together for good.' Nay that, with all his evil, he has already accomplished good, must be admitted in the soberest calculation. How much do we include in this one little word: He gave the death-stab to modern Superstition! That horrid incubus, which dwelt in darkness, shunning the light, is passing away; with all its racks, and poison-chalices, and foul sleeping-draughts, is passing away without return. It was a most weighty service. Does not the cry of "No Popery," and some vague terror or sham-terror of Smithfield fires,' still act on certain minds in these very days? 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 behind us; divided from us by a wall of Centuries, transparent indeed, but more impassable than adamant. For, as we said, Superstition is in its death-lair: the last agonies may endure for decades, or for centuries; but it carries the iron in its heart, and will not vex the earth any more. That, with Superstition, Religion is also passing away, seems to us a still more ungrounded fear. ligion cannot pass away. may hide the stars of the

Re

The burning of a little straw

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 commiseration. If he seek Truth, is he not our brother, and to be pitied? If he do not seek Truth, is he not still our brother, and to 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.

191

NOVALIS.*

[1829.]

A NUMBER of years ago, Jean Paul's copy of Novalis led him to infer that the German reading world was of a quick disposition; inasmuch as, with respect 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 a different conclusion to 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

*FOREIGN REVIEW, No. 7.-Novalis Schriften. Herausgegeben von Ludwig Tieck und Friedrich Schlegel (Novalis' Writings. Edited by Ludwig Tieck and Friedrich Schlegel). Fourth Edition. 2 vols. Berlin, 1826.

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 we would contend that such soapbubble guild 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 ap

plauded 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 everything 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 luxurious readers, soon follows his example these two react still farther 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 Schriften; little more than the Alphabet, and that in gilt letters, of such Philosophy and Art as is here taught in the form of Grammar and Rhetorical Compend: yet Coleridge's works were triumphantly condemned by the whole reviewing world, as clearly unintelligible; and among readers they have still but an unseen circulation; like living brooks, hidden for the present under mountains of froth and theatrical snow-paper, and which only at a distant day, when these mountains shall have decomposed themselves into gas and earthly residuum, may roll forth in their true limpid shape, to gladden the general eye with what beauty and everlasting freshness does reside in them. It is admitted, too, on all hands, that Mr. Coleridge is a man of genius,' that