angels; his proof is, that his eloquence hence that chiding of the intellectual that makes me one. Shall the archangels be pervades his books? Be it as it may, his less majestic and sweet than the figures that books have no melody, no emotion, no have actually walked the earth? These humour, no relief to the dead prosaic level. angels that Swedenborg paints give us no In his profuse and accurate imagery is no very high idea of their discipline and cul- pleasure, for there is no beauty. We wander ture they are all country parsons: their forlorn in a lack-lustre landscape. No bird heaven is a fête champêtre, an evangelical ever sang in all these gardens of the dead. picnic, or French distribution of prizes to The entire want of poetry in so transcendent virtuous peasants. Strange, scholastic, didac- a mind betokens the disease, and, like a tic, passionless, bloodless man, who denotes hoarse voice in a beautiful person, is a kind classes of souls as a botanist disposes of a of warning. I think, sometimes, he will not carex, and visits doleful hells as a stratum be read longer. His great name will turn a of chalk or hornblende! He has no sym- sentence. His books have become a monupathy. He goes up and down the world ment. His laurel so largely mixed with of men, a modern Rhadamanthus in gold- cypress, a charnel-breath so mingles with headed cane and peruke, and with non- the temple incense, that boys and maids chalance, and the air of a referee, distributes will shun the spot. souls. The warm, many-weathered, passionate-peopled world is to him a grammar of hieroglyphs, or an emblematic freemason's procession. How different is Jacob Behmen! he is tremulous with emotion, and listens awe-struck, with the gentlest humanity, to the Teacher whose lessons he conveys; and when he asserts that, in some sort, love is greater than God," his heart beats so high that the thumping against his leathern coat is audible across the centuries. 'Tis a great difference. Behmen is healthily and beautifully wise, notwithstanding the mystical narrowness and incommunicableness. Swedenborg is disagreeably wise, and, with all his accumulated gifts, paralyzes and repels. It is the best sign of a great nature, that it opens a foreground, and, like the breath of morning landscapes, invites us onward. Swedenborg is retrospective, nor can we divest him of his mattock and shroud. Some minds are for ever restrained from descending into nature; others are for ever prevented from ascending out of it. With a force of many men, he could never break the umbilical cord which held him to nature, and he did not rise to the platform of pure genius.

It is remarkable that this man, who, by his perception of symbols, saw the poetic construction of things, and the primary relation of mind to matter, remained entirely devoid of the whole apparatus of poetic expression, which that perception creates. He knew the grammar and rudiments of the Mother-Tongue,-how could he not read off one strain into music? Was he like Saadi, who, in his vision, designed to fill his lap with the celestial flowers, as presents for his friends; but the fragrance of the roses so intoxicated him, that the skirt dropped from his hands? Or, is reporting a breach of the manners of that heavenly society? or, was it that he saw the vision intellectually, and

Yet, in this immolation of genius and fame at the shrine of conscience, is a merit sublime beyond praise. He lived to purpose: he gave a verdict. He elected goodness as the clew to which the soul must cling in all this labyrinth of nature. Many opinions conflict as to the true centre. In the shipwreck, some cling to running rigging, some to cask and barrel, some to spars, some to mast; the pilot chooses with science,-I plant myself here; all will sink before this; he comes to land who sails with me.'

Do

not rely on heavenly favour, or on compassion to folly, or on prudence, on common sense, the old usage and main chance of men nothing can keep you,-not fate, nor health, nor admirable intellect; none can keep you, but rectitude only, rectitude for ever and ever!-and, with a tenacity that never swerved in all his studies, inventions, dreams, he adheres to this brave choice. think of him as of some transmigrating votary of Indian legend, who says, 'Though I be dog, or jackal, or pismire, in the last rudiments of nature, under what integument or ferocity, I cleave to right, as the sure ladder that leads up to man and to God.'

I

Swedenborg has rendered a double service to mankind, which is now only beginning to be known. By the science of experiment and use, he made his first steps: he observed and published the laws of nature; and, ascending by just degrees, from events to their summits and causes, he was fired with piety at the harmonies he felt, and abandoned himself to his joy and worship. This was his first service. If the glory was too bright for his eyes to bear, if he staggered under the trance of delight, the more excellent is the spectacle he saw, the realities of being which beam and blaze through him, and which no infirmities of the prophet are suffered to obscure; and he renders a second passive service to men, not less than the

N

Things always bring their own philosophy with them, that is, prudence. No man acquires property without acquiring with it a little arithmetic, also. In England, the richest country that ever existed, property Each of these riders drives too fast. Plo- stands for more, compared with personal tinus believes only in philosophers; Fenelon, ability, than in any other. After dinner, a in saints; Pindar and Byron, in poets. man believes less, denies more; verities have Read the haughty language in which Plato lost some charm. After dinner, arithmetic and the Platonists speak of all men who are is the only science: ideas are disturbing, not devoted to their own shining abstractions: incendiary, follies of young men, repudiated other men are rats and mice. The literary by the solid portion of society; and a man class is usually proud and exclusive. The comes to be valued by his athletic and animal correspondence of Pope and Swift describes qualities. Spence relates, that Mr. Pope mankind around them as monsters; and was with Sir Godfrey Kneller, one day, when that of Goethe and Schiller, in our own his nephew, a Guinea trader, came in. time, is scarcely more kind. "Nephew," said Sir Godfrey, "you have the

honour of seeing the two greatest men in the there arises a third party to occupy the world." "I don't know how great men you middle ground between these two, the may be," said the Guinea man, "but I don't sceptic, namely. He finds both wrong by like your looks. I have often bought a much being in extremes. He labours to plant his better than both of you, all muscles and feet, to be the beam of the balance. He will bones, for ten guineas." Thus, the men of the not go beyond his card. He sees the onesenses revenge themselves on the professors, sidedness of these men of the street; he will and repay scorn for scorn. The first had not be a Gibeonite; he stands for the intelleaped to conclusions not yet ripe, and say lectual faculties, a cool head, and whatever more than is true; the others make them- serves to keep it cool; no unadvised industry, selves merry with the philosopher, and weigh no unrewarded self-devotion, no loss of the man by the pound. They believe that mus- brains in toil. Am I an ox, or a dray?— tard bites the tongue, and pepper is hot, You are both in extremes, he says. You friction-matches are incendiary, revolvers to that will have all solid, and a world of pigbe avoided, and suspenders hold up panta- lead, deceive yourselves grossly: you believe loons; that there is much sentiment in a yourselves rooted and grounded on adamant; chest of tea; and a man will be eloquent, if and yet, if we uncover the last facts of our you give him good wine. Are you tender knowledge, you are spinning like bubbles in and scrupulous,-you must eat more mince- a river, you know not whither or whence, pie. They hold that Luther had milk in and you are bottomed and capped and him when he said, wrapped in delusions.

"

"Wer nicht liebt Wein, Weib, und Gesang, Der bleibt ein Narr sein Leben lang"; and when he advised a young scholar, perplexed with foreordination and free-will, to get well drunk. "The nerves," says Cabanis, "they are the man.' My neighbour, a jolly farmer, in the tavern bar-room, thinks that the use of money is sure and speedy spending : 'for his part," he says, "he puts his down his neck, and gets the good of it."

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The inconvenience of this way of thinking is, that it runs into indifferentism, and then into disgust. Life is eating us up. We shall be fables presently. Keep cool: it will be all one a hundred years hence. Life's well enough; but we shall be glad to get out of it, and they will all be glad to have us. Why should we fret and drudge? Our meat will taste to-morrow as it did yesterday, and we may at last have had enough of it. "Ah," said my languid gentleman at Oxford, "there's nothing new or true, and no

matter.

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With a little more bitterness, the cynic moans: our life is like an ass led to market by a bundle of hay being carried before him: he sees nothing but the bundle of hay. There is so much trouble in coming into the world," said Lord Bolingbroke, and so much more, as well as meanness, in going out of it, that 'tis hardly worth while to be here at all." I know a philosopher of this kidney, who was accustomed briefly to sum up his experience of human nature in saying, Mankind is a damned rascal"; and the natural corollary is pretty sure to follow, "The world lives by humbug, and so will I.' The abstractionist and the materialist thus mutually exasperating each other, and the scoffer expressing the worst of materialism,

Neither will he be betrayed to a book, and wrapped in a gown. The studious class are their own victims: they are thin and pale, their feet are cold, their heads are hot, the night is without sleep, the day a fear of interruption,-pallor, squalor, hunger, and egotism. If you come near them, and see what conceits they entertain,-they are abstractionists, and spend their days and nights in dreaming some dream; in expecting the homage of society to some precious scheme built on a truth, but destitute of proportion in its presentment, of justness in its application, and of all energy of will in the schemer to embody and vitalize it.

But I see plainly, he says, that I cannot see. I know that human strength is not in extremes, but in avoiding extremes. I, at least, will shun the weakness of philosophizing beyond my depth. What is the use of pretending to powers we have not? What is the use of pretending to assurances we have not, respecting the other life? Why exaggerate the power of virtue? Why be an angel before your time? These strings, wound up too high, will snap. If there is a wish for immortality, and no evidence, why not say just that? If there are conflicting evidences, why not state them? If there is not ground for a candid thinker to make up his mind, yea or nay,-why not suspend the judgment. I weary of these dogmatizers. I tire of these hacks of routine, who deny these dogmas. I neither affirm nor deny. I stand here to try the case. I am here to consider, OKETTE, to consider how it is. I will try to keep the balance true. Of what use to take the chair, and glibly rattle off theories of society, religion, and nature, when I know that practical objections lie in the way, insurmountable by me and by my

mates? Why so talkative in public, when each of my neighbours can pin me to my seat by arguments I cannot refute? Why pretend that life is so simple a game, when we know how subtle and illusive the Proteus is? Why think to shut up all things in your narrow coop, when we know there are not one or two only, but ten, twenty, a thousand things, and unlike? Why fancy that you have all the truth in your keeping? There is much to say on all sides.

unattainable. Come, no chimeras! Let us
go abroad; let us mix in affairs; let us learn,
and get, and have, and climb.
"Men are
a sort of moving plants, and, like trees, re-
ceive a great part of their nourishment from
the air. If they keep too much at home,
they pine." Let us have a robust, manly
life; let us know what we know, for certain;
what we have, let it be solid, and seasonable,
and our own. A world in the hand is worth
two in the bush. Let us have to do with
real men and women, and not with skipping
ghosts.

all, of scoffing and profligate jeering at all that is stable and good. These are no more his moods than are those of religion and philosophy. He is the considerer, the prudent, taking in sail, counting stock, husbanding his means, believing that a man has too many enemies, than that he can afford to be his own foe; that we cannot give ourselves too many advantages, in this unequal conflict, with powers so vast and unweariable ranged on one side, and this little, conceited, vulnerable popinjay that a man is, bobbing up and down into every danger, on the other. It is a position taken up for better defence, as of more safety, and one that can be maintained; and it is one of more opportunity and range: as, when we build a house, the rule is to set it not too high nor too low, under the wind, but out of the dirt.

Who shall forbid a wise scepticism, seeing that there is no practical question on which anything more than an approximate This, then, is the right ground of the solution can be had? Is not marriage an sceptic,-this of consideration, of self-conopen question, when it is alleged, from the taining; not at all of unbelief; not at all of beginning of the world, that such as are in universal denying, nor of universal doubting, the institution wish to get out, and such as-doubting even that he doubts; least of are out wish to get in? And the reply of Socrates, to him who asked whether he should choose a wife, still remains reasonable, that, whether he should choose one or not, he would repent it.' Is not the state a question? All society is divided in opinion on the subject of the state. Nobody loves it; great numbers dislike it, and suffer conscientious scruples in allegiance: and the only defence set up, is the fear of doing worse in disorganizing. Is it otherwise with the church? Or, to put any of the questions which touch mankind nearest, shall the young man aim at a leading part in law, in politics, in trade! It will not be pretended that a success in either of these kinds is quite coincident with what is best and inmost in his mind. Shall he, then, cutting the stays that hold him fast to the social state, put out to sea with no guidance but his genius? There is much to say on both sides. Remember the open question between the present order of competition," and the friends of "attractive and associated labour.' The generous minds embrace the proposition of labour shared by all; it is the only honesty; nothing else is safe. It is from the poor man's hut alone, that strength and virtue come: and yet, on the other side, it is alleged that labour impairs the form, and breaks the spirit of man, and the labourers cry unanimously, 'We have no thoughts.' Culture, how indispensable! I cannot forgive you the want of accomplishments; and yet, culture will instantly impair that chiefest beauty of spontaneousness. Excellent is culture for a savage; but once let him read in the book, and he is no longer able not to think of Plutarch's heroes. In short, since true fortitude of understanding consists "in not letting what we know be embarrassed by what we do not know," we ought to secure those advantages which we can command, and not risk them by clutching after the airy and

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The philosophy we want is one of fluxions and mobility. The Spartan and Stoic schemes are too stark and stiff for our occasion. A theory of Saint John, and of non-resistance, seems, on the other hand, too thin and aerial. We want some coat woven of elastic steel, stout as the first, and limber as the second. We want a ship in these billows we inhabit. An angular, dogmatic house would be rent to chips and splinters, in this storm of many elements. No, it must be tight, and fit to the form of man, to live at all; as a shell must dictate the architecture of a house founded on the sea. The soul of man must be the type of our scheme. just as the body of man is the type after which a dwellinghouse is built. Adaptiveness is the peculiarity of human nature. We are golden averages, volitant stabilities, compensated or periodic errors, houses founded on the sea. The wise sceptic wishes to have a near view of the best game, and the chief players; what is best in the planet; art and nature, places and events, but mainly men. thing that is excellent in mankind—a form

Every

of grace, an arm of iron, lips of persuasion, to his edition of the Essays. I heard with a brain of resources, every one skilful to play and win-he will see and judge.