but people) say, "I am delighted to hear great abilities do not constitute great men, from you." No other language has this beau- without the right and unremitting application tiful expression, which, like some of the most of them; and that, in the sight of Humanity lovely flowers, loses its charms for want of and Wisdom, it is better to erect one cottage close inspection, When I consider the deep than to demolish a hundred cities. Down to sense of these very simple and very common the present day we have been taught little words, I seem to hear a voice coming from else than falsehood. We have been told to afar through the air, breathed forth, and en-do this thing and that; we have been told we trusted to the care of the elements, for the nature of my sympathy.'

shall be punished unless we do; but at the same time we are shown by the finger that prosperity and glory, and the esteem of all about us, rest upon other and very different 'The Arts cannot long exist without the foundations. Now, do the ears or the eyes advent of Freedom. From every new excava-seduce the most easily, and lead the most dition whence a statue rises, there rises simulta-rectly to the heart? But both eyes and ears neously a bright vision of the age that pro- are won over, and alike are persuaded to corduced it; a strong desire to bring it back rupt us.' again; a throbbing love, an inflaming_regret, a resolute despair, beautiful as Hope herself: and Hope comes too behind.'

'How refreshing, how delicious, is a draft of pure home-drawn English, from a spring a little sheltered and shaded, but not entangled in the path to it, by antiquity!'

The Conversations which have not before been collected, are in number fortyfour; but of these, twenty have been printed, chiefly in periodical publications. The remaining twenty-four are now given to the world for the first time. We can only briefly speak of them, as we have said; but they show, in undiminished force and 'It is no uncommon thing to hear, "He has vivacity, every characteristic of Mr. Lanhumor, rather than wit." Here the expression dor's genius. Any writer might have built, can only mean pleasantry: for whoever has upon these compositions alone, an enduring humor has wit; although it does not follow reputation. The same beauties and the that whoever has wit has humor. Humor is same faults recur; but the latter in diminwit appertaining to character, and indulges in ished intensity. They have matter as varibreadth of drollery, rather than in play and ous, and character as opposite and enlivenbrilliancy of point. Wit vibrates and spirts; humor springs up exuberantly as from a foun-ing-as much to occupy the intellect of tain, and runs on. In Congreve you wonder the thoughtful, and as much to satisfy the what he will say next: in Addison you repose imagination of the lively. They form an on what is said, listening with assured expec- after-course, in short, worthy of the origi tation of something congenial and pertinent. nal banquet;-spread with the same solid The French have little humor, because they viands, the same delicate rarities, and have little character: they excel all nations in wit because of their levity and sharpnessed gold on the board, the like statues of ansparkling wines; the like vases of burnishThe personages on their theatre are generic.'

'We not only owe our birth to women, but also the better part of our education; and if we were not divided after their first lesson, we should continue to live in a widening circle of brothers and sisters all our lives. After our infancy and removal from home, the use of the rod is the principal thing we learn of our alien preceptors; and, catching their dictatorial language, we soon begin to exercise their instrument of enforcing it, and swing it right and left, even after we are paralyzed by age, and until Death's hand strikes it out of ours.'

'Shame upon historians and pedagogues for exciting the worst passions of youth by the display of false glories! If your religion hath any truth or influence, her professors will extinguish the promontory lights, which only allure to breakers. They will be assiduous in teaching the young and ardent that

tique marble gracing the chamber ;-but the very richness of the vases showing dark to imperfect vision, and the pure Greek on the plinths of the marble not easy to common appreciation.

Four of these new Dialogues seem to us to stand out pre-eminently from the rest. These are Lucian and Timotheus, Marvel and Parker, Emperor of China and his Minister, and Melancthon and Calvin. In these the dramatic tone is as perfect as every other quality in the composition; and we may doubt if, in any other equal portion of Mr. Landor's writings, there will be found so much beauty and fitness, so much point and gusto, so much condensation and strength.

We have heard his friend

Southey characterize his style, as uniting the poignancy of Champagne to the body of old English October; and nowhere, assur

edly, but in Bacon or Jeremy Taylor, do | and, instead of humble and modest, the most we find Prose-Poetry to compare with his, impudent dog and devil they had ever set eyes -in weight and brilliancy, or in wonderful upon. I fell on my knees and praised God, since at last I had been admitted into so pure suggestiveness. What Lucian says of Arand pious a country, that even this action was istotle in the latter respect, we may apply to deemed arrogant and immodest.' him. Whenever he presents to his readers one full-blown thought, there are several buds about it which are to open in the cool of the study. He makes us learn even more than he teaches. Without hesitation we say of these four Dialogues, and eminently of that between Marvel and Parker, that they contain a subtle discrimination of character, and passages of feeling and philosophy, pathetic, lofty, and profound, which we should not know where to equal in any living writer, and in very few of those who are immortal.

The idea of the Emperor of China and his Minister is not taken from either Montesquieu or Goldsmith. The aim is different; and would have delighted the author of Candide. The Emperor has heard and seen so much evil of the Jesuits, who had penetrated into his dominions,

that he conceived an idea of Christians as

In short, poor Tsing-Ti finds Christianity to be every where known and confessed as so excellent, undeniable, and divine a thing, that no man needs to practise it at all. Indeed a man is not permitted at once to be a Christian, and to call himself so. 'He may take what division he likes; he may practise the ordinances of Christ without assuming the name, or he may assume the

He is espe

name on condition that he abstain from the
ordinances.' A series of remarkable ex-
periences, as wisely as amusingly detailed,
settles this conclusion in the Minister's
mind, and he returns to his imperial Master
to lay both at his feet. But his Master
cannot credit what he is told.
cially incredulous as to what Tsing-Ti tells
is sadly afraid that he has purposely set his
him of the Ministers of Christianity. He
face against the Priests, for no better rea-
son than because he could not find his favor-
ite Christianity among them. The Minis-
ter, nevertheless, sticks to his point; and
continues to astound his Majesty by new
revelations from his budget.

the most quarrelsome and irreconcilable of all men; and, resolving to introduce a few of their first-rate zealots to sow divisions and animosities among the Tartars, dispatches his minister to Europe for that purpose. But the voyage being tedious, 'TSING-TI. A priest of the first order, on Tsing-Ti, uninfluenced by the prejudices which it is not incumbent either to preach or of his master, is able in the course of it sing, either to pray or curse, receives an emolto make himself thoroughly master of the the consolidated payment of a thousand solument of which the amount is greater than Bible; and when he lands in London, re-diers, composing the king's body-guard.-EMsolves, by way of being in the fashion, to shape his conduct entirely, by its precepts. He fears, indeed, that he cannot go the whole length of the commandment to cut off his right hand if it offend him; but he will try to do his best. With what success the reader may here perceive, in a passage written in the best style of Voltaire.

PEROR. Did they tell thee this? TSING-TI.
They did. And dost thou believe it?-TSING-
Ti. Ido.-EMPEROR. Then, Tsing-Ti, thou
hast belief enough for both of us.'

The end of it is, that the Emperor and the Minister are fain to compound their differences, by falling back upon a hearty agreement of admiration for their own native teacher, Confucius. Beautifully says the Emperor, and wisely as beautifully:

'I myself did not aim precipitately at this perfection, but in order to be well received in the country, I greatly wished the favor of a My children will disdain to persecute even blow on the right cheek. Unfortunately I got the persecutor. but will blow away both his several on the left before I succeeded. At fury and his fraudulence. The philosopher last I was so happy as to make the acquisition whom my house respects and venerates, Kongof a most hearty cuff under the socket of the Fu-Tsi, is never misunderstood by the attenright eye, giving me all those vague colors tive student of his doctrines; there is no conwhich we Chinese reduce into regular features, tradiction in them; no exaction of impossibilor into strange postures of the body, by means ities, nothing above our nature, nothing beof glasses. As soon as I knew positively low it. The most vehement of his exhortawhether my head was remaining on my neck or not, I turned my left cheek for the testimony of my faith. The assailant cursed me and kicked me; the bystanders instead of calling me Christian, called me Turk and Malay;

tions is to industry and concord; the severest of his denunciations is against the self-tormentor, vice. He entreats us to give justice and kindness a fair trial, as conductresses to happiness, and only to abandon them when

they play us false. He assures us that every one of the leaders of the early Christians, hour of our existence is favorable to the sowing goes and proposes to his cousin Lucian, or the gathering of some fruit; and that sleep that they should lay their heads together and repose are salutary repasts, to be enjoyed and compose a merry dialogue on the at stated times, and not to be long indulged Priests of Isis.' But the Priests of Isis nor frequently repeated. He is too honorable

6

to hold out bribes, too gentle to hold out had been with Lucian just before, to prothreats; he says only, satisfy your con-pose a merry dialogue on the new sect of science; and you will satisfy your God.' But Christians. And between the two claimantecedently to the satisfaction of this con-ants for his scourge, stands the great Greek science, he takes care to look into it minutely satirist and philosopher; witty, sarcastic, to see that it hangs commodiously and lightly on the breast, that all it parts be sound.and all eloquent, and most inpartially observant. its contents in order, that it be not contracted, Though less than a century had passed nor covered with cobwebs, nor crawled over since the death of the Divine Founder of with centipedes and tarantulas.' Christianity, the thorny and bitter aloe of dissension was at this time in full flower, The Dialogue of Melancthon and Calvin on the steps of the Christian temples;-and follows, as a set-off to that of the Emperor Lucian has no mercy for those who have and his Minister. No disputable sacred tended and cherished it. He is not, at the doctrine but is interpreted by Melancthon same time, without grave errors of his own, in favor of the culprit. 'Such is man; the in the direction of doubt and infidelity;benevolent judge is God.' No fierce invo- so much was needful to the portrait ;-but cation by Calvin that is not turned to char-in his reverent admiration for the character ity and peace. Thus may that weapon, so tremendous when, in the hands of the Frenchman, wielded by man against manthe arm of the gospel '-be endowed in those of the milder German, like the fabled spear of old mythology, with the faculty of healing the saddest wound its most violent wielder can inflict. Such is the lesson taught in this beautiful dialogue.

of Christ, and in his warnings and denunciations of the evil that will result from every practical denial of his doctrines, there is matter of thought and agreement for all Christian minds. It is to no purpose his cousin accuses him of turning into ridicule the true and holy. In other words, he answers, to turn myself into a fool. He who brings ridicule to bear against truth, finds in his hand a blade without a hilt. The most sparkling and pointed flame of wit flickers and expires against the incombustible walls of her sanctuary.' It is in vain Timotheus fortifies himself with Plato: Lucian, without more ado, undertakes to

'We fancy,' says Melancthon-' that all our inflictions are sent us directly and inmediately from above: sometimes we think it in piety and contrition, but oftener in moroseness and discontent. It would, however, be well if we attempted to trace the causes of them. We should probably find their origin in some region of the heart which we never had well demolish Plato. And, with whatever sucexplored, or in which we had secretly de-cess we may think this attempted, the peposited our worst indulgences. The clouds that intercept the heavens from us, come not from the heavens, but from the earth.'

The Conversation closes thus. In the

the

idea of the profound Novalis, that
true Shekinah is man, lay the thought that
had possessed Melancthon.

'MELANOTHON. Calvin! I beseech you, do you who guide and govern so many, do you (whatever others may) spare your brethren. Doubtful as I am of lighter texts, blown backward and forward at the opening of opposite windows, I am convinced and certain of one grand immovable verity. It sounds strange; it sounds contradictory.-CALVIN. I am curious to hear it.-MELANCTHON. You shall. This is the tenet. There is nothing on earth divine beside humanity.'

In a section of Lucian and Timotheus the same subject is pursued. Timotheus,

culiarity and boldness of our daring Swift, of Samosata, is certainly inimitably caught. There is nothing too high or too low for his humor and eloquence. Into the thrice-armed breasts of priests and philosophers, of conquerors, statesmen, and grammarians, he shoots his poisoned arrows. We might object to a want of occasional verisimilitude in the style;-but if, beside all fair allowance of lightness and buffoonery, we have sentences majestically sedate as those of Plato himself; a gloomy concentration and grandeur that Tacitus could hardly have excelled; and even evidence, here and there, as though the low-born lover of Aristophanes had been loitering half his life in the Pacile with the Tragedians;-it is, perhaps, hardly considerate to make this an objection! Here are a few brief extracts, by which the reader may judge for himself.

TIMOTHEUS. Cousin Lucian! cousin Lu-guided and moderated by a beneficent light cian! the name of Plato will be durable as above, the ocean of life would stagnate; and that of Sesostris.-LUCIAN. So will the peb-zeal, devotion, eloquence, would become dead bles and bricks which gangs of slaves erected carcases, collapsing and wasting on unprofitainto a pyramid. I do not hold Sesostris in ble sands. The vices of some men cause the much higher estimation than those quieter virtues of others, as corruption is the parent of lumps of matter. They, O Timotheus! who fertility.' survive the wreck of ages, are by no meanз, as a body, the worthiest of our admiration. It is in these wrecks, as in those at sea, the best things are not always saved. Hencoops and empty barrels bob upon the surface, under a serene and smiling sky, when the graven or depicted images of the Gods are scattered on invisible rocks, and when those who most resemble them in knowledge and beneficence are devoured by cold monsters below.'

'An honest man may fairly scoff at all philosophies and religions which are proud, ambitious, intemperate, and contradictory. It is the business of the philosophical to seek truth: it is the office of the religious to worship her. The falsehood that the tongue commits is slight in comparison with what is conceived by the heart, and executed by the whole man, throughout life. If, professing love and charity to the human race at large, I quarrel day after day with my next neighbor; if, professing that the rich can never see God, I spend in the luxuries of my household a talent monthly; if, professing to place so much confidence in his word, that, in regard to worldly weal, I need take no care for to-morrow, I accumulate stores even beyond what would be necesary, though I quite distrusted both his providence and his veracity; if, professing that "he who giveth to the poor lendeth to the Lord," I question the Lord's security, and haggle with him about the amount of the loan; if, professing that I am their steward, I keep ninety-nine parts in the hundred as the emol ument of my stewardship;-how, when God hates liars and punishes defrauders, shall I, and other such thieves and hypocrites, fare

hereafter?'

On words, on quibbles, if you please to call distinctions so, rest the axis of the intellectual world. A winged word hath struck ineradicably in a million hearts, and envenomed every hour throughout their hard pulsation. On a winged word hath hung the destiny of nations. On a winged word hath human wisdom been willing to cast the immortal soul, and to leave it dependent for all its future happiness. It is because a word is unsusceptible of explanation, or because they who employed it were impatient of any, that enormous evils have prevailed, not only against our common sense, but against our common humanity.'

'A great poet in the hours of his idleness may indulge in allegory; but the highest poetical character will never rest on so unsubstantial a foundation. The poet must take man from God's hands, must look into every fibre of his heart and brain, must be able to take the magnificent work to pieces, and to reconstruct it. When this labor is completed, let him throw himself composedly on the earth, and care little how many of its ephemeral insects creep over him.'

'While I admired, with a species of awe such as not Homer himself ever impressed me with, the majesty and sanctimony of Livy, I have been informed by learned Romans that in the structure of his sentences he is often inharmonious, and sometimes uncouth. I can imagine such uncouthness in the Goddess of battles, confident of power and victory, when part of her hair is waving round the helmet, vibration of her spear.' loosened by the rapidity of her descent, or the

'Scarcely ever has there been a politician, in any free state, without much falsehood and duplicity. I have named the most illustrious exceptions. Slender and irregular lines of a Marvel and Parker. The reader will have We must take the same course with darker color run along the bright blade that decides the fate of nations, and may indeed be to judge of the house, by a brick or two necessary to the perfection of its temper. The taken from its walls. The character and great warrior has usually his darker lines of position of the speakers,-the Wit and the character, necessary (it may be) to constitute Church dignitary,—are the same as in the his greatness. No two men possess the same Greek dialogue; but the objects of disquantity of the same virtues, if they have many cussion have changed with the lapse of or much. We want some which do not far outstep us, and which we may follow with the ages. The talk is here of Milton, and of hope of reaching; we want others to elevate, the danger and darkness that encompass and others to defend us. The order of things him; of the great Deeds and Thoughts that would be less beautiful without this variety. have just been replaced in England by Without the ebb and flow of our passions, but trickery and falsehood; of the transitory

glories of worldly power, and of the eternal claims of Genius. They who know any thing of the writings of Marvel, the delightful wit and incorruptible patriot, will know what he has himself said of an accidental meeting with Parker, at the house of Milton, in Burnhill Row; and how they afterwards walked and wandered up and down Moor-Fields, astrologizing upon the duration of his Majesty's 'Government.' They will remember, too, that Marvel accuses the Bishop of frequenting John Milton's incessantly; of inhumanely and inhospitably insulting over his old age; and of being no better than a Judas, that crept into all companies, to jeer, trepan, and betray them. Upon this foundation the Dialogue is built; and we think it Mr. Landor's masterpiece. It has, in greatest abundance, the greatest qualities of his writing; and is more consistently sustained, at a higher level, and with fewer drawbacks, than perhaps any other of all these Imaginary Conversations. What extracts we are able to give, may not perfectly show this; but we do not doubt that they will make the reader anxious to endeavor to ascertain it for himself.

"PARKER. Both Mr. Shakspeare and Mr. Milton have considerable merit in their respective ways; but both surely are unequal. Is it not so, Mr. Marvel ?-MARVEL. Under the highest of the immeasurable Alps, all is not valley and verdure: in some places there are frothy cataracts, there are the fruitless beds of noisy torrents, and there are dull and hollow glaciers. He must be a bad writer, or however a very indifferent one, in whom there are no inequalities. The plants of such tableland are diminutive, and never worth gathering. What would you think of a man's eyes to which all things appear of the same mag nitude and of the same elevation? You must think nearly so of a writer who makes as much of small things as of great. The vigorous mind has mountains to climb and valleys to repose in. Is there any sea without its shoals? On that which the poet navigates, he rises intrepidly as the waves rise round him, and sits composedly as they subside.'

'I have often been amused at thinking in what estimation the greatest of mankind were holden by their contemporaries. Not even the most sagacious and prudent one could discover much of them, or could prognosticate their future course in the infinity of space! Men like ourselves are permitted to stand near, and indeed in the very presence of Milton. What do they see? Dark clothes, grey hair, and sightless eyes. Other men have

better things: other men, therefore, are nodistance: go close, and all is earthy. But bler. The stars themselves are only bright by vapors illuminate these. From the breath and from the countenance of God comes light on worlds higher than they: worlds to which he has given the forms and names of Shakspeare and of Milton.'

'Who, whether among the graver or less grave, is just to woman? There may be moments when the beloved tells us, and tells us truly, that we are dearer to her than life. Is not this enough? Is it not above all merit? Yet, if ever the ardor of her enthusiasm subsides if her love ever loses, later in the day, the spirit and vivacity of its early dawn-if between the sigh and the blush an interval is perceptible-if the arm mistakes the chair for the shoulder-what an outcry is there !—what a proclamation of her injustice and her inconstancy!-what an alternation of shrinking and spurning at the coldness of her heart! Do we ask within if our own has retained all its ancient loyalty, all its own warmth, and all that was poured into it? Often the true lover has little of true love compared with what he has undeservedly received and unreasonably exacts.'

'But let it also be remembered, that marriage is the metempsychosis of women; that it turns them into different creatures from what they were before. Liveliness in the girl may have been mistaken for good temper; the little pervicacity which at first is attractively provoking, at last provokes without its attractiveness; negligence of order and propriety, of duties and civilities, long endured, often deprecated, ceases to be tolerable, when children grow up and are in danger of following the example. It often happens, that if a man unhappy in the married state were to disclose the manifold causes of his uneasiness, they would be found, by those who were beyond their influence, to be of such a nature as rather to excite derision than sympathy. The waters of bitterness do not fall on his head in a cataract, but through a colanderone, however, like the vases of the Danaides, perforated only for replenishment. We know scarcely the vestibule of a house of which we fancy we have penetrated into all the corners. We know not how grievously a man may have suffered, long before the calumnies of the world befell him, as he reluctantly left his house-door. There are women from whom incessant tears of anger swell forth at imaginary wrongs; but of contrition for their own delinquencies, not one.'

'MARVEL. We are captivated by no charms of description in the histories of Guicciardini or Machiavelli; we are detained by no peculiarities of character; we hear a clamorous