ciple, as applicable either to himself or ano-tered Baron, who still hovers in our minds, ther? Is it not rather true, as D'Alembert has never did exist in such perfection, and is now said, that for every man of letters, who de-as extinct as our own Squire Western. His serves that name, the motto and the watchword will be FREEDOM, TRUTH, and even this same POVERTY? and that if he fear the last, the two first can never be made sure to him?

descendant is a man of other culture, other aims, and other habits. We question whether there is an aristocracy in Europe, which, taken as a whole, both in a public and private capacity, more honours art and literature, and does more both in public and private to encourage them. Excluded from society! What, we would ask, was Wieland's, Schiller's, Herder's, Johannes Müller's society? Has not Goethe, by birth a Frankfort burgher, been, since his twentysixth year, the companion, not of nobles but of princes, and for half his life a minister of state? And is not this man, unrivalled in so many far deeper qualities, known also and felt to be unrivalled in nobleness of breeding and bearing; fit not to learn of princes, in this respect, but by the example of his daily life to teach them? We hear much of the munificent spirit dis

We have stated these things, to bring the question somewhat nearer its real basis; not for the sake of the Germans, who nowise need the admission of them. The German authors are not poor; neither are they excluded from association with the wealthy and well-born. | On the contrary, we scruple not to say, that, in both these respects, they are considerably better situated than our own. Their booksellers, it is true, cannot pay as ours do; yet, there as here, a man lives by his writings; and, to compare Jorden with Johnson and D'Isracli, somewhat better there than here. No case like our own noble Otway's has met us in their biographies; Boyces and Chattertons are much rarer in Ger-played among the better classes in England; man, than in English history. But farther, and their high estimation of the arts, and generous what is far more important: From the num- patronage of the artist. We rejoice to hear it; ber of universities, libraries, collections of art, we hope it is true, and will become truer and museums, and other literary or scientific in-truer. We hope that a great change has taken stitutions of a public or private nature, we place among these classes, since the time when question whether the chance, which a merito- Bishop Burnet could write of them,-"They rious man of letters has before him, of obtaining are for the most part the worst instructed, and some permanent appointment, some independ- the least knowing, of any of their rank I ever ent civic existence, is not a hundred to one in went among!" Nevertheless, let us arrogate favour of the German, compared with the to ourselves no exclusive praise in this parEnglishman. This is a weighty item, and ticular. Other nations can appreciate the arts, indeed the weightiest of all; for it will be grant- and cherish their cultivators, as well as we. ed, that, for the votary of literature, the rela- Nay, while learning from us in many other tion of entire dependence on the merchants matters, we suspect the Germans might even of literature, is, at best, and however liberal teach us somewhat in regard to this. At all the terms, a highly questionable one. It tempts events, the pity, which certain of our authors him daily and hourly to sink from an artist into express for the civil condition of their brethren a manufacturer; nay, so precarious, fluctuating, in that country, is, from such a quarter, a superand every way unsatisfactory must his civic fluous feeling. Nowhere, let us rest assured, and economic concerns become, that too many is genius more devoutly honoured than there, of his class cannot even attain the praise of by all ranks of men, from peasants and burghcommon honesty as manufacturers. There is, ers up to legislators and kings. It was but no doubt, a spirit of martyrdom, as we have last year that the Diet of the Empire passed an asserted, which can sustain this too: but few act in favour of one individual poet: the final indeed have the spirit of martyrs; and that edition of Goethe's works was guarantied to be state of matters is the safest which requires it protected against commercial injury in every least. The German authors, moreover, to their state of Germany; and special assurances to credit be it spoken, seem to set less store by that effect were sent him, in the kindest terms, wealth than many of ours. There have been from all the Authorities there assembled, some prudent, quiet men among them, who actually of them the highest in his country or in Europe. appeared not to want more wealth,-whom | Nay, even while we write, are not the newswealth could not tempt, either to this hand or that, from their pre-appointed aims. Neither must we think so hardly of the German nobility as to believe them insensible to genius, or of opinion that a patent from the Lion King is so superior to a patent direct from Almighty This hypothesis, therefore, it would seem, is God." A fair proportion of the German au- not supported by facts, and so returns to its thors are themselves men of rank: we mention original elements. The causes it alleges are only, as of our own time, and notable in other impossible: but, what is still more fatal, the respects, the two Stolbergs and Novalis. Let effect it proposes to account for has, in reality, us not be unjust to this class of persons. It is no existence. We venture to deny that the a poor error to figure them as wrapt up in Germans are defective in taste; even as a ceremonial stateliness, avoiding the most gift-nation, as a public, taking one thing with anoed man of a lewer station; and, for their own ther, we imagine they may stand comparison supercilious triviality, themselves avoided by with any of their neighbours; as writers, as all truly gifted men. On the whole, we should critics, they may decidedly court it. True, there change our notion of the German nobleman: is a mass of dulness, awkwardness, and false that ancient, thirsty, thickheaded, sixteen-quar-susceptibility in the lower regions of their lite

papers recording a visit from the Sovereign of Bavaria in person, to the same venerable man; a mere ceremony, perhaps, but one which aimost recalls to us the era of the antique Sages and the Grecian Kings?

that "it is not the finding of truth, but the honest search for it, that profits." We confess, we should be entirely at a loss for the literary creed of that man who reckoned Lessing other than a thoroughly cultivated writer; nay entitled to rank, in this particular, with the most distinguished writers of any existing nation. As a poet, as a critic, philosopher, or controversialist, his style will be found precisely such as we of England are accustomed to admire most; brief, nervous, vivid; yet quiet, without glitter or antithesis; idiomatic, pure without purism, transparent, yet full of character and reflex hues of meaning. "Every sentence," says Horn, and justly, "is like a phalanx;" not a word wrong placed, not a word that could be spared; and it forms itself so calmy and lightly, and stands in its completeness, so gay, yet so impregnable! As a poet he contemptuously denied himself all merit; but his readers have not taken him at his word: here, too, a similar felicity of style attends him; his plays, his Minna von Barnhelm, his Emilie Galoti, his Nathan der Weise, have a genuine and graceful poetic life; yet no works known to us in any language are purer from exaggeration, or any appearance of falsehood. They are pictures, we might say painted not in colours, but in crayons; yet a strange attraction lies in them; for the figures are grouped into the finest attitudes, and rue and spirit-speaking in every line. It is with his style chiefly that we have to do here; yet we must add, that the matter of his works is not less meritorious. His Criticism and philosophic or religious Skepticism were of a higher mood than had yet been heard in Europe, still more in Germany: his Dramaturgie first exploded the pretensions of the French theatre, and, with irresistible conviction, made Shakspeare known to his countrymen; preparing the way for a brighter era in their literature, the chief men of which still thankfully look back to Lessing as their patriarch. His Laocoon, with its deep glances into the philosophy of Art, his Dialogues of Free-masons, a work of far higher import than its title indicates, may yet teach many things to most of us, which we know not, and ought to know.

rature: but is not bad taste endemical in such | but the battle; as indeed himself admits to us, regions of every literature under the sun? Pure Stupidity, indeed, is of a quiet nature, and content to be merely stupid. But seldom do we find it pure; seldom unadulterated with some tincture of ambition, which drives it into new and strange metamorphoses. Here it has assumed a contemptuous trenchant air, intended to represent superior tact, and a sort of allwisdom; there a truculent atrabilious scowl, which is to stand for passionate strength: now we have an outpouring of tumid fervour; now a fruitless, asthmatic hunting after wit and humour. Grave or gay, enthusiastic or derisive, admiring or despising, the dull man would be something which he is not and cannot be. Shall we confess, that, of these too common extremes, we reckon the German error considerably the more harmless, and, in our day, by far the more curable? Of unwise admiration much may be hoped, for much good is really in it but unwise contempt is itself a negation; nothing comes of it, for it is nothing. To judge of a national taste, however, we must raise our view from its transitory modes to its perennial models; from the mass of vulgar writers, who blaze out and are extinguished with the popular delusion which they flatter, to those few who are admitted to shine with a pure and lasting lustre; to whom, by common consent, the eyes of the people are turned, as to its lodestar and celestial luminaries. Among German writers of this stamp, we would ask any candid reader of them, let him be of what country or what creed he might, whether bad taste struck him as a prevailing characteristic. Was Wieland's taste uncultivated? Taste, we should say, and taste of the very species which a disciple of the Negative School would call the highest, formed the great object of his life; the perfection he unweariedly endeavoured after, and, more than any other perfection, has attained. The most fastidious Frenchman might read him, with admiration of his merely French qualities. And is not Klopstock, with his clear enthusiasm, his azure purity, and heavenly, if still somewhat cold and lunar light, a man of taste? His Messias reminds us oftener of no other poets than of Virgil and Racine. But it is to Lessing that an Englishman would turn with the readiest affection. We cannot but wonder that more of this man is not known among us; or that the knowledge of him has not done more to remove such misconceptions. Among all the writers of the eighteenth century, we will not except even Diderot and David Hume, there is not one of a more compact and rigid intellectual structure; who more distinctly knows what he is aiming at, or with more gracefulness, vigour, and precision sets it forth to his readers. He thinks with the clearness and piercing sharpness of the most expert logician: but a genial fire pervades him, a wit, a heartiness, a general richness and fineness of nature, to which most logicians are strangers. He is a skeptic in many things, but the noblest of skeptics; a mild, manly, half-careless enthusiasm struggles through his indignant unbelief: he stands efore us like a toilworn, but unwearied and neroic champion, earning not the conquest

With Lessing and Klopstock might be joined, in this respect, nearly, every one, we do not say of their distinguished, but even of their tolerated contemporaries. The two Jacobis, known more or less in all countries, are little known here, if they are accused of wanting literary taste These are men, whether as thinkers or poets, to be regarded and admired for their mild and lofty wisdom, the devoutness, the benignity and calm grandeur of their philosophical views. In such, it were strange if among so many high merits, this lower one of a just and elegant style, which is indeed their natural and even necessary product, had been wanting. We recommend the elder Jacobi no less for his clearness than for his depth; of the younger, it may be enough in this point of view to say, that the chief praisers of his earlier poetry were the French. Neither are Hamann and Mendelsohn, who could meditate deep thoughts, defective in the power of uttering

them with propriety. The Phadon of the latter, in its chaste precision and simplicity of style, may almost remind us of Xenophon: Socrates, to our mind, has spoken in no modern language so like Socrates, as here, by the lips of this wise and cultivated Jew.*

Among the poets and more popular writers of the time, the case is the same: Utz, Gellert, Cramer, Ramler, Kleist, Hagedorn, Rabener, Gleim, and a multitude of lesser men, whatever excellences they might want, certainly are not chargeable with bad taste. Nay, perhaps of all writers they are the least chargeable with it a certain clear, light, unaffected elegance, of a higher nature than French elegance, it might be, yet to the exclusion of all very deep or genial qualities, was the excellence they strove after, and, for the most part, in a fair measure attained. They resemble English writers of the same, or perhaps an earlier peried, more than any other foreigners: apart from Pope, whose influence is visible enough, Beattie, Logan, Wilkie, Glover, unknown perhaps to any of them, might otherwise have almost seemed their models. Goldsmith also would rank among them; perhaps, in regard to true poetic genius, at their head, for none of them has left us a Vicar of Wakefield; though, in regard to judgment, knowledge, general talent, his place would scarcely be so high.

that their views of it are not only dim and perplexed, but altogether imaginary and delusive. It is proposed to School the Germans in the Alphabet of taste; and the Germans are already busied with their Accidence! Far from being behind other nations in the practice or science of Criticism, it is a fact, for which we fearlessly refer to all competent judges, that they are distinctly, and even considerably, in advance. We state what is already known to a great part of Europe to be true. Criticism has assumed a new form in Germany; it proceeds on other principles, and proposes to itself a higher aim. The grand question is not now a question concerning the qualities of diction, the coherence of metaphors, the fitness of sentiments, the general logical truth, in a work of art, as it was some half century ago among most critics. Neither is it a question mainly of a psychological sort, to be answered by discovering and delineating the peculiar nature of the poet from his poetry, as is usual with the best of our own critics at present; but it is, not indeed exclusively, but inclusively of those two other questions, properly and ultimately a question on the essence and peculiar life of the poetry itself. The first of these questions, as we see it answered, for instance, in the criticisms of Johnson and Kames, relates, strictly speaking, to the garment of poetry; the second, indeed, to its body and material existence, a much higher point; but only the last to its soul and spiritual existence, by which alone can the body, in its movements and phases, be informed with significance and rational life. The problem is not now to determine by what mechanism Addison composed sentences, and struck out similitudes, but by what far finer and more mysterious mechanism Shakspeare organized his dramas, and gave life and individuality to his Ariel and his Hamlet. Wherein lies that life; how have they attained that shape and individuality? Whence comes that empyrean fire, which irradiates their whole being, and pierces, at least in starry gleams, like a liviner thing, into all hearts? Are these dramas of his not verisimilar only, but true; nay, truer than reality itself, since the essence of unmixed op-reality is bodied forth in them under more expressive symbols? What is this unity of theirs; and can our deeper inspection discern it to be indivisible, and existing by necessity, because each work springs, as it were, from the general elements of all Thought, and grows up there. from, into form and expansion, by its own growth? Not only who was the poet, and how did he compose; but what and how was the poem, and why was it a poem and not rhymed eloquence, creation and not figured passion? These are the questions for the critic. Criticism stands like an interpreter between the inspired and the uninspired; be tween the prophet and those who hear the melody of his words, and catch some glimpse of their material meaning, but understand not their deeper import. She pretends to open for us this deeper import; to clear our sense that it may discern the pure brightness of this eter nal Beauty, and recognise it as heavenly, under all forms where it looks forth, and reject, as

The same thing holds, in general, and with fewer drawbacks, of the somewhat later and more energetic race, denominated the Göttingen School, in contradistinction from the Saxon, to which Rabener, Cramer, and Gellert directly belonged, and most of those others indirectly. Hölty, Bürger, the two Stolbergs, are men whom Bossu might measure with his scale and compasses as strictly as he pleased. Of Herder, Schiller, Goethe, we speak not here: they are men of another stature and form of movement, whom Bossu's scale and compasses could not measure without difficulty, or rather not at all. To say that such men wrote with taste of this sort, were saying little; for this forms not the apex, but the basis, in their conception of style; a quality not to be paraded as an excellence, but to be understood as indispensable, as there by necessity, and like a thing of course.

In truth, for it must be spoken out, our ponents are so widely astray in this matter,

The history of Mendelsohn is interesting in itself, and full of encouragement to all lovers of self-improvement. At thirteen he was a wandering Jewish beggar, without health, without home, almost without a language, for the jargon of broken Hebrew and provincial German which he spoke could scarcely be called one. At middle age, he could write this Phedon; was a man of wealth and breeding, and ranked among the teachers of his age. Like Pope, he abode by his original creed, though often solicited to change it: indeed, the grand problem of his life was to better the inward and outward condition of bis own ill-fated people; for whom he actually accomplished much benefit. He was a mild, shrewd, and worthy man; and might well love Phedon and Socrates, for his own character was Socratic He was a friend of Lessing's: indeed a pupil; for Lessing having accidentally met him at chess, recognised the spirit that lay struggling under such incumbrances, and generously undertook to help him. By teaching the poor Jew a little Greek he disenchanted him from the Talmud and the Rabbins. The two were afterwards co-labourers in

Nicolai's Deutsche Bibliothek, the first German Review
of any character; which, however, in the hands of
Nicolai himself, it subsequently lost. Mendelsohn's
Works have mostly been translated into French.

of the earth earthy, all forms, be their mate- | urged, between the Classicists and the Romanrial splendour what it may, where no gleaming of that other shines through.

ticists, in which the Schlegels are assumed, much too loosely, on all hands, as the patrons and generalissimos of the latter, shows us sufficiently what spirit is at work in that long stagnant literature. Doubtless this turbid fermentation of the elements will at length settle into clearness, both there, and here, as in Germany it has already in a great measure done; and perhaps a more serene and genial poetic day is everywhere to be expected with some confidence. How much the example of the Germans may have to teach us in this particular, needs no farther exposition.

The authors and first promulgators of this new critical doctrine, were at one time contemptuously named the New School; nor was it till after a war of all the few good heads in the nation, with all the many bad ones, had ended as such wars must ever do,* that these critical principles were generally adopted; and their assertors found to be no School or new heretical Sect, but the ancient primitive Catholic Communion, of which all sects that had any living light in them were but members and subordinate modes. It is, indeed, the most sacred article of this creed to preach and prac

This is the task of Criticism, as the Germans understand it. And how do they accomplish this task? By a vague declamation clothed in gorgeous mystic phraseology? By vehement tumultuous anthems to the poet and his poetry; by epithets and laudatory similitudes drawn from Tartarus and Elysium, and all intermediate terrors and glories; whereby, in truth, it is rendered clear both that the poet is an extremely great poet, and also that the critic's allotment of understanding, overflowed by these Pythian raptures, has unhappily melted into deliquium? Nowise in this manner do the Germans proceed: but by rigorous scientific inquiry; by appeal to principles which, whether correct or not, have been deduced patiently, and by long investigation, from the highest and calmest regions of Philosophy. For this finer portion of their Criticism is now also embodied in systems; and standing, so far as these reach, coherent, distinct, and methodical, no less than, on their much shallower foundation, the systems of Boileau and Blair. That this new Criticism is a complete, much more a certain science, we are far from meaning to affirm:tise universal tolerance. Every literature of the aesthetic theories of Kant, Herder, Schiller, Goethe, Richter, vary in external aspect, according to the varied habits of the individual; and can at best only be regarded as approximations to the truth, or modifications of it; each critic representing it as it harmonizes more or less perfectly with the other intellectual persuasions of his own mind, and of different classes of minds that resemble his. Nor can we here undertake to inquire what degree of such approximation to the truth there is in each or all of these writers; or in Tieck and the two Schlegels, who, especially the latter, have laboured so meritoriously in reconciling these various opinions; and so successfully in impressing and diffusing the best spirit of them, first in their own country, and now also in several others. Thus much, however, we will say: That we reckon the mere circumstance of such a science being in existence, a ground of the highest consideration, and worthy the best attention of all inquiring men. For we should err widely, if we thought that this new tendency of critical science pertains to Germany alone. It is a European tendency, and springs from the general condition of intellect in Europe. We ourselves have all, for the last thirty years, more or less distinctly felt the necessity of such a science: witness the neglect into which our Blairs and Bossus have silently fallen; our increased and increasing admiration, not only of Shakspeare, but of all his contemporaries, and of all who breathe any portion of his spirit; our controversy whether Pope was a poet; and so much vague effort on the part of our best critics, everywhere, to express some still unexpressed idea concerning the nature of true poetry; as if they felt in their hearts that a pure glory, nay, a divineness, belonged to it, for which they had as yet no name, and no intellectual form. But in Italy too, in France itself, the same thing is visible. Their grand controversy, so hotly

the world has been cultivated by the Germans; and to every literature they have studied to give due honour. Shakspeare and Homer, no doubt, occupy alone the loftiest station in the poetical Olympus; but there is space for all true Singers, out of every age and clime. Ferdusi and the primeval Mythologists of Hindostan, live in brotherly union with the Troubadours and ancient Story-tellers of the West. The way ward mystic gloom of Calderon, the lurid fire of Dante, the auroral light of Tasso, the clear icy glitter of Racine, all are acknowledged and reverenced: nay, in the celestial fore-court an abode has been appointed for the Gressets and Delilles, that no spark of inspiration, no tone of mental music, might remain unrecognised The Germans study foreign nations in a spirit which deserves to be oftener imitated. It is their honest endeavour to understand each with its own peculiarities, in its own special manner of existing; not that they may praise it, or censure it, or attempt to alter it, but simply that they may see this manner of existing as the nation itself sees it, and so participate in whatever worth or beauty it has brought into being. Of all literatures, accordingly, the German has the best as well as the most trans. lations; men like Goethe, Schiller, Wieland, Schlegel, Tieck, have not disdained this task Of Shakspeare there are three entire versions admitted to be good; and we know not how

It began in Schiller's Musenalmanch for 1793. The Schiller and Goethe,) descended there unexpectedly, Xenien, (a series of philosophic epigrams jointly by like a flood of ethereal fire, on the German literary world; quickening all that was noble into new life, but visiting unknown pangs. The agitation was extreme: scarcely the ancient empire of Dulness with astonishment and since the age of Luther, has there been such stir and strife in the intellect of Germany; indeed, scarcely since that age, has there been a controversy, if we consider its ultimate bearings on the best and noblest interests of mankind, so important as this, which, for the time, seemed only to turn on metaphysical subtilties, and came apparent by degrees. matters of mere elgance. Its farther applications be

many partial, or considered as bad. In their criticisms of him we ourselves have long ago admitted, that no such clear judgment or hearty appreciation of his merits had ever been exhibited by any critic of our own.

own esteem and that of others, will be readily inferred. The character of a Poet does, ac. cordingly, stand higher with the Germans than with most nations. That he is a man of integrity as a man; of zeal and honest diligence in his art, and of true manly feeling towards all men, is of course presupposed. Of persons that are not so, but employ their gifts, in rhyme or otherwise, for brutish or malignant purposes, it is understood that such lie without the limits of Criticism, being subjects not for the judge of Art, but for the judge of Police. But even with regard to the fair tradesman, who offers his talent in open market, to do work of a harmless and acceptable sort for hire,-with regard to this person also, their opinion is very low. The "Bread-artist," as they call him, can gain no reverence for himself from these men. "Unhappy mortal!" says the mild but lofty-minded Schiller, "Unhappy mortal! that, with Science and Art, the noblest of all instruments, effectest and attemptest nothing more than the day-drudge with the meanest; that in the domain of perfect freedom, bearest about in thee the spirit of a Slave!" Nay, to the genuine Poet, they deny even the privilege of regarding what so many cherish, under the title of their fame," as the best and highest of all. Hear Schiller again :

To attempt stating in separate aphorisms the doctrines of this new poetical system, would, in such space as is now allowed us, be to ensure them of misapprehension. The science of Criticism, as the Germans practise it, is no study of an hour; for it springs from the depths of thought, and remotely or immediately connects itself with the subtilest problems of all philcsophy. One characteristic of it we may state, the obvious parent of many others. Poetic beauty, in its pure essence, is not, by this theory, as by all our theories, from Hume's to Alison's, derived from any thing external, or of merely intellectual origin; not from association, or any reflex or reminiscence of mere sensations; nor from natural love, either of imitation, of similarity in dissimilarity, of excitement by contrast, or of seeing difficulties overcome. On the contrary, it is assumed as underived; not borrowing its existence from such sources, but as lending to most of these their significance and principal charm for the mind. It dwells, and is born in the inmost Spirit of Man, united to all love of Virtue, to all true belief in God; or rather, it is one with this love and this belief, another phase of the same highest principle in the mysterious infinitude of the human Soul. To apprehend this beauty of poetry, in its full and purest brightness, is not easy, but difficult; thousands on thousands eagerly read poems, and attain not the smallest taste of it; yet to all uncorrupted hearts, some effulgences of this heavenly glory are here and there revealed; and to apprehend it clearly and wholly, to acquire and maintain a sense and heart that sees and worships it, is the last perfection of all humane culture. With mere readers for amusement, therefore, this Criticism has, and can have, nothing to do; these find their amusement, in less or greater measure, and the nature of Poetry remains for ever hidden from them in the deepest concealment. On all hands, there is no truce given to the hypothesis, that the ultimate object of the poet is to please. Sensation, even of the finest and most rapturous sort, is not the end but the means. Art is to be loved, not because of its effects, but because of itself; not because it is useful for spiritual pleasure, or even for moral culture, but because it is Art, and the highest in man, and the soul of all Beauty. To inquire after its utility, would be like inquiring after the utility of a God, or what to the Germans would sound stranger than it does to us, the utility of Virtue and Religion. On these particulars, the authenticity of which we might verify, not so much by citation of individual passages, as by reference to the scope and spirit of whole trea- "But how is the Artist to guard himself from tises, we must for the present leave our read- the corruptions of his time, which on every side ers to their own reflections. Might we advise assail him? By despising its decisions. Let them, it would be to inquire farther, and, if pos-him look upwards to his dignity and the law, sible, to see the matter with their own eyes.

Meanwhile, that all this must tend, among the Germans, to raise the general standard of Art, and of what an Artist ought to be in his

"The Artist, it is true, is the son of his age; but pity for him if he is its pupil, or even its favourite! Let some beneficent divinity snatch him, when a suckling, from the breast of his mother, and nurse him with the milk of a better time, that he may ripen to his full stature be neath a distant Grecian sky. And having grown to manhood, let him return a foreign shape, into his century; not, however, to delight it by his presence, but dreadful, like the son of Agamemnon, to purify it. The matter of his works he will take from the present, but their form he will derive from a nobler time; nay, from beyond all time, from the absolu.e unchanging unity of his own nature. Here, from the pure æther of his spiritual essence, flows down the Fountain of Beauty, uncontami nated by the pollutions of ages and generations, which roll to and fro in their turbid vortex far beneath it. His matter, Caprice can dishonour, as she has ennobled it; but the chaste form is withdrawn from her mutations. The Romar of the first century had long bent the knee be fore his Cæsars, when the statues of Rome were still standing erect; the temples continued holy to the eye, when their gods had long been a laughing-stock; and the abominations of a Nero and a Commodus were silently rebuked by the style of the edifice, which lent them its concealment. Man has lost his dignity, but Art has saved it, and preserved it for him in expressivé marbles. Truth still lives in fiction, and from the copy the original will be restored.

not downwards to his happiness and his wants. Free al.ke from the vain activity inat longs to impress its traces on the fleeting instant, and from the querulous spirit of enthusiasm that