of her form when she was alive; at the fame time the work is fo well methodifed, the parts grow fo naturally and gracefully out of each other, that it would be doing it equal injuftice to fhew it by broken and detached pieces. There will, in a work of this kind, always be great deficiencies; but we are far from profeffing to make our accounts ftand to the reader in the place of the books on which we remark. Had we thought that this in any degree would happen, we fhould certainly think ourfelves obliged totally to omit this article in the Register, as it would be an effect the fartheft in the world from our defign, which is in the ftrongeft manner to recommend to the attention of our readers, fome of these books which we think deferving of it; we chufe none which we cannot recommend; we give our judgment with candour and impartiality; but never aiming to impofe our opinions dogmatically on the public, we think it but juftice to the authors and the readers, to give fome fpecimen, however imperfect, of each writer's way of thinking and expreffion. We mean to raise, not to fatisfy curiofity.

There have been of late many books written on our moral duties, and our moral fenfations. One would have thought the matter had been exhaufted. But this author has ftruck our a new, and at the fame time a perfectly natural road of fpeculation on this fubject. Had it been only an ingenious novelty on any other fubje&t, it might have been praised; but with regard to morals, nothing could be more dangerous. We conceive, that here the theory is in all its effential parts jult, and founded on truth and na

ture. The author feeks for the foundation of the juft, the fit, the proper, the decent, in our most common and moft allowed paffions; and making approbation and difapprobation the tests of virtue and vice, and fhewing that thofe are founded on fympathy, he raifes from this fimple truth, one of the moft beautiful fabrics of moral theory, that has perhaps ever appeared. The illuftrations are numerous and happy, and fhew the author to be a man of uncommon obfervation. His language is eafy and fpirited, and puts things before you in the fulleft light; it is rather painting than writing. We infert the first fection as it concerns fympathy, the bafis of his theory; and as it exhibits equally with any of the reft, an idea of his ftyle and manner.

Of Sympathy.

How felfifh foever man may be fuppofed, there are evidently fome principles in his nature, which intereft him in the fortune of others, and render their happinefs neceffary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of feeing it. Of this kind is pity or compaffion, the emotion which we feel for the mifery of others, when we either fee it, or are made to conceive it in a very lively manner. That we often derive forrow from the forrow of others, is too obvious to require any inftances to prove it; for this fentiment, like all the other original paffions of human nature, is by no means confined to the virtuous and humane, though they perhaps may feel it with the moit exquilite fenfibility. The greatest rufian, the most hardened violater I i3

of

of the laws of fociety, is not altogether without it.

As we have no immediate experience of what other men feel, we can form no idea of the manner in which they are affected, but by conceiving what we ourfulves thould feel in the like fituation. Though our brother is upon the rack, as long as we are at our own eafe, our fenfes will never inform us of what he fuffers. They never did, nor ever can carry us beyond our own perfons, and it is by the imagination only, that we can form any conception of what are his fenfations. Neither can that faculty help us to this any other way, than by repiefenting to us what would be cur own, if we were in his cafe. It is the impreffions of our own fentes only, not thofe of his, which our imaginations copy. By the imagination we place ourselves in his fituation, we conceive ourselves enduring all the fame torments, we enter as it were into his body, and become in fome meafure him, and thence form fome idea of his fenfations, and even feel fomething, which, tho' weaker in degree, is not altogether unlike them. His agonies, when they are thus brought home to ourfelves, when we have thus adopted and made them our own, begin at laft to affect us, and we then tremble and fhudder, at the thought of what he feels. For as to be in pain or diftrefs of any kind excites the moft exceffive forrow, fo to conceive or to imagine that we are in it, excites fome degree of the fame emotion, in proportion to the vivacity or dulnefs of the conception.

That this is the fource of our fellow feeling for the mifery of others, that it is by changing places in fancy with the fufferer, that we

come either to conceive or be affe&ted by what he feels, may be demonitrated by many obvious obfervitions, if it should not be thought fufficiently evident of itself. When we fee a itroke aimed and just ready to fall upon the leg or arm of another perfon, we naturally fhrink and draw back our own leg, or our own arm; and when it does fall, we feel it in fome measure, and are hurt by it as well as the fufferer. The mob, when they are gazing at a dancer on the flack rope, naturally writhe and twist, and balance their own bodies, as they fee him do, and as they feel that they themselves muft do in his fituation. Perfons of delicate fibres, and a weak conftitution of body, complain, that in looking on the fores and ulcers that are expofed by beggars in the streets, they are apt to feel an itching or uneafy fenfation in the correfponding part of their own bodies. The horror which they conceive at the mifery of thofe wretches affects that particular part in themselves, more than any other; because that horror arifes from conceiving what they themselves would fuffer, if they really were the wretches whom they are looking upon, and if that particular part in themselves was actually affected in the fame miferable manner. The very force of this conception is fufficient, in their feeble frames, to produce that itching or uneafy fenfation complained of. Men of the most robult make, obferve that in looking upon fore eyes they often feel a very fenfible foreness in their own, which proceeds from the fame reafon; that organ being in the ftrongest man more delicate than any other part of the body is in the weakest.

Neither

Neither is it those circumftances only, which create pain or forrow, that call forth our fellow-feeling. Whatever is the paffion which arifes from any object in the perfon principally concerned, an analogous emotion fprings up, at the thought of his fituation, in the breaft of every attentive spectator. Our joy for the deliverance of thofe heroes of tragedy or romance who intereft us, is as fincere as our grief for their diftrefs, and our fellow-feeling with their mifery is not more real than than with their happiness. We enter into their gratitude towards thofe faithful friends, who did not defert them in their difficulties; and we heartily go along with their refentment against thofe perfidious traitors, who injured, abandoned, or deceived them. In every paffion, of which the mind of man is fufceptible, the emotions of the by-flander always correfpond to what, by bringing the cafe home to himself, he imagines, fhould be the fentiments of the fufferer.

Pity and compaffion are words appropriated to fignify our fellowfeeling with the forrow of others. Sympathy, though its meaning was, perhaps, originally the fame, may now, however, without much impropriety, be made use of to denote our fellow-feeling with any paffion whatever.

Upon fome occafions fympathy may seem to arife merely from the view of a certain emotion in another perfon. The paffions, upon fome occafions, may feem to be tranf fufed from one man to another, inftantaneously, and antecedent to any knowledge of what excited them in the perfon principally concerned. Grief and joy, for example, ftrongly expreffed in the look and gestures

of any one, at once affect the spectator, with fome degree of a like painful or agreeable emotion. A fmiling face is, to every body that fees it, a chearful object; as a forrowful countenance, on the other hand, is a melancholy one.

This, however, does not hold univerfally with regard to every pasfion.

There are fome of which the expreffions excite no fort of sympathy, but before we are acquainted with what gave occafion to them, ferve rather to disgust and provoke us against them. The furious behaviour of an angry man is more likely to exafperate us against himfelf, than against his enemies. As we are unacquainted with his provocation, we cannot bring his cafe home to ourselves, nor conceive any thing like the paffions which it excites. But we plainly fee what is the fituation of those with whom he is angry, and to what violence they may be expofed from fo enraged an adverfary. We readily, therefore, fympathize with their fear or refentment, and are immediately difpofed to take part against the man, from whom they appear to be in fo much danger.

If the very appearances of grief and joy infpire us with fome degree of the like emotions, it is because they fuggeft to us the general idea of fome good or bad fortune that has befallen the perfon in whom we obferve them: and in thefe paffions this is fufficient to have fome little influence upon us. The effects of grief and joy terminate in the perfon who feels those emotions, of which the expreffions do not, like thofe of refentment, fuggeft to us the idea of any other perfon for whom we are concerned, and whose interefts are oppofite to his. The I i 4

general

general idea of good or bad fortune, therefore, creates fome concern for the person who has met with it; but the general idea of provocation excites no fympathy with the anger of the man who has received it. Nature, it feems, teaches us to be more averse to enter into this paffion, and, till informed of its caufe, to be difpofed father to take part against it. Even our fympathy with the grief or joy of another, before we are informed of the cause of either, is always extremely imperfect. General lamentations, which exprefs nothing but the anguish of the fufferer, create rather a curiofity to enquire into his fituation, along with fome difpofition to fympathize with him, than actual fympathy that is very fenfible. The firft queftion that we afk is, What has befallen you? "Till this be answered, tho' we are uneafy, both from the vague idea of his misfortune, and ftill more from torturing ourselves with conjectures about what it may be, yet our fellow-feeling is not very confiderable.

Sympathy therefore, does not arife fo much from the view of the paffion, as from that of the fituation which excites it. We fometimes feel for another, a passion of which he himself feems to be altogether incapable; becaufe when we put ourfelves in his cafe, that paffion arifes in our breaft from the imagination, though it does not in his from the reality. We bluth for the impudence and rudencfs of another, though he himself appears to have no fenfe of the impropriety of his own behaviour; becaufe we cannot help feeling with what confufion we ourfelves fhould be covered, had we behaved in fo abfurd a manner.

Of all the calamities to which the

condition of mortality expofes mankind, the lofs of reafon appears, to those who have the leaft spark of humanity, by far the most dreadful, and they behold that laft ftage of human wretchedness with deeper commiferation than any other. But the poor wretch, who is in it, laughs and fings perhaps, and is altogether infenfible of his own mifery. The anguish which humanity feels, therefore, at the fight of fuch an object, cannot be the reflection of any fentiment of the fafferer. The compaffion of the fpectator muft arise altogether from the confideration of what he himself would feel if he was reduced to the fame unhappy fituation, and, what perhaps is impoffible, was at the fame time, able to regard it with his present reafon and judgment.

What are the pangs of a mother when the hears the moaning of her infant, that during the agony of difeafe cannot exprefs what it feels ? In her idea of what it fuffers, she joins, to its real helpleffnefs, her own confcioufnefs of that helpleffnefs, and her own terrors for the unknown confequences of its diforder; and out of all thefe forms, for her own forrow, the most complete image of mifery and diftrefs. The in ant, however, feels only the uneafinefs of the prefent inftant, which can never be great. With regard to the future it is perfectly fecure, and in its thoughtleffnefs and want of forefight, poffeffes an antidote against fear and anxiety, the great tormentors of the human breast, from which reafon and philofophy will in vain attempt to defend it when it grows up to a man.

We fympathize even with the dead, and overlooking what is of real importance in their fituation, that

aweful

aweful futurity which awaits them, we are chiefly affected by thofe circumftances which ftrike our fenfes, but can have no influence upon their happiness. It is miferable, we think, to be deprived of the light of the fun; to be fhut out from life and converfation; to be laid in the cold grave a prey to corruption and the reptiles of the earth; to be no more thought of in this world, but to be obliterated in a little time from the affections and almost from the memory of their dearest friends and relations. Surely, we imagine, we can never feel too much for thofe who have fuffered fo dreadful a calamity. The tribute of our fellowfeeling feems doubly due to them now when they are in danger of being forgot by every body: and, by the vain honours which we pay to their memory, we endeavour, for our own mifery, artificially to keep alive our melancholy remembrance of their misfortune. That our fympathy can afford them no confolation, feems to be an addition to their calamity; and to think that all we can do is unavailing, and that, what alleviates all other diftrefs, the regret, love, and the lamentation of their friends, can yield no comfort to them, ferves only to exafperate our fenfe of the mifery. The happiness of the dead, however, moft affuredly is affected by none of thefe circumftances; nor is it the thought of these things which can ever disturb the fecurity of their repofe. The idea of that dreary and endlefs melancholy, which the fancy naturally afcribes to their condition, arifes altogether from our joining to the charge which has been produced upon them, our own confcioufnefs of that charge, from our

putting ourselves in their fituation, and from our lodging, if I may be allowed to fay fo, our own living fouls in their inanimated bodies, and thence conceiving what would be our emotions in this cafe. It is this very illufion of the imagination which renders the forefight of our own diffolution fo terrible to us, and the idea of thofe circumftances, which undoubtedly can give us no pain when we are dead, makes us miferable while we are alive And from thence arifes one of the most important principles in human nature, the dread of death, the great poifon to the happiness, but the great reftraint upon the injuftice of mankind, which, while it afflicts and mortifies the individuals, guards and protects the fociety."

The hiftory of Scotland, during the reigns of Queen Mary and King James VI. till his acceffion to the crown of England. With a review of the Scottish history previous to that period; and an appendix containing original papers. By William Robertfon, D. D. minifter of Lady Yefter's, Edinburgh. In two volumes Quarto. A. Millar, in the Strand.

THE great and just applaufe

with which this history has been received, makes it lefs necef fary for us to dwell long upon it. Its merit is of the very first class, and it has not been under-rated. But there is one beauty we have not fo generally heard taken notice of, in that work; which is the great judgment of the author in drawing out or abridging his story according as he found the matter more or less

important