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picks a quarrel in Amsterdam; and is, as the great Napoleon says, insulted. A mountain is made of this molehill, and an angry letter written by the Emperor to the King, which concludes with the following dignified words: "This is the last letter I "shall write you as long as I live!"

On running over the remaining pages of the work, our eye caught such foolish passages as the following, all suggested by a project the King had formed of defending Amsterdam.

"I shall fall with glory,' he said to himself." "From his house at Haarlem he beheld the vast city of Amsterdam, seated on a shoal between two seas, and that to defend it, it was necessary to sink it entirely.”—“ Doe wel," &c.-"This is enough,' said the King; this determines me: I will drive the Emperor to the wall, and compel him to avow,' &c."—" "I put my son in my place.' "After sitting a long time, they (the Legislative body) brought him their resolution, which was an approval of his abdicating in favour of his two children." "And who knows? Perhaps I alone am an obstacle to the reconciliation of this country with France; and if this be so, I should have, I might find, some sort of consolation, in dragging on the remainder of a life of wandering and languishment, far from the first objects of all my affection."-" This good people and my son constitute a great portion of my motives: there are others not less imperious, on which I must be silent, and which will easily be guessed." (The impossibility of an effectual resistance.)—" The Emperor my brother must feel, that I cannot act otherwise. Though strongly prejudiced against me, he is magnanimous: he must be just, when he is cool!!"

In short, the King abdicated, and the act of abdication was dated 1st July, 1810. Immediately after his abdication, he went to the baths of Toeplitz in Bohemia. The only other fact worth mentioning is the singular one, that, after all, Louis retained a hankering after the throne of Holland, and a sort of half-formed hope to return to it. The Emperor's wishes, however, did not tally. "I had rather that Holland should return into the power "of the House of Orange, than into that of my brother." Now, as in this opinion the House of Orange were likely to agree cordially with Napoleon, for once, Louis's chance of restoration was slender, whatever should be the event of the struggle between Napoleon and his enemies. Yet when, in 1813, Holland did throw off the French yoke, Louis made a feeble attempt at restoration, by writing a letter to the provisional government, signifying that he was still in existence, and very much attached to Holland.

Of this work, the literary merit is of the humblest rank. The arrangement is execrable; it is no better than the confusion of a common-place book. The narrative is plain to dullness; and the translation exhibits all the marks of punctual fidelity. Often his Majesty is didactic and speculative, and precisely as often, absurd. The historical documents have one merit. There is trustworthy honesty in their statement of facts, which secures

our faith to all which we are certain rest upon the author's own knowledge. When he deceives us, we feel assured that he is himself deceived. Our impression, on the whole, from Louis's authorship is, that, in this country at least, it will lower the estimate prevalent of his character. Fairness and moderation we always conceded to him; and not being able to imagine a brother of Napoleon's not a man of more than average intellect and talent, we concluded him an able man, as well as an honest. But he has let out a secret which he might have kept; and if his impatient brother may, peradventure, have called him the most worthy, wellmeaning, dull, absurd, and pig-headed male creature in Holland itself, we are not sure that we could violently contradict the compliment. His intentions were unexceptionable, and he did even effectuate some good to the internal economy of Holland. His principles were disinterested and honest; but his honesty should have begun somewhat sooner. No honest wise man would have accepted the throne of Holland from the hands of Napoleon Bonaparte; or dreamed of being able, as Napoleon's slave, to do one act of good to the country over which he was placed, contrary to his master's will. With his principles, which we have never denied to be correct, and with his dispositions, which we have as invariably admitted to be amiable, Louis's grand error was allowing himself to be mocked with such a sceptre at all. Having taken it, to commence the practice of a previously arranged, but concealed system of honest government, was ut terly absurd. Nay, it was an act of extreme bad faith. As well might Talleyrand and Fouché have received from Napoleon their seals of office, on a fair though implied understanding that their every act should be crooked, knavish, oppressive, and unfeeling; and have betrayed their trust by governing justly and benevolently, and acting candidly and honourably. They would not have been entitled to one livre of their salaries had they done so. Now, in the same manner, the throne of Holland constituted the wages of Louis; and to Holland he went, in gorgeous circumstance, to take his place in the yoke of kings, then breaking in to advance Napoleon's car of conquest, injustice, and oppression. What right had he alone to rear and plunge and recalcitrate, in harness, when all the rest were fat, and sleek, and steady? The thing was entirely out of keeping, and we are only surprised that he was borne with for one-tenth part of the time by so impatient a driver as the French Emperor. We fear that not all his improvements in dikes, finance, and other minuter matters, nor all his activity at explosions and inundations, will redeem the inconsistency and imbecility of his general conduct. A good man he may still be denominated, but he lost all chance of hay

ing a place in history as a great man, the instant he relaxed from a firm refusal to take a part, whether as king or custom-house officer, in the execrable system of his atrocious brother.

It has often been said that the ex-emperor's acts have been exaggerated, and his motives calumniated. We have now his own brother as a witness; not only bearing his testimony, wherein, no doubt, he might blunder; but producing Napoleon's private letters, in which there can neither be exaggeration nor extenuation. We hail the recovery of every adminicle of condemnatory evidence against that dangerous man. We should have required no more than to have convicted him of the coarse and cruel imagination of declaring a national bankruptcy in Holland,—which would in one instant have crushed thousands who had trusted their all to the good faith of their rulers, to satisfy us that, in the way of his own ambitious career, no consideration of good faith, no extent of ruin to his fellow-creatures, no pitch of human suffering, ever occasioned him one instant's hesitation. Yet after furnishing irrefragable proof of this grand enormity, and of twenty other profligate acts and unprincipled schemes, Louis is inconsistent reasoner enough to term the restraint whereby Napoleon is prevented from again trampling on the rights and feelings of millions of human beings, "HIS INCOMPREHENSIBLE

IMPRISONMENT!"

ART. V.-Illustrations of Phrenology, with seventeen engrav ings By SIR G. S. MACKENZIE, Bart. Constable & Co. Edinburgh; and Hurst, Robinson, & Co. London. 8vo. 1820.

BACON inferred that Aristotle's philosophy was false because it was barren; and we fear that the same judgment, on the same principle, may be formed of the theories of the mind still current in the world. In fact, the knowledge of mind is still in the same imperfect state in which the knowledge of matter was in the days of that philosopher; and on the same grounds that he foresaw the approaching improvement of the physical sciences, we think we foresee an amendment in the science of the mind. The most powerful intellects have been applied with the most persevering industry to the study of it; many facts have been accumulated, and much ingenious disquisition has been written; and yet no results corresponding to the magnitude of the efforts bestowed on it have been produced. Locke's greatest praise is, that he overturned the doc

trines of Des Cartes. Hume carried Locke's views to what he conceived to be their natural result, absurdity. Reid endeavoured to destroy the theories of both; and Stewart illustrated Reid. But Dr. Thomas Brown completed what he imagined to be a vindication of many of the doctrines of Locke and Hume, and a refutation of the views both of Reid and Stewart. These facts, too well known to require to be supported by quotations, prove that there is yet very little certainty in metaphysical science.

But another great defect of the philosophy of the mind is its inutility. We admit that metaphysics afford an admirable field for exercising the reflecting powers, and that many of our acutest philosophers, Hume and Dr. Adam Smith, for example, owe much of their acumen in more profitable disquisitions to the intellectual strength gained in the metaphysical arena. But this advantage is indirect. If chemistry conferred only skill in manipulation, and led to no practical advantages, we should not esteem it worthy of cultivation. In like manner, while the science of the mind affords no other advantage than a field for intellectual skirmishing; we may well doubt whether the extent of the benefit be adequate to the price in time and talent which it costs. Mr. Stewart has spoken of improvements in education, founded on the philosophy of the mind, but we have not the satisfaction of being aware of what they are--except that Mrs. Elizabeth Hamilton wrote letters on education, founded on Mr. Stewart's philosophy, which, however philosophical, are utterly inapplicable in practice.

In point of practical application, therefore, there is a wide difference betwixt the physical sciences and the science of the mind. The chemist's knowledge of the constitution of nature is more extensive and more precise than that of the common observer. Present a compound body to the one and to the other, the former will inform us correctly concerning its constituent principles, and the manner in which it will act on other substances; while the latter will inform us only that it possesses length and breadth and thickness, that it is white or grey, granulous or solid, and so forth, without being able to specify any thing coneerning the elements of its composition or its mode of action. But produce a human being to a metaphysician, even after he has spent his life in studying the mind, and he may be able, perhaps, to tell that he possesses memory, judgment, imagination, and association; but he will be unable to predicate concerning his particular dispositions, aptitudes, or talents. In short the kind of information which he will communicate, will resemble information concerning the length and breadth and thickness of matter; it will be correct, but too general to be useful. Not only so, but the difference betwixt physical and metaphysical science is wider still. In the former, when we have ascer

tained the qualities of one piece of matter, we are able to predicate with certainty concerning the qualities of all other pieces of the same kind; but in the latter, although we have studied the mind in general, or our own minds in particular, we are incapable of telling, à priori, the precise degree in which the general qualities of mind exist in the next individual we meet with. In short, different minds do not resemble each other so completely as different pieces of matter of the same kind; and hence, what is true as to the capacities or tendencies of one mind does not necessarily hold in regard to those of another. Let us inquire a little into the causes of this distinction betwixt the two sciences.

The qualities of physical substances are found by experience to be the same in every case where the same elements combine in the same proportions; but alter either, and the qualities of the compound are greatly changed. Combine mercury with oxygen and muriatic acid in one proportion, (viz. 69.7 of mercury, 12.3 of oxygen, and 18 of muriatic acid) and the result is the corrosive muriate, operating as a deadly poison. Combine the same ingredients in different proportions (viz. 79 of mercury, 9.5 of oxygen, and 11.5 of muriatic acid,) and the compound is the mild muriate, operating as a gentle medicine. In physical substances, every change of elementary combination is accompanied by a change of external appearance; and the appearance indicates to the experienced eye the degree in which the elements are present. Thus the chemist distinguishes the mild from the corrosive muriate by their different aspects. Hence, after having ascertained the qualities of one substance presenting certain external appearances, we are able to tell, à priori, that all other substances presenting the same appearances will possess the same qualities; and it is on this fact alone that the certainty and utility of all physical discoveries rest. If a change of elementary principles, or a change of the proportions in which they are combined, took place in matter without those changes being indicated by correspond ing alterations in the sensible properties, all certainty in physical science would be at an end.

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Now Mr. Stewart informs us, that "in his inquiries he has "aimed at nothing more than to ascertain in the first place, THE "LAWS OF OUR CONSTITUTION as far as they can be discovered "by attention to the subjects of our own consciousness; and af "terwards to apply those laws as principles for the synthetical explanation of the more complicated phenomena of the under"standing." But before "the laws of our constitution," can be discovered by reflecting on our own consciousness, it must be shewn that the elementary principles of the mind are combined in the same proportions in every individual. Mr. Stewart himself observes, that in

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whatever way we choose to account for it, whether by original or

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