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viously endeavored, as far as possible, to conciliate prejudice. But the truth is, that it does not fall in with the views of any party or sect; and, as even an honest party, or a liberal sect, cares more for the thread which separates it from mankind than for the cables which unite it to them, it will not do anything towards spreading the popularity of a work which deals much in matters of universal concernment and agreement, and scarcely treats at all of particular and accidental differences. No one can read these little volumes without feeling more sensibility to beauty, more reverence for truth, more love for man, more devotion towards God. But, as it is not one of its objects to enter into the question of infant baptism or episcopacy, it can never become the manual of those who, like the religious people of England, think such questions of more importance than the deepest principles of the human mind. When men coalesce into sects and parties, they club together the folly of all to establish a power which shall be stronger than the reason of any.

Another reason why the "Guesses at Truth" have not become more fashionable is, because they do not profess to be a system. The fault is not that they are "guesses," but that they do not profess to be anything else. If you tell a man you are guessing, you leave him the labor of thinking whether you are right or wrong; and labor takes time and trouble, both of which are reserved by our generation for their counting-houses and dinner-tables. Write a system, and your readers have nothing to do but learn it by rote, and they are saved from thought, the curse of enjoyment, with regard to the whole subject of your book. If we had it in our choice to establish in London a School of Wisdom or a Delphic Oracle, a Socrates or a Sibyl, though we believe the one to be the means of arriving at truth and know the other to be an imposture, we should instantly choose the divination and reject the philosophy, because we may cheat ourselves into a persuasion

that the dogmatism is right, and so avoid the trouble of examination, while thought can only address itself to thought, and truth be won only by those who will toil to gain her. If Mademoiselle le Normand and Mr. Coleridge would each of them advertise to answer questions at the Egyptian Hall, we would wager that the lady would be as generally visited as if she had a pig-face or a Hottentot protuberance; and that, after the first three days, the teacher would be as completely deserted as if he were really inspired. Those who, like the authors of the "Guesses at Truth," make it their great object to set free their own minds and those of their fellow-men, to feel as deeply and think as earnestly as they can, and to teach others to do so,-who would bring us to truth, not by tumbling us into a stage-coach, (none of which travel that road, and) which would certainly take us wrong, but by lending us a staff and a lantern, and setting us forward on our way for ourselves—such persons as these, whether in Rome, London, or Cambridge, are very certain to meet at first with but scanty audiences, jealous reception, and niggard entertainment.

We have said that this work has not found its due level, because it does not put forth opinions after the approved manner of sectarians and partisans, and because it does not pretend to be a code or a system. It is also comparatively unrenowned for two opposite, though not contrary, reasons. The authors do not chime in with the weary "ding-dong-bell" of class doctrines; but they have strong convictions of their own. They do not put forward a system, but they think systematically.

Society has a natural dislike to an earnest belief of any mind on any subject. It has no such belief itself, and has an antipathy to all who have for they rouse the slumbers, or interrupt the business, of the crowd, and in either case are equally disagreeable. a man feel deeply the truth of that which is only held in words, only seen

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in shadows, by the mob, he will utter it with an energy which is as startling and painful to them, as if it were the expression of some dangerous heresy or evident falsehood. Where they are accustomed to mutter and lisp, he speaks with boldness and emphasis; where they dogmatise with indifference, he reasons with zeal and resolution; where they decide in their dreams, he inquires with all the best and most awakened faculties of his nature. This is worse to them than the curled rose-leaf to the Sybarite,it is as if he had been transferred from his luxury to "Damien's bed of steel," or to the spiked couch of an Indian devotee. The world, till the innovator who dares to feel and to think has been justified by success, never forgives the disturbance he causes. The only excusable case is when some oldaccustomed persuasion, which has been in the mind till it no longer breaks the rest thereof, has been

brought into dispute, and some "air from heaven, or blast from hell," has shaken the dulness of "the fat weed, that rots itself in ease on Lethe's wharf," some mole, working beneath, has stirred its roots, or some lark from his airy poise has sunk upon its leaves, and thrilled them with the tremblings of his song. Then, as a mere expedient for preserving as far as possible the previous insensibility, some momentary exertion is permitted till the invasion has been repelled. The Heathens combated Christianity by rationalising and spiritualising Paganism. The Roman Catholic Church endured a small reform, to prevent the success of the great one, and permitted a feeble development of energy to keep off the impulse begun by Wickliffe and Luther; and, at this moment, in India, Brahminism is strengthened against the missionaries by a modification or interpretation of its doctrines, of which, about fifty years ago, there was scarcely a glimmering to be discovered. Except in such circumstances as these, the bold and eager enforcement of any principle, the outbreaking of any powerful feeling, agi9 ATHENEUM, VOL. 1, 3d series.

tates and frightens the crowd ; its nature is like that of the beasts who hate light, merely because it is light; and it never becomes reconciled to the torch which any philosopher has kindled, until time has rendered it such a feeble, fluttering, and dim illumination, as alone its weak and bat-like eyes can bear without annoyance. So fresh and bright a flame as burns over the pages of the "Guesses at Truth," is almost always sure to be made the mark, like the light held by the Duc D'Enghien, at which the bullets of the vulgar will be aimed.

Again, we have said that a great obstacle to the wide circulation of this book is the unhappy circumstance that its authors think systematically. This is an immense drawback from its chance of boudoir and circulatinglibrary celebrity; for, though people like to have systems-no matter on what principles founded,-meaning by systems things that entitle their readers to pronounce opinions upon every point connected with a subject—works which none but men of the highest genius are fit to write,-yet they do not at all like, that in a book, not pretending to settle the omne scibile of dress or political economy, cookery, or Christianity, there should be evidence of its writer having thought with fixed principles; and for this obvious reason, that a principle, like the flying horse of the "Arabian Nights," is an unmanageable power, which will not stop when it is bidden, or go on when it is whipped. It is true that many a

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man who thinks that he is mounted upon a principle, and careering among the stars, is, in fact, seated, like Don Quixote, on a wooden hobby, which does not stir an inch. But, on the other hand, no one is more unhappy than a vulgar man,-a man of moderation, and compromise, and "sound practical sense,' who has long ago "made up his mind" out of the parings of this orthodoxy, and that prejudice, and the dust shaken from the feet of the wise,-when he finds himself suddenly mounted on some master truth, which, instead of taking him a quiet amble along the

turnpike-road he has been accustomed sense and wit. We must even be al

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The stamp of fate, and fiat of the god," in most English coteries, when he by accident falls in with some such truths as are scattered in scores through these volumes. They take their rise in admitted reasonings, or outward revelations, but however do not stop at the ordinary conclusions which most men of cultivated minds would perhaps agree with. They hold on their course desolating the after-dinner homily of the rector, and annulling the warrantlike dictum of the justice. They humble the pride of the attorney, and lay waste his shrubbery of quibbles, and teach the philosophy of the merchant to prop itself no more upon

"The Westminster Review."

Some of the qualities which we would attribute to the "Guesses at Truth," may be inferred from the preceding observations. Besides their freedom from the spirit of party, and their inculcation of great universal principles, they are written throughout with a vividness of style which is now very rarely found in connection with so little of conceit or affectation. We also meet in every page the touches of as picturesque a pencil as has ever been at work except in first-rate poetry. There is often an earnest, sometimes a quaint, conciseness, which gives exceeding character and strength to the style; but this quality frequently degenerates, especially in the shorter "Guesses," into obscurity and far-fetchedness. There is also in some instances evidence of a tendency to substitute a mere jingle of words for

lowed to say, that the book contains some sentences ludicrously and despicably trivial, and some in which, though one may trace the thought that the authors had in their minds, it is yet utterly worthless, and very ill expressed. As to the particular acquirements, tenets, and characters of the writers, we shall only say, that they are evidently scholars, gentlemen, and Christians, in no small degree conversant with literature, nature, and the human mind, among the best critics of our day, enthusiastic admirers of all things admirable, and profound reverers of Mr. Coleridge.

We shall now make some extracts

almost at random. The best things in the book-such as the inimitable essay on poetry and sculpture-are too long to be quoted, and too good to be curtailed.

"Some people would have us love, or rather obey God, chiefly because he outbids the devil."

The next seems to us very odd and amusing.

"Many nowadays write what may be called a dashing style. Unable to put much meaning into their words, they try to eke it out by certain marks which they attach to them, something like pigtails sticking out at right angles to the body. The perfection of this style is found in the articles by the Editor of The Edinburgh Review,' and in Lord Byron's Poems, above all in The Corsair,' deservedly his most popular work, seeing that all his faults came to a head in it. A couplet from The Bride of Abydos' may instance my meaning:

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and there. The celebrated sentence him before he is old enough to know of Galgacus becomes :

'He makes a solitude-and calls it-peace!'

The noble poet places a flourish after every second word, like a vulgar writing master. But perhaps they are only marks of admiration, standing prostrate, as Lord Castlereagh would have termed it. Nor are upright ones spared."

"How easy it is to pass sentence against a work! All we understand in it, is common-place: all we understand not, is nonsense.

"A mother should give her children a superfluity of enthusiasm, that after they have lost all they will lose on mixing with the world, enough may still remain to prompt and support them through great actions. A cloak should be of three-pile, to keep its gloss in wear.

"The best criterion of an enlarged mind, next to the performance of great actions, is their comprehension.

"Fickleness is in women of the world the fault most likely to result from their situation in society. The weaknesses which they know are the most severely condemned, and the good qualities which they feel to be most highly valued, in the female character, by our sex as well as their own, have alike a tendency to render them generally obliging, to the exclusion, so far as nature will permit, of strong and durable, unmixed, uncountenanced attachment to individuals. Well! we deserve no better of them. And after all, the flame is only smothered by society, not extinguished: give it free ventilation, and it will blaze.

Poetry is to philosophy what the sabbath is to the rest of the week.

It is well for us that we are born babies in intellect. Could we understand and reflect upon one half of what most mothers at that time say and do to us, we should draw conclusions in favor of our own importance which would render us insupportable for years. Happy the boy whose mother is tired of talking nonsense to

the sense of it!

"Since the generality of persons act from impulse, and not from principle, men are neither so good nor so bad as we are apt to imagine them.

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Beauty is perfection unmodified by a predominating expression.

"The progress of knowledge is slow, like the march of the sun. We cannot see him moving, but after a time we may perceive that he has moved onward.

"Too much is seldom enough. Pumping after your bucket runs over prevents its keeping full.

"The mind is like a trunk: if well packed, it holds almost everything; if ill packed, next to nothing.

"We hurry through life fearful, as it would seem, of looking back, lest we should be turned, like Lot's wife, into pillars of salt. And, alas! if we did look back, very often we should see nothing but the blackened and smouldering ruins of our vices, the smoking Sodom and Gomorrah of the heart.

"Many persons seem to keep their hearts in their eyes you come into both together, and so you go out of them.

"The history of philosophy is the history of a game at cat's cradle. One theory is taken off; and then the taker off holds out a second to you, of the same thread, and very like the first, although not quite the same. According to the skill of the players, the game lasts through more or fewer changes: but mostly the string at length gets entangled, and you must begin afresh, or give over; or at best the cat's cradle comes back again, and you have never a cat to put into it.

"Men harm others by their deeds, themselves by their thoughts.

Heliogabolus is said to have calculated the size of Rome from ten thousand pounds weight of cobwebs amassed within it. Mr. Colquhoun and the Reports of the Police and Mendicity Committees have furnished us with similar materials for estimating the grandeur of our own metropolis. Only the dirt is moral.

"A man's errors are what renders him amiable,' says Goethe, in the last number of his Journal on Art, that is, in his seventy-seventh year. I said one day to a girl of fourteen: If you were but as good as your brother!' 'Well!' she replied, with something of a bashful sullenness, I don't care. You would not be so fond of me, if I was.'

"I love to gaze on a breaking wave. It is the only thing in nature which is most beautiful in the moment of its dissolution.

"Seeking is not always the way to find; or Altamira would have found a husband long ago.

"A great man commonly disappoints those who visit him. They are on the look-out for his thundering and lightning, and he speaks about common things much like other people; nay, sometimes he may even be seen laughing. He proportions his exertions to his excitements having been accustomed to converse with deep and lofty thoughts, it is not to be expected that he will flare or sparkle in ordinary chit-chat. One sees no pebbles glittering at the bottom of the Atlantic.

"The tower of Babel could never have been built in a mountainous country: nature there awes and defies rivalry.

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old church: the worn stones are hallowed by the feet which have trod, and the knees which have knelt, on them so much in it has been changed by time, that it is become more like a house not made with hands: nobody now living can make anything like it; its architect is forgotten-it is the work not of a man but of an age. A new church, on the contrary, was built by such a man, fitted up by such another: everything about it is so neat and so modern; it is almost as smart as a theatre there was no such thing five years ago, and what has been so short-lived can never seem to have any permanent reason for its existence, or indeed to have anything permanent about it; and instead of the odor of sanctity, one finds only the smell of paint. It has no atmosphere of prayer; it is not a treasure-house of the dead. My feelings on this subject I should have conceived would have been almost universal, had not an American gentleman once expressed to me his surprise, that we let our churches in England, especially the cathedrals, grow so old and dirty. He had seen the minsters of York and Lincoln, and assured me that, if they stood in America, the outside of them would be white-washed every ten years; such being the American way of showing their reverence for the house of God. How far his statement is correct, I know not. A nation of yesterday may perhaps be destitute of sympathy with the day before: but we in England, I trust, should as soon think of white-washing Helvellyn."

"The worst thing of all is a new church. I love to say my prayers in a place where my fathers and forefathers have prayed. It may be idleness and vanity to think so, but somehow God seems to be nearer in a building where he has long been more immediately present. There is an odor of sanctity breathing about an mens.

Accurate and feeling, the passages quoted above are favorable speci

THE PLACE OF REST.

I AM weary of life, I am tired of the earth, Of its dark sorrows and boisterous mirth, Of its changeful scenes, its uncertain joys, Its wo that frowns, and its pleasure that cloys,

Of its dreams that delude the youthful breast:

-Would I could find me a place of rest!

I sought in a land far beyond the sea, Where the flowers came forth in radiancy, Where shone the clearest and sunniest sky; But, alas! I found that the flowers would die,

That clouds would o'ershadow the heaven's blue breast;

And I left it,-for me 'twas no place of rest!

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