nions may be in regard to the wisdom of a protective system in connexion with the corn-trade, we can never consent that the policy of England's prime minister shall be forced upon him by the Anti-Corn-Law League; and we are inclined to believe that the majority of the aristocracy-of the Whig aristocracy not less than of the Tory-are of our way of thinking. Messrs. Cobden and Bright, in the fervour of their anticipated triumph, let out a little too much for the good of the cause which they advocate, at the great Covent Garden meeting. The English people entertain a profound respect for the hereditary peerage; they would not exchange so noble an institution even for Mr. Cobden's services, were he called to the queen's councils, and invited to bring in an abolition-bill as Secretary of State for the Home Department to-morrow. Besides, the people of England must be more gullable than we take them to be, if they are persuaded to believe that an order of things can be very injurious to trade and manufactures under which the great apostle of the repeal of the Corn-laws has contrived to work his way from the condition of a poor farmer's son in Sussex, to the ownership of mills, the profits on which are rated to the income-tax at an amount so enormous, that we are really afraid to particularise it. And now a word or two to all right thinking men,-to those among our readers who value the country's well-being above such minor considerations as the question who shall or who shall not preside in her majesty's councils, and be called prime minister. We witnessed with regret the unbecoming haste with which, immediately The Times' rumour got afloat, some who ought to have known better proceeded at once to condemn and denounce the recreant premier. This was neither just nor wise. Sir John Tyrrell, and other equally respectable, though somewhat hot-tempered gentlemen, have no ground as yet-none with which we, at least are acquaintedfor coming to the conclusions at which, with extraordinary precipitation, they arrived. They would have done better had they waited, as we recommended others of the party to do, till Sir Robert Peel and his colleagues-who continue in office, and their friends who quit it-shall have made their explanations. If, indeed, The Times be correct in its assumptions, then each man, whether a member of parliament or not, will be free to take his own line. The unflinching advocates for protection will, of course, resist whatever attempts are made to diminish or in any other way to interfere with it; while such of them as take pleasure in dealing out hard names and bitter words may, with a better grace than now, give license both to their pens and to their tongues. At the same time one point there is peculiar to the crisis at which we have arrived, which seems to demand their serious attention. Supposing they defeat Sir Robert Peel, and drive him out of office (no hard matter to do, it would appear, seeing that he would have voluntarily resigned, if he had been permitted), are they perpared with any one to take his place, who shall prove at once acceptable to the crown, and of sufficient weight, personal or otherwise, to go down with the constituencies? They cannot look to the Whigs, that is clear. The Whigs have done their best to form an administration, and failed; neither, we presume, will they condescend to make terms with Mr. Cobden, or Mr. Bright, or Mr. O'Connell. Will the Duke of Richmond be invited to form an administration? and if he do, will the country support him? We cannot tell, but this much we venture to hope, that the actual measures of the existing cabinet will be found much less alarming than the sanguine on either side anticipate; and, at all events, we advise our readers to suspend their judgments, as we here undertake to suspend our own, till the mystery in which the proceedings of the last month are involved shall be dispelled; and there are some sure grounds on which either to support or to condemn the man whom, for ten years and more, the great Conservative party has, both in opposition and in power, honoured as its champion. London-Printed by George Barclay, Castle Street, Leicester Square. FRASER'S MAGAZINE FOR TOWN AND COUNTRY. No. CXCIV. FEBRUARY, 1846. VOL. XXXIII. pole, the criticism of Warton, and the fancy of Collins. Is one of Lord Byron's MS. diaries, begun at Ravenna, May 1821, he makes this entry," What shall I write? Another journal? Any thing that comes uppermost, and call it My Dictionary." The project died in the thinking. Whether the bow was not well bent, or the quiver had been exhausted in other forays, we know not, but the author never carried his incursion beyond A. Like other bold invaders, he was stopped by the elements. The interruption of the plan is certainly to be regretted. We should have received many brilliant sayings and much hardihood of criticism and philosophy. The prose of Byron was very often better than his verse, more fluent, natural, and idiomatic; vigorous, yet elastic; and masculine, yet musical. The framework, morcover, was well adapted to his pencil. He could stretch or contract it to his canvass. Every letter might be a picture, copious and magnificent as a Veronese, or minute and delicate as a Mieris. Lockhart once recommended a similar shape to his excursive friend Sir Egerton Brydges. He might have adopted it with advantage, and given us, to our delight and improvement, the gossip of Wal VOL. XXXIII. NO. CXCIV. It seems difficult to brand any article save one with the mark of utter exclusion, and that is dulness, in every form and under every aspect, from the beginning to the end of the alphabet. It must not be suffered to creep in through D, or steal upon us with a sweet surprise in the murmurs of S. No column will keep the field with this symbolical letter in the ranks. Miserable in itself, it is fatal to its companions. It will ensure the defeat of a whole army of eloquence and learning. The most brilliant music of the fancy fails to attract our attention when it has been completely benumbed. Pope might have read in vain the rape of Mrs. Fermor's lock to an audience whom Dennis had been lecturing upon poetry. The saying of Haller is true in literature, whatever it may be in physics, and we are assuredly deaf when we are yawning. There can be no doubt that Byron was in the full enjoyment of the prophetic eye of taste when he sketched this faint image of a new dictionary. Writing at Ravenna, he was really in Regent Street. The doctrine of K developement, with all its wonders of imagination, was present to his mind, and he felt a deep but delicious sentiment of delight in the conviction that the suggestion, thus idly thrown out, was only a germ which would subsequently take root, and grow, and blossom, and bear fruit; and that while the first seed-small, barren, and insignificant,-might indeed be imbedded in his own writings, the verdure, and foliage, and fragrance, and fruit, would be found, after the lapse of twenty years, in the garden of Fraser's Magazine. And where can any good or salutary thought be planted with a richer promise and hope of ripeness and abundance? REGINA is above all little jealousies; safe in the unapproached splendour of her charms, she has no sneer for her rival:"No Rufa, with her combs of lead, Whisp'ring that Sappho's hair is red." The idea of a dictionary implies universality; in dragging the stream from A to Z, you enclose every thing: the largest and the smallest, Homer or Hume, Demosthenes or Duncombe, the Sophist or the Sonneteer. And this variety is only the reflection of every scholar's experience. It was the agreeable confession of Gray, that his studies ranged from Pausanias to Pindar, and that he mixed Aristotle with Óvid; just as the hand wanders from the bread to the cheese, and provides the appetite with refreshment from both. The image is his own. But the habit can plead still higher authority in its behalf. Lord Bacon long ago urged the importance of being able to contract or dilate the eyesight of the understanding. He regarded that power as essential to the healthfulness of the organ. And justly so. Every one knows that the natural eye is injured by gazing too steadfastly or too long upon a brilliant body; the dilation, which that protracted scrutiny occasions, impedes the necessary and restorative contraction. Any reader can make the experiment for himself. Let him, on some gorgeous summer-day, wind out gradually from the beeches of Knowle, or the chestnuts of Penshurst, until he comes full upon the sun, then riding in its state above the trees; let him fix his eye upon the burning orb for an instant, and then look down unto the grass; he will perceive that every blade is tinged with a reddish glare, and that a flickering lustre is shed over the turf, as if a fairy procession had just gone by. And this peculiarity will not be really in the grass, but in his own eye. When it is refreshed by the contrast, the light will fade. We will endeavour to apply this phe nomenon. The analogy between the natural and intellectual sight-the eye of the body and the mind-is very close and interesting. If, after a prolonged and earnest examination of the dim recesses of early eloquence or poetry, the inward eye of thought be suddenly turned upon the broad, central, glowing orbs of Cicero, Shakspeare, Thucydides, or Milton, and be then cast down into the common surface of daily life, and the low growth of everyday thoughts and feelings, it becomes not only dazzled and confused, but even pained by the discolouring hues that seem to float over every object. In both cases the phenomenon admits of a similar explanation. The blaze of light and the intensity of attention have dilated the eye beyond the healthful expansion; the continued exposure of the nerve, either natural or intellectual, is attended with results of peculiar inconvenience and injury. The nerve of vision gradually loses much of its susceptibility to the finer gradations of light and shade; and, for a transient gratification, undergoes a permanent damage. On the other hand, a careful education of the eye refines and strengthens it; it makes the astronomer or the critic, the naturalist or the painter. The Nogay Tartar can resolve what appear to be only dark spots in the remote horizon into horses, sheep, or oxen; and, throwing himself on the ground, the quick sensibility of his ear distinguishes the neighing and bleating of his own cattle. This is the fruit of instruction and habit. In like manner, the intellectual eye arranges what to the uncultivated faculty seem to be rude and unshapen images into the elements of a charming landscape of poetry and taste. We shall not forget the physiology of the mental vision in our Dictionary, -“from grave to gay, from lively to severe," is a wise precaution in a moral, as well as in a literary sense. We shall follow it. Things great and small will pass before us, and after the magnificence of the upward gaze into the sun, we shall be ever looking down into the fragrant sequesterment of the daisy. Our philosophy will be related to our poetry-truth, but upon its sunny side as it is best calculated to cheer and warm the traveller under the burden and storm of life. Philosophy, thus illuminated by poetry, will be a powerful shield in the warfare of existence. He who cultivates Literature in a pure and trusting spirit will never find himself forsaken or forlorn. Much she loves, if much she be loved. Other friends fail us, she never; alike beautiful and fond, when the lamps of our fortune arc full of oil, and when the embers upon our hearth are mouldering away. The Greek poet's description of Venus concealing her favourite from the attack of the enemy, is only the allegory of Literature protecting her children. Now as then, on a British as on a Trojan field, Προσθε δε οἱ πέπλοιο φαείνου πτυγμ It thunders, the resplendent gates unclose; Far as the eye can glance, on height o'er height, Rise fiery waving wings and star crown'd brows, Rank'd by their millions brighter and more bright, Till all is lost in one supreme unmingled light." She does not wrap him in her veil, but only interposes it when the danger is imminent and the arrow is abroad. She, who helps him most, teaches him also to help himself. Slight revelations only of her beauty and her face does she vouchsafe; a faint gleam of her garment, a vanishing flash of her eye, a parting whisper of her voice, that is all, but it is enough; Who does not know the enchantment of small circumstances, in any terrible crisis of our destiny? When the packet ship, Lady Hobart, was driving before the tempest, a white bird, like a dove, suddenly hovered over the mast; and, amid all the consternation of the elements, the hearts of the crew were cheered by the spectacle. One bright thought in our storm is the dove upon our mast. Seck not great comforts or great hopes, but be content with small. These blossom under your feet. There grows among the Indian jungle-grass a phosphorescent plant that emits a clear brilliancy in the night. "To husbands, who rove about the IIimalaya mountains with their wives, and enter its caves, these plants serve in the night as lamps, burning without oil." This is an Indian tale, but what a deep and affecting moral it enfolds! This luminous grass makes green our English villages and skirts the highways of our swarming cities, if we only look for it with the patient and the trusting eye. Every where has the sced of happiness and hope been scattered, every where may its shining blade be seen, slowly rising up in the darkest weather. But men the celestial visitor is sooner recognised in her departure than in her approach. Who shall despise these glimpses? In the stoniest wilderness they come oftenest, and the Olympian friends of the poet or the philosopher make the clouds of trial to be their ladder of descent: trample this grass down in their impatience to reach some broader turning of their road. They scorn their little and illuminating blessings, because they think they might be favoured with others, larger and brighter. 66 To the man of the studious turn that Tranquillus is, it is sufficient if he has but a small spot to relieve the mind and divert the eye, where he may saunter round his grounds, traverse his single walk, grow familiar with his two or three vines, and count his little plantation." Why should Tranquillus live only in the time of Pliny? We shall seek to multiply the tribe; and if we be asked, And what we reply of nature, we reply also of life. Such is the spirit of our Dictionary. We attempt no conquests, and pretend to no discoveries. Professor Airy, from his woody hermitage in Greenwich Park, may square the circle, if he can; Professor Whewell may still go on filling an interleaved copy of the Quarrels of Authors. The glory of Mr. Lindley Murray is safe from our rivalry. We shall lead no famishing band from University College to the Moscow of grammar, nor leave them to perish on the frozen roads of philology, under the blinding snow-storms of conjecture. Our aim is practical; whatever is of good report in poetry or eloquence, in history or morals, in human sympathies, or human books, that we shall touch upon; and hav ing the whole alphabet to walk in, our digressions will be many; an argument with Plato or Adam Smith, a chat with Armida or Mrs. Norton, a sketch with Rubens or Maclise, a ramble in the fields with White or Buckland, that will be our plan. Our machinery is delicate, as well as powerful; and will break a Disraeli or a butterfly with equal facility, and with the same crushing completion of demolition. For the present we begin with S., and proceed, in some observations upon the little things in the characters of men, to shew how they are "Pleased with a feather, tickled by a straw." The subject of our first specimen, then, is straws; and we shall illustrate their value in men, in books, in pictures, and in religion. And, 1. with regard to the straw in human character, it will be seen that it abounds most in men of greatest genius. Byron sent away a Genoese tailor with a new coat, because he brought it home on a Friday. He was also observed to rein up his horse while passing a corner, and to assume an aspect of determination and courage, as if he expected to be charged by Front de Bœuf on the opposite side. But a more surprising specimen of this kind of straw is to be found in the history of Johnson, and may probably have escaped the notice of readers in general. It was this:-He always went in or out at a door, or passage, by a certain number of steps from a certain point; so that either his right or left foot (Boz, No. I., was not certain which) should be the first to cross the threshold. Every thing depended upon this question of precedence. He was frequently observed to stop suddenly on such occasions, and apparently to count his steps with much earnestness; when he made any mistake in the movement, he would return and place himself in the right position, and having sa tisfactorily performed the feat, rejoin his companions with the air of a man who had got something off his mind. Of this remarkable habit none of the Doctor's friends ever dared to ask the beginning or the motive. Boswell supposed it to be a superstitious custom contracted early, and from which Johnson never sought to extricate himself by the help of his reason. We have not at hand Mr. Croker's emendations of "The Laird of Auchinleck," and know not whether he has attempted any commentary. But the supersti tion of Johnson might have pleaded an antique origin. The Romans, and we believe the Greeks also, always entered a place with the right foot foremost. So important did they deem this rule of progression, that Vitruvius gives a particular direction for building steps, so that the first step should be ascended by the right foot. Juvenal alludes to the practice in the beginning of his famous tenth satire, when, casting his eye from Spain to the Ganges, he la |