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has told him so*. And if he come to the Pure Reason of the Germans, or the discoveries which that contemplative nation say they have made, in the highest regions of the mind, of a reason above ordinary reason, reconciling the logic and consciousness of the latter with the former's instinctive and hitherto undeveloped affirmations, he is told that he may give evidence to faith after his own most approved fashion. For our parts, we confess that we are of a more child-like turn of contentment; and that keeping our ordinary reason to what appears to us its fittest task, namely, the guarding us against the admission of gratuitous pains, we will suffer a loving faith to open to us whatever regions it pleases, of possibilities honourable to God and man, cultivating them studiously, whether we thoroughly understand them or not. For who thoroughly understands anything which he cultivates, even to the flowers at his feet? And cultivating these, shall we refuse to cultivate also the stars, and aspirations and thoughts angelical, and hopes of rejoining friends and kindred, and all the flowers of heaven?—No, assuredly,- not while we have a star to see, and a thought to reach it. Why should heaven have given us those? Why not have put us into some blank region of space, with a wall of nothingness on all sides of us, and no power to have a thought beyond it? Because, some advocate of chance and blind action may say, it could not help it; because the nature of things could not help it; because things are as they are. 0 the assumptions of those who protest against assumption of the faculty which exclusively calls itself reason, and would deprive us of some of our most reasonable faculties! Even upon the ground of these gentlemen's showing, faith itself cannot be helped; at least not as long as things are as they are ;" and in this respect we are assuredly not for helping it. We are content to let it love and be happy.

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With regard to the belief in Spirits (which we take this opportunity of saying a few words upon, as it was in answer to our correspondent on this subject that we made use of the word we have explained) it has surely a right, even upon the severest grounds of reason, to rest upon the same privileges of possibility, and of a modest and wise ignorance to the contrary, as any other parts of a loving and even a knowing faith; for the more we know of creation, the more we discover of the endless and thronging forms of it, of the crowds in air, earth, and water; and are we, with our confessedly limited faculties, and our daily discoveries of things wonderful, to assume that there are no modes of being but such as are cognizable to our five senses? Had we possessed but two or three senses, we know very well that there are thousands of things round about us of which we * Deontology, vol. ii. p. 102.

could have formed no conception; and does not common modesty, as well as the possibilities of infinitude, demand of us that we should suppose there are senses besides our own, and that with the help of but one more we might become aware of phenomena at present unmanifested to human eyes? Locke has given celebrity to a story of a blind man, who, being being asked what he thought of the colour of red, said he conceived it must be like the sound of a trumpet. A counterpart to this story has been found (we know not with what truth) in that of a deaf man, who is said to have likened the sound of a trumpet to the colour of red. Dr. Blacklock, who was blind from his infancy, and who wrote very good heart and impart verses, in which he talked of light and colours with all the confidence of a repetition-exercise (a striking lesson to us verse-makers!) being requested one day to state what he really thought of something visible, of the sun, for instance,-said, with modest hesitation, that he conceived it must resemble "a pleasing friendship!" We quote from memory; but this was his simile. We may thus judge what we miss by the small amount of our own complete senses. We may have been sometimes tempted to think, seeing what a beautiful world this is, and how little we make of it, that human beings are not the chief inhabitants of the planet, but that there are others, of a nobler sort, who see and enjoy all its loveliness, and who regard us with the same curiosity with which we look upon bees or beavers. But a consideration of the divine qualities of love and imagination and hope (as well as some other reflections, more serious) restores us to confidence in ourselves, and we resume our task of endeavouring to equalise enjoyment with the abundance afforded us. When we look upon the stars at night-time, shining and sparkling like so many happy eyes, conscious of their joy, we cannot help fancying that they are so many heavens which have realised, or are in the progress of realising, the perfections of which they are capable; and that our own planet (a star in the heavens to them) is one of the same golden brotherhood of hope and possibility, destined to be retained as a heaven, if its inhabitants answer to the incitements of the great Experimenter, or to be done away with for a new experiment if they fail. For endeavour and failure, in the particular, are manifestly a part of the universal system; and considering the large scale on which Providence acts, and the mixture of evil through which good advances, Deluges are to be accounted for on principles of the most natural reason, moral as well as physical, and an awful belief thus becomes reconcileable to the commonest deductions of utility.

But "bad spirits" and spirits to be "afraid of ?" We confess that, large and willing as our faith is in the utmost possibilities of life

and varieties of being, we see no reason of any sort to believe in those, at least not as made up of anything like pure evil or malignity. It is possible that other beings, as well as men, may partake more or less of imperfection, and so be liable to mistake and brute impulses; but, as we need not be troubled with this side of spiritual possibility, why should we? For as to pure evil or malignity for its own sake, apart from some procurement or notion of good, nothing which we see in all nature induces us to suppose it possible. The veriest wretch that ever astonished the community, did not perpetrate his crime out of sheer love of inflicting evil, but out of some false idea of good and pleasure, or of avoidance of evil, which idea might have been done away in him by a wiser and healthier training. And as to the belief in a great malignant principle or Devil (though even he has his horrible story lightened by a mixture of mistake and suffering,) the most devout Christians have long been giving it up, especially since they have observed that the places in which he is mentioned in Scripture are very rare, sometimes apocryphal, and at other times translateable into a very different sense from what was commonly received. In truth, the word "devil" has not been translated at all; it has simply been repeated, and thus given rise, in many instances, to a manifest and painful delusion; for devil (diabolus, Latin; diavolo, Italian) is merely the Greek word diaßoxos (diabolos) repeated; and diabolos signified simply an accuser, calumniator; it was a Greek word for an evilspeaker, a thrower of stones, and came from a verb signifying to cast through or against. The Latin word is used in the sense to this day, in the well-known appellation of the AttorneyGeneral, which has caused so many jokes against that officer; for he who was known in France by the title of Public Accuser is designated in law Latin as the King's or Royal Accuser, that is to say, Devil, "Diabolus Regis." The word is flat and plain enough, and very edifying. How simply is the frightful supernatural caution of the Apostle thus converted into the most natural of all cautions !

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"Be sober, be vigilant (says the GreekEnglish,) for your adversary the Decil walketh about, seeking whom he may devour."

But "Be sober, be vigilant (says the proper English-English,) for your adversary the Accuser walketh about seeking whom he may devour."

Here is a poor mistaken human being, instead of a prowling Satan; and what can be more natural, simple, or reconcileable with God's goodness and pre-eminence, and the working of an improveable weakness and blockish mystery, instead of a malignant might?

To show how accustomed we are to follow

up the spiritual analogies suggested by all kinds of reasonable and loving faith, we will close this article with a copy of verses which we wrote last winter, after we had been thinking of some beloved friends who have disappeared from this present state of being.

AN ANGEL IN THE HOUSE.

How sweet it were, if without feeble fright,
Or dying of the dreadful beauteous sight,
An angel came to us, and we could bear
To see him issue from the silent air
At evening in our room, and bend on ours
His divine eyes, and bring us from his bowers
News of dear friends, and children who have never
Been dead indeed: as we shall know for ever.
Alas! we think not what we daily see
About our hearths,-angels, that are to be,
Or may be if they will, and we prepare
Their souls and ours to meet in happy air,-
A child, a friend, a wife whose soft heart sings
In unison with ours, breeding its future wings.

LIII.-ON DEATH AND BURIAL.

THE cultivation of pleasant associations is, next to health, the great secret of enjoyment; and, accordingly, as we lessen our cares and increase our pleasures, we may imagine ourselves affording a grateful spectacle to the Author of happiness. Error and misery, taken in their proportion, are the exceptions in his system. The world is most unquestionably happier upon the whole than otherwise; or light and air, and the face of nature, would be different from what they are, and mankind no longer be buoyed up in perpetual hope and action. By cultivating agreeable thoughts, then, we tend, like bodies in philosophy, to the greater mass of sensations, rather than the

less.

What we can enjoy, let us enjoy like creatures made for that very purpose: what we cannot, let us, in the same character, do our best to deprive of its bitterness. Nothing can be more idle than the voluntary gloom with which people think to please Heaven in certain matters, and which they confound with serious acknowledgment, or with what they call a due sense of its dispensations. It is nothing but the cultivation of the principle of fear, instead of confidence, with whatever name they may disguise it. It is carrying frightened faces to court, instead of glad and grateful ones; and is above all measure ridiculous, because the real cause of it, and, by the way, of a thousand other feelings which religious courtiers mistake for religion, cannot be concealed from the Being it is intended to honour. There is a dignity certainly in suffering well, where we cannot choose but suffer ;-if we must take physic, let us do it like men;-but what would be his dignity, who, when he had the choice in his power, should make the physic bitterer

than it is, or even to refuse to render it more palatable, purely to look grave over it, and do honour to the physician?

The idea of our dissolution is one of those which we most abuse in this manner, principally, no doubt, because it is abhorrent from the strong principle of vitality implanted in us, and the habits that have grown up with it. But what then? So much the more should we divest it of all the unpleasant associations which it need not excite, and add to it all the pleasant ones which it will allow.

But what is the course we pursue? We remember having a strong impression, years ago, of the absurdity of our mode of treating a death-bed, and of the great desirableness of having it considered as nothing but a sick one, -one to be smoothed and comforted, even by cordial helps, if necessary. We remember

also how some persons, who, nevertheless, did too much justice to the very freest of our speculations to consider them as profane, were startled by this opinion, till we found it expressed, in almost so many words, by no less an authority than Lord Bacon. We got at our notion through a very different process, no doubt, - he through the depth of his knowledge, and we from the very buoyancy of our youth; but we are not disposed to think it the less wise on that account. "The serious," of course, are bound to be shocked at so cheering a proposition; but of them we have already spoken. The great objection would be, that such a system would deprive the evil-disposed of one terror in prospect, and that this principle of determent is already found too feeble to afford any diminution. The fact is, the whole principle is worth little or nothing, unless the penalty to be inflicted is pretty certain, and appeals also to the less sentimental part of our nature. It is good habits,-a well-educated conscience, - a little early knowledge, the cultivation of generous motives,-must supply people with preventives of bad conduct; their sense of things is too immediate and lively to attend, in the long run, to anything else. We will be bound to say, generally speaking, that the prospective terrors of a death-bed never influenced any others than nervous consciences, too weak, and inhabiting organizations too delicate, to afford to be very bad ones. But, in the mean time, they may be very alarming to such consciences in prospect, and very painful to the best and most temperate of mankind in actual sufferance; and why should this be, but, as we have said before, to keep bitter that which we could sweeten, and to persist in a mistaken want of relief, under a notion of its being a due sense of our condition? We know well enough what a due sense of our condition is in other cases of infirmity; and what is a death-bed but the very acme of infirmity, the sickness, bodily and mental, that of all others has most need of relief?

If the death happens to be an easy one, the case is altered; and no doubt it is oftener so than people imagine ;-but how much pains are often taken to render it difficult!-First, the chamber, in which the dying person lies, is made as gloomy as possible with curtains, and vials, and nurses, and terrible whispers, and, perhaps, the continual application of handkerchiefs to weeping eyes; then, whether he wishes it or not, or is fit to receive it or not, he is to have the whole truth told him by some busy-body who never was so anxious, perhaps, in the cause of veracity before ;-and lastly, come partings, and family assemblings, and confusion of the head with matters of faith, and trembling prayers, that tend to force upon dying weakness the very doubts they undertake to dissipate. Well may the soldier take advantage of such death-beds as these, to boast of the end that awaits him in the field.

But having lost our friend, we must still continue to add to our own misery at the circumstance. We must heap about the recollection of our loss all the most gloomy and distasteful circumstances we can contrive, and thus, perhaps, absolutely incline ourselves to think as little of him as possible. We wrap the body in ghastly habiliments, put it in as tasteless a piece of furniture as we can invent, dress ourselves in the gloomiest of colours, awake the barbarous monotony of the churchbell, (to frighten every sick person in the neighbourhood,) call about us a set of officious mechanics, of all sorts, who are counting their shillings, as it were, by the tears that we shed, and watching with jealousy every candle's end of their " perquisites," and proceed to consign our friend or relation to the dust, under a ceremony that takes particular pains to impress that consummation on our minds. Lastly, come tasteless tombstones and ridiculous epitaphs, with perhaps a skull and cross-bones at top; and the tombstones are crowded together, generally in the middle of towns, always near the places of worship, unless the church-yard is overstocked. Scarcely ever is there a tree on the spot;-in some remote villages alone are the graves ever decorated with flowers*. All is stony, earthy, and dreary. It seems as if, after having rendered everything before death as painful as possible, we endeavoured to subside into a sullen indifference, which contradicted itself by its own efforts.

The Greeks managed these things better. It is curious that we, who boast so much of our knowledge of the immortality of the soul, and of the glad hopes of an after-life, should take such pains to make the image of death melancholy; while, on the other hand, Gentiles whom we treat with so much contempt for their ignorance on those heads, should do the reverse, and associate it with emblems that * Matters have been improving since this article was written.

ought to belong rather to us. But the truth is, that we know very little what we are talking about when we speak, in the gross, of the ancients, and of their ideas of Deity and humanity. The very finest and most amiable part of our notions on those subjects comes originally from their philosophers; all the rest, the gloom, the bad passions, the favouritism, are the work of other hands, who have borrowed the better materials as they proceeded, and then pretended an original right in them. Even the absurd parts of the Greek Mythology are less painfully absurd than those of any other; because, generally speaking, they are on the cheerful side instead of the gloomy. We would rather have a Deity who fell in love with the beautiful creatures of his own making, than one who would consign nine hundred out of a thousand to destruction for not believing ill of him.

But not to digress from the main subject. The ancients did not render the idea of death so harshly distinct, as we do, from that of life. They did not extinguish all light and cheerfulness in their minds, and in things about them, as it were, on the instant; neither did they keep before one's eyes, with hypochondriacal pertinacity, the idea of death's heads and skeletons, which, as representations of humanity, are something more absurd than the brick which the pedant carried about as the specimen of his house. They selected pleasant spots for sepulture, and outside the town; they adorned their graves with arches and pillars,-with myrtles, lilies, and roses; they kept up the social and useful idea of their great men by entombing them near the highway, so that every traveller paid his homage as he went; and latterly, they reduced the dead body to ashes,—a clean and inoffensive substance-gathered it into a tasteful urn, and often accompanied it with other vessels of exquisite construction, on which were painted the most cheerful actions of the person departed, even to those of his everyday life, the prize in the games, the toilet, the recollections of his marriages and friendships -the figures of beautiful females, everything, in short, which seemed to keep up the idea of a vital principle, and to say, "the creature who so did and so enjoyed itself cannot be all gone." The image of the vital principle and of an after-life was, in fact, often and distinctly repeated on these vessels by a variety of emblems, animal and vegetable, particularly the image of Psyche, or the soul, by means of the butterfly, an association which, in process of time, as other associations gathered about it, gave rise to the most exquisite allegory in the world, the story of Cupid and Psyche.

Now, we do not mean to say, that everybody who thinks as we do upon this subject, should or can depart at once from existing customs, especially the chief ones. These things must either go out gradually or by some

convulsive movement in society, as others have gone; and mere eccentricity is no help to their departure. What we cannot undo, let us only do as decently as possible; but we might render the dying a great deal more comfortable, by just daring a little to consider their comforts and not our puerility: we might allow their rooms also to be more light and cheerful; we might take pains to bring pleasanter associations about them altogether; and, when they were gone, we might cultivate our own a little better; our tombstones might at least be in better taste; we might take more care of our graves; we might preserve our sick neighbours from the sound of the deathbell; a single piece of ribbon or crape would surely be enough to guard us against the unweeting inquiries of friends, while, in the rest of our clothes, we might adopt, by means of a ring or a watch-ribbon, some cheerful instead of gloomy recollection of the person we had lost, a favourite colour, for instance, or device, and thus contrive to balance a grief which we must feel, and which, indeed, in its proper associations, it would not be desirable to avoid. Rousseau died gazing on the setting sun, and was buried under green trees. Petrarch, who seemed born to complete and render glorious the idea of an author from first to last, was found dead in his study with his head placidly resting on a book. What is there in deaths like these to make us look back with anguish, or to plunge into all sorts of gloominess and bad taste?

We know not whether it has ever struck any of our readers, but we seem to consider the relics of ancient taste, which we possess, as things of mere ornament, and forget that their uses may be in some measure preserved, so as to complete the idea of their beauty, and give them, as it were, a soul again. We place their urns and vases, for instance, about our apartments, but never think of putting anything in them; yet when they are not absolutely too fragile, we might often do so,— fruit, flowers, toilet utensils, a hundred things, with a fine opportunity (to boot) of showing our taste in inscriptions. The Chinese, in the Citizen of the World, when he was shown the two large vases from his own country, was naturally amused to hear that they only served to fill up the room, and held no supply of tea in them as they did at home. A lady, a friend of ours, who shows in her countenance her origin from a country of taste, and who acts up to the promise of her countenance, is the only person, but one, whom we ever knew to turn antique ornament to account in this respect. She buried a favourite bird in a vase on her mantel-piece; and there the little rogue lies, with more kind and tasteful associations about him, than the greatest dust in Christendom. The other instance is that of two urns of marble, which have been turned

as much as possible to the original purposes of such vessels, by becoming the depository of locks of hair. A lock of hair is an actual relic of the dead, as much so, in its proportion, as ashes, and more lively and recalling than even those. It is the part of us that preserves vitality longest; it is a clean and elegant substance: and it is especially connected with ideas of tenderness, in the cheek or the eyes about which it may have strayed, and the handling we may have given it on the living head. The thoughts connected with such relics time gradually releases from grief itself, and softens into tender enjoyment; and we know that in the instance alluded to the possessor of those two little urns would no more consent to miss them from his study, than he would any other cheerful association that he could procure. It is a consideration, which he would not forego for a great deal, that the venerable and lovely dust to which they belonged lies in a village churchyard, and has left the most unfading part of it inclosed in graceful vessels.

1814.

LIV.-ON WASHERWOMEN.

WRITERS, we think, might oftener indulge themselves in direct picture-making, that is to say, in detached sketches of men and things, which should be to manners, what those of Theophrastus are to character.

Painters do not always think it necessary to paint epics, or to fill a room with a series of pictures on one subject. They deal sometimes in single figures and groups; and often exhibit a profounder feeling in these little concentrations of their art, than in subjects of a more numerous description. Their gusto, perhaps, is less likely to be lost, on that very account. They are no longer Sultans in a seraglio, but lovers with a favourite mistress, retired and absorbed. A Madonna of Correggio's, the Bath of Michael Angelo, the Standard of Leonardo da Vinci, Titian's Mistress, and other single subjects or groups of the great masters, are acknowledged to be among their greatest performances, some of them their greatest of all.

It is the same with music. Overtures, which are supposed to make allusion to the whole progress of the story they precede, are not always the best productions of the master; still less are choruses, and quintetts, and other pieces involving a multiplicity of actors. The overture to Mozart's Magic Flute (Zauberflöte) is worthy of the title of the piece; it is truly enchanting; but what are so intense, in their way, as the duet of the two lovers, Ah Perdona, or the laughing trio in Cosi Fan Tutte,

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or that passionate serenade in Don Giovanni, Deh vieni alla finestra, which breathes the very soul of refined sensuality! The gallant is before you, with his mandolin and his cap and feather, taking place of the nightingale for that amorous hour; and you feel that the sounds must inevitably draw his mistress to the window. Their intenseness even renders them pathetic; and his heart seems in earnest, because his senses are.

We do not mean to say, that, in proportion as the work is large and the subject numerous, the merit may not be the greater if all is good. Raphael's Sacrament is a greater work than his Adam and Eve; but his Transfiguration would still have been the finest picture in the world, had the second group in the foreground been away; nay, the latter is supposed, and, we think, with justice, to injure its effect. We only say that there are times when the numerousness may scatter the individual gusto; -that the greatest possible feeling may be proved without it ;—and, above all, returning to our more immediate subject, that writers, like painters, may sometimes have leisure for excellent detached pieces, when they want it for larger productions. Here, then, is an opportunity for them. Let them, in their intervals of history, or, if they want time for it, give us portraits of humanity. People lament that Sappho did not write more: but, at any rate, her two odes are worth twenty epics like Tryphiodorus.

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But, in portraits of this kind, writing will also have a great advantage; and may avoid what seems to be an inevitable stumbling-block in paintings of a similar description. Between the matter-of-fact works of the Dutch artists, and the subtle compositions of Hogarth, there seems to be a medium reserved only for the pen. The writer only can tell you all he means, can let you into his whole mind and intention. The moral insinuations of the painter are, on the one hand, apt to be lost for want of distinctness; or tempted, on the other, by their visible nature, to put on too gross a shape. If he leaves his meanings to be imagined, he may unfortunately speak to unimaginative spectators, and generally does; if he wishes to explain himself so as not to be mistaken, he will paint a set of comments upon his own incidents and characters, rather than let them tell for themselves. Hogarth himself, for instance, who never does anything without a sentiment or a moral, is too apt to perk them both in your face, and to be overredundant in his combinations. His persons, in many instances, seem too much taken away from their proper indifference to effect, and to be made too much of conscious agents and joint contributors. He "o'er-informs his te nements." His very goods and chattels are didactic. He makes a capital remark of a cow's horn, and brings up a piece of cannon in

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