the octo-syllabic measure of the Allegro and Penseroso. He would, probably, thus get imbued with a sensation, if not a sense, of metre without knowing it, just as Eton boys get to write such good Latin verses by conning Ovid and Tibullus. As it is, I can scarcely scan his verses. May 1. 1833. I THINK with some interest upon the fact that Rabelais and Luther were born in the same year.* Glorious spirits! glorious spirits! "Hos utinam inter Heroas natum me!" "Great wits are sure to madness near allied," says Dryden, and true so far as this, that genius of the highest kind implies an un *They were born within twelve months of each other, I believe; but Luther's birth was in November, 1484, and that of Rabelais is generally placed at the end of the year preceding. — ED. - usual intensity of the modifying power, which, detached from the discriminative and reproductive power, might conjure a platted straw into a royal diadem: but it would be at least as true, that great genius is most alien from madness, yea, divided from it by an impassable mountain,—namely, the activity of thought and vivacity of the accumulative memory, which are no less essential constituents of " great wit." May 4. 1833. COLONIZATION.-MACHINERY.-CAPITAL. COLONIZATION is not only a manifest expedient, but an imperative duty on Great Britain. God seems to hold out his finger to us over the sea. But it must be a national colonization, such as was that of the Scotch to America; a colonization of Hope, and not such as we have alone encouraged and effected for the last fifty years, a colonization of Despair. The wonderful powers of machinery can, by multiplied production, render the mere arte facta of life actually cheaper: thus money and all other things being supposed the same in value, a silk gown is five times cheaper now than in Queen Elizabeth's time; but machinery cannot cheapen, in any thing like an equal degree, the immediate growths of nature or the immediate necessaries of man. Now the arte facta are sought by the higher classes of society in a proportion incalculably beyond that in which they are sought by the lower classes; and therefore it is that the vast increase of mechanical powers has not cheapened life and pleasure to the poor as it has done to the rich. In some respects, no doubt, it has done so, as in giving cotton dresses to maid-servants, and penny gin to all. A pretty benefit truly ! I think this country is now suffering grievously under an excessive accumulation of capital, which, having no field for profitable operation, is in a state of fierce civil war with itself. May 6. 1833. ROMAN CONQUEST. - CONSTANTINE. THE Romans had no national clerisy; their priesthood was entirely a matter of state, and, as far back as we can trace it, an evident stronghold of the Patricians against the increasing powers of the Plebeians. All we know of the early Romans is, that, after an indefinite lapse of years, they had conquered some fifty or sixty miles round their city. Then it is that they go to war with Carthage, the great maritime power, and the result of that war was the occupation of Sicily. Thence they, in succession, conquered Spain, Macedonia, Asia Minor, &c., and so at last con trived to subjugate Italy, partly by a tremendous back blow, and partly by bribing the Italian States with a communication of their privileges, which the now enormously enriched conquerors possessed over so large a portion of the civilized world. They were ordained by Providence to conquer and amalgamate the materials of Christendom. They were not a national people; they were truly Romanos rerum dominos· - and that's all. Under Constantine the spiritual power became a complete reflex of the temporal. There were four patriarchs, and four prefects, and so on. The Clergy and the Lawyers, the Church and the State, were opposed. The beneficial influence of the Papacy upon the whole has been much over-rated by some writers; and certainly no country in Europe received less benefit and more harm from it than England. In fact, the lawful |