near the Lakes of Killarney, to estimate the influence of natural beauty and grandeur on the generality of the people placed under their habitual operation. And we apprehend that the investigator will be utterly disappointed if he expects to find any mental modification, corresponding to the nobleness of the scenes. He will find that the main proportion of their habitual spectators are not either consciously or unconsciously the subjects of their power. Not unconsciously: they have not acquired insensibly a richer imagination; they have not a more vivid sensibility to the sublime and beautiful generally, as elements in the constitution of the natural and moral world, and as displayed in literature and the arts. Not consciously they are not haunted by the images of the grand peculiarities of the scene around them; their minds are not arrested and thrown into trains of thought by their aspect; they can pass long spaces of time without even distinctly recognizing them as objects to be thought of when they are seen, and still longer spaces without employing any of their leisure in visiting the spots (perhaps not far off) which are the most striking in themselves, or which afford the most commanding views of the wonders of the region. And if sometimes a party of pleasure is made up for such a visit, it is very commonly seen that the graces or the majesty of Nature engage but very little of their attention, and that they scarcely at all, unless perhaps by augmented hilarity, affect the tone of their feelings. The looks, sometimes thrown vaguely over the scene, are evidently not such as to bring the soul in contact with it;

There is no speculation in those eyes.'

The lively talk about indifferent subjects, the freaks and frolic, the good or bad cheer, the little diverting or vexatious incidents, shall so besport away the hours and faculties, that the whole expedition might appear to have been planned as an insult on the goddess (that has had so many pretended worshippers, and so few true ones) Nature, in the way of practically telling her how little all her fine things are good for.

Among a multitude of flights of rhapsody in the work that has led us into these observations, there is one in glorification of Snowdon, in which, after a great deal of probably real, and certainly reasonable enthusiasm, with an addition of what we suspect to be rhetorical affectation, it is asserted, without the compliment of looking round in anticipation of any body's scepticism, that No one ever mounted this towering eminence but he became a wiser and a better man.' And several particulars are specified, in which it is assumed as infallible, that this transforming energy must evince itself on a summit which, it seems, is high enough to attract the influences of a heaven superior to

that of the lightnings. This bold position imports at the very least, and as the minor part of the fact which it asserts, that every one who beholds what may be seen from that eminence, is profoundly affected by the magnificent vision. Now, we happen to have had plentiful evidence on the spot, that a number of human beings may look from that sublime position, on all that it commands, by the light of the rising sun, and be little more impressed and detained by the view than they would in standing to contemplate, on the busy day, the market place of any large town, and very much less than in surveying that area when filled with the exhibitions of a fair. As the rule must be, that the subsequent effects on the mind can only be in proportion to the force of the impression, it is not worth while to waste even a guess on the probable improvement in goodness, wisdom, or taste, derived by these spectators from a scene to which these islands, perhaps, do not afford an equal.

It is to the uncultivated portion of a nation which, nevertheless, accounts itself collectively more cultivated than all others, that we have mainly limited these observations. But whoever has had many opportunities of observing, with respect to the point in question, the much smaller portion that may make pretensions to be distinguished as cultivated, will have to testify that a real, thoughtful perception, and a genuine, ardent admiration, of the beautiful and sublime of Nature, are among the very rarest endowments or acquirements of educated and well informed persons. His deposition will unquestionably be, that but very few among the elegant and polished part of the community, very few among the studious and learned, very few of those who are occupied in the higher professions, are intent observers of the material world, with the direct thought of its being the very basis and archetype of whatever we can know of the fair, the harmonious, and the grand; with a direct wish and study, therefore, to have the economy of the mind, as to taste and imagination, and partly as to intellect itself, formed and modified in accordance to it; and with a feeling that there is, through all Nature, some mysterious element like soul, which comes, with a deep significance, to mingle itself with their own conscious being.

Nevertheless, there is a proportion of cultivated minds (and we must reckon, inclusively or additionally, an extremely few spirits but slightly cultivated in a strictly literary sense, yet strongly instinct with genius) that find, in the wide field of Nature, something indefinitely more than a mere indifferent ground on which to prosecute the journey and accomplish the ordinary business of life. They find it a scene marked all over with mystical figures, the prints and traces, as it were, of the frequentation and agency of superior spirits. They find it

sometimes concentrating their faculties to curious and minute inspection, sometimes dilating them to the expansion of vast and magnificent forms; sometimes beguiling them out of all precise recognition of material realities, whether small or great, into visionary musings, and habitually and in all ways conveying into the mind, trains and masses of ideas of an order not to be acquired in the schools, and exerting a modifying and assimilating influence on the whole mental economy.

Now a clear intellectual illustration of all this might fairly assume the title of The Philosophy of Nature.' Such a work would not, perhaps, have been required to commence with the very elements of the philosophy of the mind, or an abstruse investigation into the principles of sublimity and beauty. It might, perhaps, not improperly begin with inferences from the striking and obvious fact, repeatedly dwelt on by philosophers and poets, that in the constitution of the material world, the Creator's intentions were much beyond a provision for mere necessity and plain utility, in the strict sense of those terms; that it was determined there should be, in the mundane economy for man, something besides the means of physical well-being, something besides moral order, and even religious truth: that the system was made to include a marvellous provision for taste and imagination, and for an infinity of pleasing emotions excited through the medium of these faculties. The comprehensive inference, capable of being established in several forms and illustrations, is plainly this, that the human mind should not be insensible to this signally remarkable part of the divine economy, but should be both passively and actively responsive to it.

A rapid general view might then be taken of the actual state of the human mind, past and present, as to its modes and degrees of sensibility to this grand circumstance in the Creator's work. It might be shewn in what manner this sensibility has appeared to manifest itself in various nations, in the character of their philosophy and their superstitions, of their poetry and other fine arts. Such a survey would contribute to ascertain the influence of civilization in bringing this otherwise nearly dormant sensibility into an effective state. And it would, alas! too opprobiously shew how easily this fine faculty may be perverted into superstition and idolatry. There would sometimes occur, during this review, the very remarkable fact, of this sensibility's acquiring, when perverted into superstition, tenfold the poignancy it ever had before; tribes of human beings, who would have been but feebly impressed by the beauty and grandeur of Nature in itself, or as a work of God, being enthusiastic for that beauty and sublimity just when, and so far as, profaned into the materials of a false religion. Thus men obtained something like the accomplishment of the expectation of

our first parents, a more vivid perception, by means of their sin, of what was fair and sublime.

The supposed work might inquire what class of the beauties, that may be comprehended within the wide term scenery,' may have had the greatest power over susceptible minds. And it might be shewn how the different orders of genius are attracted and modified respectively by those different classes of Nature's

exhibitions.

It would be a matter of very great interest to determine, under what conditions this influence of Nature, where it does actually operate on the taste and imagination, shall also be salutary in a moral respect. It has been a favourite doctrine with many men of sensibility and genius, that these captivations of Nature are absolutely and almost necessarily conducive to the moral rectitude of the mind; that they unconditionally tend to purify, to harmonize, and to exalt, the principles and the affections. If the maintainers of this opinion, so kind to our nature, had not examined the human mind enough to know, from its very constitution, that in some modes and degrees of its depravity, it not only may fail to be corrected by the perception of these charms of Nature, but may receive their influence so that it shall augment the depravity, it is strange that their faith was not shaken by the notorious fact, that many fine geniuses - of the very class most alive to the beauty and sublimity of Nature, poets and painters, have been among the most profligate of men:-not to notice that the inhabitants of some of the most paradisiacal and romantic sections of the earth, are among the most basely corrupt of the whole human race. Let any man recollect what he has read and heard of the inhabitants of the most exquisite countries on the Mediterranean.

Another object of the supposed inquiry, would be to determine what mode of training from childhood, what kind of locality for residence, what studies and occupations, would most effectually dispose and gratify a mind possessed of the requisite native sensibility, for feeling these finer influences of the material world. It would also be a very capital object to teach the art and habit of observing the scenery of nature;-an instruction which might, with the greatest propriety, be accompanied by an emphatical censure of the careless stupidity of the man who can, for half a century, carry about the world a soul, accom.. modated with the organs of sight and hearing, and scarcely twenty times in that whole lapse of duration fix an intense, examining, prolonged attention, on any of the innumerable displays exhibited in the elegance and grandeur of the creation.

It would be a gratifying and an easy part of the undertaking, to shew, chiefly by means of well-selected examples, the vast advantage to eloquence, and indeed to all serious moral and

religious instruction,-derivable in the form of striking analogies, happy illustrations, and a diction full of colour and life,from having the prodigious world without the mind, brought, in its representative imagery, to be an ideal world, almost as rich, within it.

In the last place, it would be proper, in some part of such a work, to caution men of genius, who both perceive the palpable material beauty and grandeur of the creation, and feel, in the contemplation, the influence as of some more refined and ideal element, far beyond the perception of the senses, against suffering themselves to be deluded into a notion that this abstracted and elevated mode of feeling is something so analogous to religion as to render it of less importance to attain that distinct and diviner sentiment. The fine enthusiasm of this feeling made some ancient, and has made some modern philosophers, content with acknowledging, as supreme in the universe, some kind of all-pervading spirit, less than a real intelligence. And among certain modern poets, we have heard of a mystical spiritualization of the earth and the heavens, which, under the denomination of physiopathy, was to be regarded as the most refined mode of religion, and peculiarly adapted to the most subtile and purified human spirits, though it was less than an acknowledgement of absolute intelligence in the object adored!It is not, however, against this that we particularly mean the caution; but against the delusion, in minds firmly believing in a God, of the self-flattery that being exceedingly enchanted and elevated in contemplating his works, must of itself necessarily be, in effect, identical with devotion towards them.

These paragraphs may serve as a slight rudimental suggestion of the topics of an investigation which, in proper hands, might be interesting and valuable;-most eminently so, if it were possible to compel to such a task, for instance, one genius that, more than any other, has sojourned on that frontier, where the material and the ideal worlds join and combine their elements; that has seen those elements, as it were, mutually interfused, in a state of assimilation more intimate than mere analogy.-It may not have been with a very sanguine hope of finding such a service performed that we took up the present work; we did, however, reckon on a certain measure of systematic and continuous investigation; but we soon perceived that the lively author was not at all enamoured of regular and hard labour. We found he had been injudicious rather than intentionally deceptive, in the choice of a title of so grave and high import. His work was designed for a discursive and amusing miscellany, rather than an elaborate disquisition; and if some title indicative of this had been adopted, instead of the term of large profession and assumption, "Philosophy," the reader might have