"How can we take interest enough in distant beings of our own sort, to feel anything that deserves to be called universal benevolence? Why did the Supreme Disposer put so many beings in one world, under circumstances which necessarily make them strangers to one another?

man absurd in the eyes of others, and often intensely miserable within himself, is the very rudiment of its greatness, and the reason of its power over other minds, when it attaches, in a high degree, to splendor of the imagination, and to compass and force of the reflective faculty. "A painful sense of an awkward and entire individutwelfth year; no doubt from his earliest childhood; and this insulating consciousness-a dim consciousness of intellectual dimensions out of all proportion to his worldly condition, and to the opinion entertained of him by others-even his parents and his instructors, had time to congest, and to become the unalterable habit of his character, while as yet he had not surmised anything distinctly as to his own powers of mind. His "individuality" had thoroughly crusted itself at eighteen; his great faculties had not fully become known to himself at eight-and-twenty. Even four years later-a period when men of eminent intelligence, born in a higher sphere, and enjoying the The world-the human system-being in his advantages of education, have usually won half view an uncouth mass, not to be looked at without their laurels-Foster was barely beginning to susdisgust, and not to be touched without defilement, pect that the lofty prerogatives which his “indiFoster gathered himself up-sympathies and ener-viduality" made him long for, were actually his gies-within, not the cloak of the misanthrope, own, by the gift of nature. nor the tub of Diogenes, but the dust-coated attic, whence issued writings that will finely temper the products of other men's activities. His essays his letters-his journal, exhibit the converse of a mind, a mind of gigantic stature, a mind of the keenest sensitiveness-with itself! Everything in these writings is genuine and true, and noble, that relates to this one soul. Most things in them that relate to the world exterior are, if not false, yet mis-stated; or true only in some partial sense. There is no modern writer whose thoughts are of more weight than Foster's; none (of any note) whose opinions are of less. We shall endeavor to hold out to view this interior universe grand and beautiful, while, with a becoming gentleness and reverence, we animadvert upon those strange mistakes that attach to his notions of things around him. The comparison which we disclaim, between Arnold and Foster, will, alas! haunt us still! Arnold, within his sphere, (and had his sphere been immensely wider than it was, the same would have been true,) ruled his firmament as the sun, enlightening all things, warming all, vivifying all : Foster (the passage is inimitably beautiful) describes the moon in terms that might not unaptly be taken to depict himself.

"Views which strongly realize to the mind the vast multitude of mankind, tend to contract benev-ality" belonged to him, as he says, so early as his olence. The mind seems to say, What can I do with all this crowd? I cannot keep them in my habitual view; I cannot extend my affections to a thousand millions of persons who know nothing, and care nothing about me or each other; I can do them no good, I can derive no good from them; they have all their concerns, and I have mine; if I were this moment annihilated, it would be all the same to them;-there is no connection, nor relation, nor sympathy, nor mutual interest between us. I cannot therefore care anything about them; my affections cannot reach beyond these four or five with whom my own personal interests are immediately connected."-Vol. i., p. 355.

"Have just seen the moon rise, and wish the image to be eternal. I never beheld her in so much character, nor with so much sentiment, all these thirty years that I have lived. Emerging from a dark mountain of clouds, she appeared in a dim sky, which gave a sombre tinge to her most majestic aspect. It seemed an aspect of solemn, retiring severity, which had long forgotten to smile; the aspect of a being which had no sympathies with this world-of a being totally regardless of notice, and having long since, with a gloomy dignity, resigned the hope of doing any good, yet proceeding, with composed, unchangeable self-determination, to fulfil her destiny, and even now looking over the world at its accomplishment."-Vol. i., p. 211.

That individuality, the absence of which is precisely what makes the "many" the many, and the presence of which in excess, along with common qualities and a narrow intellect, renders a

"Long as it is since I wrote to you before, no incident worthy of particular notice has occurred-or perhaps the very circumstance of my being apt to suffer things to pass without notice, is itself the reason why I do not distinguish and recollect particulars. Many events may possibly have engaged the attention of other men, which I was too thoughtless to observe, or too ignorant to comprehend their consequence. I am a very indifferent philosopher, I confess, for I have neither curiosity nor speculation. This inattention to the external world might be excused if the deficiency were supplied from within. If I were, like some men, a kingdom or a world within myself, superior entertainment should soon make my friends forget the uninteresting particulars of ordinary intelligence. How enviable the situation

to feel the transition from the surrounding world into one's own capacious mind, like quitting a narrow, confined valley, and entering on diversified and almost boundless plains-if this felicity were mine, I might be equally unconcerned to obtain or to recollect the news of the town. I might explore new and unknown regions of intellect and fancy-and after having carried my career to a distance which the most erratic comets never reached, return with the most glowing and amazing descriptions of the scenes through which I had passed.”—Vol. i., p. 25.

Many passages in the Journal are to the same purpose.

Feel this insuperable individuality. Something seems to say, 'Come, come away; I am but a gloomy ghost among the living and the happy. There is no need of me; I shall never be loved as I wish to be loved, and as I could love. I will converse with my friends in solitude; then they seem to be within my soul; when I am with them they seem to be without it. They do not need the few felicities I could impart; it is not generous to tax their sympathies with my sorrows; and these sorrows have an aspect on myself which no other person can see. I can never become deeply important to any one; and the unsuccessful effort to become so, costs too much in the painful sentiment which the affeetions feel when they return mortified from the fervent attempt to give themselves to some heart

A

outrageously at whatever dares stand erect in his course. The best thing that can be done by quiet folks on such occasions, is to stand on one side until the gigantic creature has finished his sport, and plunges again into the jungle; but we protest against the error of calling the buffalo either tiger or crocodile.

which would welcome them with a pathetic or ecclesiastical controversy, he starts forward in a warmth."-Vol. i., p. 220. sort of bison gallop-fiercely breaking through en"I have long been taught and compelled by ob-closures-trampling down fair fields, and butting servation to form a very bad opinion of mankind; this conviction is irresistible; but, at the same time, I am aware of the Christian duty of cultivating a benevolence as ardent as if the contrary estimate of human character were true. I feel it most difficult to preserve anything like this benevolence; my mind recoils from human beings, excepting a very few, into a cold interior retirement, where it feels as if dissociated from the whole creation. I do not, however, in any degree, approve this tendency, and I earnestly wish and pray for more of the spirit of the Saviour of the world."-Vol i., p. 319.

Con

In this view of the case, we must warn off from these volumes party writers and sectarian reviewers. Such, if any such there be, will be prompt to snatch at, and adduce many passages which might seem to bear them out in saying-" See what the We have said that everything in Foster's letters party is-what is its spirit-what its intentionsand journal relating to himself-this inner world-what its malignity-which John Foster represented this retreat wherein he took refuge, is genuine and in his time, and of which he was the idol!" true. It can barely be necessary to exclude a mis-clusions such as this would only indicate a want of understanding, as if we accepted as literally true his intelligence, a lack of philosophic perception, a misown estimate of his dispositions, when he reports understanding of the instance. Not a little that is abhimself to be misanthropic, unsocial and cold. surdly sectarian, violent, uncharitable, intemperate, Nothing could be farther from the truth than such might be culled from the letters and journal; and a representation: it was the loftiness, the purity, if, in the course of this article, we advert to passathe fervor of his moral perceptions-it was the in-ges of this kind, our intention in doing so will be tensity of his social instincts that drove him out of not to set the particular question right-whether the "world" into his attic, and that encased him ecclesiastical or political, which were a superfluous in ice when unavoidably mingling with ordinary task, but to set Foster's personal reputation clear of minds. Psychologically understood, Foster's own the imputations to which these crude portions will report of himself, as a misanthrope"-a being probably render it obnoxious. Fairly to interpret "cold and unsocial"-contradicted as it is so co- them, one should duly consider his own mental piously by other evidence-his own evidence given structure, the narrowing influences of his early under other influences, as well as the entire char- course and position, and, not less, the peculiar asacter of his various writings-is quite true and pects and provocations of the times when his opingenuine, in as much as it is a symptom of his case ions were formed and proclaimed. Born in the -a diagnostic of his moral constitution-a constitu- humblest rank, and enjoying, in early life, very tion not altogether healthful. Real misanthropes do scantily those advantages of education or association not mournfully make such entries in their journals which may avail to remove from a vigorous mind its as this: "Alas! I am a misanthrope." Beings plebeian notions, and which, with a mind such as his, who indeed are cold-hearted, unsocial, and selfish, would not less have mellowed his moral nature, neither write it down that they are so, nor speak it. than have disciplined his reason, Foster began to Too clearly conscious of the dread fact, they would think and to feel, in relation to political and ecclenot give evidence against themselves in a case siastical questions, just at that enigmatic juncture, which they know lacks no sort of proof, unless it be the misunderstood phenomena of which perverted such a confession. the views, and set wrong the public course, of some, greater than he in intellect, and far better taught.

We take it for granted that everybody will read these volumes, and shall, therefore, attempt no summary of Foster's life—a tale soon told-nor

Foster's case, although indeed rare, if we think of the faculties of mind which, in this instance, signalize it, is by no means uncommon. Affections deep, tender, and refined—moral instincts of the purest sort, and the most vivid, a sense of right-quote from them, except such passages as may be and therefore a sense of wrong, the most passionate necessary to give coherence and support to our re-even tempestuous, and imagination alive to the marks. Like all who indeed think, and who muse great and beautiful, but always swayed by an painfully upon the mysteries of the system in which infelicitous animal temperament towards what is they find themselves placed, Foster early doubted terrible or sombre:-Such elements of character concerning many things ordinarily held, in his conimperfectly governed by the higher reason-per-nexion, to be true, and some such points of belief haps owning no submission to any such authority, he continued to reject to the last. He wandered constitute the man-such as was Foster-ever reviling himself as a misanthrope, because born into a world where the impulses of a seraph's bosom are so often outraged, and must always be repressed.

not, however, from the precincts of serious faithfaith in Christianity; and no reader of the letters and journal can hesitate to admit that a deep, a solemn conviction of the reality of things unseen and eternal-a conviction meekly submissive always On subjects remote from those questions which to the testimony of Scripture-possessed his mind, had enlisted-shall we say which had "retained”- and governed it. Besides that the high moral tone his imagination and his moral sensibilities, Foster's of his character, and the grandeur of his imaginajudgment is sound, his perceptions acute, his de- tion, held him ever near to the radiant centre of cisions discriminating, his conclusions apt and just. truth, his mind wanted entirely the scientific rudiReason, with him, was an energy of a high order-ment, and therefore he was never in peril of skeptialthough not at all of scientific quality: but the misfortune was, that it bore no proportion to the combined forces-and they were ever in combination-of his imagination and his moral sense, and so it is that, whenever he nears the ground of political

cism. If he disbelieved some things which others believed, it was not from disbelief that he did so; but rather from an overpowering belief-a vivid sense of certain truths which were seemingly incompatible with such and such articles of an ortho

dox creed. There are men, and many such, who believe everything firmly, precisely because they believe nothing deeply. They doubt nothing, because they never ask themselves what their belief includes and implies; and if only they could, for a moment, get a glimpse of the interior of a mind like Foster's-if they could creep into his bosom, they would come away bereft of a third of their "arti-ing to fact-nothing that tends to guide or to incles." Foster believed, as superior natures in an upper world believe; and he, on earth, doubted, just where they, in heaven, veil their faces with their wings.

Whatever shocked or countervailed the powerful impulses and genuine instincts of his soul, he cast from him as utterly to be rejected. Christians should love each other; but, alas! church members too often "bite and devour one another;" and the inference with him is instantaneous-not that church members should be admonished and reformed, but that churches are nuisances, and should be dissolved, one and all!

letters such as these:-that he had reached the age of three-and-thirty at the time they were written, affords a striking evidence of the slow growth, and the late development of his mind. They are, in fact, worthy of a sensitive, romantic youth of eighteen, and are very fit to be addressed to "a young lady!" Nothing in them is simply accordspire benevolent enterprises. Well is it for London, and for the world, that its hundred charities, religious and secular, find men and women to sup port and carry them out, whose sensibilities are more practical, and whose imaginations are less sublime! So moody was Foster's mind, when once it had been smitten with a sad theme, that probably, if one had ventured to whisper in his ear something about hospitals, dispensaries, visiting societies, city missions, and churches, or even chapels, besides innumerable benevolent agencies, purely private and individual, all would have been interpreted by him in an ominous sense, as afford"On the occasion of a violent dissension between ing more proof of his argument! Take Foster two religious societies, which came under his im- to a "Ragged School"-what confirmation does mediate notice, he speaks of obtaining plenty of con- it yield of his darkest surmises as to the misery firmation, if he had needed it,of his old opinion, that and the vice of the metropolis! "Yes, sir," we churches are useless and mischievous institutions, should have said, "but grant us at least this-that and the sooner they are dissolved the better. if the scholars belong to, and if they are a sample He believed that there was more of appearance than of, London, the school also belongs to, and is a of reality in the union of church-membership; sample of, the same awful concrete." The squalid and that, at all events, its benefits were greatly urchins are "the Metropolis;" but the master, overrated. With the exception of public worship and the mistress, and their patrons, are also "the and the Lord's supper, he was averse to everything Metropolis." Let it be true, that the noble and institutional in religion. He never administered, the wealthy do not attempt all they might and nor even witnessed in mature life, (it is believed,) the ordinance of baptism, and was known to entertain doubts respecting its perpetuity. In writing to a friend, (Sept. 10, 1828,) he says:- I have long felt an utter loathing of what bears the general denomination of the church, with all its parties, contests, disgraces, or honors. My wish would be little less than the dissolution of all church institu- "I am sorry not to have gained the knowledge tions, of all orders and shapes; that religion might which thirty or forty shillings would have purbe set free, as a grand spiritual and moral element, chased in London. At the expense of so much no longer clogged, perverted, and prostituted by spent in charity, a person might have visited just corporation forms and principles."—Vol. i., p. 61. once eight or ten of those sad retirements in darkThe very same melancholic fastidiousness gave ness, in dark alleys, where, in garrets and cellars, its character to Foster's opinions on the most ordi- thousands of wretched families are dying of famnary subjects, and impelled him toward extreme ine and disease. It would be most painful, howconclusions in relation to any object, which at once ever, to see these miseries without the power to woke up the moral sense-in him so painfully supply any effectual relief. At the very same sensitive and overclouded his imagination with time you may see a succession, which seems to lugubrious images. The premises leading to such have no end, of splendid mansions, equipages, livconclusions were furnished wholly by his moral instincts and his imagination, nor were his inferences modified at all by a regard to the simple facts of the case. Witness the crudities of the letters "On the Metropolis." An intense commiseration of want and woe-a high, indiscriminate wrath against the possessors of luxury, of comfort, and of authority, who are assumed to be the authors, remotely or directly, of human sufferings; and then the resentment of a countryman against brick walls, noisy vehicles, smoke, and the sundry nuisances of such a city as London-combined, if not to convince him that London should be shoved into the Thames, yet to exclude from his view, as if no such things existed, all that incalculable amount of good-good of the highest order-good, not merely for the metropolis itself, nor merely for Britain, but for the wide world-of which London is the focus, the germinating centre, the direct and active cause. We can scarcely believe that Foster would himself have reprinted, in his later years,

ought, in behalf of the want and woe around them; and let them be urged and incited, by all proper means, to acquit themselves better than they do of their responsibilities; but we doubt if much good will be done in this way by those who would handle the subject after such a fashion as the following:

eries; you may scent the effluvia of preparing feasts; you may hear of fortunes, levees, preferments, pensions, corporation dinners, royal hunts, etc., etc., numerous beyond the devil's own arithmetic to calculate. This whole view of society might be called the devil's play-bill; for surely this world might be deemed a vast theatre, in which he, as manager, conducts the endless, horrible drama of laughing and suffering, while the diabolical satyrs of power, wealth, and pride, are dancing round their dying victims:-a spectacle and an amusement for which the infernals will pay him liberal thanks."—Vol. i., p. 258.

It is curious, we will not say amusing, to observe the manner in which men of Foster's order are apt to be carried away by their impulses. There is, perhaps, a terrible sublimity in the idea of tens of thousands of wretches thought of as living and dying the victims of luxury and power! But there is no sublimity in the thought or spectacle of fifty or a hundred methodist-looking men, in

LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF JOHN FOSTER.

he was surrounded with a deadening heterodoxy,
he says:-

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My opinions are more Calvinistic than when I first came here; so much so as to be in direct hostility with the leading principles of belief in this society. The greatest part of my views are, I believe, accurately Calvinistic. My opinion respecting future punishments is an exception."-Vol. i., p. 99.

Similar professions occur elsewhere, and they are entitled to the most entire confidence. Minds of less compass, clearness, and depth than his, and equally addicted to meditation, very usually run

place of repose. Foster's was too profound not to know well that these several illusions serve to alleviate nothing, to solve nothing, to illuminate nothing;-that they are vapors which may indeed show bright and gaudy colors when seen at a great distance, but in the bosom of which, if one enters them, there is nothing but chill and gloom. By the aid of those moral instincts which attach to a great mind, he kept himself anear to the effulgent source of light and heat, although "clouds and darkness are round about it."

shabby black, dingy stocks, and pale faces, setting out to visit these tens of thousands? A dirty pale face is the symbol of masses of dirty pale facesand all the victims of " vicious institutions," and evidences of "wicked government!" A clean pale face is only a clean pale face! nevertheless, if the wearer of it be the martyr of Christian benevolence, and if, moreover, he be salaried by Christian wealth, then, surely the pale clean face might just be named, when the dirty pale face is made the text of a sweeping commination, thundered against "the diabolical satyrs of power, wealth, and pride!" The editor, we think, might very well have suppressed more than a few pages of this sort of pue-off into mysticism, gnosticism, pantheism, as their rile sophistry. Finding them where they are, we are free to refer to them as furnishing proof that the preponderance of certain unhappy elements in his constitution was such as should be held to screen his opinions from any severe treatment, as The adif they had been the products of reason. herents of such opinions will, we think, be wise if they abstain from boasting of Foster as a champion of "sound principles," and of "great truths;" while, on the other hand, those of the contrary part, will show right feeling, and good taste, if they deny themselves the spiteful gratification, which these volumes would supply, of bringing Samson forth" to make them sport." As to those who will do so, we stigmatize them, beforehand, as men of an ill temper, and of narrow intellect. John Foster belongs to us all, as a writer who, beyond any other, within the compass of a century, has enriched our English literature with full-toned and impassioned eloquence-has gone deeper, than any other of our times, into the deep waters of religious and ethical meditation-shedding upon such themes the splendor of an imagination of high order, and who, in a word, has, on lofty ground, occupied an ample space, quite his own, and where he is little likely soon to find his superior.

Foster's proper sphere was that vast region wherein there is neither pathway nor rest for the foot of man-a region into which every serious and reflective mind makes an excursion early in its course, and from which calm and well-ordered minds presently retire trembling, and forbidding themselves any renewed endeavors to penetrate its awful gloom.

"I sometimes fall into profound musings on the state of this great world-on the nature and the destinies of man, on the subject of the question, What is truth? The whole hemisphere of contemplation appears inexpressibly strange and mysterious. It is cloud pursuing cloud, forest after forest, and alps upon alps! It is in vain to declaim against skepticism. I feel with an emphasis of conviction, and wonder, and regret, that almost all things are involved in shade, that many things are covered with thickest darkness, that the number to * I hope which certainty belongs is small. * to enjoy the sunshine of the other world.' One of the very few things that appear to me not doubtful, is the truth of Christianity in general; some of the evidences of which I have lately seen most ably stated by Archdeacon Paley in his book on the subject."-Vol. i., p. 89.

Not merely did he hold fast his profession as a Christian, amid these cheerless musings, but, even while indulging them without restraint, he became more and more decisive in his adoption of the most serious form of theological belief. Writing from Chichester to his parents, March 25, 1799, where

His letters to his "honored parents" exhibit, with a sort of boyish simplicity, and continue to do so even after he had passed the meridian of life, the interior of his soul, as a devout Christian. Those addressed to his early and most congenial friend, the late accomplished Joseph Hughes, take, as might be supposed, a higher tone, and they beautifully develope that which the former only indicate, namely, the deepest reverence toward God, the most ardent desires for Christian advancement and usefulness, and a readiness, the very opposite of the skeptical feeling, to bow to the undoubted testimony of Scripture when once it is ascertained. His friend had, as it seems, with a faithful but overdone severity, called him to account on the question of evangelic piety; in reply, and with a child-like humility, he pleads his own cause, (Letter XXIX.,) and makes an ample profession of sufficient orthodoxy-a profession, we confidently think, which, although Dr. Gill might perhaps have spurned it, St. Paul would have accepted with To the same purpose-we need not tears of love. cite it is a letter to his tutor, Dr. Fawcett, (XXXIII.,) breathing a tender conscientiousness, and an ingenuous warmth. But at this period, and just before his reputation had set him safe from such annoyances, he was paying the penalty, or was expecting every moment to be called upon to pay it, which is exacted always, by narrow sects, from an individual, beneath their sway, who is suspected of daring to keep a soul and mind of his own.

It is a vexation to find, and we must infer it, from the tone of Foster's expostulations, that his friend Hughes, candid and kind-hearted as he was, had given in to this prejudice of the sect, and, while much his inferior intellectually, was treating him in something like a supercilious manner, as a man compromised by suspicion of the plague, and who should, therefore, keep himself off from clean folks. Foster does not resent this unworthy treatment; he Hughes "You do not understand me." only says, could not fully-although somewhat more than did the good folks assembling in the vestry of Battersea Meeting House on a week evening," understand the man who, with a discriminating sense of his individual character, and without arrogance,

notes it of himself, that he holds easier correspond-lence; perhaps in part to his dread of encountering ence with God, than with his fellows.

"(In the vestry of Battersea Meeting, during evening service.) Most emphatic feeling of my individuality-my insulated existence-except that close and interminable connexion, from the very necessity of existence, with the Deity. To the continent of human nature, I am a small island near its coast; to the Divine existence, I am a small peninsula.”—P. 183, Journal, (434.)

on the way-just at the corner of a street, or, worse still, midway on a field path, where a turn off could not be effected-some worthy biped with whom he must have exchanged (terrible annoyance) a few phrases of civility! But besides; as Foster shunned common society because his converse with himself afforded him a higher enjoyment than he could derive from intercourse with others, so he shut himself in his attic, even during the At a prayer-meeting the "peninsular" relation- most splendid seasons, because the luxuries of the ship is naturally uppermost in his thoughts :-in a imagination-luxuries purely intellectual-were party, the "insular." more exquisite than the primary, or elementary "How often I have entered a room with the em- gratifications, which the mind admits direct from barrassment of feeling that all my motions, ges- the eye. The sight of beautiful objects affords, intures, postures, dress, &c., &c., &c., were criti-deed, a vivid pleasure; yet it is a crude pleasure. cally appreciated and self-complacently condemned, But while the eye-balls glare vacantly upon a but, at the same time, with the bold consciousness stained and cobwebbed wall, the mind revels in that the inquisition could reach no further. I have some bower or glade of its own paradise. Will a said with myself, My character, that is the man, man put on a hat, to walk as far as Longleat, laughs at you behind this veil; I may be the devil who can, at his ease, perambulate Elysian fields, for what you can tell, and you would not perceive where neither if I were an angel of light.”—Vol. i., p.

lawns, or level downs, and flocks Grazing the tender herb, are interposed, Or palmy hillock; or the flowing lap Of some irriguous valley spreads her store; Flowers of all hue, and without thorn the rose. Or shall he risk the hearing of a factory's din, who can listen while

murmuring waters fall Down the sloped hills;

and where

The birds their quire apply; airs, vernal airs,
Breathing the smell of field and grove, attune
The trembling leaves.

"Why is this being, that looks at me and talks, whose bosom is warm, and whose nature and wants resemble my own, necessary to me? This kindred being whom I love, is more to me than all His attic window, he tells us, commanded a yonder stars of heaven, and than all the inanimate peep at the green fields; but we doubt if he actuobjects on earth. Delightful necessity of my na-ally availed himself much of this advantage. He ture! But to what a world of disappointments and who could stand at an attic window, looking at vexations is this social feeling liable, and how few the fields, would assuredly, unless lame or imprisare made happy by it in any such degree as I pic-oned, walk forth to look at them. ture to myself and long for!"-Vol. i., p. 228.

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"I am still all alone here, and since I wrote to Foster felt himself insulated in general society you, have lived a more solitary life than ever in from a cause analogous to that which insulates a my life before. This last six months I have lived man in a foreign land; for there was no medium a little way out of the town, in a house amidst the between himself and the beings around him; and fields. However, I hardly ever go out, because I the forced endeavors made to break through the can see them so well through my window, the obstruction serve only to confirm his resolution not window of an upper room. I hardly ever what can to repeat the attempt. Spent part of an hour in be called take a walk, except merely in the garden company with a handsome young woman and a adjoining the house. The beauties of nature are friendly little cat. The young woman was igno- brought so directly under my eyes and to my feet, rant and unsocial. I felt as if I could more easily that I am rarely prompted to go in quest of them, make society of the cat." The inference that he even as far as from your house to the top of Wick was not social, because his behavior and habits Lane. Excepting my journey to Bristol, I have were those of a recluse, would have been as erro- hardly ever taken a good long walk for the last neous as the supposition that he had no sense of nine months. If this rigid limitation were imposed the beautiful in nature, because his practice was-upon me by some external authority, by the will even when residing in the midst of scenery the most agreeable-to shut himself up for weeks, nay months, treading the boards of a dingy and dusty attic, to and fro, many miles every day. In the enjoyment of abundant animal energy-with the most absolute command of his time-unquestioned by any one, the very man who, when abroad, Happily, the social element-in few bosoms of would stand an hour fixedly gazing at a tree, and greater intensity than in his-was at length resto whom a tour in Wales afforded unutterable de- cued from extinction by the opening of the conjulight, freely imprisoned himself in a garret through gal and parental affections. Had it not been so, a large portion of his best years! An inconsisten- the writer of passages such as the following might cy seemingly so strange may, no doubt, in good have ended in actually becoming-what he had long part be attributed to constitutional animal indo-been erroneously calling himself-"a misanthrope."

of somebody else than myself, what a wretched prisoner I should think myself, and should watch day and night for an opportunity to make my escape. I almost decline all visiting, and have not dined from home, I believe, six times these last seven months."-Vol. i., p. 288.