make

competition, the place which nature has allotted to you; of it no mean battle, but strive hard; strengthen your soul to the search of Truth, and follow that spectre of Excellence which beckons you on beyond the walls of the world, to something better than man has yet done. It may be you shall burst out into light and glory at the last: but if frequent failure convince you of that mediocrity of nature, which is incompatible with great actions, submit wisely and cheerfully to your lot; let no mean spirit of revenge tempt you to throw off your loyalty to your country, and to prefer a vicious celebrity to obscurity crowned with piety and virtue. If you can throw new light upon moral truth, or, by any exertions, multiply the comforts or confirm the happiness of mankind, this fame guides you to the true ends of your nature; but, in the name of heaven, as you tremble at retributive justice; and in the name of mankind, if mankind be dear to you; seek not that easy and accursed fame which is gathered in the work of revolutions: and deem it better to be for ever unknown, than to found a momentary name upon the basis of anarchy and irreligion.

X.-LIBERTY AND SLAVERY.-Sterne.

DISGUISE thyself as thou wilt, still, Slavery! still thou art a bitter draught: and though thousands, in all ages, have been made to drink of thee, thou art no less bitter on that account. It is thou, Liberty!-thrice sweet and gracious goddess, whom all in public or in private worship,-whose taste is grateful, and ever will be so till Nature herself shall change. No tint of words can spot thy snowy mantle, or chemic power turn thy sceptre into iron:- -with thee to smile upon him as he eats his crust, the swain is happier than his monarch, from whose court thou art exiled. Gracious Heaven! grant me but health, thou Great Bestower of it, and give me but this fair goddess as my companion; and shower down thy mitres, -if it seem good unto thy divine providence,-upon those heads which are aching for them.

Pursuing these ideas, I sat down close by my table, and, leaning my head upon my hand, I began to figure to myself the miseries of confinement. I was in a right frame for it, and so I gave full scope to my imagination.

I was going to begin with the millions of my fellowcreatures, born to no inheritance but slavery; but finding, however affecting the picture was, that I could not bring it

near me, and that the multitude of sad groups in it did but distract me

-I took a single captive, and, having first shut him up in his dungeon, I then looked through the twilight of his grated door to take his picture.

I beheld his body half wasted away with long expectation and confinement, and felt what kind of sickness of the heart it is, which arises from hope deferred. Upon looking nearer, I saw him pale and feverish: in thirty years the western breeze had not once fanned his blood-he had seen no sun, no moon, in all that time—nor had the voice of friend or kinsman breathed through his lattice. His children

But here my heart began to bleed-and I was forced to go on with another part of the portrait.

He was sitting upon the ground upon a little straw, in the farthest corner of his dungeon, which was alternately his chair and bed: a little calendar of small sticks was laid at the head, notched all over with the dismal days and nights he had passed there he had one of these little sticks in his hand, and, with a rusty nail, he was etching another day of misery to add to the heap. As I darkened the little light he had, he lifted up a hopeless eye towards the door-then cast it down-shook his head-and went on with his work of affliction. I heard his chains upon his legs, as he turned his body to lay his little stick upon the bundle. He gave a deep sigh-I saw the iron enter into his soul-I burst into tears-I could not sustain the picture of confinement which my fancy had drawn.

XI. THE GENIUS OF SHAKSPEARE.-Lord Jeffrey.

MANY persons are very sensible of the effect of fine poetry upon their feelings, who do not well know how to refer these feelings to their causes; and it is always a delightful thing to be made to see clearly the sources from which our delight has proceeded, and to trace the mingled stream that has flowed upon our hearts, to the remoter fountains from which it has been gathered; and when this is done with warmth as well as precision, and embodied in an eloquent description of the beauty which is explained, it forms one of the most attractive, and not the least instructive, of literary exercises. In all works of merit, however, and especially in all works of original genius, there are a thousand retiring and less obtrusive graces, which escape hasty and superficial observers, and only give out their beauties to fond and patient contemplation; a

thousand slight and harmonizing touches, the merit and the effect of which are equally imperceptible to vulgar eyes; and a thousand indications of the continual presence of that poetical spirit, which can only be recognised by those who are, in some measure, under its influence, and have prepared themselves to receive it, by worshipping meekly at the shrine which it inhabits.

In the exposition of these, there is room enough for originality, and more room than Mr. Hazlitt has yet filled. In many points, however, he has acquitted himself excellently; particularly in the development of the principal characters with which Shakspeare has peopled the fancies of all English readers; but principally, we think, in the delicate sensibility. with which he has traced, and the natural eloquence with which he has pointed out, that familiarity with beautiful forms and images that eternal recurrence to what is sweet or majestic, in the simple aspect of nature that indestructible love of flowers and odours, and dews and clear waters, and soft airs and sounds, and bright skies, and woodland solitudes, and moonlight bowers, which are the material elements of poetry; and that fine sense of their undefinable relation to mental emotion, which is its essence and vivifying soul, and which, in the midst of Shakspeare's most busy and atrocious scenes, falls like gleams of sunshine on rocks and ruins; contrasting with all that is rugged and repulsive, and reminding us of the existence of purer and brighter elements, which he alone has poured out from the richness of his own mind, without effort or restraint; and contrived to intermingle with the play of all the passions, and the vulgar course of this world's affairs, without deserting, for an instant, the proper business of the scene, or appearing to pause or digress from love of ornament or need of repose;―he alone, who, when the subject requires it, is always keen, and worldly, and practical; and who yet, without changing his hand, or stopping his course, scatters around him, as he goes, all sounds and shapes of sweetness, and conjures up landscapes of immortal fragrance and freshness, and peoples them with spirits of glorious aspect and attractive grace, and is a thousand times more full of imagery and splendour than those who, for the sake of such qualities, have shrunk back from the delineation of character or passion, and declined the discussion of human duties and cares. More full of wisdom, and ridicule, and sagacity, than all the moralists and satirists in existence, he is more wild, airy, and inventive, and more pathetic and fantastic, than all

the poets of all regions and ages of the world; and has all those elements so happily mixed up in him, and bears his high faculties so temperately, that the most severe reader cannot complain of him for want of strength or of reason, nor the most sensitive for defect of ornament or ingenuity. Every thing in him is in unmeasured abundance and unequalled perfection; but every thing so balanced and kept in subordination, as not to jostle, or disturb, or take the place of another. The most exquisite poetical conceptions, images, and descriptions, are given with such brevity, and introduced with such skill, as merely to adorn, not to load, the sense they accompany. Although his sails are purple and perfumed, and his prow of beaten gold, they waft him on his voyage more rapidly and directly, than if they had been composed of baser materials. All his excellences like those of Nature herself, are thrown out together; and, instead of interfering with, support and recommend each other. His flowers are not tied up in garlands, nor his fruits crushed into baskets, but they spring living from the soil, in all the dew and freshness of youth; while the graceful foliage in which they lurk, and the ample branches, the rough and vigorous stem, and the wide-spreading roots on which they depend, are present along with them, and share, in their places, the equal care of their creator.

XII. ON WAR.-Dr. Channing.

PUBLIC war is not an evil which stands alone, or has nothing in common with other evils. It belongs to a great family. It may be said that society, through its whole extent, is deformed by war. Even in families, we see jarring interests and passions, invasions of right, resistance of authority, violence, force; and in common life, how continually do we see men struggling with one another for property or distinction-injuring one another in word or deed-exasperated against one another by jealousies, neglects, and mutual reproach! All this is essentially war, but war restrained, hemmed in, disarmed, by the opinions and institutions of society. To limit its ravages, to guard reputation, property, and life; society has instituted government, erected the tribunal of justice, clothed the legislature with the power of enacting equal laws, put the sword into the hands of the magistrate, and pledged its whole force to its support. Human wisdom has been manifested in nothing more conspicuously than in civil institutions for repressing war, retaliation, and

passionate resort to force, among the citizens of the same state. But here it has stopped. Government, which is ever at work to restrain the citizen at home, often lets him loose, and arms him with fire and sword, against other communities, sends out hosts for desolation and slaughter, and concentrates the whole energies of a people in the work of spreading misery and death. Government, the peace officer at home, breathes war abroad, organizes it into a science, reduces it to a system, makes it a trade, and applauds it, as if it were the most honourable work of nations. Strange, that the wisdom which has so successfully put down the wars of individuals, has never been inspired and emboldened, to engage in the task of bringing to an end the more gigantic crimes and miseries of public war! What gives these miseries pre-eminence among human woes—what should compel 'us to look on them with peculiar terror-is, not their awful amount, but their origin, their source. They are miseries inflicted by man on man. They spring from depravity of will. They bear the impress of cruelty, of hardness of heart. The distorted features, writhing frames, and shrieks of the wounded and dying-these are not the chief horrors of war; they sink into unimportance, compared with the infernal passions which work this woe. Death is a light evil, when not joined with crime. Had the countless millions destroyed by war been swallowed up by floods or yawning earthquakes, we should look back awestruck but submissive, on the mysterious Providence which had thus fulfilled the mortal sentence, originally passed on the human race. But that man, born of woman, bound by ties of brotherhood to man, and commanded-by an inward law and the voice of God-to love and do good, should, through selfishness, pride, or revenge, inflict these agonies, and shed these torrents of human blood;-here is an evil which combines, with exquisite suffering, fiendish guilt. All other evils fade before it.

The idea of honour is associated with war. But to whom does the honour belong? If to any, certainly not to the mass of the people, but to those who are particularly engaged in it. The mass of a people who stay at home, and hire others to fight-who sleep in their warm beds, and hire others to sleep on the cold and damp earth-who sit at their well-spread boards, and hire others to take the chance of starving-who nurse the slightest hurt in their own bodies, and hire others to expose themselves to mortal wounds, and to linger in comfortless hospitals-certainly this mass reaps little honour from