difficulty lies not in nature, but in artifice: the | in the higher Literature of Germany, there European Calcutta-Blackhole has no walls but already lies, for him that can read it, the beair ones, and paper ones.-So, too, Skepticism ginning of a new revelation of the Godlike; itself, with its innumerable mischiefs, what is as yet unrecognised by the mass of the world; it but the sour fruit of a most blessed increase, but waiting there for recognition, and sure to that of Knowledge; a fruit, too, that will not find it when the fit hour comes. This age also always continue sour? is not wholly without its Prophets.

In fact, much as we have said and mourned about the unproductive prevalence of Metaphysics, it was not without some insight into the use that lies in them. Metaphysical Speculation, if a necessary evil, is the forerunner of much good. The fever of Skepticism must needs burn itself out, and burn out thereby the Impurities that caused it; then again will there be clearness, health. The principle of Life, which now struggles painfully, in the outer, thin, and barren domain of the Conscious or Mechanical, may then withdraw into its inner Sanctuaries, its abysses of mystery and miracle; withdraw deeper than ever into that domain of the Unconscious, by nature infinite and inexhaustible; and creatively work there. From that mystic region, and from that alone, all wonders, all Poesies, and Religions, and Social Systems have proceeded: the like wonders, and greater and higher, lie slumbering there; and, brooded on by the spirit of the waters, will evolve themselves, and rise like exhalations from the Deep.

Again, under another aspect, if Utilitarianism, or Radicalism, or the Mechanical Philosophy, or by whatever name it is called, has still its long task to do; nevertheless we can now see through it and beyond it in the better heads, even among us English, it has become obsolete; as in other countries it has been, in such heads, for some forty or even fifty years. What sound mind among the French, for example, now fancies that men can be governed by "Constitutions;" by the never so cunning mechanizing of Self-interests, and all conceivable adjustments of checking and balancing: in a word, by the best possible solution of this quite insoluble and impossible problem, Given a world of Knaves, to produce an Honesty from their united action? Were not experiments enough of this kind tried before all Europe, and found wanting, when, in that doomsday of France, the infinite gulf of human Passion shivered asunder the thin rinds of Habit; and burst forth all-devouring, as in seas of Nether Fire? Which cunningly-devised "Constitution," constitutional, republican, democratic, sans-culottic, could bind that raging chasm together? Were they not all burnt up, like Paper as they were, in its molten eddies; and still the fire-sea raged fiercer than before? It is not by Mechanism, but by Religion; not by Selfinterest, but by Loyalty, that men are governed or governable.

Of our modern Metaphysics, accordingly, may not this already be said, that if they have produced no Affirmation, they have destroyed much Negation? It is a disease expelling a disease: the fire of Doubt, as above hinted, consuming away the Doubtful; that so the Certain come to light, and again lie visible on the surface. English or French Metaphysics, in reference to this last stage of the speculative process, are not what we allude to here; but Remarkable it is, truly, how everywhere only the Metaphysics of the Germans. In the eternal fact begins again to be recognised, France or England, since the days of Diderot that there is a Godlike in human affairs; that and Hume, though all thought has been of a God not only made us and beholds us, but is skeptico-metaphysical texture, so far as there in us and around us; that the Age of Mirawere any Thought, we have seen no Meta- cles, as it ever was, now is. Such recogniphysics; but only more or less ineffectual tion we discern on all hands, and in all counquestionings whether such could be. In the tries: in each country after its own fashion. Pyrrhonism of Hume and the Materialism of In France, among the younger nobler minds, Diderot, Logic had, as it were, overshot itself, strangely enough; where, in their loud conoverset itself. Now, though the athlete, to use tention with the Actual and Conscious, the our old figure, cannot, by much lifting, lift up Ideal or Unconscious is, for the time, without his own body, he may shift it out of a laming exponent; where Religion means not the paposture, and get to stand in a free one. Such rent of Polity, as of all that is highest, but a service have German Metaphysics done for Polity itself; and this and the other earnest man's mind. The second sickness of Specula- man has not been wanting, who could whisper tion has abolished both itself and the first. audibly: "Go to, I will make a religion." In Friedrich Schlegel complains much of the England still more strangely; as in all things, fruitlessness, the tumult and transiency of worthy England will have its way by the German as of all Metaphysics; and with rea- shrieking of hysterical women casting out of son yet in that wide-spreading, deep-whirling devils, and other "gifts of the Holy Ghost." vortex of Kantism, so soon metamorphosed Well might Jean Paul say, in this his twelfth into Fichteism, Schellingism, and then as hour of the Night, "the living dream;" well Hegelism, and Cousinism, perhaps finally might he say, "the dead walk." Meanwhile evaporated, is not this issue visible enough, let us rejoice rather that so much has been that Pyrrhonism and Materialism, themselves seen into, were it through never so diffracting necessary phenomena in European culture, media, and never so madly distorted; that in have disappeared; and a Faith in Religion all dialects, though but half-articulately, this has again become possible and inevitable for the scientific mind; and the word Free-thinker no longer means the Denier or Caviller, but the Believer, or the Ready to believe? Nay,

high Gospel begins to be preached: "Man is still Man." The genius of Mechanism, as was once before predicted, will not always sit like a choking incubus on our soul; but at

length, when by a new magic Word the old Soldiers, fighting in a foreign land; that unspell is broken, become our slave, and as fa- derstand not the plan of the campaign, and miliar-spirit do all our bidding. "We are have no need to understand it; seeing well near awakening when we dream that we what is at our hand to be done. Let us do it dream." like Soldiers, with submission, with courage, with a heroic joy. "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with all thy might." Behind us, behind each one of us, lie Six Thousand years of human effort, human conquest: before us is the boundless Time, with its as yet uncreated and unconquered Continents and Eldorados, which we, even we, have to conquer, to create: and from the bosom of Eternity shine for us celestial guiding stars. "My inheritance how wide and fair!

GOETHE'S PORTRAIT.*

[FRASER'S MAGAZINE, 1832.]

in living hearts, as the life and inspiration of thinkers, born and still unborn. Some fifty years hence, his thinking will be found translated, and ground down, even to the capacity of the diurnal press; acts of parliament will be passed in virtue of him:-this man, if we well consider of it, is appointed to be ruler of the world.

one counsel to give, the secret of his whole
poetic alchymy: GEDENKE ZU LEBEN. Yes,
"think of living!" Thy life, wert thou the
"pitifullest of all the sons of earth," is no idle
dream, but a solemn reality. It is thy own; it
is all thou hast to front eternity with. Work.
then, even as he has done, and does-"LIKE A
STAR UNHASTING, YET
UNRESTING."-Sic va

Reader! to thee thyself, even now, he has leas.

BIOGRAPHY.*

[FRAZER'S MAGAZINE, 1832.]

his own. Of these millions of living men each individual is a mirror to us: a mirror both scientific and poetic; or, if you will, both natural and magical;-from which one would so gladly draw aside the gauze veil; and, peering therein, discern the image of his own natural face, and the supernatural secrets that prophetically lie under the same!

MAN'S sociality of nature evinces itself, in spite of all that can be said, with abundant evidence by this one fact, were there no other: the unspeakable delight he takes in Biography. It is written, "The proper study of mankind is man;" to which study, let us candidly admit, he, by true or by false methods, applies himself, nothing loath. 'Man is perennially interesting to man; nay, if we look strictly to it, Observe, accordingly, to what extent, in the there is nothing else interesting." How inex- actual course of things, this business of Biopressibly comfortable to know our fellow-graphy is practised and relished. Define to creature; to see into him, understand his goings forth, decipher the whole heart of his mystery: nay, not only to see into him, but even to see out of him, to view the world altogether as he views it; so that we can theoretically construe him, and could almost practically personate him; and do now thoroughly discern both what manner of man he is, and what manner of thing he has got to work on and live on!

A scientific interest and a poetic one alike inspire us in this matter. A scientific: because every mortal has a Problem of Existence set before him, which, were it only, what for the most it is, the Problem of keeping soul and body together, must be to a certain extent original, unlike every other; and yet, at the same time, so like every other; like our own, therefore; instructive, moreover, since we also are indentured to live. A poetic interest still more for precisely this same struggle of human Free-will against material Necessity, which every man's Life, by the mere circumstance that the man continues alive, will more or less victoriously exhibit,-is that which above all else, or rather inclusive of all else, calls the Sympathy of mortal hearts into action; and whether as acted, or as represented and written of, not only is Poetry, but is the sole Poetry possible. Borne onwards by which two all-embracing interests, may the earnest Lover of Biography expand himself on all sides, and indefinitely enrich himself. Looking with the eyes of every new neighbour, he can discern a new world different for each: feeling with the heart of every neighbour, he lives with every neighbour's life, even as with

*The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. including a Tour to the Hebrides: By James Boswell, Esq. A new Edition, with numerous Additions and Notes. By John Wilson Croker, LL.D., F. R. S. 5 vols. London, 1831.

thyself, judicious Reader, the real significance of these phenomena, named Gossip, Egotism, Personal Narrative, (miraculous or not,) Scandal, Raillery, Slander, and such like; the sumtotal of which (with some fractional addition of a better ingredient, generally too small to be noticeable) constitutes that other grand phenomenon still called "Conversation." Do they not mean wholly: Biography and Autobiography? Not only in the common Speech of men; but in all Art, too, which is or should be the concentrated and conserved essence of what men can speak and show, Biography is almost the one thing needful.

Even in the highest works of Art our interest, as the critics complain, is too apt to be strongly or even mainly of a Biographic sort. In the Art, we can nowise forget the Artist: while looking on the Transfiguration, while studying the Iliad, we ever strive to figure to ourselves what spirit dwelt in Raphael; what a head was that of Homer, wherein, woven of Elysian light and Tartarian gloom, that old world fashioned itself together, of which these written Greek characters are but a feeble though perennial copy. The Painter and the Singer are present to us; we partially and for the time become the very Painter and the very Singer, while we enjoy the Picture and the Song. Perhaps, too, let the critic say what he will, this is the highest enjoyment, the clearest recognition, we can have of these. Art indeed is Art; yet Man also is Man. Had the Trans figuration been painted without human hand, had it grown merely on the canvas, say by atmospheric influences, as lichen-pictures do on rocks, it were a grand Picture doubtless; yet nothing like so grand as the Picture, which, on opening our eyes, we everywhere in Heaven and in Earth see painted; and every

where pass over with indifference,-because could eat the wind, with ever new disappointthe Painter was not a Man. Think of this; ment. much lies in it. The Vatican is great; yet poor to Chimborazo or the Peake of Teneriffe: its dome is but a foolish Big-endian or Littleendian chip of an egg-shell, compared with that star-fretted Dome where Arcturus and Orion glance for ever; which latter, notwithstanding, who looks at, save perhaps some necessitous star-gazer bent to make Almanacs, some thick-quilted watchman, to see what weather it will prove? The Biographic interest is wanting: no Michael Angelo was He who built that "Temple of Immensity;" therefore do we, pitiful Littlenesses as we are, turn rather to wonder and to worship in the little toybox of a Temple built by our like.

Still more decisively, still more exclusively does the Biographic interest manifest itself, as we descend into lower regions of spiritual communication; through the whole range of what is called Literature. Of History, for example, the most honoured, if not honourable species of composition, is not the whole purport biographic? "History," it has been said, "is the essence of innumerable Biographies." Such, at least, it should be: whether it is, might admit of question. But, in any case, what hope have we in turning over those old interminable Chronicles, with their garrulities and insipidities; or still worse, in patiently examining those modern Narrations, of the Philosophic kind, where " Philosophy, teaching by Experience," must sit like owl on housetop, seeing nothing, understanding nothing, uttering only, with solemnity enough, her perpetual most wearisome hoo-hoo:—what hope have we, except for the most part fallacious one of gaining some acquaintance with our fellow-creatures, though dead and vanished, yet dear to us; how they got along in those old days, suffering and doing; to what extent, and under what circumstances, they resisted the Devil and triumphed over him, or struck their colours to him, and were trodden under foot by him; how, in short, the perennial Battle went, which men name Life, which we also in these new days, with indifferent fortune, have to fight, and must bequeath to our sons and grandsons to go on fighting,-till the Enemy one day be quite vanquished and abolished, or else the great Night sink and part the combatants; and thus, either by some Millennium or some new Noah's Deluge, the Volume of Universal History wind itself up! Other hope, in studying such Books, we have none: and that it is a deceitful hope, who that has tried knows not? A feast of widest Biographic insight is spread for us; we enter full of hungry anticipation: alas! like so many other feasts, which Life invites us to, a mere Ossian's "feast of shells," the food and liquor being all emptied out and clean gone, and only the vacant dishes and deceitful emblems thereof left! Your modern Historical Restaurateurs are indeed little better than high-priests of Famine; that keep choicest china dinner-sets, only no dinner to serve therein. Yet such is our Biographic appetite, we run trying from shop to shop, with ever new hope; and, unless we

Again, consider the whole class of Fictitious Narratives; from the highest category of epic or dramatic Poetry, in Shakspeare and Homer, down to the lowest of froth Prose in the Fashionable Novel. What are all these but so many mimic Biographies? Attempts, here by an inspired Speaker, there by an uninspired Babbler, to deliver himself, more or less ineffectually, of the grand secret wherewith all hearts labour oppressed: The significance of Man's Life;-which deliverance, even as traced in the unfurnished head, and printed at the Minerva Press, finds readers. For, observe, though there is a greatest Fool, as a su perlative in every kind; and the most Foolish man in the Earth is now indubitably living and breathing, and did this morning or lately eat breakfast, and is even now digesting the same; and looks out on the world, with his dim horn-eyes, and inwardly forms some unspeakable theory thereof: yet where shall the authentically Existing be personally met with! Can one of us, otherwise than by guess, know that we have got sight of him, have orally communed with him? To take even the narrower sphere of this our English metropolis, can any one confidently say to himself, that he has conversed with the identical, individual, Stupidest man now extant in London? No one. Deep as we dive in the Profound, there is ever a new depth opens: where the ultimate bottom may lie, through what new scenes of being we must pass before reaching it, (except that we know it does lie somewhere, and might by human faculty and opportunity be reached,) is altogether a mystery to us. Strange, tantalizing pursuit! We have the fullest assu rance, not only that there is a Stupidest of London men actually resident, with bed and board of some kind, in London; but that several persons have been or perhaps are now speaking face to face with him: while for us, chase it as we may, such scientific blessedness will too probably be for ever denied!—But the thing we meant to enforce was this comfortable fact, that no known Head was so wooden, but there might be other heads to which it were a genius and Friar Bacon's Oracle. Of no given Book, not even of a Fashionable Novel, can you predicate with certainty that its vacuity is absolute; that there are not other vacuities which shall partially replenish themselves therefrom, and esteem it a plenum. How knowest thou, may the distressed Novelwright exclaim, that I, here where I sit, am the Foolishest of existing mortals; that this my Longear of a Fictitious Biography shall not find one and the other, into whose still longer ears it may be the means, under Providence, of instilling somewhat? We answer, None knows, none can certainly know: therefore, write on, worthy Brother, even as thou canst, as it has been given thee.

Here, however, in regard to "Fictitious Biographies," and much other matter of like sort, which the greener mind in these days inditeth, we may as well insert some singular sentences on the importance and significance of

Reality, as they stand written for us in Professor | far that your Machinery' is avowedly mechaGottfried Sauerteig's Esthetische Springwürzel: nical and unbelieved,-what is it else, if we a Work, perhaps, as yet new to most English dare tell ourselves the truth, but a miserable, readers. The Professor and Doctor is not a meaningless Deception kept up by old use and man whom we can praise without reservation; neither shall we say that his Springwürzel (a sort of magical pick-locks, as he affectedly names them) are adequate to "start" every bolt that locks up an æsthetic mystery; nevertheless, in his crabbed, one-sided way, he sometimes hits masses of the truth. We endeavour to translate faithfully, and trust the reader will find it worth serious perusal :