Poetical composition was one of her re- of the biographical sort.

taken an Oration of Demosthenes to put into consciousness, however, that many of her literal English, and back again into Greek; convictions were at variance with the opinbesides which I have been reading and theoriz- ions of the world around her, on points on ing about Eschylus' Prometheus Vinctus, with which opinion is peculiarly sensitive, and Cudworth's Intellectual System, and Brucker's the dislike of giving offence on the one History of Philosophy, and Diogenes Laertius and Athenagoras, for the Orphic Theology. Now, if ever one might be excused for not writing to one's friends under a press of business, I think I have that excuse to offer. In the midst of this I have been quite happy and well; not a moment, even at meal times, was unemployed; my books, paper, and pens were beside me, and I ate with my left hand, and wrote with my right, and never even thought whether was alone. I think that this is the secret of being happy-the having always some engrossing subject to occupy the mind." - P. 237.

hand, or of hearing her views scoffed at as a mere woman's notions on the other, kept her firm in the resolution of concealing her authorship as long as she should live. But she left with her editor - one of her attached female disciples, as we believe, and the domestic companion of her later years the charge of lifting the veil after her death, and making known any particulars of her literary life and correspondence that might have an interest for the public at large. We cannot but wish this charge had been carried out a little more fully; that a few The works by which Miss Cornwallis has more particulars, at least, had been given as established her claim to a dignified place in to the society in which Miss Cornwallis the ranks of female authorship are "Peri- mixed, and the means which she possessed cles, a Tale of Athens in the 83d Olympi- for acquiring that very wide and varied ad," of which Dr. Hawtrey, the late Head knowledge which was the cherished delight Master and Provost of Eton, said he had of her life. In the earlier portion of the never met with any work of fiction on a correspondence, we hear of mornings spent classical subject which united so much valu- in reading at the British Museum, but there able information to so interesting a story;" is no distinct record of any residence in the fifteen entirely, and four more partially, of metropolis. Her letters are all dated from the the Small Books on Great Subjects, embra- country; almost all from her quiet homes cing the topics of Physiology, Metaphysics, in Kent. A slight connection and old hereJurisprudence, Chemistry, Greek Philosophy, Grammar, History, and Social Science; a Prize Essay on Juvenile Delinquency, published by Smith and Elder in 1853; five articles contributed to the Westminster Review, on social and other subjects; and one or two to Fraser's Magazine, on Naval Education.

66

ditary friendship with the family of John Hookham Frere, the accomplished author of Whistlecraft, and friend of Canning, afforded her, as it would seem, some of the pleasantest opportunities of enjoying varied intellectual converse. At one time of her life, she was, as we have before said, a not unfrequent guest at Hampstead, where one The Small Books were received with of Mr. Frere's brothers had his home: and great favour at the time of their publica- here she met many cultivated and distintion, both in England and in America. guished men; among others, S. T. Coleridge, Second and third editions were called for; who, as she records, sat by her at dinner on "and," says the editor of Miss Cornwallis's one occasion, and charmed her by his conletters, "it was in a spirit of triumph in versation. He talked of the sense of imwhich no mean or personal feeling had mortality in man, and of its universality, place, that she delighted to remark how which, in his opinion, caused it to partake through the long series no hostile criticism of the nature of what we call instinct in anhad discovered a misrepresentation or a mis-imals. "The only time I ever saw Lord take.'" In those of her books which treated of the history of Christianity, her method was to dwell with emphasis on the simple affirmations to which she firmly held, but not to provoke controversy or shock prejudice by drawing conclusions, which, she nevertheless believed, congenial readers would not fail to discover for themselves. So it was, that, with few exceptions, the critics of the press passed by the element of "unsoundness," and united in praising the learning, the impartiality, the good sense, and the liberality of the unknown author. Her own

Byron,' he said, 'he pointed to a man in a state of brutal intoxication, and asked if I thought that a proof of an immortal nature.' Your inquiry, my Lord, is,' I answered; and so it was; it was the natural instinct shrinking with abhorrence from the degradation of the soul."

"Such conversation," adds Miss Cornwallis, "at a dinner party is not common, and I was much pleased with my place."

- P. 49.

Miss Cornwallis died in January, 1858. The published correspondence ends in No

vember, 1856, and we have no record of the concluding period of her life; but from the list of her writings it appears that her pen was active up to within a few months of her decease, and that one of the latest subjects that occupied her was the reform of the laws respecting the property of married women, which she had the satisfaction of seeing carried through both Houses of Parliament the year before she died.

tion could best be attained by recluse meditation. On this subject hear her emphatic protest against the pietism of Wilberforce :

communings of her faith and love charm us chiefly by the minute and graphic touches of life and nature with which they abound. But in her small details there is no attempt at philosophy or generalization, no quickness to probe, no restless desire to remedy the evils of a world immersed in sin and error. She writes of the things and persons around her with the taste and discrimination, but also with something of the gossipAnd here we must claim a moment's ing minuteness, of a De Sévigné. And her pause for a comparison, which the recent personal appearance, slight, pale, fragile, inpublication of a supplemental volume of the significant but for dark intelligent eyes letters of Eugénie de Guérin has suggested and a bright smile which sometimes illuto us, between two female intellects of the mined the pensiveness of her countenance, nineteenth century, the one of the English how different is this, too, from the outward Protestant, the other of the French Roman- aspect which we have heard ascribed to the ist type. We lay stress upon the first term English lady philosopher! Family affections in this qualification, for it is evident to us and a sense of duty kept Eugénie de Guéthat national as well as ecclesiastical in- rin in the world, but natural inclination fluences had their share in the mental de- would have consigned her to a cloister. velopment of each of these gifted ladies. Miss Cornwallis, as we have had occasion to In Caroline Cornwallis we see Protestant- remark, was repelled from the amenities of ism resolving itself into Rationalism; in social intercourse by the angularity of her Eugénie de Guérin we see Catholicism tend- own nature, by dislike of notoriety as a ing to Mysticism; yet, even with the un- "learned lady," and by the want of natucompromising appeal to reason as the verify-ral objects for her softer affections; certaining faculty which limited Miss Cornwallis's ly not from the sense that the soul's perfectheoretical faith, we still discern the workings of that deep sense of unseen realities, which, amid all varieties of belief and disbelief, has ever been found brooding over the Teutonic mind, and enduing the contemplative, often gloomy intellect of the North with its highest model of imagination; while the pious meditations of the French lady are woven over the framework of a refined sentimentality, which, under other inspiration, might have afforded garniture for a novel of Balzac or George Sand. The earthly love and tenderness for friends, brother, home, and nature, in which Eugénie's soul was steeped, mingled with and fed on to her devout lifeconsecration to a Higher Power. She felt the sense of bliss to consist in close-confiding trust and self-abnegation; and for the full contentment of such yearnings as hers she could find no satisfying object save such as dogmatic Christian doctrine afforded her. She knew no impulse for questioning or searching into the grounds of things. Her gentle marvel into life's mysteries was easily quelled by the dictates of faith; and she was content to accept her Church's view of what religion is, and to see beauty in all its forms, though, with her innate purity and elevation of soul, it was its spirit and not its form to which she really clung. Those portions of Mlle. de Guérin's writings which do not derive their whole interest from the self

and if we

"Wilberforce mistook his road (led away by the speciousness of the religious party he attached himself to), and strove to meditate' when he ought to have thought. He wasted precious time in writing down good resolutions and self-reproaches for doing less than he ought, yet seems to have overlooked the fact that all his writing and meditation was the cause of his doing little. Thought, happily for us, is very think when we ought to do so, with the full rapid; were really determined to erally despatch the business, and well too; for powers of our reason, five minutes would genthe mind, already well stored with knowledge and accustomed to close application, can bring its powers to bear on any given subject at a moinent's notice with thorough effect. To set apart hours for thinking is mere indolence, and has much the same effect on the mind that a diet of weak broth would have on the body: it At fifty-two, Wilberforce complains that his enfeebles and unfits it for any vigorous effort. memory is failing. He himself attributes it to having suffered his thoughts to be too desultory, and I have no doubt he was right; his watergruel 'meditations' had taken from him the power of grasping rapidly and firmly the objects brought before him; for I have invariably seen among my acquaintance that the powers of the mind failed the earliest in those who applied the least."-P. 197.

And here our remarks draw to an end.

It so happens that the three clever women line Cornwallis as her own, the critical with whose memorials we have been occupy- philosophy which the new impulses of the ing ourselves take up their position respec- time had brought from the German univertively in the three departments into which sities, and which is making its familiar the genius of ages and the genius of indi- home in the minds of the present generaviduals are said to be alike distributable. tion. All honour be to the triad! They Poetry, Narrative, and Philosophy, or had neither of them cause to be ashamed of Science, have been by turns the favourite the place assigned to their productions on forms of human thought since men began the shelves of contemporary literature. to think. In the present century, they With whatever differences of taste or ability, would seem to have each come in for their they each in their several way helped to share in giving the prevalent direction to vindicate woman's right to the franchise of the public taste. The quality of imagina- the human intellect, and have afforded man tion was certainly predominant in the days opportunity to show that the old days of to which Joanna Baillie properly belonged, jealousy and derisive compliment are at an the day of the great minstrels of Scott, end, and that the pretensions of a précieuse Byron, Campbell, Southey. It was at ridicule would be as unmeaning in this latter History's shrine that Lucy Aikin paid her half of the nineteenth century as were the devotions, in company with, at however fantastic pedantries of La Mancha's knight respectful a distance, Hallam, Mackintosh, among the working-day realities of the age and Sismondi. Philosophy claimed Caro- of Cervantes.

THE SELF-ACCUSING NATURE OF CRIME. expose our moral constitution to the action of We are so constituted, that although external crime, we must entail upon ourselves, as an incircumstance may conspire to conceal our crime, evitable consequence, the punishment of an yet retribution commences immediately after its avenging conscience -a moral palsy, a woundcommission. No sooner has the murderer ac- ed self-respect, a loss of that conscious recticomplished his fell purpose than the agonies of tude which can alone make a man decisive an aroused accusing conscience begin to tor- in action, bold in danger, and generous and good ment him. Sleep forsakes his eyelids, the dark- in all things. Take a case in point. There is ness of the night is peopled with horrible phan- a man who has broken the laws of his country, toms. They crowd around his pillow, and shriek has stolen, perjured, or forged; the vengeance the name of his dark crime into his ear. Day- of social justice overtakes him, he is deprived light brings no relief, for though he go forth into of the rights of citizenship, and confined in the busy world, and mingle with the bustling prison, whence, after an assigned period, he crowds of his fellow-men; though he try to lose comes out, and we say his punishment is over; himself in the distraction of guilt; yet in all - it is not so, his punishment is going on withits scenes the phantom is at his elbow, gazing at in, and will probably go on as long as he lives. him with its hollow eyes, appalling him with its He has lost caste, has stabbed his self-respect; speechless accusations, and high above the noise henceforth he will never feel the proud integrity of many voices, the strains of music, the roar of amongst his fellow-men; there is a foul brand cannon, or the peal of thunder, the death-shriek on his forehead, a felon-feeling in his heart, of his victim rings through his soul, for the pow- which will make his lips falter when he proers of nature as well as the hand of man are nounces the words of probity and honour, for alike directed against him as against one com-they will fall from him like lies. Society may mon enemy. What a fallacy is crime, seeing that it makes a brave man fear life more than death! And not only is this self-inflicting retribution attendant upon murder, the highest of all crimes, but in a proportionate degree it accompanies every infringement of the moral law. We may commit crime without detection, but we can no more commit crime without punishment than we can infuse poison into the blood without injury. It is one of the most subtle workings of our internal constitution, and is in strict keeping with the analogies of nature. We expose our physical constitutions to the action of forces inimical to it, whether of damp, cold, or heat, and we suffer accordingly; and if we

welcome him back, may honour him with her most distinguished gifts; but in vain; he will drag the fetid carcass of his moral life through all the world's fairest scenes, and though men may bow before him, yet the applause of honesty will be his most bitter reproof, for to himself he will always be a lost, ruined man. Such is the terrible price of the departure from rectitude. Human law may assign punishment, but it cannot atone for the loss of that feeling of spotless honour, that consciousness of innocence, which, once gone, can never be regained, and that whispering of the accusing self which will blight the fairest life and blast the happiest hour. · Dublin University Magazine.

From the Reader. Better a fool than a clod, and better a clod than a stone;

PROSE TUPPER.

Critical Essays of a Country Parson. By the
Author of "The Recreations of a Country
Parson." (Longman & Co.)

Better a mouse than a mountain, even though it be christened Ben.

Here our comparison between these two To each age, says the Koran, is given its writers must cease. We simply wish to own poet, speaking in its own tongue. We indicate the general position in literature rejoice in our Tupper, the laureate of com- which A. K. Ĥ. B. rightfully holds by his formonplaces. He sings platitudes in verse, and mer productions. Tupper, however, it must A. K. H. B. in prose; so that we are better be allowed, enjoyed a considerable advanoff than the Koran contemplated. Both are tage over his rival. Nobody expects actual great in the different ways of quiet imbecil- meaning in verse, but prose must now and ity. Tupper is flowery and tinselly, A. K. then have some lucid intervals. Throughout H. B. plain and simple. In fact, Tupper is most of his volumes, A. K. H. B., however, the butterfly, and A. K. H. B. the grub. has fully reached the Tupperian standard of Comparisons should not be instituted lightly imbecility. Of his various essays we will between great men; and it is quite worth only say that their style is egotistical, their while to see by what process the prosaic grub religion evangelical, and their humour becomes changed into the beautiful but rather Scotch, which means that they have neither artificial butterfly. Nothing can be simpler. religion nor humour. They are generally For instance, here is a piece of wisdom from headed " Concerning," and the heaviest A. K. H. B.: "No private ground of offence ones are called "Graver." Here and there should make you rejoice that your fellow-italics and capital letters stand as substicreature was hanged." ("Recreations of a Country Parson," p. 93.) This is the rough thought in its chrysalis state. But behold the change. In Tupper it would expand into something of this sort:

Rejoice neither at the hanging of a man; for the hemp may be growing for you:

Jack Ketch is a long lane; and lo! he sometimes cometh in the dark.

This would be the Tupperian style, as near as we can approach to Tupperian art. Under its treatment the baldness entirely disappears, and is replaced by an affectation of sense. Again, in his own plain simple way, A. K. H. B. writes: "It is good occasionally to rise at five on a December morning, that you may feel how much you are indebted to some who do for your sake all the winter through." (As before, p. 243.) This sublime truth may be easily rendered into Tupperics in some such fashion as the following:

Pleasant indeed is sleep; but damp sheets always give me a cold:

Dreams are a caution; but rising at five enlar geth the heart.

Or, to take another example of A. K. H. B.'s aphoristic wisdom: "It is better to be the warm, trembling, foreboding human being than to be Ben Nevis, knowing nothing; feeling nothing, fearing nothing, cold and lifeless." (As before, p. 268.) The analogous Tupperism for this would naturally be :

tutes for ideas. In short, A. K. H. B. has nothing to say, and he says it very badly.

In the volume, however, before us, A. K. H. B. is in the position of Juvenal's Codrus. He formerly had nothing, but now he has even lost that nothing.

Nil habuit Codrus: quis enim negat? et tamen illud

Perdidit infelix totum nihil.

After this, the wonder is how Codrus existed. And the modern wonder is how A. K. H. B.'s books exist. But just as the brain may be removed from a tortoise, and the animal will still live, so too, without brains, will certain books live. The arts of the publisher and the circulating library keep them in motion. Their life, however, is purely mechanical, and consists in being lifted from shelf to shelf. How far A. K. H. B. is fitted for the office of a critic, his own words shall testify :

"For myself, I confess with shame - and I know the reason is in myself - I cannot for my life see anything to admire in the writings of Mr. Carlyle. His style, both of thought and language, is to me insufferably irritating. I tried to read the Sartor Resartus,' and could not do it. So, if all people who have learned to read English were like me, Mr. Carlyle would have no readers. Happily, the majority in most is no further appeal than to the deliberate judgcases possesses the normal taste. At least, there ment of the majority of educated men. fess further, that I would rather read Mr. Helps than Milton. I do not say that I think Mr. Helps the greater man, but I feel that he suits

I con