*

Now, without recurring to what we have is it to be believed, that there can be many already said as to the total absence of power occasions for its employment in the govern in all cases of mere observation, we shall merely request our readers to consider, what is the circumstance that bestows a value, an importance, or an utility, upon the discovery and statement of those general laws, which are admitted, in the passage now quoted, to have been previously exemplified in practice. Is it any thing else, than their capacity of a more extensive application?-the possibility or facility of employing them to accomplish many things to which they had not been previously thought applicable? If Newton's third law of motion could never have been employed for any other purpose than to set afloat the canoe of the savage-or if the discovery of the pressure of the atmosphere had led to nothing more than an explanation of the operation of sucking-would there have been any thing gained by stating that law, or that discovery, in general and abstract terms? Would there have been any utility, any dignity or real advancement of knowledge, in the mere technical arrangement of these limited and familiar phenomena under a new classification? There can be but one answer to these interrogatories. But we humbly conceive, that all the laws of mental operation which philosophy may collect and digest, are exactly in this last predicament. They have no application to any other phenomena than the particular ones by which they are suggestedand which they were familiarly employed to produce. They are not capable of being extended to any other cases; and all that is gained by their digestion into a system, is a more precise and methodical enumeration of truths that were always notorious.

ment of the human mind, of which men have never yet had the sense to bethink themselves? Or, can it be seriously maintained, that it is capable of applications as much more extensive and important than those which have been vulgarly made in past ages, as are the uses of Newton's third law of motion, compared with the operation of the savage in pushing his canoe from the shore? If Mr. Stewart really entertained any such opinion as this, it was incumbent upon him to have indicated, in a general way, the departments in which he conceived that these great discoveries were to be made; and to have pointed out some, at least, of the new applications, on the assumption of which alone he could justify so ambitious a paral lel. Instead of this, however, we do not find that he has contemplated any other spheres for the application of this principle, than those which have been so long conceded to it-the formation of taste, and the conduct of education: and, with regard to the last and most important of these, he has himself recorded an admission, which to us, we will confess, appears a full justification of all that we have now been advancing, and a sutficient answer to the positions we have been endeavouring to combat. "In so far," Mr. Stewart observes, "as education is effectual and salutary, it is founded on those principles of our nature which have forced themselves upon general observation, in conse quence of the experience of ages." That the principle of association is to be reckoned in the number of these, Mr. Stewart certainly will not deny; and our proposition is, that all the principles of our nature which are capable of any useful application, have thus

many centuries ago, and can now receive little more than a technical nomenclature and description from the best efforts of philosophy.

From the experience and consciousness of all men, in all ages, we learn that, when two or more objects are frequently presented to-"forced themselves on general observation " gether, the mind passes spontaneously from one to the other, and invests both with something of the colouring which belongs to the most important. This is the law of association; which is known to every savage, and to every clown, in a thousand familiar instances: and, with regard to its capacity of useful application, it seems to be admitted, that it has been known and acted upon by parents, pedagogues, priests, and legislators, in all ages of the world; and has even been emproyed, as an obvious and easy instrument, by such humble judges of intellectual resources, as common horse-jockies and bear-dancers.

If this principle, then, was always known, and regularly employed wherever any advantage could be expected from its employment, what reason have we to imagine, that any substantial benefit is to be derived from its scientific investigation, or any important uses hereafter discovered for it, in consequence merely of investing it with a precise name, and stating, under one general theorem, the common law of its operation? If such persons as grooms and masters of menageries have been guided, by their low intellects and sordid motives, to its skilful application as a means of directing even the lower animals,

The sentiments to which we have ventured to give expression in these and our former hasty observations, were suggested to us, we will confess, in a great degree, by the striking contrast between the wonders which have been wrought by the cultivation of modern Physics, and the absolute nothingness of the effects that have hitherto been produced by the labours of the philosophers of mind. We have only to mention the names of Astronomy, Chemistry, Mechanics, Optics, and Navigation;-nay, we have only to look around us, in public or in private,-to cast a glance on the machines and manufactures, the ships. observatories, steam engines, and elaboratories, by which we are perpetually surrounded, -or to turn our eyes on the most common

* Upwards of thirty years have now elapsed since this was written; during which a taste for metaphysical inquiry has revived in France, and been greatly encouraged in Germany. Yet I am its votaries can yet point; or what practical improvenot aware to what useful applications of the science

ment or increase of human power they can trace t its cultivation.

STEWART'S PHILOSOPHICAL ESSAYS.

articles of our dress and furniture,-on the accomplished, by an instrument which has mirrors, engravings, books, fire-arms, watches, hitherto effected so little? It is in vain for barometers, thunder-rods and opera-glasses, Mr. Stewart to say, that the science is yet but The truth is, that it has, of nethat present themselves in our ordinary dwell in its infancy, and that it will bear its fruit in ings, to feel how vast a progress has been due season. made in exploring and subduing the physical cessity, been more constantly and diligently elements of nature, and how stupendous an cultivated than any other. It has always increase the power of man has received, by been the first object with men of talent and the experimental investigation of her laws. good affections, to influence and to form the Now is any thing in this astonishing survey minds of others, and to train their own to the more remarkable, than the feeling with which highest pitch of vigour and perfection: and it is always accompanied, that what we have accordingly, it is admitted by Mr. Stewart, hitherto done in any of these departments is that the most important principles of this phi but a small part of what we are yet destined losophy have been long ago "forced upon to accomplish; and that the inquiries which general observation" by the feelings and exhave led us so far, will infallibly carry us still perience of past ages. Independently, howfarther. When we ask, however, for the tro- ever, of this, the years that have passed since phies of the philosophy of mind, or inquire for Hobbes, and Locke, and Malebranche, and the vestiges of her progress in the more plastic Leibnitz drew the attention of Europe to this and susceptible elements of human genius study, and the very extraordinary genius and and character, we are answered only by in- talents of those who have since addicted them genuous silence, or vague anticipations and selves to it, are far more than enough to have find nothing but a blank in the record of her brought it, if not to perfection, at least to such actual achievements. The knowledge and a degree of excellence, as no longer to leave the power of man over inanimate nature has it a matter of dispute, whether it was really been increased tenfold in the course of the destined to add to our knowledge and our last two centuries. The knowledge and the power, or to produce any sensible effects upo power of man over the mind of man remains the happiness and condition of mankine almost exactly where it was at the first de- That society has made great advances in com velopment of his faculties. The natural phi- fort and intelligence, during that period, is losophy of antiquity is mere childishness and indisputable; but we do not find that Mr. dotage, and their physical inquirers are mere Stewart himself imputes any great part of this pigmies and drivellers, compared with their improvement to our increased knowledge of successors in the present age; but their logi- our mental constitution; and indeed it is quite cians, and metaphysicians, and moralists, and, obvious, that it is an effect resulting from the what is of infinitely more consequence, the increase of political freedom-the influences practical maxims and the actual effects result- of reformed Christianity-the invention of ing from their philosophy of mind, are very printing-and that improvement and multiplinearly on a level with the philosophy of the cation of the mechanical arts, that have renpresent day. The end and aim of all that dered the body of the people far more busy, philosophy is to make education rational and wealthy, inventive and independent, than they To us, therefore, it certainly does appear, effective, and to train men to such sagacity ever were in any former period of society. and force of judgment, as to induce them to cast off the bondage of prejudices, and to fol- that the lofty estimate which Mr. Stewart has low happiness and virtue with assured and again made of the practical importance of his steady steps. We do not know, however, favourite studies, is one of those splendid viwhat modern work contains juster, or more sions by which men of genius have been so profound views on the subject of education, often misled, in the enthusiastic pursuit of than may be collected from the writings of science and of virtue. That these studies are Xenophon and Quintilian, Polybius, Plutarch, of a very dignified and interesting nature, we and Cicero: and, as to that sagacity and just admit most cheerfully-that they exercise ness of thinking, which, after all, is the fruit and delight the understanding, by reasonings by which this tree of knowledge must be ulti- and inquiries, at once subtle, cautious, and mately known, we are not aware of many profound, and either gratify or exalt a keen modern performances that exemplify it in a and aspiring curiosity, must be acknowledged stronger degree, than many parts of the his- by all who have been initiated into their eletories of Tacitus and Thucydides, or the Satires ments. Those who have had the good fortune and Epistles of Horace. In the conduct of to be so initiated by the writings of Mr. Stewbusiness and affairs, we shall find Pericles, art, will be delighted to add, that they are and Caesar, and Cicero, but little inferior to the blended with so many lessons of gentle and of philosophical politicians of the present day; ennobling virtue-so many striking precepts and, for lofty and solid principles of practi- and bright examples of liberality, high-mindedcal ethics, we might safely match Epictetus ness, and pure taste-as to be calculated, in an and Antoninus (without mentioning Aristotle, eminent degree, to make men love goodness the understanding, the imagination, and the Plato, Plutarch, Xenophon, or Polybius,) with and aspire to elegance, and to improve at once most of our modern speculators. heart. But this must be the limit of our praise.

Where, then, it may be asked, are the performances of this philosophy, which makes such large promises? or, what are the grounds upon which we should expect to see so much

The sequel of this article is not now reprinted, for the reasons already stated.

NOVELS, TALES.

AND

PROSE WORKS OF FICTION.

As I perceive 1 have, in some of the following papers, made a sort of apology for ecek ing to direct the attention of my readers to things so insignificant as Novels, it may be worth while to inform the present generation that, in my youth, writings of this sort were rated very low with us--scarcely allowed indeed to pass as part of a nation's permanent literature -and generally deemed altogether unworthy of any grave critical notice. Nor, in truth— in spite of Cervantes and Le Sage-and Marivaux, Rousseau, and Voltaire abroad-and even our own Richardson and Fielding at home-would it have been easy to controvert that opinion, in our England, at the time: For certainly a greater mass of trash and rubbish never disgraced the press of any country, than the ordinary Novels that filled and supported our circulating libraries, down nearly to the time of Miss Edgeworth's first appearance. There had been, the Vicar of Wakefield, to be sure, before; and Miss Burney's Evelina and Cecilia --and Mackenzie's Man of Feeling, and some bolder and more varied fictions of the Misses Lee. But the staple of our Novel market was, beyond imagination, despicable: and had consequently sunk and degraded the whole department of literature, of which it had usurped the name.

All this, however, has since been signally, and happily, changed; and that rabble rout of abominations driven from our confines for ever. The Novels of Sir Walter Scott are, beyond all question, the most remarkable productions of the present age; and have made a sensation, and produced an effect, all over Europe, to which nothing parallel can be mentioned since the days of Rousseau and Voltaire; while, in our own country, they have attained a place, inferior only to that which must be filled for ever by the unapproachable glory of Shakespeare. With the help, no doubt, of their political revolutions, they have produced, in France, Victor Hugo, Balsac, Paul de Cocq, &c., the promessi sposi in Italy-and Cooper, at least, in America.—In England, also, they have had imitators enough; in the persons of Mr. James, Mr. Lover, and others. But the works most akin to them in excellence have rather, I think, been related as collaterals than as descendants. Miss Edgeworth, indeed, stands more in the line of their ancestry; and I take Miss Austen and Sir E. L. Bulwer to be as intrinsically original ;—as well as the great German writers, Goethe, Tiek, Jean Paul, Richter, &c. Among them, however, the honour of this branch of literature has at any rate been splendidly redeemed ;-and now bids fair to maintain its place, at the head of all that is graceful and instructive in the productions of modern genius.

(July, 1809.)

Tales of Fashionable Life. By Miss EDGEWORTH, Author of "Practical Education," "Belinda,' ," "Castle Rackrent," &c. 12mo. 3 vols. London: 1809.

If it were possible for reviewers to Envy the authors who are brought before them for judgment, we rather think we should be tempted to envy Miss Edgeworth;-not, however, so much for her matchless powers of probable invention-her never-failing good sense and cheerfulness-nor her fine discrimination of characters-as for the delightful ronsciousness of having done more good than

any other writer, male or female, of her generation. Other arts and sciences have their use, no doubt; and, Heaven knows, they have their reward and their fame. But the great art is the art of living; and the chief science the science of being happy. Where there is an absolute deficiency of good sense, these cannot indeed be taught; and, with an extraordinary share of it, they may be acquired

without an instructor: but the most common case is, to be capable of learning, and yet to require teaching; and a far greater part of the misery which exists in society arises from ignorance, than either from vice or from incapacity.

There are two great sources of unhappiness to those whom fortune and nature seem to have placed above the reach of ordinary miseries. The one is ennui-that stagnation of life and feeling which results from the ab sence of all motives to exertion; and by Miss Edgeworth is the great modern mis- which the justice of providence has so fully tress in this school of true philosophy; and compensated the partiality of fortune, that it has eclipsed, we think, the fame of all her may be fairly doubted whether, upon the predecessors. By her many excellent tracts whole, the race of beggars is not happier on education, she has conferred a benefit on than the race of lords; and whether those the whole mass of the population; and dis-vulgar wants that are sometimes so importu charged, with exemplary patience as well as nate, are not, in this world, the chief ministers extraordinary judgment, a task which super- of enjoyment. This is a plague that infects ficial spirits may perhaps mistake for an hum-all indolent persons who can live on in the ble and easy one. By her Popular Tales, she has rendered an invaluable service to the middling and lower orders of the people; and by her Novels, and by the volumes before us, has made a great and meritorious effort to promote the happiness and respectability of the higher classes. On a former occasion we believe we hinted to her, that these would probably be the least successful of all her fabours; and that it was doubtful whether she could be justified for bestowing so much of her time on the case of a few persons, who scarcely deserved to be cured, and were scarcely capable of being corrected. The foolish and unhappy part of the fashionable world, for the most part, "is not fit to bear itself convinced. It is too vain, too busy, and too dissipated to listen to, or remember any thing that is said to it. Every thing serions it repels, by "its dear wit and gay rhetoric and against every thing poignant, it seeks shelter in the impenetrable armour of its conjunct audacity.

"Laugh'd at, it laughs again; and, stricken hard,

Turns to the stroke its adamantine scales,
That fear no discipline of human hands.”

rank in which they were born, without the necessity of working: but, in a free country, it rarely occurs in any great degree of virulence, except among those who are already at the summit of human felicity. Below this, there is room for ambition, and envy, and emulation, and all the feverish movements aspiring vanity and unresting selfishness, which act as prophylactics against this more dark and deadly distemper. It is the canker which corrodes the full-blown flower of hu-| man felicity-the pestilence which smites at the bright hour of noon.

The other curse of the happy, has a range more wide and indiscriminate. It, too, iortures only the comparatively rich and fortunate; but is most active among the least distinguished; and abates in malignity as we ascend to the lofty regions of pure ennui. This is the desire of being fashionable;-the restless and insatiable passion to pass for creatures a little more distinguished than we really are-with the mortification of frequent failure, and the humiliating consciousness of being perpetually exposed to it. Among those who are secure of "meat, clothes, and fire," and are thus above the chief physical evils A book, on the other hand, and especially a of existence, we do believe that this is a more witty and popular book, is still a thing of con- prolific source of unhappiness, than guilt, dissequence, to such of the middling classes of ease, or wounded affection; and that more society as are in the habit of reading. They positive misery is created, and more true endispute about it, and think of it; and as they joyment excluded, by the eternal fretting occasionally make themselves ridiculous by and straining of this pitiful ambition, than by copying the manners it displays, so they are all the ravages of passion, the desolations of apt to be impressed with the great lessons it war, or the accidents of mortality. This may may be calculated to teach; and, on the whole, appear a strong statement; but we make it receive it into considerable authority among deliberately, and are deeply convinced of its the regulators of their lives and opinions.-truth. The wretchedness which it produces But a fashionable person has scarcely any leisure to read; and none to think of what he has been reading. It would be a derogation from his dignity to speak of a book in any terms but those of frivolous derision; and a strange desertion of his own superiority, to allow himself to receive, from its perusal, any impressions which could at all affect his conduct or opinions.

But though, for these reasons, we continue to think that Miss Edgeworth's fashionable patients will do less credit to her prescriptions than the more numerous classes to whom they might have been directed, we admit that her plan of treatment is in the highest degree judicious, and her conception of the disorder most luminous and precise.

may not be so intense; but it is of much longer duration, and spreads over a far wider circle. It is quite dreadful, indeed, to think what a sweep this pest has taken among the comforts of our prosperous population. To be thought fashionable-that is, to be though more opulent and tasteful, and on a footing of intimacy with a greater number of distin guished persons than they really are, is the great and laborious pursuit of four families out of five, the members of which are ex empted from the necessity of daily industry. In this pursuit, their time, spirits, and talents are wasted; their tempers, soured; their affections palsied; and their natural manners and dispositions altogether sophisticated and lost.

These are the giant curses of fashionable

life, and Miss Edgeworth has accordingly which life can be made tolerable to those who dedicated her two best tales to the delinea- have nothing to wish for. Born on the very tion of their symptoms. The history of "Lord pinnacle of human fortune, "he had nothing Glenthorn" is a fine picture of ennui-that of to do but to sit still and enjoy the barrenness Almeria" an instructive representation of of the prospect." He tries travelling, gaming, the miseries of aspirations after fashion. We gluttony, hunting, pugilism, and coach-drydo not know whether it was a part of the fair ing; but is so pressed down with the load of writer's design to represent these maladies as life, as to be repeatedly on the eve of suicide. absolutely incurable, without a change of He passes over to Ireland, where he receives condition; but the fact is, that in spite of the a temporary relief, from the rebellion-and best dispositions and capacities, and the most from falling in love with a lady of high char powerful inducements to action, the hero of acter and accomplishments; but the effect of ennui makes no advances towards amend- these stimulants is speedily expended, and ment, till he is deprived of his title and estate! he is in danger of falling into a confirmed and the victim of fashion is left, at the end of lethargy, when it is fortunately discovered the tale, pursuing her weary career, with fa- that he has been changed at nurse! and that, ding hopes and wasted spirits, but with in- instead of being a peer of boundless fortune, creased anxiety and perseverance. The moral he is the son of a cottager who lives on potause of these narratives, therefore, must consist toes. With great magnanimity, he instantly in warning us against the first approaches of gives up the fortune to the rightful owner, evils which can never afterwards be resisted. who has been bred a blacksmith, and takes These are the great twin scourges of the to the study of the law. At the commenceprosperous: But there are other maladies, of ment of this arduous career, he fortunately no slight malignity, to which they are pecu- falls in love, for the second time, with the liarly liable. One of these, arising mainly lady entitled, after the death of the blackfrom want of more worthy occupation, is that smith, to succeed to his former estate. Pover perpetual use of stratagem and contrivance ty and love now supply him with irresistible that little, artful diplomacy of private life, by motives for exertion. He rises in his profes which the simplest and most natural transac- sion; marries the lady of his heart; and in tions are rendered complicated and difficult, due time returns, an altered man, to the pos and the common business of existence made session of his former affluence. to depend on the success of plots and counter- Such is the naked outline of a story, more plots. By the incessant practice of this petty rich in character, incident, and reflection, than policy, a habit of duplicity and anxiety is in- any English narrative which we can now call fallibly generated, which is equally fatal to to remembrance:-as rapid and various as integrity and enjoyment. We gradually come the best tales of Voltaire, and as full of prac to look on others with the distrust which we tical good sense and moral pathetic as any of are conscious of deserving; and are insensibly the other tales of Miss Edgeworth. The Irish formed to sentiments of the most unamiable characters are inimitable;-not the coarse caselfishness and suspicion. It is needless to ricatures of modern playwrights-but drawn say, that all these elaborate artifices are worse with a spirit, a delicacy, and a precision, to than useless to the person who employs them; which we do not know if there be any paraland that the ingenious plotter is almost always lel among national delineations. As these are baffled and exposed by the downright honesty tales of fashionable life, we shall present our of some undesigning competitor. Miss Edge-readers, in the first place, with some traits of worth, in her tale of "Manoeuvring," has given an Irish lady of rank. Lady Geraldine-the a very complete and most entertaining repre- enchantress whose powerful magic almost sentation of "the by-paths and indirect crook'd raised the hero of ennui from his leaden slumways," by which these artful and inefficient bers is represented with such exquisite liveli people generally make their way to disap-ness and completeness of effect, that the pointment. In the tale, entitled "Madame de reader can scarcely help imagining that he Fleury," she has given some useful examples has formerly been acquainted with the origi of the ways in which the rich may most ef- nal. Every one, at least we conceive, must fectually do good to the poor-an operation have known somebody, the recollection of which, we really believe, fails more frequently whom must convince him that the following from want of skill than of inclination: And, in description is as true nature as it is creditable "The Dun," she has drawn a touching and to art:most impressive picture of the wretchedness "As Lady Geraldine entered, I gave one involunwhich the poor so frequently suffer, from the tary glance of curiosity. I saw a tall, finely-shaped unfeeling thoughtlessness which withholds woman, with the commanding air of a person of from them the scanty earnings of their labour. rank: she moved well; not with feminine timidity, Of these tales, "Ennui" is the best and the yet with ease, promptitude, and decision. She had most entertaining-though the leading char- of feature. The only thing that struck me as really fine eyes, and a fine complexion, yet no regularity acter is somewhat caricatured, and the dé-extraordinary, was her indifference when I was innouement is brought about by a discovery which shocks by its needless improbability. Lord Glenthorn is bred up, by a false and indulgent guardian, as the heir to an immense English and Irish estate; and, long before he is of age, exhausts almost all the resources by

troduced to her. Every body had seemed extremely desirous that I should see her ladyship, and that her ladyship should see me; and I was rather surprised by her unconcerned air. This piqued me. began to converse with others. Her voice was and fixed my attention. She turned from me, and agreeable, though rather loud: she did not speak