give the subject a fair hearing, which is all that can be rationally sought for by any such attempts. The author of The Principles of Human Action' required no more than this himself; and it was not accorded. He had no hearing; but then he was alive. He was very soon reconciled to the temporary disappointment; he could afford to repose in imagination on the future. To know much, is to expect little, to fear little, and, as far as all personal advantage is concerned, to hope little. But as the feelings, impelled by and impelling imagination, are ever prompt to rove away from the severe eye of the understanding and revel in anticipated fields, where success crowns, with far-diverging rays, benevolence of will; so it may well be believed that the abrupt recall of such feelings and anticipations by the harsh convictions of knowledge and reason, can never be unattended with regret, and a painful sense of the postponement of general good. To the neglect of this work he was easily reconciled; to the neglect of the principles it contains, he was never reconciled. Nor let it be supposed, that, thwarted in his first attempt, he relinquished the purpose with splenetic indignation or moody chagrin. It will be shown, as we proceed through his subsequent works, that most of them have originated in the same feelings as his first, and grown out of its principles: we shall see this in our progress through the grand continuous chain, like men, who, in their course through mountain passes, pause on their lofty way to gaze on fertile plains, deep lakes, and rich embrowned slopes in the far distance below, and reflect that the sweeping masses above their heads on every side, clad in sunlight and in snow, or dark with mighty pines, to whose primeval music they listen with no unapt devotion, were once companions of the woods and plains below, perchance deriving their original matter, even as their generative impulse, from the unknown depths of those silent lakes. In the ceaseless operation of this principle, Hazlitt was enabled to compete with his destiny, dedicating his labours to future times, and his personal feelings to the great family of human nature. 6 Man's love is from man's life a thing apart;' a devoted contemplation of its object lifts him into a region of abstraction above the earthliness of his corporeal date, and far beyond the ignorant present;' and if he record his passion, it may chance to outlive the memory of where his lonely grave was made, and influence mankind, perhaps even when his name has melted away, through the fatuity of Time's overburthened memory, into fixed oblivion. If his passion hath had a wide extended benevolence of aim and of result, this obliteration of man's nominal identity, being all that remained of the benefactor of his race, would be a sort of sublimity in apathy, or universality of ingratitude, were it not that Oblivion is a realm whose void majesty is the final bourne of all human acts, a universe whose grandeur is the infinite vacuity of accomplished cycles. 749 LINES SUGGESTED BY MACREADY'S HAMLET,' THERE are two revelations !-One when he, The creature of his thought, for one that really was. The other, when some wonder-working spirit For the enraptured sense a form where late Where treasures lie as in a silent hive, And bid the mighty dead stand forth, and breathe, and live! And such art thou! who canst so vitally A living Hamlet,' from the poet's dreaming; Light, from the radiant halo with which truth hath crowned thee. Oh wond'rous is the power that doth attend No vacant page receives the glowing thought, To waft with laden wings the treasures of thy voice! They say, thy work doth perish with thy life! With subtle influence still its course to wind To swell the sea of mind, which time can ne'er destroy! S. Y. SKETCHES OF SCOTLAND.* POETICAL painters are there who can create scenery out of any country; and countries of scenery are there which may almost realize the converse proposition, and create poetical painters out of any body: it is the harder task of the two, for Nature never spoils a land as men spoil themselves; and the most unsightly and incorrigible dead flats are those of humanity. So there are large deductions from the generality of the proposition: but it has some truth in it, nevertheless; and we can only wish it had more. If it be not universal, we submit that it deserves to be so, and that is merit of no common order. Very few regions can there be on the face of the earth where it has a better chance of holding good than in Scotland, which country is beneficently placed next door to England, steam having opened the portal, not only that painters may make the one and be made by the other, but that the proper proportion of poetical and pictorial influence may from time to time overflow the meadow land and arable soil of our commercial and busy population. And we do believe that much good is done and doing by the wonderful facilities afforded of late years for exchanging, within three or four days, the dome of St. Paul's for the top of Ben Lomond, Kingstreet for Killicrankie, and Eel-pie Island for Staffa and Iona. The suffocated politician at the City of London Tavern, in a crowded meeting on the state of the nation, while he ejaculates what a pass we are come to!' is calmed and brightened by a flitting vision of the Pass of Glencoe in its glory, where he uttered the very same exclamation. In many a back parlour of Watlingstreet or Thames-street a glass of whisky is a more spiritual thing for ever after, and hands shake the heartier for auld lang syne." Farren feels the benefit in a double encore of Green grow the rashes, O!' and the plaudits of the pit are partly prompted by associations of Ayrshire. For a town-tradesman to have traversed the moors is mental gravy to his grouse as long as he lives; it elevates his memory to have met with mountains; and enlarges * Scotland, by W. Beattie, M. D., illustrated in a Series of Views by T. Allom, Esq., engraved by or under the immediate direction of Robert Wallis. London: G. Virtue, Ivy Lane. his soul to have sailed on lakes. The Highlands and Islands hamper and humble him for his H's, and impel him to purify his aspirations. Oh, there is no end to the good which is gained by England in general, and by London in particular. But we have no scope, and must skip it all over, to come to these Sketches of Scotland, the popularity of which ought to perpetuate all the solace of the scenery-a beautiful memory for those who have been; a beautiful hope for those who have to go; a beautiful fact for the liberal; a beautiful fancy for the poetical; and a beautiful substitute for those whose hard lot extinguishes the expectancy of ever realizing the original. Scotch scenery is pre-eminently pictorial; nor are many regions of much more renown half so well adapted to the purposes of the painter and engraver. Its mountains are well defined, and their outline is generally bold and noble. They have something like a character, and are not the mere masses of mould piled into high but unshapely hills that in some places are dignified by that designation. Nor does it matter that there are many in the world much loftier: height is not sublimity for pictorial effect; at least, not proportionately, nor beyond certain limits. Three or four thousand feet is quite enough for the eye, unless at an immense distance; and then the picture becomes a picture of something else, with a mountain for the remote background. Who can paint Chimborazo or even Mont Blanc? You can but take bits, not bigger than Ben Nevis; a portrait is not within possibility. Who ever saw the Himalaya but by instalments, remitted to his senses at intervals. In this case, the aggregate of the parts does not make up the whole. Only the younger sons of Anak should sit for their pictures. Goliah of Gath will never go into a miniature. The little Bens are just the true bigness. The same thing may be said of the lakes; they are never too large, and yet many of them have ample space for all the grandeur of a storm. Then how rich is Scotland in all those contrasts which constitute the charm of mere landscape! The deep ravines, with their rich vegetation, into which you tumble from the interminable surface of a barren heath. Passes, with the torrent and its falls in the deep abyss below, and their steep mountain walls reaching unto heaven, which sometimes seems to close over you above, throwing from side to side its canopy of cloud. The grand fantasticalness of its western coast, the wild forms of which go through all diversities and gradations till they grow into the marvellous and stately symmetry of pillared Staffa. What individual shapes of beauty everywhere abound; and what combinations are there of sea, and coast, and ruined castle, bare rock, and sheltered wood, and sunny nook, and the vast expanse-vast, yet enclosed as you may see it from off the shores of Morven, by an amphitheatrical boundary of mountains, fifty pillars of heaven, from Ben Nevis to the Grampians! The publication before us is the first quarterly part (five monthly numbers) of the best attempt we have seen to bring something of all this beauty home to us. It contains twenty-one engravings, the subjects and execution, with scarcely an exception, being alike creditable to the taste and skill of the artists. The only fault we have to find is with the frequent introduction of figures. Those capering horses in a curricle at Glencroe; that plaided party which almost seems about to dance a quadrille in the Trosachs; the nervous lady who is limping and lounging with a dandy hand to help her helplessness, thinking more of her own falls than of those of the Clyde, and presenting the back of her bonnet to Stoney byres: these are all impertinences, which ought to be obliterated, and we trust will not be continued. Not but what there is a discretion to be used in these matters. In the West Bow, Edinburgh, the Covenanters come in well. They are not condemned Covenanters.' Towns must be peopled. Street scenery abhors solitude. Nor could there have been better grouping, or more appropriate, for the stern old stone houses of that memorable fragment of Auld Reekie. But against all the rest we protest; except perhaps the washerwomen at Cartlane Crags. So much beauty may easily bear the imputation of one blot. The dark transparency of the waters of Loch Katrine; the spiritualized vision of Ben Lomond in the view from Inveruglas; the delicate mists floating around the heights of Ben Arthur and over the vale of Glencroe; the spectral whiteness of the Brig o' Balgownie; the foaming of Corra Lynn, and that bare tree in the torrent which seems a preternatural form; the soft light of Loch Long; and the dreamy sunset on Loch Fyne; these are the genuine poetry of painting, and not to be praised by words, but by the eloquent eye that appreciates and drinks in their loveliness. CRITICAL NOTICES. Views of the World from Halley's Comet. A Discourse, &c. THE rather odd title given above is the introduction not, as some might expect, of a satire, but of a sermon; and of a sermon characterized by qualities almost as rare as the appearances of comets in the heavens, but of a much more durable description. It is best reviewed, and to every reader who appreciates sound thought, chaste fancy, elevated piety, and a rare felicity of expression, it is best praised, by extract. After some introductory remarks on the association of religion with astronomy, the author takes the following view of the condition of society at each of the ascertained returns of the heavenly visitant whose second predicted appearance our hemisphere has just enjoyed. 'Six of its years ago, Europe was immersed in an intellectual darkness almost total. Amid the gloom, priestcraft celebrated its carnival, and played its most "fantastic tricks before high Heaven." Religion was the only |