wore

geon: he could not murder all his patients: some of the surgical patients must be retained intact; re infecta. For these he wanted linen bandages. But unhappily the Romans woollen, on which account they bathed so often. Meantime, there was linen to be had in Rome: but it was mon. strously dear: and the τιλαμῶνες or linen swathing bandages in which superstition obliged them to bind up corpses, would answer capitally for the surgeon. The doctor, therefore, contracts to furnish his friend with a constant succession of corpses, provided, and be it understood always, that his said friend in return should supply him with one-half of the articles he would receive from the friends of the parties murdered or to be murdered. The doctor invariably recommended his invaluable friend the pollinctor, (whom let us call the undertaker;) the undertaker, with equal regard to the sacred rights of friendship, uniformly recommended the doctor. Like Pylades and Orestes, they were models of a perfect friendship: in their lives they were lovely; and on the gallows, it is to be hoped, they were not divided.

"Gentlemen, it makes me laugh horribly when I think of those two friends drawing and redrawing on each other: • Pollinctor in account with Doctor, debtor by sixteen corpses; creditor by forty-five bandages, two of which damaged." Their names unfortunately are lost; but I conceive they must have been Quintus Burkius and Publius Harius. By the way, gentlemen, has anybody heard lately of Hare? Iunderstand he is comfortably settled in

Ireland, considerably to the west, and does a little business now and then; but, as he observes with a sigh, only as a retailer-nothing like the fine thriving wholesale concern so carelessly blown up at Edinburgh. • You see what comes of neglecting business,' is the chief moral, the ἐπιμύθιον, as Esop would say, which he draws from his past experience."

At length came the toast of the day
-Thugdom in all its branches.

The speeches attempted at this crisis of the Dinner were past all counting. But the applause was so furious, the music so stormy, and the crashing of glasses so incessant, from the general resolution never again to drink an inferior toast from the same glass, that my power is not equal to the task of reporting. Besides which, Toad-inthe-hole now became quite ungovernable. He kept firing pistols in every direction; sent his servant for a blunderbuss, and talked of loading with ball-cartridge. We conceived that his former madness had returned at the mention of Burke and Hare; or, that being again weary of life, he had resolved to go off in a general massacre. This we could not think of allowing: it became indispensable, therefore, to kick him out, which we did with universal consent, the whole company lending their toes uno pede, as I may say, though pitying his grey hairs and his angelic smile. During the operation the orchestra poured in their old chorus. The universal company sang, and (what surprised us most of all) Toad-in-the-hole joined us furiously in singing

τελαμωνας,

Εις επιδεσμευειν πεμπε φιλῳ Κρατεα. Τον δ' απαμειβομένος Κρατεας, εις ενταφιαζειν

Πεμπεν όλες αυτῳ τους θεραπευομενες.

Damon, who plied the undertaker's trade, With Doctor Krateas an agreement made. What grave-clothes Damon from the dead

could seize,

1.

All religion implies that the universe is a system of essential good, not evil. And this in spite of experience, which acquaints us with nothing but a mixture, in larger or smaller proportion, of good and evil, neither of them at any time pure from some ingredient of the other. Thus the great general axiom of all higher than Pagan religion is the existence of an Absolute which transcends experience. No philosophy which teaches this can, without danger of calumny, be called irreligious.

4.

Of a mere chaos, blank ignorance would be the only corresponding image in the soul. Of a mere hell, an unchecked appetite of hatred would be the proper counterpart in man. All knowledge contradicts the one view; all goodness the other. The energies of life in all men work in opposition to both falsehoods, and take for granted their emptiness. But the clear insight and mature conscientiousness of the wise man realize the complete victory over all doubt of truth, and all selfabandonment to evil.

5.

The true idea of a philosopher, and that which, dimly apprehended, has been the cause of the universal reverence, even if only a reverential hatred, connected with the name, isa man who discerns an Absolute Truth more clearly than others, and is thus enabled to found on it a scientific, that is, systematic construction of all knowledge. To this idea is directly opposed that of a man whose aim is to establish the uncertainty of all things,who is certain only that we can know nothing certainly. To this class of NO. CCLXXXIX. YOL. XLVI.

thinkers belong not merely Pyrrhonists, that is, the dealers in lazy and captious frivolities of speculation, but all who maintain, however zealously and consistently, that we know nothing beyond appearances all who teach that truth is endowed with a positive value and certainty, but only in reference to us, who are essentially fallible, as having in ourselves no measure or organ of the absolute. Of such men, Locke, though often inconsistent, and sometimes suggesting a higher belief than he could clearly understand, is, on the whole, the great modern master. But from this, it by no means follows, nor indeed is it at all true, that he and his most decided followers have asserted nothing but error as to the mode in which our conceptions arise, and are associated and generalized. On the contrary, his writings, and those of others who pursue the same method, abound in ingenious and undeniable explanations of many phenomena of consciousness. Their error-when a philosopher of a higher and more genuine school must believe them in error is in the denial of any deeper ground of conviction in man than that which can be reduced to the impressions of objects, and the manufacture of these into conceptions, and sequences of conceptions.

6.

The belief in an Absolute Truth discernible by man, under whatever conditions, is the common ground of all constructive, all religious philosophies; by which they are contradistinguished from all the schemes which would reduce the objects of knowledge to an accidental and relative medley of facts, and the powers of knowing to implements produced by no previous high necessity of reason, and of which we can only say that here they are-and neither why nor whence. The enquiries of the em pirical analyses, pursued, as they may be, with serious devotion to truth, have yet so strong a tendency to deaden and choke up the inlets for all higher suggestions, that the affirmation of an absolute reality discernible by man seems to such a one, when at all accomplished in his own method, no better than the conceits of children or the dreams of sleepers. If any one take this view, it is utterly impossible to refute him; for his theory does perfectly well explain all the facts that he acknowledges or can be led to apprehend. If he once make up his mind that human existence is nothing better than the frightful farce which on his scheme it appears to men of larger and more aspiring souls-what can be said, but that he must make the best of the world which he has chosen for himself?

7.

The Absolute Truth of the philosopher has doubtless never been apprehended by the mass of mankind, as divested of innumerable, arbitrary, and often absurd adjuncts. Yet there are few who have not been visited by some faint and broken image of an unchangeable Ground, an eternal Reason, an inexhaustible Fount of Life, a pure Love, a perfect Will, a universal God; though doubtless even Christianity has as yet communicated a clear, devout, mature knowledge of this idea to but a small portion of those who profess it. The verdict of the multitude, ignorant as they are, first of what they do mean, and secondly, of what they ought to mean, is, on the whole, in favour of a Reality of Truth. But the seer who does know what he affirms, has a certainty which votes and adherents cannot augment, nor deniers take away. Seeing the truth in itself as it is, he cannot but know that he sees it, and would still possess this insight, though he were the one among a thousand millions who believed that man is more than a phantom of the night.

11.

The greatest instance of the opposition of the apparent and the real is found in the world itself as a whole, which presents to us a mass of fluctuating atoms, and yet reveals an Eternal Oneness as its true origin and life. 12.

Most English persons of liberal education would say that the primary question in philosophy is this: whether the human mind has or has not any capacities but those of sensation, memory, and association; or, in other words, whether from these alone all knowledge and all principles of action are derived? This would perhaps be the statement of those who take either the one or the other side in the controversy. A man of a deeper, ampler, and, as it is called among us, a more mystical mind than can be looked for among men of business and men of fashion, would say that philosophy starts from the assumption of a power in man to arrive at the knowledge of an Absolute Truth, on which the particular truths of experience depend, and from which they receive their explanation. The teacher of association and similar processes, as solving all mysteries into mere commonplaces, says that the sensation of bitter or sweet cannot be imparted by words to him who has not experienced it; so the believer in a fontal reality above all phenomena, and their generalized laws, says that the intuition of this, and the accompanying conviction of its inconclusiveness, cannot be conveyed by mere verbal teaching; and requires a training of the affections, imagination, and will, as well as the understanding, in order to bring it within our reach. Only the one asserts that there is nothing in man which is not obvious in all men; the other, that there is much, and the best, which in most has never distinctly appeared, and shows itself only by vague but unconquerable feeling.

13.

The reductio ad absurdum, the triumphant sarcasm of the follower of Locke, commonly amounts to this, that the asserted truth of the visionary enthusiast cannot be stated in terms of the sensations, and their images and associated results, without manifest self-contradiction; and that therefore it is a mere lunacy. But this is only a ridiculous conclusion from a state. ment which is essential to the very case of the transcendentalist. For it ■ is his allegation that there is such a truth as cannot be conveyed except in - language which must appear an inane jargon to all who resolve existence into a nothing but yet it would be absurd to deny that Hobbes, Locke, ■and Berkely, Hume, Hartley, Brown, and one in acuteness, clearness, and coherence, equal to any of these, the late James Mill, have given not only very ingenious, but quite adequate expositions of many phenomena of consciousness, while admitting only the scantiest premises and data. Laying down their volumes, and especially the Analysis of the Human Mind, by the last and most consistent of these #writers, it is hard not to feel for a time, as if after all men might be a mere bundle of these dry sticks thus neatly fitted and tied together. But at last, to any one who has habitually breathed a more devout air, and lived in the belief that there is something above, which we never can do more than look up to, the old faith of sages, and poets, and saintly hearts, nay, that of the great multitude of civilized men, however blundered and distorted by them, returns with power. We thus find in the conviction that there is an Absolute Truth and good, how. ever diversely manifested to different lands and generations, a depth and strength, a sufficiency for the demands of the reason, which no small psychological theory can explain, and which, therefore, none should be allowed to explain away. Must we then say that truth is inconsistent with itself, and that the analysis of phenomena by Hartley or Mill, though irrefutable, must be set aside, because it is discordant from the belief in a supersensual and eternal Idea? Assuredly not. But we may admit by far the greater part of what is positive in their teaching, and yet hold, that they do but explain the process by which sensations, images, and associations, build up the mass of common thoughts and feelings, which, nevertheless, must rest at last on a deeper and more permanent

foundation.

14.

Man's actual knowledge may easily be measured. His ignorance is for him unfathomable; he is ignorant of the extent of his ignorance. But, on the other hand, his knowledge, were it but the conscious certainty of

the difference between odd and even numbers, or of the idea of a circle, proves that existence is essentially knowable by him, and that he has the capacity for knowing it altogether. Our ignorance is immense, but not entire. All actually share in it, but it is not constitutive, universal, char acteristic of the race. Knowledge is all these. It with all its infinity surrounds us, calls us, belongs to us, is ideally ours. Not only the child, the peasant, the sage are ignorant, So also are the insentient stone, the unmoving plant, the unreflecting animal. Man like these is ignorant; but it is his crowning distinction that he knows himself to be so, as having in his knowledge a standard which proves him ignorant.

15.

Contented ignorance of that which we may know has a no less deplorable likeness to the condition of brutes, than the most obvious brutalities to which we degrade our nature.

16.

Often has it been said, far oftener indistinctly felt, that nothing is more really inconsistent with the spirit of true morality than the affected parade of buckram severity. Thus, the corrupt exaggeration of prudes fastens as a stain on the soul the tint which might otherwise have been but a play of shadow. In such a tone of mind, and how much of it is there in England, especially in England's moral self-complacence, it is plain that the want of inward life betrays itself by the prurient excess of life on the surface. A careless unconscious ease of soul as to trifles, arises naturally from the habitual presence of that spirit of free purity and generosity which alone can render any human life really moral, under the paint. That is only a fit and meritable contrast to the stiff and bitter pedantry of duty which is presented in the emphatic licences and naked orgies of genial blackguardism, such as has not wanted eulogists among us. In the former case, the dirt is frozen into lumps, and may be handled with less defilement. In the other, it is liquid, rank, and steaming, and gives one at least the hope that it may flow down its proper channels into some congenial abyss. But all is dirt alike, and the less that any one meddles with it, save those to whom such work belongs, the better for himself and for