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or of fine and illimitable prospects of imaginary existence; the bursts of feeling and of sentiment which gains utterance, not perhaps in the chastised and measured flow of eloquence, which distinguishes the man of extensive intellectual cultivation, and refined habits of thought,-which attends the periods of the student long inured to polished numbers and academical honours,-but rather in the simple, but plaintive language and thoughts which is understood in every age and every nation, which commands respect and admiration among every class of society whose "mind's eye" is capable of opening to pleasure beyond those of sense,-of feeling a sympathy with passion and sentiment abstracted from mercenary views and sordid joys, these artless but fervid emanations of a mind alive to " gentlest beauty" must be ever read with peculiar interest and avidity, by all descriptions of mankind, who can appreciate the generous flow of a heart cast in a fine mould, and fired by emotions far above those of his own level and occupation.

Whether it is that the child of Nature, in her rude unlettered character, has peculiar appeals of his own, and that his beauties, from their intrinsic pleadings, find their way at once to the hearts of all ;or from the benevolent wish to fos

ter and animate to still greater things the humble but aspiring swain, in whom dawns the fire of Genius,-it is certain, that all ranks feel a sud den impulse within them (although that impulse may possibly never realize any active or permanent display of patronage), to eulogize, and render honours and assistance to him whose productions gild, with a new radiance, the intellectual horizon.

The appearance of these literary phenomena or anomalies in the mo ral and mental world may likewise give birth to speculations to their existence and formation.

The philosophic investigator on the subject of mind,-its laws, its component principles and its stimulative mediums, might, perhaps, find scope for theories variously connected with the openings of the human faculties.

Whether from his birth, the peasant who rises to literary honours and immunities, possessed a secret power GENT, MAG. January, 1821.

and propensity, which led him to poetry and to song; or whether certain associations in early childhood or infancy opened, at once, his perceptions and his taste to a range of thinking vastly superior to the standard of his ordinary compeers, has been a question, which, in the opinions of many, is still undecided.

Whatever be assumed as the operative cause, or whether there be any cause which may be termed operative or secondary, (thus referring this disparity to the immediate decree of the Deity,) the fact has repeatedly of late been sufficiently evident to the world,-of Genius, in the more refined studies of the human mind, rising, as it were, from the clods and the dunghill, and attaining, from its own native stores of imagery and force of sentiment, eminence, and justly-merited fame among the productious of those higher lucrubators, who, from the appointment of nature, or certain favourable circumstances connected with their moral being, retain, in general, an exclusive dominion in the empire of mind.

It is certain that the powers of mind or of understanding are as unequal among subordinate and labouring classes, as among those where mind is cultivated, and endowments carefully expanded.

Observe two peasants of equal birth and fortune, perhaps the one appears stupid and dull as the clods which his industry attempts to fertilize and animate, and his sordid soul revolves in a narrow circle of gross enjoyments, whilst the other enjoys his faculties in far brighter vigour,thinks with greater precision and correctness, and looks upon men and things with more acute and aspiring views. But he may be equally far from seeing nature, and nature's scenery, through the delightful medium of Poetry; or of measuring the fitness of things, material and immaterial, through the subtle and profound theory of metaphysics. His faculties, so far as the finer operations, necessary to render him a proficient in these pursuits, were concerned, re. mained equally barren and deaf to every outward solicitation.

Many instances have occurred in which peasants have evinced an acute. ness and sagacity in mechanical inven

tion,

34

Spontaneous Display of native Genius.

tion, have made discoveries far beyond any thing which their rank and level would warrant an expectation of, but still the association of mind here argued, are of a subordinate description to the mental standard of thought which shall view nature and mankind as the common materials by which its Genius should rise to the attainment of new truths, or by which it should create fresh systems of intellectual delight.

This vast disparity, however, in the thinking conceptions of individuals of the same rank and occupation, must be assumed to militate very powerfully against the hypothesis of Helvetius, and others, who have taught that it is education alone, combined with certain favourable circumstances and moral temperaments, which constitutes the sole difference between the understandings and capacities of men.

The passions, which the French philosopher speaks of, as the constant excitements to Genius, can hardly be reconciled with a sober examination of facts, as clowns may be often observed, whose animal pas sions and temperaments are ardent, and easily excited, whose mind and imagination seem, yet, wholly dead to the finer intellectual passions, incapable of exercising abstractions, and of creating, in idea, an associated thought, or a poetical image,-while, on the other hand, those who have drawn the eyes of their contemporaries from their extraordinary conceptions and endowments of mind, have often been of a retiring dispo sition, and have been by no means distinguished by the warmth or impetuosity of their animal passions.

The capabilities, in this last case, seem to depend, not upon the passions or the moral temperament, although these are often useful in aiding the flow of mind, and although certain circumstances, often, considerably facilitate their expansion,but, rather upon a decided, and peculiar pre-disposition implanted originally by the Author of Nature, for these pursuits, and these associations. Indeed it may be thought that suf ficient grounds exist for concluding that, although the intellectual perceptions are often elicited and determined by extrinsic means, a settled bias for this or that pursuit is

[Jan.

always originally latent in the bu man mind previous to its actual developement.

The Literature of our Island may be said to have, of late years, exemplified the truth of reflection of this nature, as it may also be said to have been fruitful in generating Poetical talents, of no inferior order, emerging from plebeian rank and sta tion, and the actual progress which they achieved in polite literature and sciences, when this genial principle of mental emancipation bas struggled into birth, surrounded by poverty, and by every other deteriorating circumstance in the shape of coarse and sordid minds in those to whom they would naturally look for example, for patronage, and support.

Generous and emulative spirits,emulative of that high and heavenborn genius which disdains to be fettered by the dull range of thoughts, which circumscribes the souls of those among whom they were bred, -they have, at length, risen to a standard of excellence which has extorted the suffrage of honourable eulogium, even from the fastidiousness of criticism.

This may, perhaps, be said with justice of Chatterton, of Burns, of Bloomfield, of Drew, of Gifford, of Clare, and of Kirke White.

The fate of Chatterton,-his advantages in early youth, the wonderful powers which could, whilst so young and so destitute of every gift, except alone that of Nature, imagine the poems which, it is generally acknowledged his genius had a great share in composing,-together with the standard and merits of his labours, have long been before the public, and have, perhaps, been sufficiently analyzed to enable criticism, in all after ages, to form a fair and correct judgment.

Burns has likewise passed his ordeal, flattering, on the whole, it must be said to be, since almost every author of eminence and of weight, has joined in eulogizing his powers, and the delicacy of his senLiments. Sprung from obscurity, he rose to distinction and notice by the strength and variety of his poetical conceptions, and quickly drew the patronage and flattering caresses of the rich, and, if his career had not been tarnished by profligacy of life,

and

and a course of vices, unworthy, at once of the resources of his mind, and the reputation to which he aspired, might have sustained a character correspondent to his mental rank. The variety and copiousness of his genius will not be disputed; the beauty, the vigour, and the grace of his Muse have, generally, like wise been the subjects of the highest encomiums, especially of late, since, as it seems, the fashionable suffrage of criticism has discovered that high rank which Scottish phraseology and thinking ought to occupy in human literature.

Bloomfield has had a large share of public acknowledgment,-his productions have been favourably received at the tribunal of criticism, whilst all who could feel, and all who could appreciate pathos of sentiment, and simplicity of description, have admired that mind which, having submitted to the menial drudgery, and all the servile offices of a rustic, could enroll them in the annals of Harmony and Song.

The two next whom we have mentioned are Gifford and Drew, although their class and character of genius are widely different, the one a Poet, and a man of polite literature, and the other a Metaphysician, they were yet, in their birth and origin, pretty similar to each other. Of mean parentage, and, during the period of childhood, not only destitute of the common means of instruction, Gifford, however, afterwards experienced the advantages of education, and was admitted to the immunities which let ters afford, and has proved, by the ardour with which he attached himself to these pursuits, and the works be actually accomplished, that there was originally implanted in him a native sympathy for the more refined exercises of intellectual, converse.

Drew, although characterized by similar circumstances of life, wanted perhaps the advantages which distinguished Gifford. Condemned to labour with his hands for his subsistence under the controul of a sordid and ignorant master, he at length, as be tells us, accidentally, in his boundless thirst for imbibing literary knowledge from any thing in the shape of books, which fell in his way, met with Locke's Essay on the Human Understanding. Upon beginning

to read, he was struck with utter astonishment. It seemed to treat of subjects of which, before, he had no conception, and to endeavour to fathom matters beyond the bounds of human comprehensibility. Filled with a train of new ideas, which seemed altogether above the standard of his former thinking, his energetic genius received an additional stimulus, and, although before turned to the pursuit of knowledge, they were now prompted by a curiosity and ardour which knew no bounds. Having, at length, surmounted the obstacles which seemed so formidably to oppose themselves in this new science, he, at length, thought deeply for himself, and crowned his labours by the production of the "Essay on the Immateriality and Immortality of the Human Soul;" a work which, without pronouncing its critical rank in lucubrations of this class, certainly argues a depth of thought, a patience of investigation, and a display of talents considerably above the common standard of those who have written on these abstract subjects, who have, nevertheless, enjoyed the early advantages of education.

Of the genius of Clare and Kirke White we may, without incurring the charge of tediousness, go a little into detail.

The Poems of Clare, a Northamptonshire peasant of the lowest order, which have recently been given to the world, may be thought well calculated to generate the reflections in which we just now indulged. It is not too much to say that the genius of their author, for poetic imagery of a genuine class and character, stands high among his contemporaries, while his means of intellectual culture were unprecedentedly low;-such indeed as, without very extraordinary energy of mind and imagination, aided by every parsimony of time and attention, he could not have succeeded in giving his embryo conceptions intelligible utterance to the world. Melksham.

(To be continued.)

Mr. URBAN,

E. P.

Jan. 15.

in the East having been lately rebuilt, in the Pointed style of Architec

HE Parish Church of St. Dun

GENERAL LIBRARY

36

New Church of St. Dunstan's in the East.

Architecture, the following remarks on its Architecture will, perhaps, not be unacceptable to your intelli gent Antiquarian Readers.

The plan is a nave and side ailes, with a chancel of small proportion, and a porch, vestry, and another attached apartment on the North side. In consequence of being built on the foundation of the old Church, the side ailes are broader in the centre; an irregularity which has rendered the building disproportionate, and greatly injured the harmony of the design.

The windows shew two different designs: those in the ailes contain each two mullions with upright divisions in the head of the arch, common to buildings of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, The clerestory have also two mullions, the arches containing circles with six turns: a bad imitation of the tracery of a period, at least two centuries earlier. The but tresses are narrow and perpendicular, projecting but little from the building; have but two breaks, and are then earried up pilaster fashion to the parapet, where they terminate in angular shafts, supporting pinnacles, resembling Grandison's at Exeter (1327); or Wykeham's at Oxford (1380), and Winchester (1390). The parapets are finished without battlements, the absence of which is not supplied by the pinnacles, which in consequence of their elongated shafts, appear no part of the buttresses; and are elevated so high above the parapet of the aile, as to be but little ornament to it.

The East end contains a magnificent window of five lights, similar in design to the ailes, and divided by a transom into two stories; its sweeping cornice rests upon corbels, representing the busts of his late Majesty, in an antient crown; and his Grace the Abp. of Canterbury, mitred. The angles are strengthened with double buttresses, but narrow and perpendicular as the others, and surmounted with similar pinnacles. To render the design uniform, the angles of the ailes should have been buttressed in the same manner. The pediment is ornamented with a range of small trefoil arches; and in the tympan is a cross, the usual introduction of modern Architects, unsanctioned by any antient precedent. This holy emblem,

[Jan.

if introduced, should have been ele vated upon the summit of the pediment; it would then have been an appropriate ornament, agreeable to antient practice and the most correct insignia of a Christian Church.

The North aile is in seven divisions. The first from the East is occupied by a heavy porch, with buttresses at the angles; and entrance (from the East instead of that side, opposite to the main building, as may be seen in almost every old Church) through a large square-headed doorway with sweeping cornice; the spandrils enriched with the Royal arms, and those of the Archbishop: the headway is more acutely pointed than either their form, or the age when these door-ways were invented, will warrant. The door is carved with mouldings in unison with the general design: the North and West sides contain windows of similar design with the clerestory. The sixth division contains an apartment corresponding with the porch. The favou rite cross loop-hole is here and in the porch several times repeated. The next division, which runs parallel with the tower, is the vestry. It is of similar workmanship with the other parts of the building, and is no addition to the appearance of this side of the Church, already defaced by the other additions.

The chief fault of this building is, a want of uniformity in the style, which in its general appearance is that which prevailed in the sixteenth century. But the pinnacles and windows in the clerestory and porches are poor imitations of at least two centuries earlier: a fault which modern Architects always fall into, though usually in a greater degree than in the present instance. But this, however, is not the only defect. The Architects of old times abhorred a space of dead wall; but here, not content with a cornice above the aile windows, where, with the addition of battlements, the elevation should have terminated, the architect has added several feet more of wall, and finished it with a second cornice or coping; making an unnecessary expanse of plain masonry, broken in upon alone by the pilaster termination of the buttresses: the lower cornice consists only of horizontal mouldings, instead of the ornamented

blocks,

blocks, invariably met with in an tient designs and the windows in the ailes do not fill up the space between the buttresses: all which are defects so entirely modern as to destroy in the exterior that resemblance of the buildings of antiquity, to attain which should have been the chief aim of the Architect. The height of the ailes also greatly hides the clerestory. How different was the antient arrangement! where the pitch of the aile roofs, however high, always admitted a bold and, uninterrupted view of the clerestory; to which circumstance is in a great measure owing, that idea of height and magnificence, which is always attached to the appearance of an antient Church.

I now proceed to the interior; and entering by the West door, the view is grand and impressive, and most agreeably terminated by the beautiful East window, a scene which none can behold without the most pleasing emotions. The Church is entered through a beautifully carved door, forming part of a screen of open carved work, occupying the whole breadth of the Church; it consists of a series of pointed arches, separated by buttresses, and filled up with trasary mouldings, the spandrils all richly carved the front of the organ gallery is a continuation of the screen, and divided into pannels, filled with shields in cireles, and other minute ornaments, in unison with the grand design, and resembling the embellishments of Henry VII.'s Chapel. The ailes are divided by pointed arches springing from cluster columns, which from the tasteful and judicious pew-arrangement, are seen from their bases. The clerestory windows internally, have their arches inserted within the segments of others, as in Wykeham's work at Winchester; which conveys this absurdity, that the upper part of the building appears older than its supporting arches.

From the capital of the internal column in the cluster, rises another, as a support to the groining of the roof; which is composed of numerous ribs, contracting with a tasteful and elegant sweep; and adorned at the intersections with bosses, the centre one containing the arms of the Archbishop of Canterbury. The Chancel is not, as usual, divided from

the body of the Church by an arch; but is only indicated by the groining being discontinued and its place supplied by a coved ceiling, formed into pannels, with trefoil heads, of very inferior design; and for the sake of uniformity, the same alteration appears over the organ, not adding in the least to the beauty of the design, but greatly detracting from the simplicity of the groined work.

The East window is filled with stained glass: in the five lights in the lower tier is represented the altar of incense, worthy of little attention, between the effigies of Moses and Aaron, under canopies, which, though of an earlier period than any of the ornaments. of the building, are not inelegant. The upper five lights contain whole-length portraits of our Saviour, and the Evangelists, under similar canopies; and the compartments in the head of the arch are filled with the arms of the Arcbbishop, twice repeated, and those of his Majesty, and the City of London; with other devices in an inferior stile to the figures, and out of character here, where all the ornaments should have been religious, as angels bearing implements of the Passion, &c. Though this window may suffer in comparison with the work of antiquity in the same material, how preferable it is to the modern Heathenish personifications of the Virtues, or the Graces; or an open pointed arch, containing a Scriptural representation, degraded by a Jack o' Lantern contrivance, attracting the surprise, but never gaining the admiration of the spectator!

The altar-screen is not in a good taste; it is of wood, and has in the centre a large hexagonal canopy, a poor design; sided by four upright arched pannels, containing the Decalogue, Creed, and Pater Noster; and two others, corresponding with the screen at the West end. The altar table, and rails are elegantly carved, in harmony with the surrounding building! What an opportunity has here been lost, of more appropriately embellishing this sacred part of the building. If, instead of the wainscotting, which now appears more as a vehicle for receiving the inscriptions upon it, the place had been occupied by an elegant stone screen, without the useless accompaniment

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