pioneers of social improvement, and to ply pickaxe and shovel all the more vigorously whenever the obstacles were most formidable, instead of turning aside into an easier path for their own progress. We looked for their teaching England the lesson which France has learned of the importance of principles, and doing something for our deliverance from the narrow, shallow, retail, and empirical mode of treating public matters to which our countrymen are addicted.

Moreover, the condition of women, of which the exclusion from all political right is a prominent feature, is a topic to which the public mind may not only be usefully directed, but towards which it is turning of itself; as witness the clever pamphlet of Lydia Tomkins,' with many other indications both in books and in periodical literature. The Westminster' predicted some time ago, that this would be the popular topic of the next generation; now one generation is perhaps rather below than above the average advance of the London Review' upon its cotemporaries. At any rate, we should expect it to be never behind the foremost rank in the discussion of grievances and improvements. There is no mischief so deeply rooted, so wide spreading, as that which results from the dependent and degraded position of women. The superficial education to which they are condemned; their dependence on marriage for a civil existence; the absence of those rights of property which are essential to their protection; their exclusion not only from political rights, but their being warned off all public interests as ground on which they are trespassers; the selfish, enfeebling, and debasing character of the influence which they too often exercise over man in his public capacity, and which is the reaction of his own conduct: these are suffi cient evidence of the necessity of popular discussion,' and in such hands as those of the writer on whom we are commenting, who can doubt the prospect of practical advantage? It is a subject worthy of him, and of which he is worthy; and we do hope that he will soon advert to it in a different spirit, and shew what can be done towards the redress of one of the greatest grievances, by the efforts of one of the finest intellects of the age in which we live.

CORRESPONDENCE.

The hint of A Subscriber' must depend on some correspondent for its realization. Could he undertake the task himself?

Although the article on Female Education' be not inserted, it is too good for destruction. It is left at our office, directed according to the signature of the envelope.

E. I. should study simplicity.

Speranza's lines have been forwarded to the party addressed, who is much pleased

with them.

We heartily wish that W. H. P., Frank Friendly, and other young men of talent. would employ their time and their ability (of which they give unquestionable evidence) in something better than versification. Prose composition, for some distinct purpose, is a much more wholesome exercise; and if there be poetry in them, it will not rust for lack of rhyming. But there can be no great poet whose intellect has not undergone a long and vigorous training.

The Sketches of Domestic Life,' by Mrs. Leman Grimstone, will be resumed next month.

We do not do business in the way supposed by the writer of the Critical Notice that was to have been anonymous.

629

DISQUISITION ON THE GENIUS, WRITINGS, AND CHARACTER OF WILLIAM HAZLITT.

By the Author of the Exposition of the False Medium, &c.

WILLIAM HAZLITT began to think deeply at an early period, and while others of the same age were devoting their animal spirits to sportive games, or their minds to boyish projects, he was speculating on the abstract rights of humanity. His letter to the editor of the Shrewsbury Chronicle,' written at the age of thirteen, on the persecution of Dr. Priestley, is a sufficient proof of this masculine predisposition of his intellect and feelings. It was his first literary production, and was printed immediately. But who shall say at what far earlier dawn of youth his heart with voiceless sensibility brooded over the condition of mankind, and his mind began to develop itself through the hazy twilight of unrisen power? This reflection, combined with a knowledge of his works, -even though we are speaking of his childhood,-forces upon us the recollection of his fine and fact-like description of Blind Orion hungering for the dawn,' in the sublime picture of Nicolas Poussin.

The early years of his childhood were passed in America, where his father had taken his whole family. Here, as well as in former places of residence, William Hazlitt, then in his fifth year only, attracted the admiration and affection of everybody by the extreme beauty of his person, the amiability and sweetness of his disposition, and the vivid comprehension of his mind. The expression of his face is said to have borne a close resemblance to the beatified look of intelligence in the children of some of the paintings of Raphael and Corregio. His personal beauty was palpable to all; but his peculiar quality of intellect, even at the dawn, was not of course considered in the light of a presage of future greatness. We can seldom accuse relations and family friends of backwardness in conferring, with prophetic pride, all manner of future honours upon the precocity of their little favourites; but it is an amusing fact that the infant prodigies, thus singled out for posterity, never come to anything worth mentioning the reality only remains undiscovered until fully developed. It is hardly just, nevertheless, and certainly unrea sonable, to accuse individuals of dulness because they do not see the germ of great genius where it actually exists. To expect that they should do so, is almost the same as expecting them to be possessed of a similar genius themselves; since the powers in question must be seen and understood in their elemental forms. Looking, however, as we now do, to the application of high qualities, it may be recollected by some who knew William Hazlitt in his childhood that he gave unequivocal indications of that strong sensibility and comprehension which are certainly the visible,

though seldom seen, harbingers of superior powers, the fruits of which time only can ripen to practical manifestation and lofty maturity.

The most pure and perfect state of human existence, the most ethereal in mind, being fresh from the creative hand; the most enthusiastic and benevolent of heart, being yet uncontaminated by the outer world and all its bitter disappointments; the sweetest, and yet the most pathetic, were it only from the extreme sense of beauty, is the early youth of genius. Alone in the acuteness of its general sensibility,-unsympathized with in its peculiar views of nature; its heart without utterance, and its intellect a mine penetrated by the warmth of the dawning sun, but unopened by its meridian beams,-the child of genius wanders forth into the fields and woods, an embodied imagination; an elemental being yearning for operation, but knowing not its mission. A powerful destiny heaves for development in its bosom; it feels the prophetic waves surging to and fro: but all is indistinct and vast, caverned, spell-bound, aimless, and rife with sighs. It has little retrospection, and that little of no importance; its heart and soul are in the future, a glorified dream. Memory, with all its melancholy pleasures and countless pains, is for the old, and chiefly for the prematurely old; but youth is a vision of the islands of the blest; it tells its own fairy tale to itself, and is at once the hero and inventor. It revels in the radiance of years to come, nor ever dreams that the little daisy on the lawn, so smilingly beheld, or so tenderly gathered from its green bed, shall make the whole heart ache with all the past when it meets the eye some years hence. If this be more or less the case with youth in general, it is so in a pre-eminent degree with the youth of genius. At this early period of the life of such a being, impressions of moral and physical beauty exist in ecstatic sensation, rather than in sentiment; a practical feeling and instinct, not a theory or rule of right. Conscious only of its ever-working sensibility and dim aspirations, boundless as dim,-utterly unconscious of its own latent powers or means of realizing its feelings,-the child of genius yearns with a deep sense of the divinity of imperishable creation, with hopes that sweep high over the dull earth and all its revolving graves; and lost in beatific abstraction, it has a positive foretaste of immortality.

Such we may affirm,-if the reader will add that intensity of comprehension which pierces beneath the deepest roots of the heart, and to which all words are but the earth-like signs, the finger-marks of mortality pointing to the profound elements of human nature,—such was the early youth of William Hazlitt.

But a more distinct condition of mind,-less affecting perhaps from its approach towards self-reliance and manly equality, yet still touching from the very youthfulness of its power and evident unconsciousness of the practically incorrigible vices and perverse

bigotries of the actual world-was destined to supervene at a much earlier period than is common with any order of fine intellect, and more especially the highest. It has been mentioned that his first literary production was induced by the persecution of the benevolent and philosophic Priestley. Literature, to say the truth, has very little to do with the awkward effort; but sincerity of feeling, clearness of understanding, and the early manifestation of principles which time and circumstance have shown to have been fixed as the northern star, have everything to do with it. The following is a copy of the letter that appeared in the Shrewsbury Chronicle;' and the editor was not a little surprised when he subsequently learnt that the writer was a school-boy:

'MR. WOOD,-"Tis really surprising that men-men, too, that aspire to the character of Christiaus-should seem to take such pleasure in endeavouring to load with infamy one of the best, one of the wisest, and one of the greatest of men.

One of your late correspondents, under the signature of "OYAEIE," seems desirous of having Dr. Priestley in chains; and, indeed, would not, perhaps, (from the gentleman's seemingly charitable disposition,) be greatly averse to seeing him in the flames also. This is the Christian-this is the meek, the charitable spirit of Christianity-this the mild spirit its great master taught! Áh, Christianity, how art thou debased! how am I grieved to see that universal benevolence, that love to all mankind, that love. even to our enemies, and that compassion for the failings of our fellow-men that thou art calculated to promote, contracted and shrunk up within the narrow limits that prejudice and bigotry. mark out!

'But to return. Supposing the gentleman's end to be intentionally good; supposing him, indeed, to desire all this, in order to extirpate the doctor's supposedly impious and erroneous doctrines, and promote the cause of truth, yet the means he would use are certainly wrong. For, may I be allowed to remind him of this, (which prejudice has hitherto apparently prevented him from seeing,) that violence and force can never promote the cause of truth, but reason and argument alone; and whenever these fail, all other means are vain and ineffectual? And, as the doctor himself has said in his letter to the inhabitants of Birmingham, that "if they destroyed him, ten others would rise as able or abler than himself, and stand forth immediately to defend his principles; and that were those destroyed, a hundred would appear, for the God of truth will not suffer his cause to lie de. fenceless." This letter of the doctor's, though it throughout breathes the pure and genuine spirit of Christianity, is by another of your correspondents charged with sedition and heresy! But, indeed, if such sentiments as those which it contains be sedition and heresy, sedition and heresy would be an honour: for all their sedition is that fortitude that becomes the dignity of man,

and the character of Christian; and their heresy, Christianity. The whole letter, indeed, far from being seditious, is peaceable and charitable; and far from being heretical, that is, in the usual acceptance of the word, furnishes proofs of that resignation so worthy of himself. And to be sensible of this, 'tis only necessary that any one, laying aside prejudice, read the letter itself with candour. What, or who, then, is free from the calumniating pen of malice, malice concealed, perhaps, under the specious guise of religion and a love of truth?

Religious persecution is the bane of all religion; and the friends of persecution are the worst enemies religion has. Of all persecutions, that of calumny is the most intolerable. Any other kind of persecution can affect our outward circumstances only, our properties, our lives; but this may affect our characters for ever! And this great man has not only had his goods spoiled, his habitation burned, and his life endangered, but is also calumniated, aspersed with the most malicious reflections, and charged with everything bad, for which a misrepresentation of the truth, "Nihil est . . .”

and prejudice, can give the least pretence. And why all this? To the shame of some one let it be replied, merely on account of particular speculative opinions, and not anything scandalous, shameful, or criminal in his moral character. When I see," says the great and admirable Robinson, "a spirit of intolerance, I think I see the great devil!" And it is certainly the worst of devils. And here I shall conclude, staying only to remind your anti-Priestleyan correspondents, that, when they presume to attack the character of Dr. Priestley, they do not so much resemble the wren pecking at the eagle, as the owl attempting, by the flap of her wings, to hurl Mount Athos into the ocean! and that while Dr. Priestley's name shall "flourish in immortal youth," and his memory be respected and revered by posterity, prejudice no longer blinding the understandings of men, theirs will be forgotten in obscurity, or only remembered as the friends of bigotry and persecution, the most odious of all characters.

* ΗΛΙΑΣΟΝ.

From this letter it appears that the only champion who entered the field of the Shrewsbury Chronicle,' in opposition to the various correspondents who were the friends of bigotry and persecution,' and who assiduously displayed their base congeniality in one of the most heinous crusades that were ever instituted against individual wisdom and humanity, (and against all reason and human rights, looking at the principle,) was a schoolboy of thirteen, whom an impassioned love of abstract truth, a strong sense of indignation at the vulgar injustice of attempting to crush all spirit of free inquiry, and a generous sympathy, associated with a feeling of gratitude for intellectual improvement, derived from * Quotation illegible in the original MS.