stimulus-over and above that of the food-should not be administered, to excite the stomach into more energetic action, and to produce a more copious supply of gastric juice. A glass or two of white wine could not, therefore, prove pernicious; instead of diluting the secretion of the stomach, it would add both to its quantity and quality. Let us, then, take the middle path; and while we sincerely deprecate dilution, let us not wholly abjure a gentle stimulus.

66

To return, however, to our subject, Under ordinary circumstances the consideration of diet might be rendered very simple, if people would but make it so. "The best general rule for diet, that I can write," says Dr. Kitchener, who, amongst a vast quantity of trash and nonsense, has contrived to dove-tail now and then a sensible remark, is to eat and drink only of such foods-at such times-and in such quantities as experience has convinced you agree with your constitution ;and absolutely to avoid all other*." After all," temperantia medicina optima est;" and we should bear in mind a quaint apophthegm in Lacon," namely, that "the excesses of our youth are drafts upon our old age; payable with interest, about twenty years after date." All excess must be bad, not only in its immediate effect, but in its ultimate consequence; and we most cordially agree with the authors of "L'Encyclopédie Portative," when they observe," Si les alimens sont pris en quantité modérée, c'est-à-dire, si l'individu ne va jamais jusqu'à la satiété, ils accomplissent parfaitement leur but, sans que leur ingestion dans l'estomac et leur passage dans les voies circulatoires déterminent ni malaise, ni accablement, ni fatigue, ni agitation."

[To be concluded in our next.]

AMERICAN CRITICISM.

Ir was well said by Dr. Johnson, that "the chief glory of a people is its authors." It is in its literature, more than in anything else, that the mind of a nation expresses itself; it is there we have that mind in its most spiritualized essence and highest power; and it is there that it is enshrined, both most enduringly and so as to cast most diffusively abroad, and to send deepest into many hearts, whatever of splendour or beauty may belong to it. If there be any meaning in the term, a nation or people-if it denote anything more than merely a local fragment of the earth's population, so many miles long and so many broad, like the rectangular kingdoms and principalities established by the Congress of Vienna, in which souls were split into halves and quarters, according as they happened to lie under the unrelenting shadow of the dictator's sword,-every people must have its own character just as every individual has-and this character will evidence itself, and may be read throughout the whole part which it plays in the drama of the world's history. It has often been asked,

*The Art of Invigorating and Prolonging Life-4th. Ed. p. 33.

whether or no the particular form of a nation's social institutions necessarily exerts any influence over the cast and quality of its literature-and many ingenious theories have been excogitated to determine the principles according to which the one of these things acts upon the other, and the nature and amount of the effect with which it operates. Now it is undoubtedly true that, in so far as the government established in any particular country is the result of what we may call accidental causes, or, in other words, has owed its origin. or the fashion it has taken, not to the free and natural working of the national spirit, but to events in the production of which the nation had little or no share; such as a conquest by the overwhelming numbers of a foreign host, or the usurpation of a dexterous or fortunate adventurer in a moment of civil confusion, that, which has forced everything else, will, in some degree, force the growth and direction of literature also, and the works that are produced will shew that the very intellect of the people has been enslaved. Thus, in our own history, we should mention the unfortunate circumstances which attended the Restoration-the tide of foreign frivolity, which was brought in upon us by the habits and connexions of the new court, and that position of things at home which gave to the tastes and example of the court so lamentable an ascendancy in the country—as accidental influences, not springing at all out of the soil of the English mind, but operating upon it, which for a time changed altogether the old character of its produce of every description, and cast a blight upon our literature especially, which it felt for considerably more than a century, if it may be deemed to have even yet entirely recovered from it. But these are, after all, and at the most, but temporary elements of disturbance, the fact of the occasional intrusion of which does not affect the general truth, that a people's government and institutions, being themselves the growth and manifestation of its moral and intellectual character, not less than its literature, the origin of whatever at least is fundamental and constituent in the latter is not to be sought in the former, but in that common parent of which both are equally the offspring. It is only the national mind shooting forth at the same time in two different directions-the light giving itself out in diverging rays, which, however far separated at the one extremity, are united in a single point at the other. Not that the two emanations may not also give and receive from one another; but it is not this process of mutual reflection that confers its being and character upon either. Each is, in all material respects, an independent derivation-only influencing and influenced by the other in the degree in which any two elements will naturally act, and be acted on, when operating in combination.

It were an inquiry worth the attention of philosophy to review, with reference to this consideration, the principal nations both of antiquity and of modern times, and to compare together their literature on the one hand, with their social institutions and civil history on the other. Such an investigation, if rightly conducted, might fairly be expected to throw not a little of new light on the real character of each of the different races and communities that have figured in the tale of human affairs, and thereby to let us into a more intimate acquaintance with

that of which common history tells us so little, or so little that we can rely upon the spirit and actuating principle of each scene of the mighty drama. The history of nations would then no longer present us with merely a confusing succession of unconnected exhibitions, the movers in which seem to us to be often as little under the control of any intelligible system in shifting their positions, as so many clouds of dust blown about by the winds;-but we should discern throughout the whole an order and harmony, if not so luminous and susceptible of precise assignment as that of the mechanism of the heavens, at least equal to what we find in every tolerably-constructed moral fiction. In writing the history even of any single people, surely but little is done if there be no effort made to discover, and keep constantly in view, the true elements of its genius and character; and yet how seldom is this attempted or thought of?-this, which it would seem strange to neglect in the biography of an individual, and unpardonable in the case of the humblest personage introduced to utter three sentences in a novel? A history of any nation, which does not develope the character of that nation, is really not its history at all. Such a work may, and generally does, contain in it a multitude of histories of the more conspicuous individuals who have at different times arisen in the nation; but of the nation itself it is not a history, but a chronology. Is the history of a people to be told in the same way as would be that of Trajan's Pillar or Cleopatra's Needle?

Perhaps the country that, more than any other, engages the attention of mankind in our day, is the United States of America. We do not say that the people of this country are, either on account of their character or their actual achievements, the most interesting on the face of the globe; but in their accidental position they unquestionably are. If we thought, as many do, that they had already completed their grand experiment in government and social regeneration, we should scarcely perhaps say this; but regarding them, as we do, as still on their trial before the world and in the midst of their voyage onward to a mighty fulfilment, or a still mightier failure, we cannot but feel them to be placed as no other nation is for drawing to them the gaze of a liberal and philosophical curiosity. The subject of the hopes and fears that may be felt with regard to them is, in its general scope, greatly too wide a one for us even to enter upon here; but we may possibly take a future opportunity of hazarding a few remarks upon it, when we can give it our undivided attention. In the mean time we have a very few words to say on a sample of the popular literature of our transatlantic brethren, which now lies before usThe North American Review,' which we noticed, with other American periodicals, in our Number for September last. The last number that has appeared of this work is the sixty-second, dated January in the present year.

The first article in the present number, and perhaps the one of greatest pretension which it contains, purports to be a review of Mr. Hunt's late work on Lord Byron, which, however, the writer dismisses in a single introductory paragraph, devoting the remainder of his space to a dissertation on the Decline of Poetry, of which he is pleased to say Mr. Hunt's name and writings, by a very easy and natural as

sociation, remind him. This article is not an unfavourable specimen of that tranchant style of criticism which a few years ago used to be so fashionable among ourselves, but which, we are happy to think, has of late begun rapidly to give place to a more genial manner of estimating both the beauties and the faults, the powers and the weaknesses, of gifted minds. In the times to which we allude our critics used to write, even when in their best humour, and while descanting on the works of the greatest authors of the age, much in the style in which the keepers of menageries are wont to expatiate to the company in exhibiting their wild beasts, mixing, with the most lordly flippancy imaginable, their tones and accents of authority with those of condescending patronage, almost, one would have thought, as if they really took themselves to belong to a different species from the poor devil of a poet, or other man of genius, whom they had got caged and were stirring up with the long pole for their own diversion and that of their readers. Any expression of reverence or humble affection for the noble nature of him whom they had thus summoned into their presence they never for a moment dreamed of giving way to. If the lion had a peculiarly majestic gait, or richly flowing mane, they pointed it out to be sure; but it was principally that they might shew their own critical cleverness in detecting the feature, much in the same manner as you might point out in a garden with your walking-stick a fine specimen of a grub or a caterpillar. These were certainly the golden days of critics, if not of criticism. Our reviewers were then the throned sovereigns of the world of literature, at least in their own estimation; and so imposing for a time is mere pretension, that they were actually looked up to and dreaded as such by no small a proportion of the rest of the public. We have, however, as we have said, considerably reformed all this now; the pert scribblers of our reviews and magazines have been taught their proper place; and how infinitely their place is below that, of many at least, of those on whom they were wont to lavish so liberally their insolent ridicule or more offensive courtesies. The several causes to which we are indebted for this revolution we have no time at present to inquire into; but we should despise ourselves if we could be withheld by any feelings, as to other matters, from acknowledging how much of it we owe to the example of one celebrated periodical Blackwood's Magazine'-which has, from the very first, lifted a voice of powerful eloquence against the wretched assumption to which we have been adverting, and most ably vindicated that rightful supremacy of genius which it had become so much the fashion among our mere men of talent to forget. On the other side of the Atlantic, however, if we may judge by the disquisition before us, reviewers have scarcely yet learned to think that there is any one greater than themselves, or in speaking of whom it becomes them to use any other language than such as a schoolmaster would employ in catechising his pupils, or a draper in passing sentence on the quality of a web of broadcloth. This is a smartly-enough-written article; but the tone of it is really from beginning to end, to our taste, insufferably offensive. We do not greatly complain of the summary style in which Mr. Hunt's literary merits are dismissed; although, without any wish to deny or palliate the affectations and other littlenesses which are to be

found in his works, we hold much of his poetry, and a good deal of his prose, in considerably higher estimation than this critic, because he is evidently mentioned merely for the purpose of introducing another subject which alone there is any attempt to discuss seriously and at length. But our lively scribe is, in truth, quite as much at his ease among the greatest names of the age, and of all ages, as he is among the least; and discourses about Byron, and Wordsworth, and Coleridge, and "the good old way of Milton and Pope," almost as flippantly as about Mr. Hunt himself. By-the-bye, what may be this same " way of Milton and Pope," which we find so repeatedly recommended as the only model of excellence in these pages? Does this writer really imagine these two poets to be of the same school? or to have any remarkable characteristics in common? except, indeed, that they neither of them belong to the present age, which is, to be sure, a most admirable reason for describing them as writing in" one way." We can only say that we dissent from our critic here, and also in many of his other opinions; as for example, when he affirms that "there can be no doubt that poetry has been losing the public favour," (his leading proposition,) and that "the poets of the present century have contributed to the disrespect into which their art has fallen;" and that the only thing approaching to a standard of taste is the sentiment of the greatest proportion of men ;" and that "Byron's smaller pieces are those of his writings most likely to be admired in future times;" and that "next to Byron we must place Campbell;" and that "Wordsworth," the poet who has, in fact, revolutionized our poetry, "has had less influence on the public mind than any distinguished writer of the age ;" and that " Coleridge has been fortunate enough to maintain the reputation of a great genius merely on the strength of his Ancient Mariner ;" and multitudes of other assertions of a similar order which meet us in every page of the article. Superficial, however, and as we cannot help thinking, positively erroneous as is much of the philosophy of the disquisition, it is, as we have already said, cleverly written, and contains a good deal of very felicitous expression. We were struck particularly with the passage in which Campbell is described, in allusion to the Essay on English Poetry, in the first volume of his Specimens, as having been employed in "building the tombs of the older prophets in a beautiful criticism," and with the other place where it is said of Byron, among the recollections of Rome, that "he seems like a guide walking mysteriously through the city, and when he comes to some striking fragment of antiquity, turning upon it the strong light of his dark lantern." Both these figures are worthy of poetry.

Perhaps the most powerful article in the number is that on Austin's Life of Elbridge Gerry, one of the eminent founders of American freedom, who died in 1814. We have not many passages in our modern literature more profound and eloquent than the following:

"We are well convinced, that, in after ages, one of the most important points of view, under which the American revolution will be scrutinized by the friends of liberty and the student of history, may be that of a great school of freedom, in which other times may find the most instructive lessons, as to the methods by which a republican independence can most successfully be