The Fireside. Dear Cloe, while the busy crowd, Though singularity and pride Be called our choice, we 'll step aside, From the gay world we'll oft retire Where love our hours employs; If solid happiness we prize, And they are fools who roam : Of rest was Noah's dove bereft, Giving her vain excursion o'er, Explored the sacred bark. Though fools spurn Hymen's gentle powers, Our babes shall richest comforts bring; Whence pleasures ever rise: And train them for the skies. While they our wisest hours engage, And recompense our cares. No borrowed joys! they're all our own, Our portion is not large, indeed; In this the art of living lies, And make that little do. We'll therefore relish with content Whate'er kind providence has sent, Nor aim beyond our power; For, if our stock be very small, 'Tis prudence to enjoy it all, Nor lose the present hour. To be resigned when ills betide, And pleased with favours given; Whose fragrance smells to heaven. We'll ask no long-protracted treat, Since winter-life is seldom sweet; But when our feast is o'er, Grateful from table we 'll arise, Nor grudge our sons with envious eyes The relics of our store. Thus hand in hand through life we 'll go ; Its checkered paths of joy and woe With cautious steps we'll tread; Quit its vain scenes without a tear, Without a trouble or a fear, And mingle with the dead: While conscience, like a faithful friend, Shall through the gloomy vale attend, And cheer our dying breath; Shall, when all other comforts cease, Like a kind angel, whisper peace, And smooth the bed of death. 533 His works, Various Pieces in Prose and Verse, published after his death by his son, fill two volumes (1791), and are included in some of the collections of the poets. Samuel Bishop (1731-95), born in London and educated at Merchant Taylors' School and St John's, Oxford, became, after taking orders, master of his old school. His poems (which fill two volumes quarto !) are none of them long, and deal with subjects as miscellaneous as spring, the man of taste, cricket, the library, Sunday, the privateer, the easy-chair, arithmetic, landscape painting, and the English sailor. Many of his happiest verses were addressed to his wife and daughter. To Mrs Bishop, on the Anniversary of her With that first ring I married youth, If she, by merit since disclosed, Here, then, to-day, with faith as sure, As when, amidst the rites divine, I took thy troth, and plighted mine, My soul enjoys, my song approves, For conscience' sake as well as love's. And why?—They shew me every hour Honour's high thought, Affection's power, Discretion's deed, sound Judgment's sentence, And teach me all things-but repentance. Two hundred and ninety-seven short poems are classified-oddly enough, some of them-as 'epigrams,' of which these are specimens: John Bull. John Bull whene'er the maggot bites, Cropsick with ease and quiet, Raves about wrongs, roars about rights, But if a foreign foe intrudes, John tells a different story; Away with fears! away with feuds ! He scorns Dons, Dutchmen, and Mounseers, With half the world about his ears, Bids t' other half defiance! When England's foes her follies view, And England is-Old England still! Plus Ultra. When Johnson the lives of our poets composed, [closed. Male, female, friend, foe have had hands in the mess, Hugh Blair (1718-1800), an Edinburgh minister, was long regarded as the most famous exponent of 'sacred eloquence' both in theory and in practice. The number of sets of volumes of his sermons still to be seen in book-stalls and at book-auctions testifies not less strongly to the popularity he once enjoyed than to the change of taste in that depart ment. He was at first minister of a country church in Fifeshire, but was successively preferred to the Canongate, Lady Yester's, and the High Church in Edinburgh. In 1759 he commenced a course of lectures on rhetoric and belles-lettres, becoming professor of that subject at the university in 1762; and in 1763 he published his Dissertation on the Poems of Ossian, in which he zealously defended the authenticity of Macpherson's Ossianic discoveries. In 1777 appeared the first volume of his Sermons, which was so well received that the author published three other volumes, and a fifth was printed after his death. A royal pension of £200 further rewarded the author. Blair next published his university Lectures (1783), and they also met with a favourable reception. Though somewhat feeble in style and manner, they were accepted as a supreme code of the laws of taste that prevailed at the time. The sermons are written with taste and elegance, wholly without fervour, force, or profundity, and, after the manner of the 'Moderates,' inculcate Christian morality without allusion to controversial topics. On the Cultivation of Taste. Such studies have this peculiar advantage, that they exercise our reason without fatiguing it. They lead to inquiries acute, but not painful; profound, but not dry or abstruse. They strew flowers in the path of science; and while they keep the mind bent in some degree and active, they relieve it at the same time from that more toilsome labour to which it must submit in the acquisi tion of necessary erudition or the investigation of abstract truth. The cultivation of taste is further recommended by the happy effects which it naturally tends to produce on human life. The most busy man in the most active sphere cannot be always occupied by business. Men of serious professions cannot always be on the stretch of serious thought. Neither can the most gay and flourishing situations of fortune afford any man the power of filling all his hours with pleasure. Life must always languish in the hands of the idle. It will frequently languish even in the hands of the busy, if they have not some employment subsidiary to that which forms their main pursuit. How, then, shall these vacant spaces, those unemployed intervals, which more or less occur in the life of every one, be filled up? How can we contrive to dispose of them in any way that shall be more agreeable in itself, or more consonant to the dignity of the human mind, than in the entertainments of taste and the study of polite literature? He who is so happy as to have acquired a relish for these has always at hand an innocent and irreproachable amusement for his leisure hours, to save him from the danger of many a pernicious passion. He is not in hazard of being a burden to himself. He is not obliged to fly to low company, or to court the riot of loose pleasures, in order to cure the tediousness of existence. Providence seems plainly to have pointed out this useful purpose to which the pleasures of taste may be applied, by interposing them in a middle station between the pleasures of sense and those of pure intellect. We were not designed to grovel always among objects so low as the former; nor are we capable of dwelling constantly in so high a region as the latter. The pleasures of taste refresh the mind after the toils of the intellect and the labours of abstract study; and they gradually raise it above the attachments of sense, and prepare it for the enjoyments of virtue. So consonant is this to experience, that, in the education of youth, no object has in every age appeared more important to wise men than to tincture them early with a relish for the entertainments of taste. The transition is commonly made with ease from these to the discharge of the higher and more important duties of life. Good hopes may be enter tained of those whose minds have this liberal and elegant turn. It is favourable to many virtues. Whereas, to be entirely devoid of relish for eloquence, poetry. or any of the fine arts, is justly construed to be an unpromising symptom of youth; and raises suspicions of their being prone to low gratifications, or destined to drudge in the more vulgar and illiberal pursuits of life. There are indeed few good dispositions of any kind with which the improvement of taste is not more or less connected. A cultivated taste increases sensibility to all the tender and humane passions, by giving them frequent exercise; while it tends to weaken the more violent and fierce emotions. 'Ingenuas didicisse fideliter artes Emollit mores, nec sinit esse feros.' The elevated sentiments and high examples which poetry, eloquence, and history are often bringing under our view naturally tend to nourish in our minds public spirit, the love of glory, contempt of external fortune, and the admiration of what is truly illustrious and great. I will not go so far as to say that the improvement of taste and of virtue is the same, or that they may always be expected to coexist in an equal degree. More powerful correctives than taste can apply are necessary for reforming the corrupt propensities which too frequently prevail among mankind. Elegant speculations are sometimes found to float on the surface of the mind, while bad passions possess the interior regions of the heart. At the same time, this cannot but be admitted, that the exercise of taste is, in its native tendency, moral and purifying. From reading the most admired productions of genius, whether in poetry or prose, almost every one rises with some good impressions left on his mind; and though these may not always be durable, they are at least to be ranked among the means of disposing the heart to virtue. One thing is certain, that without possessing the virtuous affections in a strong degree, no man can attain eminence in the sublime parts of eloquence. He must feel what a good man feels, if he expects greatly to move or to interest mankind. They are the ardent sentiments of honour, virtue, magnanimity, and public spirit, that only can kindle that fire of genius, and call up into the mind those high ideas, which attract the admiration of ages; and if this spirit be necessary to produce the most distinguished efforts of eloquence, it must be necessary also to our relishing them with proper taste and feeling. Dugald Stewart (1753-1828), by his essays and treatises no less than by his lectures, gave lucidity and popularity to the Scottish Philosophy. The son of the Professor of Mathematics in the University of Edinburgh, he was born in the college buildings there. While yet a youth he was appointed his father's assistant and successor; and in 1785, when Dr Adam Ferguson retired from the Moral Philosophy chair, Stewart was appointed his successor, and discharged the duties of the office till 1810. The latter years of his life were spent in literary retirement at Kinneil House near Bo'ness. His political friends, the Whigs, when in office in 1806, created for him the sinecure office of Gazette writer for Scotland. Few lecturers have ever been more popular than Dugald Stewart-his eloquence, taste, and dignity rendered him both fascinating and impressive. His writings are marked by the same characteristics, and can be read with pleasure even by those who have no very keen interest in metaphysical studies. This, indeed, the secret of their success then, has helped to render them obsolete now. They deal not merely with meta physics, but with logic, psychology, ethics, natural theology, the principles of taste, politics, and political economy. He considerably developed the Scottish Philosophy, improving on its founder, Reid, by the fuller and more systematic exposition of the powers of the mind; and his contribution to the philosophy of taste was a notable advance. The works include The Philosophy of the Human Mind (1792-1827), Philosophical Essays (1810), a Dissertation on the Progress of Metaphysical and Ethical Philosophy (originally for the Encyclopædia Britannica), and The Active and Moral Powers of Man, published a few weeks before his death. Stewart also published Outlines of Moral Philosophy, and wrote colourless Memoirs of Principal Robertson, of Adam Smith, and of Reid. 'All the years I remained about Edinburgh,' said James Mill, 'I used, as often as I could, to steal into Mr Stewart's class to hear a lecture, which was always a high treat. I have heard Pitt and Fox deliver some of their most admired speeches, but I never heard anything nearly so eloquent some of the lectures of Professor Stewart. The taste for the studies which have formed my favourite pursuits, and which will be so to the end of my life, I owe to him.' Other notable men who were taught by Stewart were Lords Jeffrey and Cockburn, Francis Horner, Sir Walter Scott, Lord Brougham, Sir James Mackintosh, the future Marquis of Lansdowne, Lord Palmerston, and Earl Russell-for Stewart's fame and his philosophic Liberalism, as much as the Toryism of the English universities, attracted to Edinburgh many scions of the great English Whig houses. Sydney Smith was an admiring auditor; and the Scottish metaphysician contributed in no small degree to the training of the next generation of English Whig statesmen and publicists. His sympathy with the Americans and, in the earlier stage, with the French Revolution provoked irritation and opposition amongst those of another way of thinking. He had occasionally American colonials amongst his hearers; thus the father of James Russell Lowell studied under the Edinburgh philosopher. as On Memory. It is generally supposed that, of all our faculties, memory is that which nature has bestowed in the most unequal degrees on different individuals; and it is far from being impossible that this opinion may be well founded. If, however, we consider that there is scarcely any man who has not memory sufficient to learn the use of language, and to learn to recognise, at the first glance, the appearances of an infinite number of familiar objects, besides acquiring such an acquaintance with the laws of nature and the ordinary course of human affairs as is necessary for directing his conduct in life, we shall be satisfied that the original disparities among men in this respect are by no means so immense as they seem to be at first view; and that much is to be ascribed to different habits of attention, and to a difference of selection among the various events presented to their curiosity. It is worthy of remark, also, that those individuals who possess unusual powers of memory with respect to any one class of objects are commonly as remarkably deficient in some of the other applications of that faculty. I knew a person who, though completely ignorant of Latin, was able to repeat over thirty or forty lines of Virgil, after having heard them once read to him—not, indeed, with perfect exactness, but with such a degree of resemblance as (all circumstances considered) was truly astonishing; yet this person (who was in the condition of a servant) was singularly deficient in memory in all cases in which that faculty is of real practical utility. He was noted in every family in which he had been employed for habits of forgetfulness, and could scarcely deliver an ordinary message without committing some blunder. A similar observation, I can almost venture to say, will be found to apply to by far the greater number of those in whom this faculty seems to exhibit a preternatural or anomalous degree of force. The varieties of memory are indeed wonderful, but they ought not to be confounded with inequalities of memory. One man is distinguished by a power of recollecting names, and dates, and genealogies; a second, by the multiplicity of speculations and of general conclusions treasured up in his intellect; a third, by the facility with which words and combinations of words (the very words of a speaker or of an author) seem to lay hold of his mind; a fourth, by the quickness with which he seizes and appropriates the sense and meaning of an author, while the phraseology and style seem altogether to escape his notice; a fifth, by his memory for poetry; a sixth, by his memory for music; a seventh, by his memory for architecture, statuary, and painting, and all the other objects of taste which are addressed to the eye. All these different powers seem miraculous to those who do not possess them; and as they are apt to be supposed by superficial observers to be commonly united in the same individuals, they contribute much to encourage those exaggerated estimates concerning the original inequalities among men in respect to this faculty which I am now endeavouring to reduce to their first standard. As the great purpose to which this faculty is subservient is to enable us to collect and to retain, for the future regulation of our conduct, the results of our past experience, it is evident that the degree of perfection which it attains in the case of different persons must vary; first, with the faculty of making the original acquisition; secondly, with the permanence of the acquisition; and thirdly, with the quickness or readiness with which the individual is able, on particular occasions, to apply it to use. The qualities, therefore, of a good memory are, in the first place, to be susceptible; secondly, to be retentive; and thirdly, to be ready. It is but rarely that these three qualities are united in the same person. We often, indeed, meet with a memory which is at once susceptible and ready; but I doubt much if such memories be commonly very retentive; for the same set of habits which are favourable to the first two qualities are adverse to the third. Those individuals, for example, who, with a view to conversation, make a constant business of informing themselves with respect to the popular topics of the day, or of turning over the ephemeral publications subservient to the amusement or to the politics of the times, are naturally led to cultivate a susceptibility and readiness of memory, but have no inducement to aim at that permanent retention of selected ideas which enables the scientific student to combine the most remote materials, and to concentrate at will, on a particular object, all the scattered lights of his experience and of his reflections. Such men (as far as my observation has reached) seldom possess a familiar or correct acquaintance even with those classical remains of our own earlier writers which have ceased to furnish topics of discourse to the circles of fashion. A stream of novelties is perpetually passing through their minds, and the faint impressions which it leaves soon vanish to make way for others, like the traces which the ebbing tide leaves upon the sand. Nor is this all. In proportion as the associating principles which lay the foundation of susceptibility and readiness predominate in the memory, those which form the basis of our more solid and lasting acquisitions may be expected to be weakened, as a natural consequence of the general laws of our intellectual frame. Stewart's works, edited by Sir William Hamilton, with a Life by Professor Veitch, appeared in 1854-58 in eleven volumes; and see H. G. Graham's Scottish Men of Letters (1902). Henry Mackenzie (1745-1831), long the Nestor of literary Edinburgh, was an imitator of Sterne in sentiment, pathos, and style, more careful of the proprieties, less addicted to excursiveness, but vastly inferior in originality, force, and humour. The son of an Edinburgh physician, he was educated at the High School and University of Edinburgh, and made the law his profession. To qualify for work in the Exchequer Court, he went to London in 1765 and studied the English Exchequer practice; and on his return to Edinburgh he was made free of its literary circles, which then included men like Hume, Robertson, Adam Smith, and Blair. In 1771 appeared his novel, The Man of Feeling, which was followed by The Man of the World (1773) and Julia de Roubigné (1777). Mackenzie was by far the most frequent and important contributor to the Mirror and Lounger, the first periodicals of the kind in Scotland, both of which he founded and edited (1779-80 and 1785-87); and he wrote some dramatic pieces, which were brought out at Edinburgh with but indifferent success. In the Mirror and the Lounger he imitated Addison rather closely, and was even called by Scott 'the Northern Addison.' At some time or another he imitated, deliberately or unconsciously, the most conspicuous writers of the century-not merely the Spectator group and Sterne, but Richardson, Fielding, and others. He accordingly never at tained to distinction or individuality, but his style is always good and wonderfully free from Scotticisms. In the Lounger he had the glory of introducing Robert Burns to the Edinburgh wits and wider circles. The friend of David Hume, he was still reading papers in the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1812; and after 1820 was the life of the company and one of the most active sportsmen in shooting-parties at Abbotsford, along with Scott himself and Sir Humphry Davy. And it was largely by a paper of his on the German theatre (1788) that interest had been awakened in Scotland in German literature. He supported the Government of Pitt in pamphlets written with great acute ness. In real life the sentimental novelist was shrewd and practical; he had early exhausted his vein of romance, and was an active man of business. And it is curious to remember that the Man of Feeling was much addicted to cockfighting! In 1804 the Government appointed him 'to the office of comptroller of taxes for Scotland, a lucrative post which entailed much drudgery. In this office, enjoying the society of his family, his many friends, and his favourite sports of the field, writing occasionally on subjects of taste and literature (for 'the old stump,' he said, 'would still occasionally send forth a few green shoots'), Mackenzie lived to the age of eighty-six. His first novel is on the whole the best of his works, unless we rank above it some of his short contributions to the Mirror and Lounger, such as the tale of La Roche, an idealised sketch of David Hume. There is no regular story in the Man of Feeling; but the character of Harley, his bashfulness and excessive delicacy, entertain the reader, though the whole is very unlike real life. His adventures in London, the talk of club and park frequenters, his visit to Bedlam, and his relief of the old soldier and his daughter, are partly modelled on the affected sentimental style of the inferior romances, but show a facility in moral and pathetic portraiture that had till then been surpassed by Richardson alone. The character of Sir Thomas Sindall-Mackenzie's Lovelaceis forced and unnatural; his plots and intrigues imply a deliberate villainy and defiance of public opinion quite incredible in view of his rank and position in the world; and his deathbed sensibility and penitence are undoubtedly out of keeping with the rest of his character. The 'romantic' adventures of young Annesly among the Indians are described with much spirit. Julia de Roubigné, still more melancholy than the Man of the World, has no gorgeous descriptions to relieve the misery and desolation which overwhelm a group of innocents whom for their virtues the reader would wish to see happy. By this novel Mackenzie took a decided place amongst the literary abolitionists who followed Mrs Aphra Behn in denouncing West Indian slavery. On Negro Slavery. I have often been tempted to doubt whether there is not an error in the whole plan of negro servitude; and whether whites or creoles born in the West Indies, or perhaps cattle, after the manner of European husbandry, would not do the business better and cheaper than the slaves do. The money which the latter cost at first, the sickness-often owing to despondency of mind-to which they are liable after their arrival, and the proportion that die in consequence of it, make the machine, if it may be so called, of a plantation extremely expensive in its master. operations. In the list of slaves belonging to a wealthy planter, it would astonish you to see the number unfit for service, pining under disease, a burden on their I am only talking as a merchant; but as a man -good Heavens! when I think of the many thousands of my fellow-creatures groaning under servitude and misery!-great God! hast thou peopled those regions of thy world for the purpose of casting out their inhabitants to chains and torture? No; thou gavest them a land teeming with good things, and lightedst up thy sun to bring forth spontaneous plenty; but the refinements of man, ever at war with thy works, have changed this scene of profusion and luxuriance into a theatre of rapine, of slavery, and of murder! Forgive the warmth of this apostrophe! Here it would not be understood; even my uncle, whose heart Harley sets out on his Journey-The Beggar and his Dog. He had taken leave of his aunt on the eve of his intended departure; but the good lady's affection for her nephew interrupted her sleep, and early as it was, next morning when Harley came down-stairs to set out, he found her in the parlour with a tear on her cheek, and her candle-cup in her hand. She knew enough of physic to prescribe against going abroad of a morning with an empty stomach. She gave her blessings with the draught; her instructions she had delivered the night before. They consisted mostly of negatives; for London, in her idea, was so replete with temptations, that it needed the whole armour of her friendly cautions to repel their attacks. Peter stood at the door. We have mentioned this |