ment, all the beauty of thought, all the energy of feeling, of which they are the representatives, have mingled in the storm and conflict of political strife, and become politicians. But they have ever embraced the nobler part of the cause. Imagination, that hurries onward from the present to the future, and even puts life into the past, cannot descend to the gross and vulgar views of the selfish and the cold. Whether, in their impetuosity, buoyed and allured by the rapid and deep conviction, the smiles and gladness of hope, they have urged the sudden and instant destruction of prevailing errors, the rude disruption of ties that are created and bound by the most enduring attachments of the human heart; or whether, in submission to the tranquil counsels of a wiser and a safer judgment, they have advised patience, the difficult, and generally, to the weak spirits of men, almost impracticable forbearance, and abiding fortitude, under suffering and wrong, that time alone is to remove, they cannot be charged with a base or selfish purpose, or as acting from any other motive than the good of men. Byron, the great poetical disorganizer of his day, has, at times, shaken this opinion. But when we consider that he was a being almost entirely of impulse; and that if he had a sinister and distant motive it would have been almost impossible for him to conceal it; that for the larger portion of his life, he was the object of contempt and avoidance to the better part of society; that he was an exile from his native country; and that even if his natural disposition had been generous, which we almost doubt, we must acknowledge that these were sufficient causes to keep in action his basest and most violent passions. A certain portion of the world made him their foe; and in retorting on them insults and calumny, his genius made him the foe of mankind. He was the head of a social convulsion. Like all civil strife, from personal bitterness it became a war of extermination. He was the representative of a certain class of opinions; the incarnate concentration of a fashionable mode of thinking; of the dangerous sentiments, the exaggerated and distempered feelings, and disorganizing principles, that, under the pretence of assaulting absurdities, were warring with the best interests and shattering the noblest institutions of men. We make every

excuse for a disgust at antiquated errors, the tyrannic rule of custom, and the servile submission with which it makes the best energies of the human soul to bend. The increased intellectual activity, the diffusion of acquirement, the whole spirit of the times were against them; but these are things at which the finger of scorn should never be pointed: let time alone be their destroyer, let thought and reason be their only innovators: but while they are intended as blessings, and no man appears able to offer a substitute, let them stand untouched. The great design with all superior intellect, all minds that can instruct, and draw from the

deep resources of their intelligence, should be to elevate human character, give it hope, give it support. The influences of the world are base and depressing enough, and require no additional power, utterly to wither the already despairing expectations of mankind; but to cast ridicule and scoffing on the little that is pure, the little that is holy, is at once to rear high the battlements of hell over the ruins of the human spirit.

The influence of this poet's writings went to this end. The times were filled with action, and passion, and convulsion. He felt the movement, took the tide, and was borne like a bubble on its surface. He aided and gave impulse to the heady current of revolution. His extraordinary popularity as a writer mingled him with the affections of the public. It wrought into their souls the doubt of the existence of virtue as a principle of action, and all the ribald jests and sneers with which he assaulted the motives of men and their institutions; it gave a vicious bias to the principles and the characters of the young; and it will only be with time, the decay of his name and works as a fashion, and an admiration for a higher standard of morals and purer sources of poetry, that an entire change in these effects may be expected. These fountains of better poetry and morals we open in the works of Wordsworth and Shelley. During the ascendency of Byron, and the confusion he created, these two poets were for the time nearly overwhelmed; but they were forming a strong though tranquil under current, deeper, though less observed-more powerful, though never swelling with the turbid fury and impetuosity that belong to those who are the idols of the mass. But they were gradually making their way, and if they are not now, will be in a few years, more read than any poets of the time. We are inclined to think that in all the higher matters of taste, popularity is suspicious. There is something low and debasing in catering for the majority at all. It shows a desire for the worst part of fame-its notoriety-that in itself betrays a vulgar and feeble mind. No one would ask the judgment of the mob alone, and no one would feel exalted by its praise; yet to gain it he must bring his intellect to their level, he must reduce the fineness of his sentiments, the energy and elevation of his feelings, all that he feels within himself separating and distinguishing him from those around, to the meagre standard of general opinion. Is there a single great work, of whatever nature, on whose merits the mass of men are able to decide? Would Raphael have hung his picture in the streets of Rome; Dante have thrown his poem as a peace offering to those who drove him from the walls of Florence; or Milton offered the result of his toils, whose every line, like the rays of light, is wrought with a beauty, brilliancy, and power, that show the deep effulgence, the magnificence, and the vastness of the orb whence they spring,

to the crop-eared fanatics or profligate cavaliers, that formed the rude and fierce factions of his country, undoubtedly not; and whoever is conscious of an inward power, a genius that he is well aware the world will not appreciate, let him not strive to subdue its struggles for expression-check its impulse and compel it to a career that from being uncongenial must wither every effort. From the great variety of human character, comes equal variety of tastes, and there is nothing in nature or intellect but will find a congenial alliance. But all minds when exerted in a sphere to which they are ill disposed, lose half their power. The will is backed by no zeal, there is straining for effect without the ability to produce it. There is no ease, no grace, no repose, in these extorted labours. The strongest minds will not yield to the whim or fashion of the moment. They seem borne up by a strength of conviction and energy of will, that resembles inspiration. They mark their course and adhere to it, through opposition and persecution, with a pertinacity that becomes obstinate in proportion to the violence with which it is assaulted. Heretofore literature was only meant for the few. The great men of the past looked to immortality, but not to popularity; they could not imagine the enormous multiplication of readers, but gave their souls to the world, with no hope that time would enlarge the sphere of their intellectual influence, or make their thoughts flow onwards in an incessant pilgrimage to the shrine of mind. They made no offerings to the passions of the hour, but like legislators seemed to be ever looking to the future. They gazed into the abyss of time, and saw moving in its depths, not the countless multitude of the gleaners of thought that multiply with the improvement of old empires, and the creation of new, but the limited few; the small brotherhood of congenial spirits, who, stood divided from the world and its interests-who loved study for itself, not for the fame it gave-and gathered around learning as the altar where all their affections were warmed-all their feelings purified--all their hopes elevated or sacrificed. This state of things has not yet passed away-and whoever has the courage to forego the intoxicating gratification of an immediate and premature reputation, and to permit his genius to take its course, will find, or make an audience. There are two things belonging to every work, that seem to require distinct faculties; the conception, and the execution; with the first, the majority of men have nothing to do, the last, is their only ground for admiration, criticism, or calumny; yet it is the first only that shows the mind-the last is matter of detail, of industry and habit. The first proves the power of imagination, the strength and extent of the intellect; the second, dexterity in managing the materials. But who, except some congenial soul, can appreciate or comprehend all that the imagination has gone through-the far world it has VOL. XIX.- -No. 38.

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traversed, the glories it has seen, the whole stupendous energies of this amazing and sublime power. It is only when it drops to earth, arrays itself in the dress of every day life, and addresses the passions and interests of men, and mingles in their humble pursuits, that it is capable of exerting an influence or drawing attention. It is only when it is no longer imagination, when it has deserted its realms of spirit, shrouded its splendour, and drawn over its starry vesture the garb that dims its beauty, adopting the plain, regular, and unpretending movements and appearance of one of the sons of earth, that it can touch their passions, or be viewed as little else than monstrous. Are there not examples and evidence of this, among the greatest poets? Dante is thought wild and absurd; Milton, cold, formal, and solemn; and Shelley, as beyond these, and almost mad, because they have given the reins to imagination, and roamed through spheres and space, so boundless, so obscure, that the common view cannot track them. But why is this attempt to degrade these great spirits? Is it forgotten that they have created new worlds? Why should that be matter of reproach that gives to us the hope of great destinies-that in increasing our admiration of the powers of the human soul, leads us to elevate its nature, inspiring through their glory the sense and desire of immortality? It is true, we believe there are things so vast and so extraordinary, that men refer their existence to accident. Their thoughts being unable to extend beyond what they see, they lose all conception of the creator, in the creation; men look on the ocean, the earth, the heavens, and admire the beauty, the magnitude, the order, the arrangement-but stop there! they neglect, or deny, or attribute to some inferior principle, the crigin of this great whole; for the love of depreciation comes from and grows with our ignorance. We have no fondness for the incomprehensible, no understanding for the invisible. All that will not rest on the columns of our intellect, we throw into the regions of speculation, scepticism, and doubt; and thence it is, that the greatest minds, unless they adapt themselves to this their earthly sphere, have but a small circle of admirers, and remain forgotten or unknown. This was particularly the case with Shelley. Almost the sole notice his works attracted, was confined to abuse. Those who confessed that they did not understand him, that he was too abstract to be popular, still calumniated and persecuted with an envenomed fury, that seemed to have a personal source; while his inferior, Byron, was allowed to fling his scoffs and sneers on all that was admirable in human character and human institutions, and distil his profligate wit into the senses of the world, till they were steeped in its poison; yet he was cheered and praised.

While the unworldly Shelley was made the victim to detraction, and driven to a solitary exile, by those who pursued him with hatred, yet who did not know him, and had the honesty to acknowledge his writings could do no harm.

This unmanly and cowardly conduct can only be attributed to base causes; the chief, a spirit of illiberality that then pervaded the literature and politics of Great Britain, and which admitted no enquiry, and always attempted to break down all freedom of thought whenever it rose in opposition to and assumed an independence of certain opinions that had long monopolized the highways of intellect. The antiquated jurisdiction, this prescriptive right of judging, that listens to no appeal, but brings before its tribunal, errors as crimes, the questionings of an anxiously seeking mind as dangerous heresies, doubts that rise in the progress of study, and are the impelling forces towards farther knowledge as expressive of the disposition to unloosen the bonds of habitual faith, and put in motion, to wander the broad field of enquiry, the most vicious elements of our nature, is now moderating its tone with the loss of its influence. The refined, antique toryism that enchained literature and morals, and gave to its dictates and decisions the imperiousness of law, though one of the best guides for public opinion, and safest sources for the moral power of a nation, is rapidly passing to a shadow, before the turbulent excitement of men's minds; and the diffusion, or with more propriety, the levelling of knowledge. The last strongholds of this worthy and honest feeling in England, are the two universities, Oxford and Cambridge; the first, however, is its oldest, strongest, and most impregnable fortress. There are preserved, with most religious respect, the skeletons of old forms, the phantoms of a grandeur, whose substance has been withered by time; yet still bears, like a mummy, the external aspect of life and power, from having been embalmed by pure principles, which suffer no corruption from age, though they may lose their vigour by neglect and want of occasional excitement. Theirs is the apathy of long self-satisfaction, the torpor of self-complacency, that come from an uninterrupted rule, and which allow the blood to stagnate in the very centre of their energies. Still to these places of instruction, the ardent and aspiring youth of England go; there they imbibe prejudices which intercourse with the world compels them to dismiss, and there they acquire a character and habits that after circumstances necessarily modify or entirely change. We allude, of course, to the general effect on the nature and principles of the young men educated within the