That which we see and touch became to such Philosophers the whole of Reality. Deity-the Relation of the Creation to the Creator-the hope of a Futurity beyond the grave-vanished from the Belief of Materialists living in, and by, and to-Sensation. SEWARD. And with what a horrid sympathy was the creed welcomed! NORTH. Ay, Seward, I who lived nearer the time-perhaps better than you can-know the evil. Not in the schools alone, or in the solitude of philosophical thought, the doctrine of an arid speculation circulated, like a thin and unwholesome blood, through the veins of polite literature; not in the schools alone, but in the gorgeous and gay saloons, where the highly-born, the courtly, and the wealthy, winged the lazy hours with light or dissolute pleasures-there the Philosophy which fettered the soul in the pleasing bands of the Senses, which plucked it back from a feared immortality, which opened a gulf of infinite separation between it and its Maker, was cordially entertained-there it pointed the jest and the jibe. Skepticism a study the zeal of Unbelief! Principles of false thought appeared suddenly and widely as principles of false passion and of false A NEGRO, who had run away from his master in South Carolina, arrived in London in an American ship. Soon after he landed, he got acquainted with a poor, honest laundress, in Wapping, who washed his linen. This poor woman usually wore two gold rings on one of her fingers, and it was said she had saved a little money, which induced this wretch to conceive the design of murdering her, and taking her property. She was a widow, and lived in an humble dwelling with her nephew. One night her nephew came home much intoxicated, and was put to bed. The negro, who was aware of the circumstance, thought this would be a favorable opportunity for executing his bloody design. Accordingly, he climbed up to the top of the house, stripped himself naked, and descended through the chimney to the apartment of the laundress, whom he murdered-not until after a severe struggle, the noise of which awoke her drunken nephew in the adjoining room, who got up and hastened to the rescue of his aunt. In the meantime the villain had cut off the finger with the rings; but before he could escape, he was grappled with by the nephew, who, being a very powerful man, though much intoxicated, very nearly overpowered him; when, by the light of the moon, which shone through the window, he discovered the com plexion of the villain, whom (having seldo seen a negro) he took for the devil! The murderer then disengaged himself from the grasp of the nephew, and succeeded in making his escape through the chimney. But the nephew believed, and ever afterwards declared, that it was the devil with whom he had struggled, and who had subsequently flown into the air and disappeared. The negro, in the course of the struggle, had besmeared the young man's shirt in many places with the blood of his victim; and this, joined with other circumstances, induced his neighbors to consider the nephew as the murderer of his aunt. He was arrested, examined, and committed to prison, though he persisted in asserting his innocence, and told his story of the midnight visitor, which appeared not only improbable, but ridiculous in the extreme. He was tried, convicted, and executed, protesting to the last his total ignorance of the murder, and throwing it wholly on his black antagonist, whom he believed to be no other than Satan. The real murderer was not suspected, and returned to America with his little booty; but he, after a wretched existence of ten years, on his death-bed confessed the murder, and related the particulars attending it.-Boston Mercantile Journal. From the New Monthly Magazine. THE AUTHORS OF THE "REJECTED ADDRESSES." Smith, "I am James the first; he must abdicate; I reigned here before he came." James was a well-looking man, but having a little of that stiffness of bearing which often attaches to a life of uniformity, with comparatively circumscribed habits. He was a constant and keen observer of city manners, and the foibles of many of the citizens he made the subject of harmless ridicule. We say harmless, for there was never the smallest portion of ill-nature in his satirical touches. He smote the folly, but spared the man; a mode much more effectual in the way of reformation, than that severity of censure which awakens the resistance of self-love. His pieces, collected and published by his brother, whom we have just lost, fully exhibit this view of his nature. A prevalent foible, a trivial display of vanity, a trait of self-indulgence, an epicurean inclination, or any little peculiarity, being the subject, he generally handled it as briefly as possible, and most probably worked the whole point out in his mind before he committed it to paper. It may be questioned if anything he ever wrote cost him more than one sitting. The closing line or two, or the last stanza, wound up what he called "his moral.' There was much less of liberality of feeling about him than about his brother Horace. It is difficult to say which of the two was the most witty in the social hour. Dependent upon momentary, often upon an involuntary disposition to cheerfulness at the moment, all wits are unequal in brilliancy at times. Both brothers may be characterized rather as possessors of a high talent for humor, than of that sparkling wit which char THE last of the "Adelphi" is no morethe last of the brothers who first rendered their writings popular in the "Rejected Addresses.' Both were clever men and piquant writers, but Horace Smith is something beyond this. He possessed talents of a wider scope than James, who preceded him to the grave in 1839; his views were more extended; he was more intellectually accomplished, had seen much more of the world, and thought deeper. James was a wit, an agreeable companion, possessed of a fine vein of humor, but circumscribed in the extent of his information, and, as a natural consequence, more concentrated in himself. James selected his subjects for the most part within the circle in which he moved and continued to move through life. A happy point well made, it was his delight to repeat at the dinner-table or in the evening party. His jokes, and excellent they were, thrown off among convivial friends-in short, society, cheerfulness, and its accompaniments-constituted the summum of his life's pleasures. His frame was not active; his bachelor habits and dinings-out rendered him a subject for the gout, to which disorder he ultimately fell a victim. From his office in Austin Friars to his residence in the Strand, constituted the major part of his journeyings. Horace, on the contrary, was of an active make. A year or two after we first knew him he visited Italy; and returning, for some time made France his residence. We first saw James at his office in Austin Friars, nearly thirty years ago. He looked as serious as the parchments and papers surrounding him for he was a solicitor by profession, and transacted the business of the Board of Ord-acterized Hook. Sometimes, with all his nance. He seemed in this situation as little of a wit as can well be imagined. A joke took place on this visit, often subsequently repeated. There were two Smiths on the same side of the court, and we had very naturally knocked at the door of the first we came, to. On entering his office we mentioned our mistake: "Aye," said James wonderful readiness, it was hit or miss with We |
