the medium instrument and expression of life, then this perplexity is at an end, and every thing becomes clear. We have no difficulty in conceiving, that between two living and mutually operating spiritual natures, there may exist a third nature apparently inanimate, to serve as the bond of connexion and mutual operation, to be their word and language, or to serve as the separation and wall of partition between them. We are familiar with such an idea, from our own experience, because we cannot have any intercourse of thought with our brother men, or even analyse our thoughts, except through the operation of exactly similar means. The simple conviction, however, that the sensible world is merely the habitation of the intellectual, and a medium of separation as well as connexion between intellectual natures, had been lost along with the knowledge and idea of the world of intellect, and the animating impression of its existence. The philosophy of the senses stumbled, in this way, at the very threshold, and proceeded to become more and more perplexed in every step of its progress. Berkeley believed that the external world has no real existence, and that our notions and impressions of it are directly communicated to us by the Deity. From the same doubts Hume fell into a totally different system, the sceptical,-a philosophy which humbles itself before its doubts, and denies the possibility of attaining knowledge. This man, by the penetrating and convulsive influence of his scepticism, determined the future condition of English philosophy. Since his time nothing more has been attempted than to erect all sorts of bulwarks against the practical influence of this destructive scepticism and to maintain, by various substitutes and aids, the pile of moral principle uncorrupted and entire. Not only with Adam Smith, but with all their later philosophers, national welfare is the ruling and central principle of thought,-a principle excellent and praiseworthy in its due situation, but quite unfitted for being the centre and oracle of all knowledge and science. The two great substitutes to which I allude are neither scientifically nor prac tically of a durable and effective nature. Common sense is poor when compared with certain knowledge, and moral feeling is a very inadequate foundation for a proper system of ethics. Were the common sense of man even as sound and universal as these English reasoners maintain, if we should take its conclusions for the last, and subject them to no higher view, we should find it inore likely to cut than to unloose the knot of the great questions in philosophy. The innate curiosity of man is not to be so satisfied, but, however frequently we may put it off, returns to the charge with undiminished pertinacity. Moral feeling and sympathy are things too frail and uncertain for rule of moral action. We must have, in

addition to these, an eternal law of rectitude, derived not from experience and feeling, but from reason or from God. A firm and unshaken faith is indispensible for our welfare. But the faith which the English philosophers have established upon the dictates of common sense and moral feeling, is like the props upon which it leans, uncertain and unworthy of our confidence. It is not worthy of the name of faith; the name applied to the impression made upon us by reason and external experience, and, with equal propriety, to the impressions we receive in a totally different way from the internal voice of conscience and the revelations of a superior nature. That which is called faith among these men, is nothing more than the weak and self-doubting faith of ne cessity,-a thing as incapable of standing the test of time, as the frail faith of custom is to resist the arguments of unprincipled sophistry. This nation is powerful and free in its whole being and life. Even in poetry, it regards the profound and internal rather than the outward and ornamental,but by means of its own errors it is cramped and confined in its philosophy. In regard to this mighty department of human intellect and exertion, the English of later times are neither original nor great; they even appear to be fundamentally inferior to some of the best writers among the French. If a few authors in England have pursued an intellectual path of their own, quite different from the common one, they have exerted no powerful, or at least no extensive, influence over their fellow-countrymen. The attempts with which I myself am acquainted do not indeed display genius such as might entitle them to much consideration.

"We may compare the mode of philosophical thought in England to a man who bears every external mark of health and vigour, but who is by nature prone to a dangerous distemper. He has repressed the first eruptions of the disease by means of palliatives, but the evil has on that very ac count had the more leisure to entwine itself with the roots of his constitution. The disease of philosophical error and unbelief can never be got the better of, unless by a thorough and radical cure. I think, for this reason, that it is extremely probable, nay, that it is almost certain, England has yet to undergo a mighty crisis in her philosophy, and, of necessity, in her morality and her religion.

"If we regard not so much the imme. diate practical consequences, but rather the internal progress of intellect itself, we shall be almost compelled to think error is less dangerous when open and complete, than when half-formed and disguised. In the midst of moderate errors our self-love keeps us ignorant of our danger. But when error has reached its height, it is the nature of the human mind to promote a re-action,

part of it much alive or awake, but his understanding. Most of the errors of his philosophy, perhaps, arose from his overlooking elements of human nature which were torpid within himself, and which could not be learnt by the mere external observer of mankind. He knew more of the virtues in their practical results, than he knew of them as sentiments; and his theory of utility resembles that explanation of musical concords which modern physics have enabled us to draw from the vibrations of the atmosphere, but which is merely an external supplement to the musical faculty within us, which judges of the harmony of sounds by totally different means.

The coldness of David Hume's character enabled him to shake off all vulgar peculiarities of thought and feeling, and to ascend into the regions of pure and classical intellect. No English writer delivers his remarks with so much grace. The taste which he followed in his compositions was founded upon the most generalized principles, and the most extended considerations of propriety; and the consequence is, that they possess a beauty which, whatever may be the fluctuations of human opinion, will never decay. He was utterly beyond the contagion of contemporary notions, and seems to have habituated himself to write as addressing a remote posterity, in whose eyes the notions which during his time had stirred and impelled the world, would perhaps be considered as the mere infatuations of ignorance and barbarism. The worthy David is entitled to less credit for those passages where he seems impressed with a belief that his own writings might continue to be perused at some future era, when Christianity would only be remembered as an exploded superstition. However, there was perhaps more scepticism than vanity in this. His writings are elaborately perspicuous. He thought he saw the foundations of all human opinions sliding so fast, that he was determined to give his own works as fair a chance as possible of being understood, if they survived the wreck.

David Hume had too little personal character about him, to bear the marks of any particular nation. The sedate self-possession for which he was remarkable, has sometimes, however, been ascribed to Scotsmen in general,

and his countrymen have always been notorious for dialectical propensities. It is remarkable, that no particular intellectual faculty has ever been set down as predominating in the English composition. Her great men have excelled in every different way, both in isolated faculties and in the aggregation of them. Englishmen have long been the first, both in delighting and instructing the nations; but owing to constitutional causes, they have also, like Dr Johnson, been the most miserable of mankind. Dr Johnson thought that all foreigners were comparatively fools.

If we compare the lives of Hume and Johnson, we find Hume spending his years in a manner well enough suited for the cultivation of his metaphysical powers, but too secluded, and too much at ease, to make him practically acquainted with human passions. In all his writings, Hume appears as a philosophical spectator, capable of estimating the wisdom or folly of men's conduct in relation to external circumstances, and of prognosticating its result; but not very capable of entering sympathetically into their feelings, or of strongly conceiving the impulses by which they are guided. Johnson had better opportunities of observation, of which we see the products in his writings; and he might have observed still better, had his attention not been so often engrossed by the fermentation of absurd prejudices in his own mind. He was generally more anxious to know whether a man was a Whig in politics, or a High-churchman, or a Dissenter, than to understand the mechanism which had been implanted in the individual by nature.

Johnson, during his lifetime, enjoyed more fame than Hume, and more personal authority in the world of letters. His growling was heard all over Parnassus. The influence he had on English literature consisted, not in disseminating any new system of opinions, but in teaching his countrymen how to reason luminously and concisely, and in making the taste for reflection more popular than it was

before.

Johnson had certainly more of what is commonly called genius than Hume. Possessing a stronger imagination and warmer feelings, it would have been less difficult for him than for the sceptic to have mounted into the re

gions of poetry; as may be seen in his tale of Anningait and Ajut, and some other pieces. Hume is said to have composed verses in his youth, which would probably be written in imitation of the coldest and most artificial models. Although Johnson had imagination, there was no native grace or elegance in his mind, to guide him in forming poetical combinations; and perhaps there is not in any English book a more clumsy and ungainly conception than that of the Happy Valley in Rasselas. Any thing that Hume had, beyond pure intellect, seems to have been a turn for pleasantry, which his strict taste prevented him from ever obtruding gratuitously upon the reader.

During the time when these men flourished, it may be safely averred, that the influence of intellect was completely predominant over that of genius in this country. No great poet arose, who produced moral impressions

tive calculations to which the times were giving birth.

MENIL'S EDITION of antara.*

Or the seven celebrated Arabic poems known by the name of Al-Moallakat, that is, the suspended (on the walls of the temple at Mecca), the fourth is that now edited by the two eminent orientalists named in the title-page. It is now two years since M. Menil first published a valuable introduction to the poem of Antara, in a "Dissertatio Philologica de Antara ejusq. poemate Arabico:" this is reprinted with the present work, without apparently any alteration, under the name of Prolegomena. The name, age, and condition of the poet, are here inquired into with much minuteness; as well as the design, plan, and contents, and metre, of the poem itself. Many excellent observations are subjoined concerning MSS., scholiasts, and various editions of the Moallakat. Reiske supposed Antara to have been a con

Antara Poema Arabicum Moallakah eum integris Zouzenii Scholiis. E codice Manuscripto edidit, in Lat. serm. transtulit, et lectionis varietatem addidit Vincentius Elias Menil. Observat. ad tot, poema subjunxit Joannes Willmet. Lugd. Bat. Lucht

mans.

"Nil animum inspirat, nil tam instigat ad egregia facinora, quam mulgere camelos et stringere ubera."

Menil preserves the same ironic sense; but instead of he reads the se

Profecto nullo ، تحسن cond person

modo ad irruendum incitas nisi (per opera servilia), quod debeam nunc mulgere camelos, nunc earum papillas, ne lacin which both of these translations retent, nodo colligare." The acceptation

ceive the word is quite indefensible, and the changing of the person in that of Menil is quite useless. There can be no doubt that I should be taken as the fourth conjugation in the sense, bene tractare novit; so that the meaning should run,

Á slave knows nothing about seizing an enemy; his only skill is to milk camels, &c.

The manuscript of the seven Moallakat, from which Mr Menil has edited the poem of Antara, was brought from the east by the late Scheid, and is now in the possession of Professor Willmet. Its date is the year of the Hegira 545, or of our era 1150:

Of this most singular work some specimens have lately been inserted by Hanmer in his learned Fundgruben des Orients. See 4th volume, 3d part.