in the world the silence, and the voice which was passing through it.

If men, we have often exclaimed, would but listen as attentively to sermons, as they do to the intimations at the end! Emerson generally commands such attention; especially, we are told, that during his first lecture in Edinburgh on Natural Aristocracy it was fine to see him, by his very bashfulness, driven not out of, but into himself, and speaking as if in the forest alone with God and his own soul. This was true self-possession. The audience, too, were made to feel themselves as much alone as their orator. To give a curdling sense of solitude in society, is a much higher achievement than to give a sense of society in solitude. It is among the mightiest acts of spiritual power, thus to insulate the imagination or the conscience of man, and suggests afar off the proceedings of that tremendous day, when in the company of a universe each man will feel himself alone.

In the three lectures we heard from Mr Emerson there did not occur a single objectionable sentence. But there was unquestionably a blank in all, most melancholy to contemplate. We have no sympathy with the attempts which have been made to poison the popular mind, and to rouse the popular passions against this gentleman, whether by misrepresenting his opinions or by blackening his motives. He does not believe himself-whatever an ignorant and conceited scribbler in the "United Presbyterian Magazine" may say to be God. He is the least in the world of a proselytiser. He visited this country solely as a literary man, invited to give literary lectures. Whatever be his creed, he has not, in Scotland at least, protruded it; and even if he had, it would have done little harm; for as easily transfer and circulate Emerson's brain as his belief. But, when we think of such a mind owning a faith seemingly so cold, and vague, and shadowy; and when, in his lectures, we find moral and spiritual truths of such importance

robbed of their awful sanctions, separated like rays cut off from the sun-from their parent system and source-swung from off their moorings upon the Rock of ages-the Infinite and the Eternal-and supported upon his own authority alone—when, in short, the Moon of genius comes between us and the Sun of God, we feel a dreariness and desolation of spirit inexpressible; and, much as we admire the author and love the man, we are tempted to regret the hour when he first landed upon our shores. Our best wishes, and those of thousands, went with him on his homeward way; but coupled with a strong desire that a better, clearer, and more definite light might dawn upon his soul, and create around him a true "forest sanctuary." Long has he been, like Jacob, dreaming in the desert: surely the ladder cannot be far off.

GEORGE DAWSON.

THE office of an interpreter, if not of the highest order, is certainly very useful, honourable, and, at certain periods, particularly necessary. There are times when the angle at which the highest minds of the age stand to the middle and lower classes is exceedingly awkward and uncertain. Their names and their pretensions are well known; even a glimmer of their doctrine has got abroad; some even of their books are read with a maximum of avidity, and a minimum of understanding; but a fuller reflection of their merits and their views-a farther circulation of their spirit, and a more complete discharge of their electric influences, are still needed. For these purposes, unless the men will condescend to interpret themselves, we must have a separate class for the purpose. Indeed, such a class will be created by the circumstances. As each morning we see a

grand process of interpretation, when the living light leaps downwards from heaven to the mountain summits, and from these to the low-lying hills, and from these to the deep glens -each mountain and hill taking up in turn its part in the great translation, till the landscape is one volume of glory -so mind after mind, in succession, and in the order of their intellectual stature, must catch and reflect the empyrean fire of truth.

Chief among the interpreters of our time stands Thomas Carlyle. He has not added any new truth to the world's stock, nor any artistic work to the world's literature, nor is he now likely to do so; but he has stood between the British mind and the great German orbs, and flung down on us their light, with a kind of contemptuous profusion, coloured, too, undoubtedly, by the strange rugged idiosyncrasy on which it has been reflected. This light, however, has fallen short of the middle class, not to speak of the masses of the community. This translation must itself be translated. For some time it might have been advertised in the newspapers-" Wanted, an interpreter for Sartor Resartus." Without the inducement of any such advertisement, but as a volunteer, has Mr George Dawson stepped forward, and has now for two years been plying his profession with much energy and very considerable success.

It were not praise-it were not even flattery-it were simply insult and irony, to speak of Mr Dawson in any other light than as a clever, a very clever translator, or, if he will, interpreter, of a greater translator and interpreter than himself. In all the lectures we have either heard or read of, his every thought and shade of thought was Carlyle's. The matter of the feast was, first course, Carlyle ; second, do.; dessert, do.; toujours, Carlyle: the dishes, dressing, and sauce only, were his own. Nor do we at all quarrel with him for this. Since the public are so highly satisfied, and since Carlyle himself is making no complaint, and instituting no hue and cry, it is all very well. It is really,

pepper and

too, a delightful hachis he does cook, full of spice, and highly palatable to the majority. Our only proper ground of quarrel would be, if he were claiming any independent merit in the thought, apart from the illustrations, the wit, and the easy vigorous talk of the exhibition. We have again and again been on the point of exclaiming, when compelled to contrast description with reality, We shall henceforth believe nothing till we have seen it with our eyes, and heard it with our ears. The most of the pictures we see drawn of celebrated people seem, after we have met with the originals, to have been painted by the blind. So very many determinedly praise a man for qualities which he has not—if a man is tall, they make him short; if dark, they give him fair hair; if his brow be moderate in dimensions, they call it a great mass of placid marble; if he be an easy, fluent speaker, they dignify him. with the name orator; if his eye kindle with the progress of his theme, they tell us that his face gets phosphorescent, and as the face of an angel. Hence the mortifying disappointments which are so common-disappointments produced less by the inferiority than by the unlikeness of the reality to the description. A distinguished painter who visited Coleridge was chagrined to find his forehead, of which he had read ravings innumerable, of quite an ordinary size. We watched Emerson's face very narrowly, but could not, for our life, perceive any glow mounting up its pale and pensive lines. We had heard much of Dawson's eloquence, but found that while there was much fluency there was little fire, and no enthusiasm. Distance and dunces together had metamorphosed him, even as a nobler cause of deception sometimes changes a village steeple into a tower of rubies, and plates a copse with gold.

To call this gentleman a Cockney Carlyle, a transcendental bagman, were to be too severe; to call him a combination of Cobbett and Carlyle were to be too complimentary. But while there is much in the matter which

reminds you of Carlyle, as the reflection reminds you of the reality, there is much in his style and manner which recalls William Cobbett. Could we conceive Cobbett by any possibility forswearing his own nature, converted to Germanism, and proclaiming it in his own way, we should have had George Dawson anticipated and forestalled. The Saxon style, the homely illustrations, the conversational air, the frequent appeals to common sense, the broad Anglicanisms, and the perfect self-possession, are common to both, with some important differences, indeed; since Dawson is much terser and pointed—since his humour is dry, not rich and since he is, as to substance, rather an echo than a native, though rude voice.

To such qualities as we have now indirectly enumerated, we are to attribute the sway he has acquired over popular, and especially over English audiences. They are not, while hearing him, called profoundly either to think or feel. They are not painfully reminded that they have not read. Enthusiastic appeal never warms their blood. A noble selfcontempt and forgetfulness is never inculcated. Of reverence for the ancient, the past, and the mysterious, there is little or none. They are never excited even to any fervour of destructive zeal. A strong, somewhat rough voice is heard pouring out an even, calm, yet swift torrent of mingled paradoxes and truisms, smart epigrammatic sentences, short, cold, hurrying sarcasms, deliberate vulgarisms of expression, quotations from "Sartor Resartus" and Scripture, and from no other book-never growing and never diminishing in interest-never suggesting an end as near, nor reminding us of a beginning as past-every one eager to listen, but no one sorry when it is done; the purpose of the whole being to shake, we think too much, respect for formulas, creeds, and constituted authorities-to inculcate, we think too strongly, a sense of independence and individualism-and to give to the future, we think, an undue preponderance over the past.