DISTINGUISHED FOREIGN VISITORS TO THE UNITED STATES.

William IV., then Prince and Midshipman, saw Nelson for the first time (Captain of the Albermarle,) lying in the Narrows, off Staten Island. The same jovial sailor king is said to have entertained a party of British officers at an old stone house, still standing at Ravenswood, L. I., a mile below Hell Gate, on the East River.

Louis Phillippe was in the United States in 1796, a traveller, a schoolmaster, and an exile.

Louis Napoleon was a denizen of New York, and one of the Metropolitan lions about 1836-37.

MISCELLANEOUS THOUGHTS.

Collections of poetry made by poets are generally indifferent. Taste is not always the concomitant of genius and fancy, and even when exhibited in the works of the poet himself, he often seems to want it when selecting from the works of others. The collections of Southey and Campbell have as much inferior as really admirable matter. Southey has included much lumbering verse in his English Parnassus; and Campbell's anthology contains at least as large a proportion of mediocre and meagre verse as of really fine poetry. Our two finest American poets have edited two selections truly inferior to most of their own productions.

A FEW NOMINAL PARADOXES.

Maids of Honor, who have little of the article to boast of; Keepers of the Royal Conscience, without any of their own;

Irreverend Reverends; Irreligious Religionists; City Pastorals; Patriot Kings; Honest Thieves, and Incorruptible Politicians.

THEATRICAL PORTRAITS.

Cibber's Apology for his own life, a most entertaining piece of autobiography, contains the first prose gallery of theatrical portraits in the English language. Contemporary notices in the Tatler, Spectator, and Guardian; and later critical sketches and allusions, chiefly incidental, as of Garrick, in Tom Jones; of Quin, in Humphrey Clincker; the masterly portrait of Garrick, in Retaliation; notices of Clive, in Gray's Letters; long before, of Nell Gwynne, in Grammont's Memoirs; and of Garrick and Siddons, in Boswell and Cumberland's Autobiography, contribute to keep up the succession of original sources for a history of the stage, to the period of the publication of Churchill's Rosciad.

The Rosciad forms a poetical pendant to Cibber. It is a gallery of miniatures in verse, as his sketches are in prose. Exquisitely finished, terse and pointed, they undoubtedly are, but no less prejudiced and satirical. Churchill was, as a celebrated critic has written, "a fine, rough, manly satirist." The first and third of these epithets only can, with truth, be applied to a just critic. Effect, however, not justice, was the object of these witty strictures and lively caricatures.

For a long period, theatrical biography, as well as criticism, fell into dull hands. Galt's Lives is the best general work of this class; but the crude Scotchman wanted geniality, to appreciate with cordiality the heroes of the sock and buskin.

Boaden's name is a synonyme for dullness. Our worthy Dunlap, too, was literal and tedious. Even men of genius,

and poets, of late years, have failed in dramatic biographyCampbell's Life of Mrs. Siddons and Barry Cornwall's Life of Kean are acknowledged failures.

A new generation of theatrical critics sprang up in the magazines and journals in London, some thirty years since, of whom Hazlitt, Lamb and Leigh Hunt are the brilliant leaders, whose ablest disciple is Foster, of the London Examiner.

Here, at home, we have had good criticism, in the Old Bachelor, in his description of Cooper's Macbeth, and Dana's exquisite critique on Kean's acting.

XXXIII.

PHILOSOPHICAL CHIT-CHAT.

THE study of even inexplicable problems is by no means altogether useless, if they effect the sharpening of the critical faculties. The reasoning employed is generally inconclusive ; the evidence is apt to be unsatisfactory or insufficient; yet the powers of the mind are braced by the exercise of inge, nuity, of patient thought, of careful analysis. Mental activitythe habit of cautious investigation, self-knowledge, and candor, ought to result from these pursuits.

It is well to ascertain the fruits of human inquiry, to know the unknowable, to speak after the German fashion, or as Locke has happily stated this position: "When we know our own strength, we shall the better know what to undertake with hopes of success; and when we shall have well surveyed the powers of our own minds, and made some es

timate what we may expect from them, we shall not be inclined either to sit still and not set our thoughts on work at all, in despair of knowing anything, or, on the other side, question and disclaim all knowledge, because some things are not. to be understood. It is of great use to the sailor to know the length of his line, though he cannot with it fathom all the depths of the ocean."

On some of the most important of these topics, (considered as speculative dogmas,) the proper state of mind appears to be that of philosophic doubt. Indifference promotes clearness; a clear thinker can distinctly express his doubts; liberal views beget a tolerant temper in others, and imply the possession of it in the theorist.

Beattie, himself a writer on these subjects and a Professor of Moral Philosophy, expressly admits, "All the practical, and most of the speculative parts of moral science have been frequently and fully explained by the ablest authors." In any thirty or forty volumes of ethical discussion, you will find here a new term, there a novel illustration; for the most part, a constant recurrence to admitted principles and facts, varied in their applications to life and conduct to be sure, but essentially the same.

Two or three of the ablest works of this class, with an accurate and succinct historical survey of the doctrines and characters of the leading philosophers, will be of more real service to the honest student than a small library read and collated after the old fashions. Most of these works, as Bacon advises, may be merely "tasted," (read in part or hastily,) others by deputy, (in reviews, commentaries, critical diction

aries,) and a very few thoroughly studied—the master minds, as infrequent here as in every department.

Of the great mass of ethical and metaphysical writers, the style is extremely poor, mean, bald, and tedious. They seek to be so distinct, and are so copious, as to become tiresome, and that too, in the discussion of conceded truths. They reverse the self-censure of Horace on his concise obscurity, and overwhelm a few commonplace ideas in a copia verborum. But this waste of the syllogism is as great an error, as a matter of taste, as the most verbose declamation. Diffuse logic is even worse than diffuse rhetoric, as well as inimical to the very spirit of reasoning. Rhetoric admits copiousness; logic is close; beauty is strength here, as well the essence of wisdom as of wit,

After the piles of controversial tracts, sermons, and philosophical treatises on the subjects of liberty, freedom of the will, moral necessity, &c., the sum of the matter, it appears, may be thus briefly stated. Moral necessity appears to be a fair logical inference from the premises, but freedom is safest to assume as a ground of practice; as a question, it is still open to the metaphysicians.

Philosophical necessity, practical freedom-to reconcile History and Providence, freedom of the will and the foreknowledge of Omniscience, (wholly a mystery,)-is logically impossible.

Systems are invariably one-sided and exclusive, exhibiting in general but a partial view of any question, and upon which an immoderate emphasis is laid. Truth lies between the extremes of opposite theories. Thus, men are both selflovers and benevolent, selfishness and disinterestedness being