which the poor dumb animal itself cannot tell, and against which it can offer no remonstrance-an untold and unknown amount of wretchedness of which no articulate voice gives utterance. But there is an eloquence in its silence; and the very shroud which disguises it only serves to aggravate its horrors. Insignificance of this Earth. Though the earth were to be burnt up, though the trumpet of its dissolution were sounded, though yon sky were to pass away as a scroll, and every visible glory which the finger of the Divinity has inscribed on it were extinguished for ever-an event so awful to us, and to every world in our vicinity, by which so many suns would be extinguished, and so many varied scenes of life and population would rush into forgetfulness-what is it in the high scale of the Almighty's workmanship? a mere shred, which, though scattered into nothing, would leave the universe of God one entire scene of greatness and of majesty. Though the earth and the heavens were to disappear, there are other worlds which roll afar; the light of other suns shines upon them; and the sky which mantles them is garnished with other stars. Is it presumption to say that the moral world extends to these distant and unknown regions? that they are occupied with people? that the charities of home and of neighbourhood flourish_there? that the praises of God are there lifted up, and his goodness rejoiced in? that there piety has its temples and its offerings? and the richness of the divine attributes is there felt and admired by intelligent worshippers? And what is this world in the immensity which teems with them; and what are they who occupy it? The universe at large would suffer as little in its splendour and variety by the destruction of our planet, as the verdure and sublime magnitude of a forest would suffer by the fall of a single leaf. The leaf quivers on the branch which supports it. It lies at the mercy of the slightest accident. A breath of wind tears it from its stem, and it lights on the stream of water which passes underneath. In a moment of time, the life which we know by the microscope it teems with is extinguished; and an occurrence so insignificant in the eye of man, and on the scale of his observation, carries in it to the myriads which people this little leaf an event as terrible and as decisive as the destruction of a world. Now, on the grand scale of the universe, we, the occupiers of this ball, which performs its little round among the suns and the systems that astronomy has unfolded-we may feel the same littleness and the same insecurity. We differ from the leaf only in this circumstance, that it would require the operation of greater elements to destroy us. But these elements exist. The fire which rages within may lift its devouring energy to the surface of our planet, and transform it into one wide and wasting volcano. The sudden formation of elastic matter in the bowels of the earth-and it lies within the agency of known substances to accomplish this-may explode it into fragments. The exhalation of noxious air from below may impart a virulence to the air that is around us; it may affect the delicate proportion of its ingredients; and the whole of animated nature may wither and die under the malignity of a tainted atmosphere. A blazing comet may cross this fated planet in its orbit, and realise all the terrors which superstition has conceived of it. We cannot anticipate with precision the consequences of an event which every astronomer must know to lie within the limits of chance and probability. It may hurry our globe towards the sun, or drag it to the outer regions of the planetary system, or give it a new axis of revolution -and the effect, which I shall simply announce without explaining it, would be to change the place of the ocean, and bring another mighty flood upon our islands and continents. These are changes which may happen in a single instant of time, and against which nothing known in the present system of things provides us with any security. They might not annihilate the earth, but they would unpeople it, and we, who tread its surface with such firm and assured footsteps, are at the mercy of devouring elements, which, if let loose upon us by the hand of the Almighty, would spread solitude, and silence, and death over the dominions of the world. Now, it is this littleness and this insecurity which make the protection of the Almighty so dear to us, and bring with such emphasis to every pious bosom the holy lessons of humility and gratitude. The God who sitteth above, and presides in high authority over all worlds, is mindful of man; and though at this moment his energy is felt in the remotest provinces of creation, we may feel the same security in his providence as if we were the objects of his undivided care. It is not for us to bring our minds up to this mysterious agency. But such is the incomprehensible fact, that the same Being whose eye is abroad over the whole universe, gives vegetation to every blade of grass, and motion to every particle of blood which circulates through the veins of the minutest animal; that though his mind takes into his comprehensive grasp immensity and all its wonders, I am as much known to Him as if I were the single object of his attention; that he marks all my thoughts; that he gives birth to every feeling and every movement within me; and that, with an exercise of power which I can neither describe nor comprehend, the same God who sits in the highest heaven, and reigns over the glories of the firmament, is at my right hand to give me every breath which I draw, and every comfort which I enjoy. The Statute-book not necessary towards Christianity. How comes it that Protestantism made such triumphant progress in these realms when it had pains and penalties to struggle with? and how came this progress to be arrested from the moment it laid on these pains and penalties in its turn? What have all the enactments of the statute-book done for the cause of Protestantism in Ireland? and how is it, that when singlehanded Truth walked through our island with the might and prowess of a conqueror, so soon as propped by the authority of the state, and the armour of intolerance was given to her, the brilliant career of her victories was ended? It was when she took up the carnal and laid down the spiritual weapon-it was then that strength went out of her. She was struck with impotency on the instant that, from a warfare of principle, it became a warfare of politics. There are gentlemen opposed to us profound in the documents of history; but she has really nothing to offer half so instructive as the living history that is now before our eyes. With the pains and penalties to fight against, the cause of Reformation did almost everything in Britain; with the pains and penalties on its side, it has done nothing, and worse than nothing, in Ireland. But after all, it is a question which does not require the evidence of history for its elucidation. There shines upon it an immediate light from the known laws and principles of human nature. When Truth and Falsehood enter into collision upon equal terms, and do so with their own appropriate weapons, the result is infallible. Magna est veritas, et prævalebit. But if, to strengthen the force of Truth, you put the forces of the statute-book under her command, there instantly starts up on the side of Falsehood an auxiliary far more formidable. You may lay an incapacity on the persons, or you may put restraint and limitation on the property of Catholics; but the Catholic mind becomes tenfold more impregnable than before. It is not because I am indifferent to the good of Protestantism that I want to displace these artificial crutches from under her; but because I want that, freed from every symptom of decrepitude and decay, she should stand forth in her own native strength, and make manifest to all men how firm a support she has on the goodness of her cause, and on the basis of her orderly and well-laid arguments. It is because I count so much-and will any Protestant here present say that I count too much?-on her Bible and her evidences, and the blessing of God upon her churches, and the force of her resistless appeals to the conscience and the understandings of men—it is because of her strength and sufficiency in these that I would disclaim the aids of the statute-book, and own no dependence or obligation whatever on the system of intolerance. These were enough for her in the days of her suffering, and should be more than enough for her in the days of her comparative safety. It is not by our fears and our false alarms that we do honour to Protestantism. A far more befitting honour to the great cause is the homage of our confidence; for what Sheridan said of the liberty of the press, admits of most emphatic application to this religion of truth and liberty. Give,' says that great orator-give to ministers a corrupt House of Commons; give them a pliant and a servile House of Lords; give them the keys of the treasury and the patronage of the and give me the liberty of the press, and with this mighty engine I will overthrow the fabric of corruption, and establish upon its ruins the rights and privileges of the people.' In like manner, give the Catholics of Ireland their emancipation; give them a seat in the parliament of their country; give them a free and equal participation in the politics of the realm; give them a place at the right ear of Majesty, and a voice in his counsels; and give me the circulation of the Bible, and with this mighty engine I will overthrow the tyranny of Antichrist, and establish the fair and original form of Christianity on its ruins.* crown; DUGALD STEWART. We have no profound original metaphysician in this period, but some rich and elegant commentators. PROFESSOR DUGALD STEWART expounded and illustrated the views of his distinguished teacher, Dr Reid; and by his essays and treatises, no less than by his lectures, gave additional grace and popularity to the system. Mr Stewart was the son of Dr Matthew Stewart, Professor of Mathematics in the university of Edinburgh, and was born in the college buildings, November 22, 1753. At the early age of nineteen he undertook to teach his father's mathematical classes, and in two years was appointed his assistant and successor. A more congenial opening occurred for him in 1780, when Dr Adam Ferguson retired from the Moral Philosophy chair. Mr Stewart was appointed his successor, and continued to discharge the duties of the office till 1810, when Dr Thomas Brown was conjoined with him as, colleague. The latter years of his life were spent in literary retirement at Kinneil House, on the banks of the Firth of Forth, about twenty miles from Edinburgh. His political friends, when in office in 1806, created for him the sinecure office of Gazette writer for Scotland, with a salary of £600 per annum. Mr Stewart died in Edinburgh on the 11th of June 1828. No lecturer was ever more popular than Dugald Stewart-his taste, dignity, and eloquence rendered him both fascinating and impressive. His writings are marked by the same characteristics, and can be read with pleasure even by those who have no great partiality for the metaphysical studies in *The above forms part of a speech delivered at a public meeting in Edinburgh, in March 1829, in favour of removing the Roman Catholic disabilities. The effect of Dr Chalmers's address is described as prodigious, the audience rising to their feet and cheering vociferously. which he excelled. They consist of Philosophy of the Human Mind, one volume of which was published in 1792, a second in 1813, and a third in 1827; also Philosophical Essays, 1810; a Dissertation on the Progress of Metaphysical and Ethical Philosophy, written in 1815, to which a second part was added in 1821; and a View of the Active and Moral Powers of Man, published only a few weeks before his death. Mr Stewart also published Outlines of Moral Philosophy, and wrote Memoirs of Robertson the historian, and Dr Reid. 'All the years I remained about Edinburgh,' says Mr James Mill, himself an able metaphysician, ‘I used, as often as I could, to steal into Mr Stewart's class to hear a lecture, which was always a high treat. I have heard Pitt and Fox deliver some of their most admired speeches, but I never heard anything nearly so eloquent as some of the lectures of Professor Stewart. The taste for the studies which have formed my favourite pursuits, and which will be so to the end of my life, I owe to him.' A handsome edition of the collected Works of Dugald Stewart, edited by Sir William Hamilton, with a Memoir by Professor Veitch, was published in Edinburgh, in eleven volumes. On Memory. It is generally supposed, that of all our faculties, memory is that which nature has bestowed in the most unequal degrees on different individuals; and it is far from being impossible that this opinion may be well founded. If, however, we consider that there is scarcely any man who has not memory sufficient to learn the use of language, and to learn to recognise, at the first glance, the appearances of an infinite number of familiar objects; besides acquiring such an acquaintance with the laws of nature, and the ordinary course of human affairs, as is necessary for directing his conduct in life, we shall be satisfied that the original disparities among men, in this respect, are by no means so immense as they seem to be at first view; and that much is to be ascribed to different habits of attention, and to a difference of selection among the various events presented to their curiosity. It is worthy of remark, also, that those individuals who possess unusual powers of memory with respect to any one class of objects, are commonly as remarkably deficient in some of the other applications of that faculty. I knew a person who, though completely ignorant of Latin, was able to repeat over thirty or forty lines of Virgil, after having heard them once read to him—not, indeed, with perfect exactness, but with such a degree of resemblance as (all circumstances considered) was truly astonishing; yet this person (who was in the condition of a servant) was singularly deficient in memory in all cases in which that faculty is of real practical utility. He was noted in every family in which he had been employed for habits of forgetfulness, and could scarcely deliver an ordinary message without committing some blunder. A similar observation, I can almost venture to say, will be found to apply to by far the greater number of those in whom this faculty seems to exhibit a preternatural or anomalous degree of force. The varieties of memory are indeed wonderful, but they ought not to be confounded with inequalities of memory. One man is distinguished by a power of recollecting names, and dates, and genealogies; a second, by the multiplicity of speculations and of general conclusions treasured up in his intellect; a third, by the facility with which words and combinations of words (the very words of a speaker or of an author) seem to lay hold of his mind; a fourth, by the quickness with which he seizes and appropriates the sense and meaning of an author, while the phraseology and style seem altogether to escape his notice; a fifth, by his memory for poetry; a sixth, by his memory for music; a seventh, by his memory for architecture, statuary, and painting, and all the other objects of taste which are addressed to the eye. All these different powers seem miraculous to those who do not possess them; and as they are apt to be supposed by superficial observers to be commonly united in the same individuals, they contribute much to encourage those exaggerated estimates concerning the original inequalities among men in respect to this faculty which I am now endeavouring to reduce to their first standard. As the great purpose to which this faculty is subservient is to enable us to collect and to retain, for the future regulation of our conduct, the results of our past experience, it is evident that the degree of perfection which it attains in the case of different persons must vary; first, with the facility of making the original acquisition; secondly, with the permanence of the acquisition; and thirdly, with the quickness or readiness with which the individual is able, on particular occasions, to apply it to use. The qualities, therefore, of a good memory are, in the first place, to be susceptible; secondly, to be retentive; and thirdly, to be ready. It is but rarely that these three qualities are united in the same person. We often, indeed, meet with a memory which is at once susceptible and ready; but I doubt much if such memories be commonly very retentive; for the same set of habits which are favourable to the first two qualities are adverse to the third. Those individuals, for example, who, with a view to conversation, make a constant business of informing themselves with respect to the popular topics of the day, or of turning over the ephemeral publications subservient to the amusement or to the politics of the times, are naturally led to cultivate a susceptibility and readiness of memory, but have no inducement to aim at that permanent retention of selected ideas which enables the scientific student to combine the most remote materials, and to concentrate at will, on a particular object, all the scattered lights of his experience and of his reflections. Such men (as far as my observation has reached) seldom possess a familiar or correct acquaintance even with those classical remains of our own earlier writers which have ceased to furnish topics of discourse to the circles of fashion. A stream of novelties is perpetually passing through their minds, and the faint impressions which it leaves soon vanish to make way for others, like the traces which the ebbing tide leaves upon the sand. Nor is this all. In proportion as the associating principles which lay the foundation of susceptibility and readiness predominate in the memory, those which form the basis of our more solid and lasting acquisitions may be expected to be weakened, as a natural consequence of the general laws of our intellectual frame. DR THOMAS BROWN. DR THOMAS BROWN (1778-1820), the successor of Stewart in the Moral Philosophy chair of Edinburgh, was son of the Rev. Samuel Brown, minister of Kirkmabreck, in Galloway. His taste for metaphysics was excited by the perusal of Professor Stewart's first volume, a copy of which had been lent him by Dr Currie of Liverpool. He appeared as an author before his twentieth year, his first work being a review of Dr Darwin's Zoonomia. On the establishment of the Edinburgh Review, he became one of the philosophical contributors; and when a controversy arose in regard to Mr Leslie, who had, in his Essay on Heat, stated his approbation of Hume's theory of causation, Dr Brown warmly espoused the cause of the philosopher, and vindicated his opinions in an Inquiry into the Relation of Cause and Effect. At this time Dr Brown practised as a physician, but without any predilection for his profession. His appointment to the chair of Moral Philosophy seems to have fulfilled his destiny, and he continued to discharge its duties amidst universal approbation and respect till his death. Part of his leisure was devoted to the cultivation of a talent, or rather taste for poetry, which he early entertained; and he published The Paradise of Coquettes, 1814; The Wanderer of Norway, 1815; and The Bower of Spring, 1816. Though correct and elegant, with occasionally fine thoughts and images, the poetry of Dr Brown wants force and passion, and is now utterly forgotten. As a philosopher he was acute and searching, and a master of the power of analysis. His style wants the rich redundancy of that of Dugald Stewart, but is also enlivened with many eloquent passages, in which there is often a large infusion of the tenderest feeling. Dr Brown quoted largely from the poets, especially Akenside; and was sometimes too flowery in his illustrations. His Lectures on the Philosophy of the Human Mind are highly popular, and form a class-book in the university. In some of his views Dr Brown differed from Reid and Stewart. His distinctions have been pronounced somewhat hypercritical; but Mackintosh considers that he rendered a new and important service to mental science by what he calls cumstances which modify the action of the general secondary laws of suggestion or association-cirlaw, and must be distinctly considered, in order to explain its connection with the phenomena.' Desire of the Happiness of Others. It is this desire of the happiness of those whom we love, which gives to the emotion of love itself its principal delight, by affording to us constant means of gratification. He who truly wishes the happiness of any one, cannot be long without discovering some mode of contributing to it. Reason itself, with all its light, is not so rapid in discoveries of this sort as simple affection, which sees means of happiness, and of important happiness, where reason scarcely could think that any happiness was to be found, and has already by many kind offices produced the happiness of hours before reason could have suspected that means so slight could have given even a moment's pleasure. It is this, indeed, which contributes in no inconsiderable degree to the perpetuity of affection. Love, the mere feeling of tender admiration, would in many cases have soon lost its power over the fickle heart, and in many other cases would have had its power greatly lessened, if the desire of giving happiness, and the innumerable little courtesies and cares to which this desire gives birth, had not thus variety of many emotions. The love itself seems new in a great measure diffused over a single passion the at every moment, because there is every moment some new wish of love that admits of being gratified; or rather, it is at once, by the most delightful of all combinations, new, in the tender wishes and cares with which it occupies us, and familiar to us, and endeared the more by the remembrance of hours and years of well-known happiness. The desire of the happiness of others, though a desire always attendant on love, does not, however, necessarily suppose the previous existence of some one of those emotions which may strictly be termed love. This feeling is so far from arising necessarily from regard for the sufferer, that it is impossible for us not to feel it when the suffering is extreme, and before our very eyes, though we may at the same time have the utmost abhorrence of him who is agonising in our sight, and whose very look, even in its agony, still seems to speak only that atrocious spirit which could again gladly is evident that our benevolence might be more usefully perpetrate the very horrors for which public indignation as much as public justice had doomed it to its dreadful fate. It is sufficient that extreme anguish is before us; we wish it relief before we have paused to love, or without reflecting on our causes of hatred; the wish is the direct and instant emotion of our soul in these circumstances an emotion which, in such peculiar circumstances, it is impossible for hatred to suppress, and which love may strengthen indeed, but is not necessary for producing. It is the same with our general desire of happiness to others. We desire, in a particular degree, the happiness of those whom we love, because we cannot think of them without tender admiration. But though we had known them for the first time simply as human beings, we should still have desired their happiness; that is to say, if no opposite interests had arisen, we should have wished them to be happy rather than to have any distress; yet there is nothing in this case which corresponds with the tender esteem that is felt in love. There is the mere wish of happiness to them -a wish which itself, indeed, is usually denominated love, and which may without any inconvenience be so denominated in that general humanity which we call a love of mankind, but which we must always remember does not afford, on analysis, the same results as other affections of more cordial regard to which we give the same name. To love a friend is to wish his happiness indeed, but it is to have other emotions at the same instant, emotions without which this mere wish would be poor to constant friendship. To love the natives of SIR J. MACKINTOSH-J. MILL-DR ABERCROMBIE Asia or Africa, of whose individual virtues or vices, talents or imbecility, wisdom or ignorance, we know nothing, is to wish their happiness; but this wish is all which constitutes the faint and feeble love. It is a wish, however, which, unless when the heart is absolutely corrupted, renders it impossible for man to be wholly indifferent to man; and this great object is that which nature had in view. She has by a provident arrangement, which we cannot but admire the more, the more attentively we examine it, accommodated our emotions to our means, making our love most ardent where our wish of giving happiness might be most effectual, and less gradually and less in proportion to our diminished means. From the affection of the mother for her new-born infant, which has been rendered the strongest of all affections, because it was to arise in circumstances where affection would be most needed, to that general philanthropy which extends itself to the remotest stranger on spots of the earth which we never are to visit, and which we as little think of ever visiting as of exploring any of the distant planets of our system, there is a scale of benevolent desire which corresponds with the necessities to be relieved, and our power of relieving them, or with the happiness to be afforded, and our power of affording happiness. How many opportunities have we of giving delight to those who live in four domestic circle, which would be lost before we could diffuse it to those who are distant from us! Our love, therefore, our desire of giving happiness, our pleasure in having given it, are stronger within the limits of this sphere of daily and hourly intercourse than beyond it. Of those who are beyond this sphere, the individuals most familiar to us are those whose happiness we must always know better how to promote than the happiness of strangers, with whose particular habits and inclinations we are little if at all acquainted. Our love, and the desire of general happiness which attends it, are therefore, by the concurrence of many constitutional tendencies of our nature in fostering the generous wish, stronger as felt for an intimate friend than for one who is scarcely known to us. If there be an exception to this gradual scale of importance according to intimacy, it must be in the case of one who is absolutely a stranger-a foreigner who comes among a people with whose general manners he is perhaps unacquainted, and who has no friend to whose attention he can lay claim from any prior intimacy. In this case, indeed, it -GEORGE COMBE. alluded to) by SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH, and his None of these writers viewed mind in connection with organisation, but this mode of inquiry has been pursued by Dr Gall and his followers. The leading doctrines of Gall are-that the brain is the organ of the mind, that various portions of the encephalon are the organs of various faculties of the mind, and that volume or size of the whole brain and its various parts is, other circumstances being equal, the measure of the powers of the mind and its various faculties in individuals. This system is founded upon observation-that is to say, it was observed that large brains, unless when of inferior quality, or in an abnormal condition, nor profound. They exhibit acuteness without depth, and ingenuity without comprehensiveness of understanding. This also proceeds from vivacity with little energy. There are other public speakers, again, who open heavily in debate their faculties acting slowly but words fall like minute-guns upon the ear, and to the deeply, like the first heave of a mountain wave. Their begun their efforts. But even their first accent is one superficial they appear about to terminate ere they have of power; it rouses and arrests attention; their very pauses are expressive, and indicate gathering energy to be embodied in the sentence that is to come. When fairly animated, they are impetuous as the torrent, brilliant as the lightning's beam, and overwhelm and take possession of feebler minds, impressing them irresistibly with a feeling of gigantic power. were accompanied by superior intellect and force of character; also that, in a vast number of instances which were accurately noticed, a large development of a special part of the brain was accompanied by an unusual demonstration of a certain mental character, and never by the opposite. From these demonstrations the fundamental character of the various faculties was sought to be eliminated. The system is well known under the name of Phrenology; and it has been expounded and enforced, in clear and admirable English, by the late MR GEORGE COMBE (1788-1858). Mr Combe was a Writer to the Signet in Edinburgh, but strongly attached to literary and philosophical pursuits. He was much respected by his fellow-citizens, and was known As a general rule, the largest organs in each head over all Europe and America for his speculations have naturally the greatest, and the smallest the least, on mental science, the criminal law, the currency, tendency to act, and to perform their functions with &c. The principal works of Mr Combe are Essays of this tendency. The nervous is the most vivacious, rapidity. The temperaments also indicate the amount on Phrenology, 1819; The Constitution of Man, next the sanguine, then the bilious, while the lymphatic 1828; System of Phrenology, 1836; Notes on the is characterised by proneness to inaction. In a lymUnited States of America, three volumes, 1841; phatic brain, great size may be present and few manifestaPhrenology applied to Painting and Sculpture;tions occur through sluggishness; but if a strong external and pamphlets on the Relation between Science and Religion, on Capital Punishments, on National Education, the Currency Question, &c. Distinction between Power and Activity. From the System of Phrenology. As commonly employed, the word power is synonymous with strength, or much power, instead of denoting mere capacity, whether much or little, to act; while by activity is usually understood much quickness of action, and great proneness to act. As it is desirable, however, to avoid every chance of ambiguity, I shall employ the words power and activity in the sense first before explained; and to high degrees of power I shall apply the terms energy, intensity, strength, or vigour; while to great activity I shall apply the terms vivacity, agility, rapidity, or quickness. In physics, strength is quite distinguishable from quickness. The balance-wheel of a watch moves with much rapidity, but so slight is its impetus, that a hair would suffice to stop it; the beam of a steam-engine progresses slowly and massively through space, but its energy is prodigiously great. In muscular action these qualities are recognised with equal facility as different. The greyhound bounds over hill and dale with animated agility; but a slight obstacle would counterbalance his momentum, and arrest his progress. The elephant, on the other hand, rolls slowly and heavily along; but the impetus of his motion would sweep away an impediment sufficient to resist fifty greyhounds at the summit of their speed. stimulus be presented, energy often appears. If the brain be very small, no degree of stimulus, either external or internal, will cause great power to be manifested. A certain combination of organs-namely, Combativeness, Destructiveness, Hope, Firmness, Acquisitiveness, and Love of Approbation, all large—is favourable to general vivacity of mind; and another combinationnamely, Combativeness, Destructiveness, Hope, Firmness, and Acquisitiveness, small or moderate, with Veneration and Benevolence large-is frequently attended with sluggishness of the mental character; but the activity of the whole brain is constitutionally greater in some individuals than in others, as already explained. It may even happen that, in the same individual, one organ is naturally more active than another, without reference to size, just as the optic nerve is sometimes more irritable than the auditory; but this is by no means a common occurrence. Exercise greatly increases activity as well as power, and hence arise the benefits of education. Dr Spurzheim thinks that 'long fibres produce more activity, and thick fibres more intensity.' The doctrine, that size is a measure of power, is not to be held as implying that much power is the only or even the most valuable quality which a mind in all circumstances can possess. To drag artillery over a mountain, or a ponderous wagon through the streets of London, we would prefer an elephant or a horse of great size and muscular power; while, for graceful motion, agility, and nimbleness, we would select an Arabian palfrey. In like manner, to lead men in gigantic and difficult enterprises-to command by native greatness, in perilous times, when law is trampled under foot-to call forth the energies of a people, and direct them against a tyrant at home, or an alliance of tyrants abroad-to stamp the impress of a single mind upon a In mental manifestations-considered apart from organisation-the distinction between energy and vivacity is equally palpable. On the stage, Mrs Siddons and Mr John Kemble were remarkable for the solemn de-nation-to infuse strength into thoughts, and depth into liberation of their manner, both in declamation and in action, and yet they were splendidly gifted with energy. They carried captive at once the sympathies and the understanding of the audience, and made every man feel his faculties expanding, and his whole mind becoming greater under the influence of their power. Other performers, again, are remarkable for agility of action and elocution, who, nevertheless, are felt to be feeble and ineffective in rousing an audience to emotion. Vivacity is their distinguishing attribute, with an absence of vigour. At the bar, in the pulpit, and in the senate, the same distinction prevails. Many members of the learned professions display great fluency of elocution and felicity of illustration, surprising us with the quickness of their parts, who, nevertheless, are felt to be neither impressive feelings, which shall command the homage of enlightened men in every age-in short, to be a Bruce, Bonaparte, Luther, Knox, Demosthenes, Shakspeare, Milton, or Cromwell-a large brain is indispensably requisite. But to display skill, enterprise, and fidelity in the various professions of civil life-to cultivate with success the less arduous branches of philosophy-to excel in acuteness, taste, and felicity of expression-to acquire extensive erudition and refined manners-a brain of a moderate size is perhaps more suitable than one that is very large; for wherever the energy is intense, it is rare that delicacy, refinement, and taste are present in an equal degree. Individuals possessing moderatesized brains easily find their proper sphere, and enjoy in it scope for all their energy. In ordinary circumstances |