When he

him mean and unpardonable in some of his censures. gave himself time to deliberate, he was benevolent and wise. I am far from denying that Johnson was a very great man in his own department; but then, as in the case of Pope, the character and rank of that department must not be mistaken.

The first rank belongs to him who invents with grandeur, beauty, and truth, on probability. The inventive faculty will scarcely be conceded to Johnson; and that in which he did not excel himself, his envious temper prompted him to depreciate.

Boswell strangely says that Johnson's mind was filled with imagery: it was not filled with imagery, but with reasonings laid up by constant meditation, and with which his memory always supplied him when called for. He never gazed upon visions, but argued to himself upon that with which experience and reading had furnished his recollection. Peruse his two celebrated satires -they have nothing of the higher ingredients of poetry in them; no poetical imagery is to be found there; they are the spiritual reflections or declamations of a moral philosopher, tinged with a deep melancholy, and plaintive from a sense of the sufferings, frailties, and imperfections of humanity. They have no invention, no enthusiasm, none of those enchanting illusions by which our human existence is exalted into a higher sphere. It was wrong of him to endeavor to tear away these delights from others, because he could not enjoy them himself.

Thus he treated the memory of his friend William Collins, with which I was shocked and disgusted, when his "Lives of the Poets" came out, and for which I could never afterwards forgive him. In that Life, while he speaks of the poet personally with kindness and sensibility, he shows a wanton absence of taste and imaginative feeling, and an ignorance or denial of the primary ingredients of poetry.

SOLITUDE.

Johnson ridicules those praises of solitude which break out from the heart of Cowley, as if they were insincere. Because he hated solitude himself, he thought no one else could love it. Cowley had lived in the bustle of a court, and seen all its falsehoods and impertinences. We may be sick of our own thoughts at last, and perhaps require some change; but no one who knows the force of language can doubt Cowley's sincerity, unless he be blind with prejudice. There is scarcely any great poet who has not sung the praises of solitude with earnestness.

Nothing is so common as the vanity of having a great number of acquaintance; and there can scarcely be a sillier vanity: it implies a hard obtrusiveness and a vacant mind. If we thus gained a knowledge of characters, we should gain something; but we thus see only the surface of mankind, and we habituate ourselves by the flutter of passing objects and transient views to lose all discrimination. A weak mind seeks thus to fill a vacuum, and thereby adds to its natural weakness.

POSTHUMOUS FAME.

He who is willing to enjoy the present moment, then to die, and leave no trace of his existence behind him, may do so if he can reconcile it to his own self-complacence. But it does not seem to be the sort of self-complacence which distinguishes human nature from brutes. We are taught to aspire, and to endeavor to make wings to rise above oblivion, when our bodies moulder in the grave. But it will be observed how few can do this with suc

cess.

Is it, then, to be our fate to be tormented with a desire of what so few are formed by nature to attain? But in proportion as the inborn faculties are narrow, the desires are probably limited to narrow objects and narrow means. Every one flatters himself that he can carve out for himself some ground of distinction. We must keep our mind in constant advance, by a progressive attention to those objects and means. To rest upon our oars, and work only at long intervals, will not do.

Some think that genius will equally show itself in sunshine or in shade, and therefore that unpropitious circumstances will not account for mediocrity of merit. The lives of unfortunate men of genius do not justify this opinion, nor does reason justify it. Mental energy is partly generated by animal spirits; and who that is discouraged and neglected can feel the same animal spirits?

All the advantages of education and art will do nothing without genius; and with how few, or rather without any of these, the bright flame of real genius will come forth. Witness in our days Burns and Bloomfield. They have some advantages over those better instructed, because they have stronger hope. Many writers of verses have a powerful memory, without any imagination at all; and some have a fancy which reflects with the faithfulness of a mirror, but cannot invent. But nothing less than inventionand noble and tender invention-will make a poet of any high order. We may give to our characters the lovely sensibility and

lofty thoughts which only exist in a few, and we may show the forms of humanity free from its blemishes and alloys; we may look on female beauty, and imagine that there dwells in it an angelic spirit; these are within the province of the truly inspired bard. But such notes are not reached except by the highly favored of heaven. Thousands have felt the dim visions within, but have not been able to embody them: they have gone to their graves dissatisfied with themselves, and unknown to the world.

THE CUNNING SUCCESSFUL IN "MAKING FORTUNES."

Are the difficulties of life of a man's own creating, or may they not arise from fate and inevitable circumstances? What is called prudence is often nothing more than mean, dishonest, and wicked cunning. I would rather not succeed than succeed by such ways. I am fully aware that the crooked and secret road is the most prosperous. There is little fair fighting; it is all done by ambush and mines. The enemy's army is made up of miners, sappers, and tirailleurs. There may, however, be an openness beyond necessity; and I believe that I have fallen into that error. One is not bound to lay bare one's breast merely to enable an assassin to plunge a dagger into it with the greater ease. Reserve is seldom amiable; but some portion of it is necessary.

Who are the people that make fortunes? The crafty and the selfish, at the expense of wrong to others. All the affairs of the world are managed by artifice and intrigue. These are carried into literature, which never succeeds without much contrivance and adroitness of address. A publisher cannot get off a book by the mere force of its merit. Tricks wear out, but then new ones are discovered. Yet he who lives by artifice must be wretched: he must always be on the watch, and have no confidence in anything around him: as he deceives others, so he must always be fearful of being deceived.

ARCHIBALD ALISON, 1756-1838.

ARCHIBALD ALISON was the son of Andrew Alison, of Edinburgh, and was matriculated at Baliol College, Oxford, in 1775. After completing

his theological course of study, he was settled successively in two or three different parishes, and finally became the senior minister of St. Paul's Chapel, in his native city. In 1790, he published his admirable "Essays on the Nature and Principles of Taste," the work for which he is most distinguished.' In 1814, he gave to the public two volumes of sermons, justly admired for the elegance and beauty of their language, and their gently persuasive inculcation of Christian duty. He died at Edinburgh in the year 1838, at the advanced age of eighty-two.2

INFLUENCE OF ASSOCIATION.

There is no man who has not some interesting associations with particular scenes, or airs, or books, and who does not feel their beauty or sublimity enhanced to him by such connections. The view of the house where one was born, of the school where one was educated, and where the gay years of infancy were passed, is indifferent to no man. They recall so many images of past happiness and past affections, they are connected with so many strong or valued emotions, and lead altogether to so long a train of feelings and recollections, that there is hardly any scene. which one ever beholds with so much rapture. There are songs, also, that we have heard in our infancy, which, when brought to our remembrance in after years, raise emotions for which we cannot well account; and which, though perhaps very indifferent in themselves, still continue, from this association, and from the variety of conceptions which they kindle in our minds, to be our favorites through life. The scenes which have been distinguished by the residence of any person whose memory we admire, produce a similar effect. The scenes themselves may be little beautiful; but the delight with which we recollect the traces of their lives blends itself insensibly with the emotions which the scenery excites; and the admiration which these recollections afford seems to give a kind of sanctity to the place where they dwelt,

In this he maintains "that all beauty, or, at least, that all the beauty of material objects depends on the associations that may have connected them with the ordinary affections or emotions of our nature; and in this, which is the fundamental part of his theory, we conceive him to be no less clearly right than he is convincing and judicious in the copious and beautiful illustration by which he has sought to establish its truth." Read a most interesting article on "Beauty," in the "Encyclopædia Britannica," by Lord Jeffrey, vol. iv. p. 481.

Read an article on "Alison's Essays on Taste," in the "Edinburgh Review," vol. xviii. p. 1; one on his "Sermons," vol. xxiii. p. 424; and another upon his "Sermons," in the "Quarterly Review," vol. xiv. p. 429.

and converts everything into beauty which appears to have been connected with them.

Essays on Taste.

ON THE PLEASURE OF ACQUIRING KNOWLEDGE.

In every period of life, the acquisition of knowledge is one of the most pleasing employments of the human mind. But in youth, there are circumstances which make it productive of higher enjoyment. It is then that everything has the charm of novelty; that curiosity and fancy are awake; and that the heart swells with the anticipations of future eminence and utility. Even in those lower branches of instruction which we call mere accomplishments, there is something always pleasing to the young in their acquisition. They seem to become every well-educated person; they adorn, if they do not dignify, humanity; and, what is far more, while they give an elegant employment to the hours of leisure and relaxation, they afford a means of contributing to the purity and innocence of domestic life.

nature.

But in the acquisition of knowledge of the higher kind-in the hours when the young gradually begin the study of the laws of nature, and of the faculties of the human mind, or of the magnificent revelations of the Gospel-there is a pleasure of a sublimer The cloud which, in their infant years, seemed to cover nature from their view, begins gradually to resolve. The world in which they are placed opens with all its wonders upon their eye; their powers of attention and observation seem to expand with the scene before them; and, while they see, for the first time, the immensity of the universe of God, and mark the majestic simplicity of those laws by which its operations are conducted, they feel as if they were awakened to a higher species of being, and admitted into nearer intercourse with the Author of Nature. It is this period, accordingly, more than all others, that determines our hopes or fears of the future fate of the young. To feel no joy in such pursuits, to listen carelessly to the voice which brings such magnificent instruction, to see the veil raised which conceals the counsels of the Deity, and to show no emotion at the discovery, are symptoms of a weak and torpid spirit of a mind unworthy of the advantages it possesses, and fitted only for the humility of sensual and ignoble pleasure. Of those, on the contrary, who distinguish themselves by the love of knowledge, who follow with ardor the career that is open to them, we are apt to form the most honorable presages. It is the character which is