"Shedding a dim, religious light,"

to touch the deep, solemn organ-stop in their ears, to turn to the statue of Newton, to gaze upon the sculptured marble on the walls, to call back the hopes and fears that lie buried there, to cast a wistful look at Poet's Corner (they scorn the Muse!)—all this would not stand one moment in the way of any of the schemes of these retrograde reformers; who, instead of being legislators for the world, and stewards to the intellectual inheritance of nations, are hardly fit to be parish-beadles, or pettifogging attorneys to a litigated estate! Their speech bewrayeth them." The leader of this class of reasoners does not write to be understood, because he would make fewer converts, if he did. The language he adopts is his own a word to the wise-a technical and conventional jargon, unintelligible to others, and conveying no idea to himself in common with the rest of mankind, purposely cut off from human sympathy and ordinary apprehension. Mr. Bentham's writings require to be translated into a foreign tongue, or his own, before they can be read at all, except by the adepts. This is not a very fair or very wise proceeding. No man who invents words arbitrarily, can be sure that he uses them conscientiously. There is no check upon him in the popular criticism exercised by the mass of readers-there is no clue to propriety in the habitual associations of his own mind. He who pretends to fit words to things, will much oftener accommodate things to words, to answer a theory. Words are a measure of truth. They ascertain (intuitively) the degrees, inflections, and powers of things in a wonderful manner; and he who voluntarily deprives himself of their assistance, does not go the way to arrive at any very nice or sure results. Language is the medium of our communication with the thoughts of others. But whoever becomes wise, becomes wise by sympathy: whoever is powerful, becomes so, by making others sympathize with him. To think justly, we must understand, what others mean: to

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must try their effect on other minds. There is this privilege in the use of a conventional style, as there was in that of the learned languages man may be as absurd as he pleases, without being ridiculous. His folly and his wisdom are alike a secret to the generality. If it were possible to contrive a perfect language consistent with itself, and answering to the complexity of human affairs, there would be some excuse for the attempt; but he who knows any thing of the nature of language or of the complexity of human thought, knows that this is impossible. What is gained in formality, is more than lost in force, ease, and perspicuity.→ Mr. Bentham's language, in short, is, like his reasoning, a logical apparatus, which will work infallibly and perform wonders, taking it for granted that his principles and definitions are universally true and intelligible; but as this is not exactly the case, neither the one nor the other is of much use or authority. Thus, the maxim that "mankind act from calculation" may be, in a general sense, true: but the moment you apply this maxim to subject all their actions systematically and demonstrably to reason, and to exclude passion both in common and in extreme cases, you give it a sense in which the principle is false, and in which all the inferences built upon it (many and mighty, no doubt) fall to the ground. "Madmen reason." But in what proportion does this hold good? How far does reason guide them, or their madness err? There is a difference between reason and madness in this respect; but according to Mr. Bentham, there can be none; for all men act from calculation, and equally so. "So runs the bond." Passion is liable to be restrained by reason, as drunkenness may be changed to sobriety by some strong motive: but passion is not reason, i. e. does not act by the same rule or law; and therefore all that follows, is that men act (according to the common-sense of the thing) either from passion or reason, from impulse or calculation, more or less as circumstances lead. But no sweeping, metaphysical conclusion can be drawn from hence, as if reason were absolute, and passion

a mere nonentity in the government of the world. People in general, or writers speculating on human actions, form wrong judgments concerning them, because they decide coolly, and at a distance on what is done in heat and on the spur of the occasion. Man is not a machine; nor is he to be measured by mechanical rules. The decisions of abstract reason would apply to what men might do if all men were philosophers: but if all men were philosophers, there would be no need of systems of philosophy!

The race of alchemists and vision aries is not yet extinct; and what is remarkable, we find them existing in the shape of deep logicians and enlightened legislators. They have got a menstruum for dissolving the lead and copper of society, and turning it to pure gold, as the adepts of old had a trick for finding the philosopher's stone. The author of St. Leon has represented his hero as possessed of the elixir vite and aurum potabile. The author of the Political Justice has adopted one half of this romantic fiction as a serious hypothesis, and maintains the natural immorta lity of man, without a figure. The truth is, that persons of the most precise and formal understandings are persons of the loosest and most extravagant imaginations. Take from them their norma loquendi, their lite ral clue, and there is no absurdity into which they will not fall with pleasure. They have no means or principle of judging of that which does not admit of absolute proof; and between this and the idlest fiction, they perceive no medium :-as those artists who take likenesses with a machine, are quite thrown out in their calculations when they have to rely on the eye or hand alone. People who are accustomed to trust to their imaginations or feelings know how far to go, and how to keep within certain limits: those who seldom exert these faculties are all abroad, in a wide sea of speculation without rudder or compass, the instant they leave the shore of matter-of-fact or

dry reasoning, and never stop short of the last absurdity. They go all lengths, or none. They laugh at poets, and are themselves lunatics. They are the dupes of all sorts of projectors and impostors. Being of a busy, meddlesome turn, they are for reducing whatever comes into their heads (and cannot be demonstrated by mood and figure to amount to a contradiction in terms) to prac tice. What they would scout in a fiction, they would set about realizing in sober sadness, and melt their fortunes in compassing what others consider as the amusement of an idle hour. Astolpho's voyage to the moon in Ariosto, they criticise sharply as a quaint and ridiculous burlesque: but if any one had the face seriously to undertake such a thing, they would immediately patronize it, and defy any one to prove by a logical dilemma that the attempt was physically impossible. So, again, we find that painters and engravers, whose attention is confined and rivetted to a minute investigation of actual objects or of visible lines and surfaces, are apt to fly out into all the extravagance and rhapsodies of the most unbridled fanaticism. Several of the most eminent are at this moment Swedenborgians, animal magnetists, &c. The mind (as it should seem) too long tied down to the evidence of sense, and a number of trifling particulars, is wearied of the bondage, revolts at it, and instinctively takes refuge in the wildest schemes, and most magnificent contradictions of an unlimited faith. Poets, on the contrary, who are continually throwing off the superfluities of feeling or fancy in little sportive sallies and short excursions with the Muse, do not find the want of any greater or more painful effort of thought; leave the ascent of the "highest Heaven of Invention" as a holiday task to persons of more mechanical habits and turn of mind; and the characters of poet and sceptic are now often united in the same individual as those of poet and prophet were supposed to be of old.

T.

rhyming propensity to an odd volume of Spenser's Fairy Queen; and I am inclined to derive mine from two odd volumes of Hayley's poems, which had been given to one of my schoolfellows by his god-mother, a very worthy old woman. We have all heard of Dr. Johnson's epitaph on the duck, and of Cowley's precocious writings; yet I question whether the candid and impartial reader will find anything in their boyish productions, much more smart and piquant than the following, which I wrote on Tom Sullivan, one of our school-fellows, who broke his arm by a fall from a restive horse, which I had dissuaded him from mounting.

EPIGRAM

Ah Tom, had my advice been taken,
As prudently as it was spoken;
You might perchance have saved your
bacon,

And not have had your right arm broken!

The sting is every thing in these cases, and the point here was much admired at the time, yet I could not have been twelve years old when it was written! I have no wish, how ever, to disparage Dr. Johnson's or Cowley's youthful attempts, which certainly have merit in their way.

Such was my capacity and application, that in an unusually short time, I had learnt every thing that old Vincent Harbord, the master, could teach me; when the Squire, having very kindly married Mary to his Gamekeeper, sent word that he could no longer pay for my education, and I was consequently taken home. I told my father candidly, that talents such as mine would be sacrificed altogether, unless I had an opportunity of displaying them in one of the liberal professions, though, I certainly gave the preference to the bar, with an ultimate eye to the House of Commons; but he was blind to my attainments, deaf to my entreaties, and actually bound me apprentice to a saddler at Marlow. O day and night, but this is wondrous strange," said I to myself; this is indeed, to yoke the antelope, and cage the eagle: -I, who never thought of saddling any horse, except Pegasus, to be polishing spurs, plaiting whips, and stitching girths! The thing was too ridiculous, and in my own defence, I

must say, that I never bestowed the smallest attention on business, and invariably held myself above all the duties of my station. Ireland's Confessions fell at this period into my hands, and I set about imitating his Imitations with such ardour, that my master discovered me one day writing poetry, and in great horror and consternation of mind, instantly cancelled my indentures. Once more "the world was all before me,”—and disdaining to return to my father to associate with brainless clowns and uneducated mechanics, I determined on supporting myself comfortably and respectably by my own literary abilities, as Rowe, Otway, Chatterton, Savage, Dermody, and other men of genius had done before me.

For this purpose, I took lodgings in a garret in this town, and as I began to consider on what subject I should first exercise my talent, it occurred to me, that it was absolutely necessary to fall in love. This point was soon settled. Sally Potts, whose father kept the White Hart, had always struck my fancy, from her strong resemblance to an engraving of Sappho, in old Vincent Harbord's parlour; and in order to get into her good graces, I got pretty deep into the Inn-keeper's books, or rather into his slates, of which he had a formidable row hanging up in the bar. Sally evidently enjoyed my sprightly ebullitions; she smiled, tittereddid every thing but blush; in the meantime, although the White Hart

was

open to all that have wherewith to pay," (Goldsmith,) I found it could be very expeditiously shut against visitants of a different description. After one or two civil hints of my having been slated for above a month, I was plainly ordered not to enter the house any more, unless I could show-up my score, as the vulgar fellow termed it. I could not exclaim with Shenstone

Whoe'er has travelled life's dull round,
May sigh to think that he has found
Whate'er its stages may have been,

His warmest welcome at an inn.

For alas! "the little dogs and all, Tray, Blanche, and Sweetheart, seemed to bark at me," (Shakspeare). As I could not pay the Inn-keeper's bill, I wrote a satire on him, which