With sanctioned and with softened love, before
The altar, gazing on his Trojan bride,
With some remorse within for Hector slain
And Priam weeping, mingled with deep passion
For the sweet downcast virgin, whose young hand
Trembled in his who slew her brother. So
He stood i' the temple! Look upon him as
Greece looked her last upon her best, the instant
Ere Paris' arrow flow."

Prose, by a Poet. 2 vols. 12mo. pp. 411.

Philadelphia, 1824.

“Book.—I have told you my author knows that you are; moreover, he foresaw that I should meet you at this time, in this place, and that we should have such conversation together; for which he prepared me with the answers already given to your very natural inquiries.

Reader.-Humph! no small proof of sagacity! -But how are you sure that I am the person whom he had in his mind's eye!'

"Book.-Only because you can be no other; and though you assume a thousand forms, and be as many ladies and gentlemen as you please, at once, or in succession,-indeed, the more the merrier for him,-yet are you invariably the person, the very person, to whom he has sent a direct message by me.

Reader. A message!-what is it?

We believe that Montgomery is supposed
to be the author of these pleasant little
volumes; they are attributed to him in the
English journals, and are well worthy of Book.-Why, when he turned me out alone into
him. Whoever the author may be, he is a vain efforts to write a character for me, in the shape
the wide world, to seek my fortune,-after twenty
man of fine sense and taste, and an excel- of a preface, which should justify my title, apolo-
lent writer. There is infinite variety in gize for my contents, anticipate criticism, and soft-
the matter and manner of the pieces; some en the sternest reviewer into graciousness, he
are humorous, some pathetic, and some ar-dropt his pen on the floor in despair, and with a
look of forlornness that cast a shade of melancholy
gumentative; there are tales, allegories,
over my lightest pages,--I wish you may not find
journals, dialogues, and essays,—all of which
the blight of it there still, he took me up in his
are pretty good, and some very excellent. arms,-I was then in my manuscript or chrysalis
The author says that the different pieces state, and a vast deal more bulky than in my pre-
have been written at different times, and sent butterfly form, I say he took me up in his
assure
principally on private occasions, within the arms, like an affectionate parent, which
last ten years; and they are now printed, you he is, loving me for my very faults, because I
fear in his heart he loves them,--was there ever
because he had accumulated so many of such a zigzag sentence of digressions?-to make
these miscellanies, that it seemed probable all straight, my author took me up and thus ad-
a selection might be made which would be dressed me:-
acceptable to the public. The preface is
in the shape of an amusing dialogue be-

tween the book and the reader.

"Reader.-Prose !-so it is; at least the greater part of it; and that which looks like verse may be the most prosaic of all.

Book-True; but to make amends, you may expect that the prose of a poet will be poetical.

Reader.-If I thought so, I would fling you into the fire at once; for next to maudlin verse I hate drunken prose.' Your title, to be sure, is a little ominous ;-what does it mean?

Book. Every book must have a title, as every man must have a name.

"Reader. But the title ought to be significant

of the contents.

"Book.-No more than a man's name need be indicative of his character, which, however fashionable among savages, could not be tolerated in civil society.

"Reader.--No, indeed; we should soon be all savages again, if it were so-who would choose to be reminded of what he was-a tiger, a bear, or a buffalo, like a wild Indian who glories in the resemblance,-every time his name was pronounced? But it is quite and her thing with books, which have no feelings to be hurt.

'My little Book,

'I have done all that I could for you, consistent with my incorrigible indolence and constitutional imbecility. I have given you a moderate education, to me a very expensive one, and made you as much like myself as such a child ought to be like such a father. This, I fear, may be no great recommendation; and yet it cannot be quite unavailing, since that which is genuine, however humble in its kind, will not be entirely unwelcome where it encounters human sympathy. I send you abroad, a stranger among strangers; and your success henceforward must depend partly upon yourself, but chiefly upon a certain personage whom you will meet on your travels to the world's end (and to the end of the world, if you can live so long), in as many shapes, colours, and sizes, as there are clouds in the firmament. This person, wherever found, and under whatever disguise, you will always know at first sight; for I need not teach you the signs of freemasonry between a Book and a Reader: but remember, that the latter must always be addressed as 'gentle;' and the more crabbed in reality your patron appears, the more courteous you must be, both for my sake and your own. Wherefore, when you come into the presence of this multitudinous and ubiquitarian being, say thus from me:-'Gentle Reader,

occasionally, but which, repulsive as they may be to some whom I would fain conciliate, I have not dared to exclude altogether from a work principally intended for intellectual dissipation in leisure hours.

I have done my part to please you; and if you do half as much to be pleased, neither of us will have reason to complain. Readers in general are little aware how much of the entertainment of such works depends upon themselves. If you, my gentle friend, are one of these, make the experiment with my little book: do your best to be delighted with it; and if there be stars in heaven, or flowers on earth, you shall not lose your labour.'

"So saying, my author dismissed me. I have come from his hands to place myself in yours, where I lie at your mercy.

"Do not ask me by what means a flower has contrived to write its own history. How in the course of my short life,-one week, five days, nine hours and twenty-three minutes, at this moment,—I learned so much of men and things, as to qualify me to tell you my little tale in language intelligible to beings so exalted in the scale of creation as you are, you will hear in the sequel. I can assure yon, on the word of one among innumerable millions of a race by whom a lie was never told since Adam plucked the first flower in Paradise,—and that, you know, was before he was married,—that every syllable of the following record is as true as that I myself ever lived. Who has lent me his pen, as amanuensis on this occasion, I shall not tell; for if you are not sufficiently well acquainted with the hand-writing at once to recognise it as that of a friend, he has deceived me, or you have deceived him. I have only to premise further, that if there be any thing in my narrative unworthy of a violet, or what a violet could not have known, spoken, or done, you will be pleased to attribute it to his ig norant or impertinent interpolation.

"I do not recollect being born, nor do I remember my parents; for we violets, being only spring. flowers, die nine months before our children come into the world. But this is idle prating; for, to tell the truth, there are no such things as fathers and mothers among us: we love ourselves, and our posterity are the offspring of self-love; consequently, there can be no fear of our own issue failing, while this ruling passion is the universal inheritance of all our tribe. The first event that I can call to mind was, the fall of an icicle from the old oak tree under which I grew, upon my head, when it was no bigger than a pin's. The pain of this uncouth accident was to me the earliest consciousness of existence; I was then, according to the best chronology, exactly eight and forty hours old, by the church-clock of our parish, which struck six, A. M. just as the icicle was shaken from a branch above, by the sudden rising on the wing of a crow, that had roosted on it all night, and who, having overslept himself, was startled out of a pleasant dream, by the report of a gun, which farmer Gripe's son fired at him over the adjacent hedge. As the poor bird lost nothing but the remainder of his nap, and his tail, which was shot sheer away, he will too grave, a few too florid, and many too cull, yet in not be any worse, or wiser either, for the misadall moods and vagaries of mind, I have had the two- venture; the feathers will grow again, no doubt; fold object in view,-to amuse if I could, and ben- and so far from profiting by the warning, I saw him eft if I might, the good-natured_reader. When I sitting on the very same bough, the day before yeshave succeeded in one of these, I cannot have mis-terday, and cawing as if he were king of the recarried altogether in the other; for in the wildest gion. This happened on the third of April, 1814; humours, amidst reveries of egotism, sallies of fancy, I therefore conclude that I must have been born on and mazes of description, I have never lost sight of the first, as good a day as can be found in the some moral aim, though I have not always placed whole calendar, for the coming forth of a flower. it ostentatiously before your eye:--at the same time, in my most portentous lucubrations, I have "Reader.-Who is your author? endeavoured to embellish, though I may have often "Book. That is a secret with which, you see, failed to illustrate those solemn and eternal verities, he has not entrusted me. **** which I will not say I have ventured to introduce

Book.-But we have characters to lose, and it 'Take this book as a token of sincere esteem would be infatuation to throw them away on the from one whom you may never have known, but outset. Great authors, who ought to be the best who, while invisible as your guardian angel, like judges what to call their offspring, have often given him has long been employed in secret oinces of them titles which were masks rather than manifes- kindness on your behali. Believe me, all the time, tations of their purpose. The Diversions of Pur- labour, study, watching, and, if you will allow it, ley,'-who could expect to be tasked with a game all the talent expended on its composition, were at hard words after such a holiday decoy? Take fervently devoted to your service. Though you the other aspect of this double-faced sphinx-may deem some of these pages too trifling, others “Eris wrightpra ;' make winged words' of these, and still, so far as concerns the subject (happily hieroglyphic as they are), they will be Heathen Greek, not to the vulgar only, but to the learned

themselves.

particulars respecting the crow and the icicle above | If I do not remember the moment of my birth, this mentioned, I was told, while yet smarting under moment I should never forget, were I to live to the the pain of the accident, by my neighbour and gos- age of the oak. Amidst the innumerable objects, sip, a withered sprig of spear-grass, which had al- all beautiful and new, above and around,-the birds ready outlived two winters, and was notoriously flitting through the air, the insects creeping among the greatest gossip that grew for ten fields round. the herbage, the flowers of many hues that blosBy this merry blade I was taught the rudiments somed on my native bank, mine ancient gossip, of useful knowledge; and whether you believe the spire of dry grass with two withered blades me or not, I will venture to affirm that my precep- hanging down, and high over all, the patriarchal tress was as good a schoolmistress as any old wo-oak, towering, and, as it appeared to me, touching man of eighty within the ring of our bells, and the sky,-nothing caught my attention longer than myself as good a scholar, at the week's end, as any while I cast a glance across it. As soon as I had little boy or girl three hundred times my age, and looked thus hastily about me, I fixed my eye on ten thousand times my bulk. During my minority, the sun, coming forth from his golden palace :-as that is, till my blossom opened, I was blind; and he rose in the firmament, my petals spread wide to in truth I had then only two of the five senses by receive his ray, and my breath grew sweeter; while which you animals vainly imagine that you are dis- I sighed in the delight of beholding him all day tinguished above us vegetables: but let me tell you, long, with the occasional intervention of a cloud, that I could feel as exquisitely as yourself, Madam. and the floating shadows of taller plants around Indeed I doubt whether an icicle a quarter of an that alternately crossed and cleared my sight, I inch long, falling upon your head, would have cost traced the splendid luminary in his course to the you half the anguish, that such an infliction cost meridian, and downward through a crimson colourme. And as for hearing, certainly you will noted sky, till behind the old oak he vanished from me. pretend to measure your ears with mine: I dare I felt my lively spirits sinking as he declined: when say you never heard a stalk of grass speak in your he was gone, vision began to fade; the objects near life; I have heard one uttering oracles all day long, me lost their colour, then their form; I was alarm-aye, and all night too; for my neighbour talked ed; I thought that my primitive blindness was reas much in her sleep, and as much to the purpose, turning; the air grew chill; I bowed upon my bed, and oppressed with indescribable dejection, I fell into a deep slumber.

as when she was awake.

"Now while I was blind, I had nothing to do but to grow wiser and bigger every day;-bigger I did grow, for I could not help it, and wiser,-but I must not boast, lest I should prove myself a fool: I may say, however, that I do not recollect that I ever lost a moment in all my schooling, with the old beldame of our bank-side, or under a much higher and more accomplished tutor, at whose feet I was brought up, and by whom I was as carefully instructed, as if, instead of a few spring-days, my life was to equal your grandmother's. This august and venerable personage was no other than a majestic oak, that had outlasted twenty generations of your long-lived race, and five hundred of ours; nay, it had stood so long against the strokes of time and death, that it had survived two-thirds of itself, being only a ruin, yet, even in decay, more magnificent than a forest of brambles in their glory. This oak, which was, or pretended to be,-for I could not help suspecting some unacknowledged gaps in the avenue of his genealogy, my honoured tutor having only one weak point about him, and that was a certain pride of ancestry incomprehensible to us ephemeral things,-a very commendable pride, you will perhaps say, in the stump of an old tree! -Be it so, but I must begin the last sentence again. This oak, which was, or pretended to be, the twelfth in descent from one that grew on the same slope at the creation, was a marvellous linguist, having in the course of its own five centuries, acquired all the knowledge that had been accumulated in its family, and transmitted by due inheritance from sire to son, for nearly six thousand

years.

****

My Royal Oak, however, was very kind and condescending to me; and from his sage lessons I learned as much of the works of nature and art. of the actions of animals human and brute, of ethics and English grammar, as you might suppose a violet of tolerable parts, improving every instant, could acquire in ten days; so that when I came of age on the eleventh, I was prepared to begin the world to advantage, having pretty clear ideas of every thing I might expect to behold when the universe became visible to ine,-for you will recollect that I was blind during the whole of my nonage.

"At sun-rise on the eleventh of April, my eyelids were opened on the creation; and in the same moment when I first saw the light, I first breathed the air, fresh, cool, and fragrant, amidst a thick

"Thanks to the sweet deceiver, Sleep! In my
dream (for flowers dream as well as sleep, whatever
botanists may say,) the glorious image of the sun
arose on my imagination, and I spent my day over
again in the night. From this delicious trance, I
was awakened by strains of music so inspiring,
that I found myself and sisters involuntarily,-and
yet, oh! how willingly!-dancing with all our
leaves and blossoms to the melody, which came
nearer, and grew merrier every moment. There
was a very pale twilight in the air, when glancing
upward, I perceived a dark cloud with a silver mar-
gin; in the middle of which there appeared a bright
spot, that became thier and thinner, as if melting
away, till a beautif orb broke through it. It was
the moon, a little on the wane, which had risen
after my eye closed, and was now half-way up the
sky. She was not so gorgeous as the sun; but in
the first joy of discovering her, I thought her a
thousand times more lovely; for just then I recol-
lected, that while I was falling asleep, I had fancied
that I was losing my sight. In the transport of
having this restored, I had no ear for music: I was
all eye, and that eye was all moon, for I saw noth-
ing else; till suddenly her beams appeared alive,
and in motion toward me. Millions, aye millions,
of little beings, in form like the lords of creation,
and as brilliant as if they had been born in ladies'
eyes, came pouring upon our bank-side, and cover-
ed it as thick as dew-drops. The music, which
was as much too exquisite for human ears as these
shapes were too fine for human sight, continued
meanwhile to swell and fall, and float, and quicken,
and languish. It seemed a moving spirit among
these lively little things; sometimes they ran out
in lines all the way up to the moon and back again;
anon they wheeled in rings so swift as to be indi-
vidually indistinguishable; again they intermingled
in measures so slow, that every feature of the small-
est face was easily discerned. Love, joy, grief,
hope, fear, and every passion, were expressed in
their countenances, carolled in their songs, and
represented in their dances. They flew among us
and over us, with steps so light that we bent not
our heads beneath their volatile feet; but when
they touched us, we felt in ourselves the very affec-
tion, whether joyous or mournful, that possessed
them at the time. It would take more hours than
I have to live, to describe all the scenes of this

pounded to me and n vegetable neighbours ing; and though a vi by minutes instead o while having been bor "But the charm was ous scaring noise dir hoo! Tohoo! Toboo hollow of the oak issu Plumb into the midst plunged, when all the derstand they are call with a sound as if the instruments were at o in the twinkling of Goodfellow, the merri had been playing his a all night, and was then with his legs in the ai tals. Neck and heels he tumbled, a heigh least, into the hollow where he lay stunned then I saw no more of "The owl, with an horrible than the fir among the ivy of the ed, and I fell asleep the same,--or rather t Madam, I will here m to you. But I must c queath the remainder I am up to the neck in prolonging my life, wounded by one of th as you will learn here live till to-morrow mor my sweetest breath, a

LE

"Dear Madam, "I did not awake the sun had given his morning-clouds; but t hoar-frost had resolve ground, and there was tear, in my eye, that

"At half-past nine butterfly, the first that of the season,―came was immediately susp ed the brilliant stran fro, displaying his ele every attitude; hove alighting nowhere. V of sweetness to allur things, how I pitied th their petals, for it was the primrosss shivered in the shade, and he butter-cups blazed ou they seemed his favou one, then towards ano and astonishment of glaring yellow dandeli bank, with which n change a word; and ing and shutting his b self-complacency; for coxcomb chose the ga it, but because its br venient resting-place, his gold and purple ti thought, of all that bel voked, that we tried t way, rather than at h eyes continually tun

sailant seemed so rough and warlike in form; nay, barrels, and an occasional c so unceremonious were his manners, if manners frock, whistling as he went ning waiter bought," they may be called, that he instantaneously saluted a little company of human lles their sisting of either sex, me, bore me down to the ground, and began suck-yourself, and a few of your fr ve thile I was gazing my breath till I was ready to faint; then off he came sauntering down the lane. the apparition, flew, singing as he went, without noticing another ing with delightful astonishment When I had a little recov- one of you-I won't say who-stept aside, and blossom on the bank. O the pang of that separation! may ered from the confusion occasioned by this rencon- plucked me. tre, I perceived that my neighbours were all sneer- you never feel one so sharp, or, if you must, may ing at me, and sneering so enviously that I soon it be as momentary;-for the next instant I was the found,—instead of being angry at the honest bee happiest flower in the world;-it was a lady who for rifling my honey, I ought to have thanked him had plucked me, and she placed me in her bosom. for his condescension in taking it by storm; and it There I should have been content to die, but, whethwas evident, to me at least, from his preference and er my brain was turned by my good fortune, or their jealousy, that I was the sweetest and hand- whether the south-wind was envious of my felicity, somest flower of the party. This notion so delighted and blew me away, certain it is, that I had no great my vanity, that I become quite giddy, and eyed cause to be proud of the lady's partiality, for she was so regardless of me, that, before I had gone ten my companions whom nature had made less attractive than myself, with a kind compassionate paces, I fell from my high estate,' and what mortiThen contempt. Down from a branch of the oak, that mo- fied me most was-she never missed me. ment, fell a great sprawling spider full on my bo- indeed, had I perished miserably in the dust, som, where he lay wriggling on his back, five seconds, or been trampled to death by some hob-nailed shoe, in your train,--he who has I am sure, an age of misery to me!-before he had not another personage could gather his legs together, and throw himself, acted as my amanuensis in writing these memoirs, rolled up like a ball, on one of my lowest leaves, picked me up, carried me home, and placed me in / where he remained to my unutterable annoyance, a lachrymatory, filled, as he assures me, with pure considering how he should further dispose of him- Castalian dew, in which I have lived long enough to self. The flowers, which had been hitherto stifling tell you the fable of my life, and, with my dying their spleen against me, or muttering it in low words, to say, that if you find no moral in it, the whispers, now tittered aloud at this ridiculous mis- fault is not mine. Farewell. chance, while I was so paralyzed that I could not even cry out for help. * * *

"At this crisis, the clouds, which had long been lowering, broke suddenly, and poured down rain in torrents on our heads. The mole, neither liking the air nor the water from above, burrowed his way back again into his subterranean abode, without doing any harm, except humbling the pride of the dandelion, for which we were all very much obliged to him. It was only an April storm; towards evening, the sun broke through the gloom, and spread a beautiful rainbow from one end of heaven to the other, as it appeared to me. The blue sky cleared, the earth glowed with verdure; every leaf and sprig of plant and flower, glittered with diamonds of the first water. All nature looked smiling and joyous. The gnats, by myriads, were dancing in circular clouds over our heads, repeatedly assembling, though as often dispersed by the swallows that darted to and fro in the open space between the hedges of the lane, and sometimes skimmed athwart our bank, bending our heads with their delicate breasts, or striking the dew-drops out of our bells, with sudden touches of the tips of their wings. A black-bird, perched on the old oak, chanted in his loudest notes a simple tale, about a few sticks and straws in a neighbouring wood, which he and his true-love had gathered in the rambles of their courtship, and woven into what they called a nest, where five chirpers had been disclosed from the shells that very morning. This had awakened, for the first time since he himself was hatched, all the rapturous tenderness of a parent in his heart, from the fulness of which he poured forth such a song as

made me wish that I had been born "with such a
"and such a head between
pair of wings" as his,
em;" for that little home was all the world to
him;-aye, and he had a right to be happy in his
own way, and to tell every body of his happiness,
though none besides himself cared a straw about eith-
er his nest, his mate, or his young ones. Meanwhile
the firmament above rang with the carolling of
larks; the thrushes answered each other from tree
to tree; and in the hedges, linnets, chaffinches, and
wrens were playing on their small pipes as many
tunes as there were minstrels among them, yet form-
ing one harmonious concert. Above all, the cuckoo,
continually changing his place, but never changing
his note, made glad the ear that hearkened to him,
while the eye in vain sought him out. All was
peace and concord around, and we flowers, forget
ting our little enmities and rivalships, enjoyed the
breeze that mingled our sweets, and waited them

as incense to heaven.

In the height of our festivity, a little company of human beings, the first whom I had seen above the rank of milk-boys, jolting along on their asses, with

MISCELLANY.

MY DEAR MR EDITOR,

smock tinuous existence, and its history might be
written, as if it were that of an individual.
There were ages when it rejoiced in the
novelty of existence; when it bounded rap-
idly along in a career of developement and
discovery, with little regard to detail, and
yet less to objections. Now there are, and
long have been, established principles, and
recognised axioms, which keep the thoughts
within the travelled road, and prevent all
aberration into darkness or light. Then in
its infancy, the mind, bound by no fetters,
and following no footsteps, gathered, in its
wide wanderings, brighter thoughts, and
more beautiful conceptions, and wilder fan-
cies, and more extravagant errors, than
have entered into the imaginations of men
in the subsequent ages of reason. These
glowing thoughts, these all-embracing
truths, these excessive errors, remained,
not perhaps in themselves, but in their in-
For in-
fluence and their consequences.
stance, the religious fables of classical
Greece, and the more distorted supersti-
tions of eastern climes, were probably but
the embodying into a tangible and tradi-
tional form, of the conceptions and the be-
lief of earlier ages, as to the origin, the pow-
ers, and the destinies of nature. Perhaps,
in most of those fables there is little mean-
ing; they may be but arrangements and
modifications of a few simple and original
allegories, if we may so call them; and
they may have been made, alike without
method, purpose, or reason; but in those few
which were in the most exact sense of the
word, primitive and elementary, it is cer-
tainly possible that many distinct traces
might be found of the earliest belief, as to
the causes, the connexions and dependen-
cies of all existences, spiritual as well as
natural.

VIOLA.

I fully intend to make a book; but can-
not exactly tell when, or upon what; I have
only determined to publish an 8vo, which
shall greatly benefit the public, and myself,
by selling very well. Of course, I want a
subject of stainless novelty; one, which
mortal man has never breathed upon,-nor
about. It is not the easiest thing in the
world, to find such a theme; but, at pre-
sent, I think I can't do better than write a
History of the Human Intellect. This may
not be absolutely, in all its parts, an untrod-
den field; but, in this quoting, borrowing,
stealing age, which is decidedly of the
composite order,-it is idle to hope for an
But such a History,
entirely new thing.
as a whole, has never been written; which
rather surprises me, as it certainly might
be executed, and, if well done, would ex-
cite as much interest, and teach as useful
truth, as the relation of any series of ex-
ternal events. The materials for a work of
this kind, are sufficiently abundant, and
available. The direct record of man's
thought, is but slightly imperfect in the
ages of classical antiquity, and is hardly
lost, when we are with the days that lie
shrouded in the outer darkness of history.
We have means of ascertaining the charac-
ter, the power, and the direction, of the
minds of the eminent of former days, in
their systems of natural and intellectual
philosophy, and their various theories, in-
tended to explain the mystery, or regu-
late the conduct of human existence; and
for the mass of mankind, are there not in
the history of their purposes and their
achievments, their traditions and their su-
perstitions, their prevalent wants and
their favourite pleasures, records of their
mental character, legible, and imperishable.

The mind of man has had a sort of con

There are not many things, which all men concur in believing; some few truths, however, have been acknowledged by all nations, in all ages. If we assume that these truths were acquired by the exercise of reflection and ratiocination, and thus gradually, but universally discovered, we meet almost insuperable difficulties in accounting for the variety of errors which now enwrap them. We are called to explain the fact, that the same powers which taught themselves to read these truths in the course, the bounty, the wonders, or the beauty of nature, should afterwards see them only with false and perverted vision; and to trace to its efficient cause the infinite difference which exists between the forms they have assumed in various ages, and among various nations. If we pursue these speculations, we are almost compelled to believe, that there was a time when all men saw these truths distinctly, not by the clouded light of erring reason, not as the boundless discovery of a finite and feeble intelligence, but as a direct emanation of living truth, from its only source;—a beam which fell from heaven to earth, bright with the lustre of eternal and inherent radiance. If this be true, what an accession would it give to the stores of human knowledge, could we gather any portion of the

intellectual wealth of that age, the fragments of whose wisdom have supported all of what is called natural religion, which exists in the world.

A history of Intellect would relate the various states and changes which the mind has passed through, and the direction which human curiosity has pursued in different ages, and the results it has discovered. It could speak of objects which have fastened themselves upon the attention with a stronger grasp, and excited a more intense intellectual industry, and nurtured a more measureless ambition, and a far more presumptuous vanity, than any history could, which saw men only as the parts of a political mass; as the units of a nation. It would speak of the contractile influence which diminished the mental strength and stature of some ages, and of the expansive power, which at other times, opened the mind into full development.

There have been in the physical world, seasons lasting through successive generations, when a universal plague scattered the arrows of sickness and death through all the nations; so, in the successive periods of time, there have been some of yet longer duration, when the intelligence of man was in a state of decrepitude and disease, and thick darkness covered the earth.

Sometimes a general delusion has overshadowed the civilized world, and made men mad in the pursuit and expectation of some boundless blessing, which they idly hoped would change at once all the circumstances of their being; as, for instance, a power of controlling the elements, of bidding the metals change their natures, or of distilling the elixir of unfading life. In past ages there have been not only empirics who assumed to possess these powers, but fools-and some exceeding wise and learned fools too,-who were willing to admit their pretensions, and seek their aid.

In these days, credulity certainly is not the besetting sin; if there be any peculiar intellectual characteristic of this age, it is curiosity. The appetite for novelty has become excessive, and must be gratified, whatever be the tastes and habits which give way to it. This is the true reason of the fact so often complained of, that the mind of man appears to have degenerated ;-that no great intellectual achievements have marked this age; -that stronger minds are distinguished from weaker, only by more spasmodic and transient efforts; that we have no Milton, no Newton, no Bacon,-nay, that even the lesser great men, the Johnsons and Warburtons, Humes and Gibbons, have passed away, and left no legitimate successors; in short, that the giant fathers are followed by a pigmy race, who find it work enough to walk quietly along the smooth and open roads made ready for them. The reason of this state of things, and the way it has been brought about, are obvious enough, though we must go back some distance to find the beginning of the process.

The age of chivalry has gone, but it was a good while after it went away, before all its habits disappeared. Hard fighting is a very

TED STATES

differ
Om easy reading, and it with the tide of publication by reading
was so not remember fore the former amuse- them. Readers, like the epicure, who
ment gashould nere way to the latter. At would eat but one bite from the sunny
length, wipak.
powerful assistance of the side of a peach, must have the essence of
press, thenge was accomplished, and these new books served up to them; hence
books supplanted the lance and the sword, many works are written with little other
and became the established playthings of purpose or effect, than to save the trouble
almost all men of a certain rank. Of of reading many others. In Great Brit-
course, the number of readers was very ain, and many parts of the continent, men
much increased, and with it increased the of letters, of the finest minds and highest
demand for books; it therefore became cultivation, almost devote themselves to
unnecessary for authors to look to pos- to the work of describing and criticising
terity for their recompense of fame. Men the writings of others; occasionally, by
always calculate their goods for the nearest way of variety, making a short and brilliant
market; of course, writers of books suited essay, for which the name of some recent
their wares for the immediate use of their book may serve as a running title.
own days, as soon as they found their co-
temporary readers were numerous enough
to pay them for their exertions a sufficiency
of reputation. Lord Bacon wrote the No-
vum Organum;—and he "bequeaths his
name to posterity after some generations
shall be passed;" and posterity have en-
circled that name with a never-dying splen-
dor. Stewart, too, wrote as a philosopher,
but he wrote for his own days, and he has
lived to see the star of his reputation cul-
minate, and perhaps depart from the zenith
on a downward road. Milton expected not
popularity; he wrote for fame and for fu-
ture ages, and he wrote the Paradise Lost.
Lord Byron knows, or rather knew, that
the reading public waits for him, and is
sure that his works will be bought and
praised first, and then criticised; conse-
quently he wrote Childe Harold.

A very important consequence of the extension of the reading public, arises from the change in the character of those who are to decide upon the merits of a work, and for whom it must therefore principally be written. When there were scarcely one hundred learned men in Europe, if any one of them made a book, he made it with the expectation, that the remaining ninety-nine would criticise it, and he acted accordingly. Now, a writer of talent hopes his work will be read, and read about, by an hundred thousand; and he knows the mob make more noise than the few, and he too acts accordingly. There is inherent in this state of things, a strong tendency to increase and progression; popular books add to the number of readers, and with them grows the demand for such books. This has been the progress of things to the present day, and the consequence is now apparent in the extreme impatience of sustained mental effort, which of necessity prevents all intellectual achievement; and, if this age bears any peculiar mark upon its intellectual character, it is set there by this impatience, and its necessary consequences.

It is sometimes said, this is not the age of great minds; it might better be said not to be the age of great efforts. There is no reason to believe, that there exists not now upon earth as great a quantity of intellectual vigour, as at any former period, or that there are not men capable of accomplishing as much, with the same efforts, as the eminent of earlier days.

The presumption, antecedent to all proof. is certainly against any such intellectual deterioration; and such facts as must be admitted, and seem to rebut this presumption, as, for instance, the difference between the literary manifestations of mind of these days, and those of the ages which have gone, may be accounted for sastifactorily by the want of habits of continued exertion, without sup posing any deficiency of power. The present age, certainly should not be considered altogether inert and indolent, as it is, on the contrary, eminently energetic and active. In all branches of natural philosophy;

in the exact sciences, and the arts which immediately subserve the comforts and wants of civilized life;—in short, in every thing but in literature, the human intellect is acting now, perhaps more strongly and efficiently than at any former period; and the absence of high literary excellence arises, as we have already said, not from a want of effort, but of continued and sustained effort.

The unapproached superiority, which works of art of the classical ages possess over those of subsequent times, must have arisen from a similar cause. It is not that there is not now, or may not be acquired now, an equal perception and comprehension of the beautiful in form, and attitude, and proportion; but that the industry of the sculptor, or the architect, is animated by other motives, and his life is cheered by other hopes than that of making one faultless production; therefore, there is not in his heart, the same entireness and intensity of devotion to his work. Canova earned It is thus that we have become a review- his fortune and his Marquisate, by making ing age. Certain it is, that there never many fine statues; Praxiteles earned his were upon the earth so many people who fame by making a few which were perread and write books, and talk and think fection. There needs no other explanaabout books, as at this present time; but it tion of the difference between the Venus is generally far pleasanter to begin a new de Medicis and Canova's Psyche, than thing than to finish an old one; and to sup- the fact, that in the best ages of Greece, ply the unceasing and enormous demand a statue of a god, arrayed in such mafor novelty, books are multiplied until it jesty of beauty, that every heart bowed would be intolerably irksome to keep along down before it, was the labour and the