MAN'S SUPERIORITY.

(Sydney Smith.)

CONFESS I treat on this subject with some degree of apprehension and reluctance, because I should be very sorry to do injustice to the poor brutes who have no professors to avenge their cause by lecturing on our faculties; and, at the same time, I know there is a very strong anthropical party who view all eulogiums on the brute creation with a very considerable degree of suspicion, and look upon every compliment which is paid to the ape as high treason to the dignity of man.

There may, perhaps, be more of rashness and ill-fated security in my opinion than of magnanimity or liberality; but I confess I feel myself so much at my ease about the superiority of mankind,-I have such a marked and decided contempt for the understanding of every baboon I have yet seen,-I feel so sure that the blue ape without a tail will never rival us in poetry, painting, and music,—that I see no reason whatever why justice may not be done to the few fragments of soul and tatters of understanding which they may really possess. I have sometimes, perhaps, felt a little uneasy at Exeter 'Change from contrasting the monkeys with the 'prentice boys who are teasing them; but a few pages of Locke or a few lines of Milton. have always restored me to tranquillity, and convinced me that the superiority of man had nothing to fear.

His gregarious nature is one cause of man's superiority over all other animals. A lion lies under a hole in a rock, and if any other lion happens to pass by, they fight. Now, whoever gets a habit of lying under a hole in a rock, and fighting with every gentleman who passes near him, cannot possibly make any progress. Every man's understanding and acquirements, how great and extensive soever they may appear, are made up from the contributions of his friends

and companions. If lions would consort together and growl out the observations they had made about killing sheep and shepherds, the most likely places for catching a calf grazing, and so forth, they could not fail to improve, because they would be actuated by such a wide range of observation, and operating by the joint force of so many minds. .

The fact seems to be, that though almost every quality of mind we possess can be traced in some trifling degree in brutes, yet that degree, compared with the extent in which the same quality is observable in man, is very low and inconsiderable. For instance, we cannot say that animals are devoid of curiosity, but they have a very slight degree of curiosity; they imitate, but they imitate very slightly in comparison with men; they cannot imitate anything very difficult, and many of them hardly imitate at all; they abstract, but they cannot make such compound abstractions as men do; they have no such compound abstractions as city, prudence, fortitude, parliament, and justice; they reason, but their reasonings are very short and very obvious; they invent, but their inventions are extremely easy, and not above the reach of a human idiot. The story of the ape and the walnuts is one of the most extraordinary I ever read; but what a wretched limit of intellect does it imply to be cited as an instance of extraordinary sagacity!

THREATENED INVASION—1803.

(Hall.)

Y a series of criminal enterprises, by the success of guilty ambition, the liberties of Europe have been gradually extinguished. The subjugation of Holland, of Switzerland, and the free towns of Germany, has completed that catastrophe; and we are the only people in the castern hemisphere who are in possession of equal laws and a free constitution. Freedom, driven from every spot on the Continent, has sought asylum in the country she always chose for her favourite abode; but she is pursued even here, and threatened with destruction. The inundation of lawless power, after covering the whole earth, threatens to follow us here. We are most exactly, most critically, placed in the only aperture where it can be successfully repelled,—in the Thermopyle of the world. As far as the interests of freedom are concerned--the most important by far of all the sublunary interestsyou, my countrymen, stand in the capacity of the representatives of the human race; for you it is to determine-under God-in what condition the latest posterity shall be born. Their fortunes are entrusted to your care; on your conduct at this moment depend the colour and complexion of their destiny. If liberty, extinguished on the Continent, be suffered to expire here, whence is it ever to emerge from the midst of that thick night which will invest it? It remains with you, then, to decide, whether that freedom, at whose voice the kingdoms of Europe awoke from the sleep of ages, to run a career of virtuous emulation in everything great and good; that freedom which dispelled the mists of superstition, and invited the nations to behold their God, and whose magic torch kindled the rays of genius, the enthusiasm of poetry, and the flame of eloquence; that freedom which poured into our lap opulence and arts, and embellished life with innumerable institutions and improvements, till it became a theatre of wonders; it is for you to decide, whether that freedom shall yet

survive, or be covered with a funeral pall, and be wrapped in eternal gloom.

It is not necessary to await your determination. In the solicitude you feel to approve yourselves worthy of such a trust, every thought of what is afflicting in warfare, every apprehension of danger, must vanish; you are impatient to mingle in the battle of the civilised world. Go then, ye defenders of your country, accompanied by every auspicious omen; advance with alacrity into the field, where God himself musters the hosts to war. Religion is too much interested in your success not to lend you her aid. She will shed over this enterprise her selectest influence. While you are engaged in the field, many will repair to the closet, many to the sanctuary. The faithful of every name will employ that prayer which has power with God. The feeble hand, unequal to any other weapon, will grasp the sword of the Spirit; from myriads of humble contrite hearts, the voice of intercession, supplication, and weeping, will mingle in its ascent to heaven with the shouts of battle and the shock of arms.

The extent of your resources, under God, is equal to the justice of your cause. But should Providence determine otherwise,-should you fall in the struggle, should the nation fall,-you will have the satisfaction-the purest allotted to man-of having performed your part ; your names will be enrolled with the most illustrious dead; while posterity to the end of time, as often as they revolve the events of this period—and they will incessantly revolve them—will turn to you a reverential eye, while they mourn over the freedom entombed in your sepulchre.

ER face, her form, have been so deeply impressed upon the imagination, that even at the distance of nearly three centuries, it is unnecessary to remind the most ignorant and uninformed reader of the striking traits which characterised that remarkable countenance, which seems at once to combine our ideas of the majestic, the pleasing, and the briiliant, leaving us to doubt whether they express most happily the queen, the beauty, or the accomplished woman. Who is there, that, at the very mention of Mary Stuart's name, has not her countenance before him, as that of the mistress of his youth, or the favourite daughter of his advanced age? Even those who feel themselves compelled to believe all or much of what her enemies laid to her charge, cannot think without a sigh upon a countenance expressive of anything rather than the foul crimes with which she was charged when living, and which still continue to shade, if not to blacken, her memory. That brow, so