human judgment; and teaches a lesson of humility, from which spiritual pride may learn meekness, and spiritual zeal a moderating wisdom.'

The names already given must suffice as representative of other writers of orations-CLAY, CALHOUN, LEGARÉ, BURGESS, WRIGHT, CHOATE, and PRESTON. In the same mode of treatment, we may select a few names of writers of essays and reviews, without any intention of asserting their claims to be regarded as the chief representatives of their respective departments.

The essays and reviews written by THEODORE PARKER for The Dial and other periodicals, would demand more than a passing notice, if their topics might be included in the range of general literature. As specimens of clear writing on difficult subjects, they deserve the highest commendation. Their theological purport has been indicated, and cannot with propriety be discussed in this place.

ORESTES A. BROWNSON, formerly editor of The Boston Quarterly Review, gained a reputation rather by his rapid changes of opinions than by his ability in metaphysical and theological controversy. During his editorship (1838-43), he wrote, it is said, almost the whole of the Review; and in 1844, when The Boston Quarterly had been merged in The Democratic Review, he commenced a new quarterly to expound his own doctrines. These were subject to changes so rapid, that a weekly periodical was required to keep pace with them. By turns, Brownson advocated catholicism in religion, eclecticism in philosophy, and other systems more or less borrowed from foreign writers, and ultimately found a resting-place in the Positive Philosophy of M. Comte. Respecting this last phase of faith, Mr Griswold says: 'It is more creditable to his [Brownson's] judgment than to his candour; for I do not recollect that he has once mentioned the name of an author from whom he has rather compiled than borrowed.' This is a serious charge; and we fear that several similar charges might be justly preferred against other metaphysical writers who have borrowed without sufficient acknowledgment from the French and the German.

HUGH SWINTON LEGARÉ (1797-1843) must be mentioned as the chief contributor to The Southern Quarterly Review, established at Charleston in 1827, and as the writer of several able articles in The New York Review.

HENRY THEODORE TUCKERMAN (born 1813) may be described as one of the most imaginative and sympathetic of American

critics, and as a refined and elegant writer. His essays and reviews shew a liberal cultivation of mind and heart. He is one of the few men who are well qualified to write criticism on poetry, for he has the powers required to recognise, though insufficient to create, true poetry. The poet and his competent critic must resemble each other, so far that the latter must be capable of recognising all the ideas and sentiments uttered by the former. It may be asserted that, in compass, their minds are equal, and that the difference between them is caused by the superior energy of the creative mind.

In 1835, Mr Tuckerman published, under the title of The Italian Sketch-book, a series of papers giving the thoughts suggested by a tour in Southern Europe. Another work of similar character, though written in the form of a romance, was entitled Isabel; or Sicily-a Pilgrimage, and appeared in 1839. This was followed in 1841 by a volume of miscellanies under the title of Rambles and Reveries; and in 1846 by the more characteristic work, Thoughts on the Poets-a series of essays on twenty-six Italian, English, and American poets, including Petrarch and Alfieri, Goldsmith, Gray, Burns, Cowper, Crabbe, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Tennyson, and Bryant. In his Characteristics of Literature, Mr Tuckerman has given a series of analytical, yet very genial and sympathetic sketches of celebrated authors, taking each as the representative of a class. observes, in a preface to the second series, that'the choice of writers has been quite accidental and subordinate to the principal aim-that of grouping around them something like a brief history and analysis of the species of writing in which they excelled.' Thus Sir Thomas Browne serves as the representative of philosophy; Channing is the moralist; Charles Lamb, the humorist; Burke, the rhetorician; Humboldt, the naturalist; and Godwin, the reformer.

He

Besides the works already mentioned, Mr Tuckerman has written a series of essays, entitled Leaves from the Diary of a Dreamer, a didactic essay in verse, styled The Spirit of Poetry, and several shorter poems and magazine articles. In one of his best essays, entitled New England Philosophy, and first published in The Democratic Review, he discusses with ability and good taste the question of the relative merits of the two departments of culture-one including the imaginative faculty and the affections; the other embracing the powers strictly called intellectual. He maintains that these latter-the faculties of practical intellect are too often cultivated with an unwise neglect of the sentiments commonly, but vaguely, styled poetical. The whole essay may be regarded as a defence of enthusiasm-taking this

word in its best and most refined meaning-and the greater portion of it is beautifully written.

"Enthusiasm is the very life of gifted spirits. Ponder the lives of the glorious in art or literature through all ages. What are they but records of toils and sacrifices supported by the earnest hearts of their votaries? Dante composed his immortal poem amid exile and suffering, prompted by the noble ambition of vindicating himself to posterity; and the sweetest angel of his paradise is the object of his early love. The best countenances the old painters have bequeathed to us are those of cherished objects intimately associated with their fame. The face of Raphael's mother blends with the angelic beauty of all his Madonnas. Titian's daughter, and the wife of Correggio, again and again meet in their works. Well does Foscolo call the fine arts the children of love. The deep interest with which the Italians hail gifted men, inspires them to the mightiest efforts. National enthusiasm is the great nursery of genius. When Cellini's statue of Perseus was first exhibited on the Piazza at Florence, it was surrounded for days by an admiring throng, and hundreds of tributary sonnets were placed upon its pedestal. Petrarch was crowned with laurel at Rome for his poetical labours; and crowds of the unlettered may still be seen on the Mole at Naples listening to a reader of Tasso. Reason is not the only interpreter of life. The fountain of action is in the feelings. Religion itself is but a state of the affections. I once met a beautiful peasant-woman in the valley of the Arno, and asked the number of her children. "I have three here, and two in Paradise," she calmly replied, with a tone and manner of touching and grave simplicity. Her faith was of the heart. Constituted as human nature is, it is in the highest degree natural that rare powers should be excited by voluntary and spontaneous appreciation. Who would not feel urged to high achievement, if he knew that every beauty his canvas displayed, or every perfect note he breathed, or every true inspiration of his lyre, would find an instant response in a thousand breasts? Lord Brougham calls the word "impossible" the mother-tongue of little souls. What, I ask, can counteract self-distrust, and sustain the higher efforts of our nature, but enthusiasm? More of this element would call forth the genius and gladden the life of New England. While the mere intellectual man speculates, and the mere man of acquisition cites authority, the man of feeling acts, realises, puts forth his complete energies. His earnest and strong heart will not let his mind rest; he is urged by an inward impulse to embody his thought. He must have sympathy-he must have results. And nature yields to the magician, acknowledging him as her child. The noble statue comes forth from the marble, the speaking figure stands out from the canvas, the electric chain is struck in the bosoms of his fellows. They receive his ideas, respond to his appeal, and reciprocate

his love. Sentiment, in its broadest acceptation, is as essential to the true enjoyment and grace of life as mind. Technical information, and that quickness of apprehension which New Englanders call smartness, are not so valuable to a human being as sensibility to the beautiful, and a spontaneous appreciation of the divine influences which fill the realms of vision and of sound, and the world of action and feeling. The tastes, affections, and sentiments, are more absolutely the man than his talent or acquirements. And yet it is by and through the latter that we are apt to estimate character, of which they are at best but fragmentary evidences. It is remarkable that, in the New Testament, allusions to the intellect are so rare, while the "heart" and the "spirit we are of," are ever appealed to. Sympathy is the golden key which unlocks the treasures of wisdom; and this depends upon vividness and warmth of feeling. It is therefore that Tranio advises: "In brief, sir, study what you most affect." A code of etiquette may refine the manners, but the "heart of courtesy," which, through the world, stamps the natural gentleman, can never be attained but through instinct; and in the same manner, those enriching and noble sentiments which are the most beautiful and endearing of human qualities, no process of mental training will create. To what end is society, popular education, churches, and all the machinery of culture, if no living truth is elicited, which fertilises as well as enlightens ? Shakspeare undoubtedly owed his marvellous insight into the human soul to his profound sympathy with man. He might have conned whole libraries on the philosophy of the passions; he might have coldly observed facts for years, and never have conceived of jealousy like Othello's, the remorse of Macbeth, or love like that of Juliet.'

EDWIN P. WHIPPLE (born 1819), one of the writers in The North American Review, has resided since 1837 in Boston, where he has been mainly occupied with commercial pursuits. Besides his lectures on Life and Literature (1850), he has written many reviews and critical papers, commonly marked by a lively and perspicuous style. He is recognised as one of the most popular of the younger essayists. The following passage is taken from one of the Lectures on Subjects connected with Literature and Life:

WIT AND HUMOUR.

'Wit was originally a general name for all the intellectual powers, meaning the faculty which kens, perceives, knows, understands; it was gradually narrowed in its signification, to express merely the resemblance between ideas; and lastly, to note that resemblance

1 Whipple's papers in The North American Review include the following :-The Old English Dramatists-British Critics-Byron-Wordsworth-Talfourd-James the Novelist-Sydney Smith. In The American Review, he has written on the topics: Beaumont and Fletcher-English Poets of the Nineteenth CenturyColeridge as a Philosophical Critic, &c.

when it occasioned ludicrous surprise. It marries ideas, lying wide apart, by a sudden jerk of the understanding. Humour originally meant moisture, a signification it metaphorically retains, for it is the very juice of the mind, oozing from the brain, and enriching and fertilising wherever it falls. Wit exists by antipathy; humour by sympathy. Wit laughs at things; humour laughs with them. Wit lashes external appearances, or cunningly exaggerates single foibles into character; humour glides into the heart of its object, looks lovingly on the infirmities it detects, and represents the whole man. Wit is abrupt, darting, scornful, and tosses its analogies in your face; humour is slow and shy, insinuating its fun into your heart. Wit is negative, analytical, destructive; humour is creative. The couplets of Pope are witty, but Sancho Panza is a humorous creation. Wit, when earnest, has the earnestness of passion, seeking to destroy; humour has the earnestness of affection, and would lift up what is seemingly low, into our charity and love. Wit, bright, rapid, and blasting as the lightning, flashes, strikes, and vanishes in an instant ; humour, warm and all-embracing as the sunshine, bathes its objects in a genial and abiding light. Wit implies hatred or contempt of folly and crime, produces its effects by brisk shocks of surprise, uses the whip of scorpions and the branding-iron-stabs, stings, pinches, tortures, goads, teases, corrodes, undermines; humour implies a sure conception of the beautiful, the majestic, and the true, by whose light it surveys and shapes their opposites. It is a humane influence, softening with mirth the ragged inequalities of existence-promoting tolerant views of life-bridging over the spaces which separate the lofty from the lowly, the great from the humble. Old Dr Fuller's remark, that a negro is "the image of God cut in ebony," is humorous; Horace Smith's inversion of it, that the taskmaster is "the image of the devil cut in ivory," is witty. Wit can coexist with fierce and malignant passions; but humour demands good feeling and fellow-feeling-feeling not merely for what is above us, but for what is around and beneath us.'

HENRY REED, a writer in the Library of American Biography, and one of the contributors to the New York Review (1837-1842), wrote a course of Lectures on English Literature, from Chaucer to Tennyson, which has been recently reprinted in London. On his return from a visit to England, this amiable and promising writer perished in the wreck of the Arctic.

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