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coldness and austerity win upon our | dred to genius essentially is,) in a large

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sense, superior to his time, and unsusceptible-encased in the pride of exalted aspira"Live unto the dignity of thy nature, and tion-of any decisive influence therefrom. leave it not disputable at last, whether thou Any one who has compared the literhast been a man; or since thou art a composi-ature of two centuries ago with that of the tion of man and beast, how thou hast predominantly passed thy days, to state the denominaBe not under any brutal metempsychosis while thou livest, and walkest about erectly under the scheme of man. Let thy thoughts be of things which have not entered into the hearts of beasts; think of things long past and long to come; acquaint thyself with the choragium of the stars, and consider the vast expansion beyond them. Let intellectual optics give thee a glance of things which visive organs reach not. Have a glimpse of incomprehensibles; and thoughts of things which thoughts but tenderly touch. Lodge immaterials in thy head; ascend unto invisibles; fill thy spirit with spirituals, with the mysteries of faith, the magnalities of religion, and thy life with the honor of God; without which, though giants in wealth and dignity, we are but dwarfs and pigmies in humanity, and may hold a pitiful rank in that triple division of mankind, heroes, men, and beasts. For though human souls are said to be equal, yet there is no small inequality in their operations; some maintain the allowable station of men, many are far below it; and some have been so divine, as to approach the apogeum of their natures, and to be in the confinium of spirits."*

present, very readily marks a grand distinction between the two periods, both in the level from which the work issues, and the tone with which its contemplations are uttered. Literature has grown democratic. The masses of humanity, before overlooked, and left entirely out of the reckoning, now assume an importance that almost overshadows the rest of mankind. We do not refer alone to such writers as Dickens, or Carlyle. We speak of the general tone of a large share of the current literature. That the tendency in this direction is so strong as to have already become vicious, and to render a reaction necessary, we firmly believe. To Sir Thomas Browne, the vulgar were simply vulgar: the wearing of a human shape, so far from being a redeeming circumstance, but added to their disgrace, in his view, from unavoidable contrast with the dignity and refinement becoming in

true men.

A certain amount of sympathy with the struggling millions of humanity, whose life is one continual toil, and whom hardship and sorrow perpetually encompass, is indispensable to the highest qualities of the scholar, no less than to true genius. Without it, none knows how to touch those common chords, whose vibration alone is universal fame, and by means of which, and not otherwise, the author gains a permanent abode in the hearts of mankind. From hence

we can understand why Browne always has had, and always will have, from his many admirers, few to love him heartily, and treasure him in their affections.

Such was the mood to which Browne himself had attained: a stately dignity, little warmed by sympathy with human hearts, and looking down with pity upon "My the inferior in culture and station. conversation," he says, "I do acknowledge austere, my behavior full of rigor, sometimes not without morosity." We are not, therefore, surprised to find him saying, after avowing a "general charity" for all men, and a love for everything, (" but the devil :")—“ If there be any among those common objects of hatred I do contemn Yet the author of Religio Medici was and laugh at, it is that great enemy of reason, virtue, and religion, the multitude." by no means an inveterate hater. The common affections of humanity flowed attempts at hatred take anything but a serious turn. He owes a particular spite to not through his heart; the pulses of common sympathy which have universally vi-"the devil," (the only creature of God, he brated through the soul of genius, never beat in his bosom. This was in some sense a fault of his time and place; but it was not from custom that it had possession of his mind, for he was, (as everything kin

Christian Morals, III, 14.

All his

admits, that is properly hateful,) and intimates that it would afford him a specialdelight to be permitted to propose to him a few hard questions. For instance, in speaking of the world's final destruction: "To determine the day and year," says he, "of this inevitable time, had been an excellent query

to have posed the devil of Delphos, and must needs have forced him to some strange amphibology." We like this quaint humor of the austere scholar, as it occasionally breaks out in the midst of his most serious disquisitions, hardly conscious, doubtless, to himself, and unexpected by the reader. This humor, however, such as it is, never finds an object among the low and everyday concerns of vulgar life; it never ventures to meddle with a subject less sublime than the fallen archangel; and that, too, only in his more dignified peculiarities. Southey could find an unfailing source of fun in the hoofs and tail of this distinguished personage, but to Sir Thomas Browne, there never occurred a train of meditation which was not altogether too grave to be intermingled with such grotesque diversion.

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That Browne had, in the common acceptation of the term, any real humor, cannot properly be asserted. There is nothing of the playful in him. His reader is taken by surprise at such an allusion as this: "I ever hear a passing-bell, though in my mirth." We pause, and vainly attempt to figure to ourselves what sort of levity that might be, in which it were possible for such a one to bear any part. "I have shaked hands with delight, in my blood and canicular days," he he says elsewhere, but in such a manner as to leave us to infer that those were, to his mind, only seasons of vanity, long since passed, and never very heartily embraced. From the time he becomes known to the world, and according to all the tokens that remain of his disposition and habits, no one can reasonably take exceptions to his own account of this matter, or perceive the necessity of any great reserve or caution in accepting it as the whole truth. "I was born," says he, "in the planetary hour of Saturn, and I think I have a piece of that leaden planet in me. I am no way facetious, nor disposed for the mirth and galliardise of company."

Yet a sort of covert, elusive, unconscious humor there is, pervading every part of his writings, the most serious no less than the apparently trivial-subtle, hard to designate or even understand-but always to be taken into the account as an essential ingredient of his style of thought and expression. It is no strange thing,

"in one

therefore, to find him saying that " dream I can compose a whole comedy, behold the action, apprehend the jests, and laugh myself awake at the conceits thereof. Mysterious and incomprehensible as it is, our dreams may become our truest instructors in self-knowledge, and they are often the revelators of many a natural quality and innate propensity, which habit has rendered latent, and which in the waking life of our spirit have come to be perpetually dormant. This element of humor, which might, under a different development, have acquired a predominating influence in the mind of Browne, now moves 'many fathom deep," like the spirit that followed the ship of the Ancient Mariner-constantly felt-ever unseen and

obscure.

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The Religio Medici comprises two grand divisions-the first of which seems to be devoted to the author's Faith; the second develops his notions of Charity. His peculiar conceptions of the nature and province of faith are worthy of especial notice. To give assent to that which reason approves, is to him a very small matterfaith comes in only where the judgment ceases to give assent, and has its chief and noblest work, where reason even enters her contradictory protest. Indeed, he complains that "there be not impossibilities enough in religion for an active faith."

It might be a very natural inquiry here, by what law his faith is squared, or how he shall know what to receive as true, and what to reject as false-allowing to the voice of reason not so much as a veto. Yet the whole tenor of his life, and the general cast of his mind, plainly enough answer the query, and thereby help us to a glimpse of certain foundation principles of his belief. The established order, both in Church and State, is to him sacred and unquestionable. Dream as he might, on other matters, he seems never to have conceived the possibility of a greater social perfection, or of a form of religious belief and worship better adapted to the wants of human nature. Existing institutions were therefore a law to his faith, so perfect and inappellable, that even with all his wild vagaries-his speculations upon the final cause of eclipses, and his wanton reveries over the oracles of old-he never once overstepped (scarcely ventured even to reach!

the limits prescribed by his education and the laws. He distinctly avows that, with him, reason is subordinate to the teachings of the Church, as the Church is subordinate to the Jewish Scriptures. Of a temper naturally visionary, (though we find it impossible to discover any appropriateness in Coleridge's designation of "affectionate enthusiast,") had his mind but swung aloof from these moorings, we might have looked for extravagances, less wild and antic, perhaps, than we are doomed to witness among our transcendental savans, yet, from the superiority of his intellect, of sufficient consequence to save him from contempt.

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That Browne had something of austerity, has already been seen. Intellect with him was supreme. Affection was rigidly governed, and passion was suppressed. His enthusiasm, even, had a stateliness of march and a severity of demeanor, that amounted almost to a perfect disguise. His was not a heart that could love. At thirty, he tells us that he "never yet cast a true affection upon a woman.' And though his marriage, some years after, puts a face of inconsistency upon the contempt at this period expressed for the other sex, yet it is easy to believe that no material change, in this particular, ever passed upon his mind. Such a cold, heroic pursuit of wisdom and virtue will always command respect and even high admiration, but there is nothing in it to love and we should greatly belie our own judgment and feelings, did we avow any ardent affection for his writings, or any impulse to seek for consolation and sympathy in his bosom, amidst the ills and perplexities of our life. While it makes us more proud of humanity to know that such a man has lived, we never feel our pulse beat warmer at the mention of his name-no sweet words of beauty and hope, from his pen, ever gush upon our spirit in moments of dejection and sorrow. Thomas Browne cared very little for the beautiful or the tender. He could weep at the idle parade of a Romish procession, but for a heart overwhelmed and broken with grief, he had no kind word of comfort. He could name, doubtless, many hundreds of flowers, but their delicate loveliness never touched his heart. He talks much and frequently of nature, yet he could never have cordially sympathized with the beautiful child of affection who should say in simplicity: "I have ever loved the flowers, and even from my earliest years, the greatest happiness that I could know was

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Sir Thomas Browne, then, did not waste his energies in a vain and endless chase after absolute truth. Clearly recognizing that man is but relative in his nature, and encompassed by no calculable course of events, nor influenced by the same unvaried causes, nor able, at all times and in all positions, to get a complete and reliable view of the elements on which his reason is exercised, he wisely abstained from a search he saw must be fruitless, and contented himself to attempt a discovery of his immediate relations, and of the wants arising therefrom. He thrust off every approach of skepticism, therefore, by a suppression of all doubts that arose to disturb a belief which he had once deliberately settled, knowing that in this state of imperfect vision, many uncertainties and apparent contradictions will attach themselves to all the weightier conclusions of our reason. The great subjects on which his contemplations most delighted to dwell, as lready intimated, were of a nature far renoved from the ordinary affairs of life, constituting a spiritual world in which few, n the present state of being, have leisure abitually to dwell. To lose himself in neditations upon an incomprehensible De-a solitary ramble among them, and an hour's by, was his constant delight, and all the oftier themes of human life, and death, nd destiny, were forever returning to his houghts. In these was his existence; nd none to whom such matters have any terest can lightly esteem the manifold nd various lucubrations, of which his orks are the elaborate record.

silent communion with nature." Beauty, in his eye, was nothing-wisdom was all. We open his pages with reverence,—we read with admiration,-we close them and go forth into the world, to find a darker hue and a sterner aspect on the face of destiny, and a more sombre shadow upon all things.

J. H. B.

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HYMN OF CREATION.

(IN THE INDUS.)

Creation, as it is described by MENU, was a work of Brahma, who is the principal person of the three that emanated from Brehm, the VAST, the ineffable, ONE. Brahma, the first of created gods, gave origin to the world by conceiving it in his thought.

See Article "The Laws of Menu," by J. D. Whelpley, American Review, Vol. I. 1845.

WHERE SURRAWATA's crag aspires,
An Indian minstrel stood alone,
Seeing the manifold soft fires

Of evening paint the westering zone;
While far below a large blue deep
Lay calmly in its circle curled,
And the low breathing of its sleep
Like music charmed the Orient world.
The poet gazed as poets gaze

Along the wave, the mount, the air,
With soul of prayer and lips of praise;
For BREHM HIMSELF was kindling there,
And, like an over-wearied dove,

The earth lay brooding in His breast of love.

The moon came up with dewy wreath,
And in the sunset's golden street,
The evening paled and died beneath
The tramplings of her silver feet.
Silent the priest of nature stood—
His hands upon his harp-his eyes
Bent raptly on the purple flood
That filled the hollows of the skies.
But when the planet, calm and queenly,
In mid heaven sat serenely,-

Gazing with extatic looks,

On the old heroic books

That Brehm hath written on the folded stars,—

He struck the strings; the wakened lyre

Leaped to an answer for his soul on fire-

The holy hymn rolled out and rang the willing wire.

I.

Mountains and seas, and suns, and stars, and spheres,

That fill the deep caves of the dark Abyss

With sounding Meres

Of splendor, giving and receiving bliss!

Oh, steadfast marks by whose keen glow

*The Hindoo name for God.

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He said, and from his shoulders swift unfurled
Their wings, like snowy clouds, and bore away
Into the Inner World,

Which owns the SIRE's immediate sway.
He stood upon the margin of the Sphere,
Waiting until the essence trembling out
Should wrap his charmed soul about

With sympathy, and draw the angelic near

Its awful but resplendent source: nor waited long,Soon shone he there with that selectest throng

Who feel, in dread delight,

The Father-Brehm's melodious love

Strike through their frames a wondrous might
That lifts them swooning to the heaven above.

* An incarnation of BREHM.

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