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Ephesian Temple, which it had employed | compared with which the often-commemorated many wise heads and strong arms, for a life-"horrors of the French Revolution," and all time, to build, could be un-built by one mad- Napoleon's wars, were but the gay jousting of man, in a single hour. a tournament to the sack of stormed cities. Of such errors, deficiencies, and positive Our European community has escaped the like misdeeds, it appears to us, a just criticism dire consummation; and by causes, which, must accuse Voltaire: at the same time, we as may be hoped, will always secure it from can nowise join in the condemnatory clamour such. Nay, were there no other cause, it may which so many worthy persons, not without be asserted, that in a commonwealth where the best intentions, to this day keep up against the Christian religion exists, where it once him. His whole character seems to be plain has existed, public and private Virtue, the enough, common enough, had not extraneous basis of all Strength, never can become exinfluences so perverted our views regarding it: tinct; but in every new age, and even from the nor, morally speaking, is it a worse character, deepest decline, there is a chance, and in the but considerably a better one, than belongs to course of ages, a certainty of renovation. the mass of men. Voltaire's aims in opposing That the Christian Religion, or any Religion, the Christian Religion were unhappily of a continued to exist; that some martyr heroism mixed nature: yet, after all, very nearly such still lived in the heart of Europe to rise against aims as we have often seen directed against mailed Tyranny when it rode triumphant,it, and often seen directed in its favour: a was indeed no merit in the age of Louis XV, little love of finding Truth, with a great love but a happy accident which it could not altoof making Proselytes; which last is in itself gether get rid of. For that age too is to be a natural, universal feeling; and if honest, is, regarded as an experiment, on the great scale, even in the worst cases, a subject for pity, ra- to decide the question, not yet, it would ap ther than for hatred. As a light, careless, pear, settled to universal satisfaction: With courteous Man of the World, he offers no what degree of vigour a political system, hateful aspect; on the contrary, a kindly, gay, grounded on pure Self-interest, never so enrather amiable one: hundreds of men, with lightened, but without a God, or any recognihalf his worth of disposition, die daily, and tion of the godlike in man, can be expected to their little world laments them. It is time flourish; or whether, in such circumstances, that he too should be judged of by his intrin- a political system can be expected to flourish, sic, not by his accidental qualities; that jus- or even to subsist at all? It is contended by tice should be done to him aiso; for injustice many that our mere love of personal Pleasure, can profit no man and no cause. or Happiness as it is called, acting on every individual, with such clearness as he may easily have, will of itself lead him to respect the rights of others, and wisely employ his own: to fulfil, on a mere principle of economy, all the duties of a good patriot; so that, in what respects the State, or the merely social existence of mankind, Belief, beyond the testimony of the senses, and Virtue, beyond the very common Virtue of loving what is pleasant, and hating what is painful, are to be considered as supererogatory qualifications, as ornamental, not essential. Many there are, on the other hand, who pause over this doctrine; cannot discover, in such a universe of conflicting atoms, any principle by which the whole shall cohere: for, if every man's selfishness, infinitely expansive, is to be hemmed in only by the infinitely-expansive selfishness of every other man, it seems as if we should have a world of mutually-repulsive bodies with no centripetal force to bind them together; in which case, it is well known they would, by and by, diffuse themselves over space, and constitute a remarkable Chaos, but no habitable Solar or Stellar System.

In fact, Voltaire's chief merits belong to Nature and himself; his chief faults are of his time and country. In that famous era of the Pompadours and Encyclopédies, he forms the main figure; and was such, we have seen, more by resembling the multitude, than by differing from them. It was a strange age that of Louis XV.; in several points, a novel one in the history of mankind. In regard to its luxury and depravity, to the high culture of all merely practical and material faculties, and the entire torpor of all the purely contemplative and spiritual, this era considerably resembles that of the Roman Emperors. There, too, was external splendour and internal squalour; the highest completeness in all sensual arts, including among these not cookery and its adjuncts alone, but even "effect-painting" and "effect-writing;" only the art of virtuous living was a lost one. Instead of Love for Poetry, there was "Taste" for it; refinement in manners, with utmost coarseness in morals: in a word, the strange spectacle of a social system, embracing large, cultivated portions of the human species, and founded only on Atheism. With the Romans, things went what we should call their natural course: Liberty, public spirit, quietly declined into a caput-mortuum; Self-love, Materialism, Baseness even to the disbelief in all possibility of Virtue, stalked more and more imperiously abroad; till the body-politic, long since deprived of its vital circulating fluids, had now become a putrid carcass, and fell in pieces to be the prey of ravenous wolves. Then was there, under those Attilas and Alarics, a world's spectacle of destruction and despair,

If the age of Louis XV. was not made an experimentum crucis in regard to this question, one reason may be that such experiments are too expensive. Nature cannot afford, above once or twice in the thousand years, to destroy a whole world,' for purposes of science; but must content herself with destroying one or two kingdoms. The age of Louis XV., so far as it went, seems a highly illustrative experiment. We are to remark, also, that its operation was clogged by a very considerable disturbing force; by a large remnant, namely

"Honour," this "Force of Public Opinion," is not asserted, on any side, to have much rẹnovating, but only a sustaining or preventive power; it cannot create new Virtue, but at best may preserve what is already there. Nay, of the age of Louis XV., we may say that its very Power, its material strength, its knowledge, all that it had, was borrowed. It boasted itself to be an age of illumination; and truly illumination there was of its kind: only, except the illuminated windows, almost nothing to be seen thereby. None of those great Doctrines or Institutions that have "made man in all points a man;" none even of those Discoveries that have the most subjected external Nature to his purposes, were made in that age. What Plough, or Printing-press, what Chivalry, or Christianity; nay, what Steam-engine, or Quakerism, or Trial by Jury, did these Encyclopedists invent for mankind? They invented simply nothing; not one of man's virtues, not one of man's powers, is due to them: in all these respects, the age of Louis XV. is among the most barren of recorded ages. Indeed, the whole trade of our Philosophes was directly the opposite of invention: it was not to produce, that they stood there; but to criticise, to quarrel with, to rend in pieces, what had been already produced;-a quite inferior trade: sometimes a useful, but on the whole a mean trade; often the fruit, and always the parent, of meanness, in every mind that permanently follows it.

of the old faith in Religion, in the invisible, | a poor era; that any little morality it had was celestial nature of Virtue, which our French chiefly borrowed, and from those very ages Purifiers, by their utmost efforts of lavation, which it accounted so barbarous. For this had not been able to wash away. The men did their best, but no man can do more. Their worst enemy, we imagine, will not accuse them of any undue regard to things unseen and spiritual: far from practising this invisible sort of Virtue, they cannot even believe in its possibility. The high exploits and endurances of old ages were no longer virtues, but "passions;" these antique persons had a taste for being heroes, a certain fancy to die for the truth: the more fools they! With our Philosophers, the only virtue of any civilization was that they call "Honour," the sanctioning deity of which is that wonderful "Force of Public Opinion." Concerning which virtue of Honour, we must be permitted to say that she reveals herself too clearly, as the daughter and heiress of our old acquaintance Vanity, who indeed has been known enough, ever since the foundation of the world, at least since the date of that "Lucifer, son of the Morning;" but known chiefly in her proper character of strolling actress, or cast-clothes Abigail; and never till that new era had seen her issue set up as Queen and all-sufficient Dictatress of man's whole soul, prescribing with nicest precision what, in all practical and all moral emergencies, he was to do and to forbear. Again, with regard to this same Force of Public Opinion, it is a force well known to all of us, respected, valued as of indispensable utility, but nowise recognised as a final or divine force. We might ask what divine, what truly great thing had ever been effected by this force? Was it the Force of Public Opinion that drove Columbus to Ame-ness, without high virtues, or high manifestarica; John Kepler, not to fare sumptuously among Rodolph's Astrologers and Fire-eaters, but to perish of want, discovering the true System of the Stars? Still more ineffectual do we find it as a basis of public or private Morals. Nay, taken by itself, it may be called a baseless basis; for without some ulterior sanction, common to all minds; without some belief in the necessary, eternal, or which is the same, in the supramundane, divine nature of Virtue, existing in each individual, what could the moral judgment of a thousand or a thousand thousand individuals avail us? Without some such celestial guidance, whencesoever derived, or howsoever named, it appears to us the Force of Public Opinion would, by and by, become an extremely unprofitable one. "Enlighten Self-interest!" cries the Philosophe; "Do but sufficiently enlighten it! We ourselves have seen enlightened Self-interests, ere now; and truly, for most part, their light was only as that of a horn-lantern, sufficient to guide the bearer himself out of various puddles: but to us and the world of comparatively small advantage. And figure the human species, like an endless host, seeking its way onwards through undiscovered Time, in black darkness, save that each had his hornlantern, and the vanguard some few of glass! However, we will not dwell on controversial niceties. What we had to remark was that this era, called of Philosophy, was in itself but

Considering the then position of affairs, it is not singular that the age of Louis XV. should have been what it was: an age without noble

tions of talent; an age of shallow clearness, of polish, self-conceit, skepticism, and all forms of Persiflage. As little does it seem surprising, or peculiarly blamable, that Voltaire, the leading man of that age, should have partaken largely of all its qualities. True, his giddy activity took serious effect, the light firebrands, which he so carelessly scattered abroad, kindled fearful conflagrations: but in these there has been good as well as evil; nor is it just that, even for the latter, he, a limited mortal, should be charged with more than mortal's responsibility. After all, that parched, blighted period, and the period of earthquakes and tornadoes which followed it, have now wellnigh cleared away: they belong to the Past, and for us and those that come after us, are not without their benefits, and calm historical meaning.

"The thinking heads of all nations," says a deep observer, "had in secret come to majority; and, in a mistaken feeling of their vocation, rose the more fiercely against antiquated constraint. The Man of Letters is, by instinct, opposed to a Priesthood of old standing; the literary class and the clerical must wage a war of extermination, when they are divided; for both strive after one place. Such division became more and more perceptible, the nearer we approached the period of European manhood, the epoch of triumphant Learning; and Knowledge and Faith came into more decided

"At the present epoch, however, we stand high enough to look back with a friendly smile on those bygone days; and even in those marvellous follies to discern curious crystallizations of historical matter. Thankfully wil we stretch out our hands to those Men of Letters and Philosophes: for this delusion too required to be exhausted; and the scientific side of things to have full value given it. More beauteous and many-coloured stands Poesy, like a leafy India, when contrasted with the cold, dead Spitzbergen of that closet-logic That in the middle of the globe, an India, sc warm and lordly, might exist, must also a cold motionless sea, dead cliffs, mist instead of the starry sky, and a long night, make both Poles uninhabitable. The deep meaning of the laws of Mechanism lay heavy on those anchorites in the deserts of Understanding: the charm of the first glimpse into it overpowered them : the Old avenged itself on them; to the first feel

contradiction. In the prevailing Faith, as was | visited that land which was the most modern thought, lay the reason of the universal degra-ized, and had the longest lain in an asthenic dation; and by a more and more searching state, from the want of freedom. ・・・ Knowledge men hoped to remove it. On all hands, the Religious feeling suffered, under manifold attacks against its actual manner of existence, against the Forms in which hitherto it had imbodied itself. The result of that modern way of thought was named Philosophy; and in this all was included that opposed itself to the ancient way of thought, especially, therefore, all that opposed itself to Religion. The original personal hatred against the Catholic faith passed, by degrees, into hatred against the Bible; against the Christian Religion and at last against Religion altogether. Nay, more, this hatred of Religion naturally extended itself over all objects of enthusiasm in genera, proscribed Fancy and Feeling, Morality and love of Art, the Future and the Antique; placed man, with an effort, foremost in the series of natural productions; and changed the infinite, creative music of the Universe into the monotonous clatter of a boundless Mill, which, turned by the streaming of self-consciousness, they sacrificed, with of Chance, and swimming thereon, was a Mill of itself, without Architect and Miller, properly, a genuine perpetuum mobile, a real, self-grinding Mill.

wondrous devotedness, what was holiest and fairest in the world! and were the first that, in practice, again recognised and preached forth the sacredness of Nature, the infinitude of Art, the independence of Knowledge, the worth of the Practical, and the all-presence of the Spirit of History; and so doing, put an end to a Spectre-dynasty, more poem, universal, and terrific than perhaps they themselves were aware of."*

"One enthusiasm was generously left to poor mankind, and rendered indispensable as a touchstone of the highest culture, for all jobbers in the same: Enthusiasm for this magnanimous Philosophy, and above all, for these its priests and mystagogues. France was so happy as to be the birthplace and dwelling of How far our readers will accompany Novalis this new Faith, which had thus, from patches in such high-soaring speculation is not for us of pure knowledge, been pasted together. Low to say. Meanwhile, that the better part of as Poetry ranked in this new Church, there them have already, in their own dialect, united were some poets among them, who for effect's with him, and with us, in candid tolerance, in sake made use of the old ornaments and old clear acknowledgment, towards French Philights; but, in so doing, ran a risk of kindling losophy, towards this Voltaire and the spiritual the new world-system by ancient fire. More period which bears his name, we do not hesicunning brethren, however, were at hand to tate to believe. Intolerance, animosity, can help; and always in season poured cold water forward nó cause; and least of all beseems the on the warming audience. The members of cause of moral and religious truth. A wise this Church were restlessly employed in clear-man has well reminded us, that "in any coning Nature, the Earth, the Souls of men, the troversy, the instant we feel anger, we have Sciences, from all Poetry; obliterating every already ceased striving for Truth, and begun vestige of the Holy: disturbing, by sarcasms, striving for Ourselves." Let no man doubt that the memory of all lofty occurrences, and lofty Voltaire and his disciples, like all men and men; disrobing the world of all its variegated all things that live and act in God's world, Pity that Nature con- will one day be found to have "worked totinued so wondrous and incomprehensible, so gether for good." Nay that with all his evil, poetical and infinite, all efforts to modernize he has already accomplished good, must be her notwithstanding! However, if any- admitted in the soberest calculation. How where an old superstition, of a higher world much do we include in this one little word: and the like, came to light, instantly, on all He gave the death-stab to modern Superstition. hands, was a springing of rattles; that, if pos- That horrid incubus, which dwelt in darkness, sible, the dangerous spark might be extin- shunning the light, is passing away; with all guished, by appliances of philosophy and wit: its racks, and poison-chalices, and foul sleepyet Tolerance was the watchword of the culti-ing-draughts, is passing away without return. vated; and in France, above all, synonymous with Philosophy. Highly remarkable is this history of modern Unbelief; the key to all the vast phenomena of recent times. Not till last century, till the latter half of it, does the novelty begin; and in a little while, it expands to an immeasurable bulk and variety: a second Reformation, a more comprehensive, and more specific, was unavoidable: and naturally it first

vesture.

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He who sees even a little way into the signs of the times, sees well that both the Smithfield fires and the Edinburgh thumbscrews (for these too must be held in remembrance) are things which have long, very long, lain be hind us; divided from us by a wall of centuries, transparent indeed, but more impassable

Novalis Schriften, i, s. 198.

more.

than adamant. For, as we said, Superstition | commiseration. If he seek Truth, is he not is in its death-lair; the last agonies may endure our brother, and to be pitied? If he do not for decades, or for centuries; but it carries the seek truth, is he not still our brother, and to iron in its heart, and will not vex the earth any be pitied still more? Old Ludovicus Vives has a story of a clown that killed his ass because it had drunk up the moon, and he thought the world could ill spare that luminary. So he killed his ass, ut lunam redderet. The clown was well-intentioned, but unwise. Let us not imitate him; let us not slay a faithful servant who has carried us far. He has not drunk the moon; but only the reflection of the moon, in his own poor water-pail, where, too, it may be, he was drinking with purposes the most harmless.

That, with Superstition, Religion is also passing away, seems to us a still more ungrounded fear. Religion cannot pass away. The burning of a little straw may hide the stars of the sky; but the stars are there, and will re-appear. On the whole, we must repeat the often-repeated saying, that it is unworthy a religious man to view an irreligious one either with alarm or aversion or with any other feeling than regret, and hope, and brotherly

NOVALIS.*

[FOREIGN REVIEW, 1829.]

A NUMBER of years ago, Jean Paul's copy | we would contend that such soap-bubble guild of Novalis led him to infer that the German reading world was of a quick disposition; inasmuch as with regard to books that required more than one perusal, it declined perusing them at all. Paul's Novalis, we suppose, was of the first Edition, uncut, dusty, and lent him from the Public Library with willingness, nay, with joy; but times, it would appear, must be considerably changed since then; indeed, were we to judge of German reading habits from these volumes of ours, we should draw quite an opposite conclusion of Paul's; for they are of the fourth Edition, perhaps therefore the ten-thousandth copy, and that of a Book demanding, whether deserving or not, to be oftener read than almost any other it has ever been our lot to examine.

Without at all entering into the merits of Novalis, we may observe that we should reckon it a happy sign of Literature, were so solid a fashion of study here and there established in all countries; for directly in the teeth of most "intellectual tea-circles," it may be asserted that no good Book, or good thing of any sort, shows its best face at first; nay, that the commonest quality in a true work of Art, if its excellence have any depth and compass, is that at first sight it occasions a certain disappointment; perhaps even, mingled with its undeniable beauty, a certain feeling of aversion. Not as if we meant, by this remark, to cast a stone at the old guild of literary Improvisators, or any of that diligent brotherhood whose trade it is to blow soap-bubbles for their fellow-creatures; which bubbles, of course, if they are not seen and admired this moment, will be altogether lost to men's eyes the next. Considering the use of these blowers, in civilized communities, we rather wish them strong lungs, and all manner of prosperity: but simply

* Noralis Schriften. Herausgegeben von Ludwig Tieck und Friedrich Schlegel. (Novalis' Writings. Edited by Ludwig Tieck and Friedrich Schlegel.) Fourth Edition. % vols. Berlin, 1826.

should not become the sole one in Literature; that being indisputably the strongest, it should content itself with this pre-eminence, and not tyrannically annihilate its less prosperous neighbours. For it should be recollected that Literature positively has other aims than this of amusement from hour to hour; nay, perhaps, that this, glorious as it may be, is not its highest or true aim. We do say, therefore, that the Improvisator corporation should be kept within limits; and readers, at least a certain small class of readers, should understand that some few departments of human inquiry have still their depths and difficulties; that the abstruse is not precisely synonymous with the absurd; nay, that light itself may be darkness, in a certain state of the eyesight; that, in short, cases may occur when a little patience and some attempt at thought would not be altogether superfluous in reading. Let the mob of gentlemen keep their own ground, and be happy and applauded there: if they overstep that ground, they indeed may flourish the better for it, but the reader will suffer damage. For in this way, a reader, accustomed to see through every thing in one second of time, comes to forget that his wisdom and critical penetration are finite and not infinite; and so commits more than one mistake in his conclusions. The Reviewer, too, who indeed is only a preparatory reader, as it were, a sort of sieve and drainer for the use of more luxur ous readers, soon follows his example: these two react still further on the mob of gentlemen; and so among them all, with this action and reaction, matters grow worse and worse.

It rather seems to us as if, in this respect of faithfulness in reading, the Germans were somewhat ahead of us English; at least we have no such proof to show of it as that fourth Edition of Novalis. Our Coleridge's Friend, for example, and Biographia Literaria, are but a slight business compared with these Schrif ten; little more than the Alphabet, and that in

fool in low-lying, high-fenced lanes: retracing the footsteps of the former, to discover where he deviated, whole provinces of the Universe are laid open to us; in the path of the latter, granting even that he have not deviated at all, little is laid open to us but two wheel-ruts and

gilt letters, of such Philosophy and Art as is
here taught in the form of Grammar and Rhe-
torical Compend: yet Coleridge's works were
triumphantly condemned by the whole review-
ing world, as clearly unintelligible; and among
readers they have still but an unseen circula-
tion; like living brooks, hidden for the present | two hedges.
under mountains of froth and theatrical snow-
paper, and which only at a distant day, when
these mountains shall have decomposed them-
selves into gas and earthly residuum, may
roll forth in their true limpid shape, to glad
den the general eye with what beauty and
everlasting freshness does reside in them.. It
is admitted, too, on all hands, that Mr. Cole-
ridge is a man of "genius," that is, a man
having more intellectual insight than other
men; and strangely enough, it is taken for
granted, at the same time, that he has less in-
tellectual insight than any other. For why
else are his doctrines to be thrown out of
doors, without examination, as false and
worthless, simply because they are obscure?
Or how is their so palpable falsehood to be
accounted for to our minds, except on this ex-
traordinary ground; that a man able to origi-
nate deep thoughts (such is the meaning of
genius) is unable to see them when originated;
that the creative intellect of a Philosopher is
destitute of that mere faculty of logic which
belongs to "all Attorneys, and men educated
En Edinburgh ?" The Cambridge carrier,
when asked whether his horse could "draw
inferences," readily replied, "Yes, any thing
in reason;" but here, it seems, is a man of
genius who has no similar gift.

We ourselves, we confess, are too young in the study of human nature to have met with any such anomaly. Never yet has it been our fortune to fall in with any man of genius, whose conclusions did not correspond better with his premises, and not worse, than those of other men; whose genius, when it once came to be understood, did not manifest itself in a deeper, fuller, truer view of all things human and divine, than the clearest of your so laudable "practical men" had claim to. Such, we say, has been our uniform experience; so uniform, that we now hardly ever expect to see it contradicted. True it is, the old Pythagorean argument of "the master said it," has long ceased to be available: in these days, no man, except the Pope of Rome, is altogether exempt from error of judgment; doubtless a man of genius may chance to adopt false opinions; nay, rather, like all other sons of Adam, except that same enviable Pope, must occasionally adopt such. Nevertheless, we reckon it a good maxim, that "no error is fully confuted till we have seen not only that it is an erior, but how it became one;" till finding that it clashes with the principles of truth, established in our own mind, we find also in what way it had seemed to harmonize with the principles of truth established in that other mind, perhaps so unspeakably superior to ours. Treated by this method it still appears to us, according to the old saying, that the errors of the wise man are literally more instructive than the truths of a fool. For the wise man travels in lofty, far-seeing regions; the

On these grounds we reckon it more profitable, in almost any case, to have to do with men of depth, than with men of shallowness: and were it possible, we would read no book that was not written by one of the former class; all members of which we would love and venerate, how perverse soever they may seem to us at first; nay, though, after the fullest investigation, we still found many things to pardon in them. Such of our readers as at all participate in this predilection will not blame us for bringing them acquainted with Novalis, a man of the most indisputable talent, poetical and philosophical; whose opinions, extraordinary, nay, altogether wild and base less as they often appear, are not without a strict coherence in his own mind, and will lead any other mind, that examines them faithfully, into endless considerations; opening the strangest inquiries, new truths, or new possibilities of truth, a whole unexpected world of thought, where, whether for belief or denial, the deepest questions await us.

The

In what is called reviewing such a book as this, we are aware that to the judicious craftsman two methods present themselves. first and most convenient is for the Reviewer to perch himself resolutely, as it were, on the shoulder of his Author, and therefrom to show as if he commanded him, and looked down on him by natural superiority of stature. Whatsoever the great man says or does, the little man shall treat him with an air of knowingness and light condescending mockery; professing, with much covert sarcastn, that this and that other is beyond his comprehension, and cunningly asking his readers if they comprehend it! Herein it will help him mightily, if besides description, he can quote a few pas sages, which, in their detached state, and taken most probably in quite a wrong acceptation of the words, shall sound strange, and to certain hearers, even absurd; all which will be easy enough, if he have any handiness in the business, and address the right audience; truths, as this world goes, being true only for those that have some understanding of them; as, for instance, in the Yorkshire Wolds, and Thames Coal-ships, Christian men enough might be found, at this day, who, if you read them the Thirty-ninth of the Principia, would "grin intelligence from ear to ear.” On the other hand, should our Reviewer meet with any passage, the wisdom of which, deep, plain, and palpable to the simplest, might cause misgivings in the reader, as if here were a man of half-unknown endowment, whom perhaps it were better to wonder at than laugh at, our Reviewer either quietly suppresses it, or citing it with an air of meritorious candour, calis upon his Author, in a tone of command and encouragement, to lay aside his transcendental crotchets, and write always thus, and he will admire him. Whereby the reader again feels

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