THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES BOHN'S STANDARD LIBEAKY. ESSAYS G. BELL AND SONS, LTD. LONDON : PORTUGAL ST., KINGSWAY CAMBRIDGE : DEIGHTON, BELLANDCO. NEW YORK : THE MACMILLAN CO. BOMBAY : A. H. WHEELER AND CO. ESSAYS * IN A SERIES OF LETTERS ON THE FOLLOWING SUBJECTS I. ON A MAN'S WRITING MEMOIRS OF HIMSELF II. ON DECISION OF CHARACTER III. ON THE APPLICATION OF THE EPITHET ROMANTIC tV. ON SOME OF THE CAUSES BY WHICH EVANGELICAL RELIGION HAS BEEN RENDERED LESS ACCEPTABLE TO PERSONS OF CULTIVATED TASTE BY JOHN FOSTER LONDON G. BELL & SONS, LTD. 1912 [Reprinted from Stereotype plates.'] College Liibrarjr f 21 All* ADVERTISEMENT. PERHAPS it will be thought that pieces writteu so much in the manner of set compositions as the follow- ing, should not have been denominated Letters ; it may therefore be proper to say, that they are so called because they were actually addressed to a friend. They were written however with an intention to put them in print, if, when they were finished, the writer could persuade himself thai they deserved it ; and the temper of even the most inconsiderable pre- tenders to literature in these times is too well known for any one to be surprised that he could so persuade Himself. When he began these letters, his intention was to confine himself within such limits, that essays on twelve or fifteen subjects might be comprised in a volume. But he soon found that so narrow a space would exclude many illustrations not less appropriate or useful than any which would be introduced. A 2 1115947 IV ADVERTISEMENT. It will not seem a very natural manner of com- mencing a course of letters to a friend, to enter formally on a subject in the first sentence. In excuse for this abruptness it may be mentioned, that there was an introductory letter ; but as it was written in the presumption that a considerable variety of subjects would be treated in the compass of a moderate number of letters, it is omitted, as not being adapted to precede what is executed in a manner so different from the design. When writing which has occupied a considerable length, and has been interrupted by considerable intervals, of time, which is also on very different subjects, and was perhaps meditated under the in- fluence of different circumstances, is at last all gone over in one short course of perusal, this immediate succession and close comparison make the writer sensible of some things of which he was not aware in the slow separate stages of the progress. On thus bringing the following essays under one review, the writer perceives some reason to apprehend, that the spirit of the third may appear so different from that of the second, as to give an impression of something like inconsistency. The second may be thought to have an appearance of representing that a man may effect almost every thing, the third that he can effect scaicely any thing. But the writer would say, that the one does not assert the efficacy of human resolution and effort under the same conditions under which the other fXsserts their inefficacy ; and that therefore there is no ADVERTISEMENT. V real contrariety between the principles of the two essays. From the evidence of history and familiar experience we know that, under certain conditions, and within certain limits, (strait ones indeed,) au enlightened and resolute human spirit has great power, this greatness being relative to the measures of things within a small sohere : while it is equally obvious that this enlightened anu resolute spirit, if disregarding these conditions, and attempting to extend its agency over a much wider sphere, shall find its power baffled and annihilated, till it draws back within the boundary. Now the great power of the human mind within the narrow limit being forcibly and 'largely insisted on at one time, and its impotence beyond that limit, at another, the assemblage of sentiments and exempli fications most adapted to illustrate, (and without real or considerable exaggeration,) that power alone, will form apparently so strong a contrast with the assem- blage of thoughts and facts proper for illustrating that imbecility alone, thac on a superficial view the two representations may appear contradictory. The author appeals to the experience of such thinking men as are accustomed to commit their thoughts to writing, whether sometimes, on comparing the pages in which they had endeavoured to place one truth in the strongest light, with those in which they have en- deavoured a strong but yet not extravagant exhibition of another, they have not felt a momentary difficulty to reconcile them, even while satisfied of the substantial justness of both. The whole doctrine on any extensive VI ADVERTISEMENT. moral subject necessarily includes two views which may be considered as its extremes ; and if these are strongly stated quite apart from their relations to each other, both the representations may be perfectly true, and yet may require, in order to the reader's perceiving iheir consistency, a recollection of many intermediate ideas. In the fourth essay, it was not intended to take a comprehensive or systematic view 01 the causes con- tributing to prevent the candid attention and the cordial admission due to evangelical religion, but simply to select a few which had particularly attracted the writer's observation. One or two more would have been specified aud slightly illustrated, if the eesay had not been already too long. ADVERTISEMENT TO TftE NINTH EDITION. A* it is signified in the title-page that the book is corrected in this edition, it may not be impertinent to indicate by a few sentences the nature and amount of the correction. After a revisal which introduced a number of small verbal alterations in one of the later of the preceding editions, the writer had been willing to believe himself excused from any repetition of that kind of task. But when it was becoming probable that the new edition now printed would be called for, an acute literary friend strongly recommended one more and a final revisal ; enforcing his recommendation by pointing out, in various places, what the writer readily acknowledged to be faults in the composition. This determined him to try the effect of a careful inspection throughout with a view to such an abatement of the imperfections of the book, as might make him decidedly content to let it go without any future revision. vlli ADVERTISEMENT TO In this operation there has been no attempt at novelty beyond such slight changes and diminutive additions as appeared necessary in older to give a more exact or full expression of the sense. There is not, probably, mere of any thing that could properly be called new, than might be contained in half-a-dozen pages. Correction, in the strict sense, has been the object. Sentences, of ill-ordered construction, or loose or inconsequential in their connexion, have been attempted to be reformed. In some instances a sentence has been abbreviated, in others a little extended by the insertion of an explanatory or qualifying clause. Here and there a sentence has been substituted for one that was not easily reducible to the exact direction of the line of thought, or appeared feeble in expression. In several instances some modification has been re- quired to obviate a seeming or real inconsistency with what is said in other places. This part of the process may have taken off in such instances somewhat of the cast of force and spirit, exhibited or attempted in the former mode of expression ; and might have been objected to as a deterioration, by a person not aware of the reason for the change. Here and there an epithet, or a combination of words, bordering on extravagance, has yielded to the dictate of the maturer judgment, or more fastidious taste, or less stimulated feelings, of advanced life, and given place to a some- what moderated language. The general course of thought is not affected by these minute alterations; e:icept that, (as the writer would persuade himself,) it THE NINTH EDITION. ix ia in parts a little more distinctly and palpably brought out The endeavour has been to disperse any mists that appeared to lie on the pages, that the ideas might present themselves in as defined a form as the writer could give to any of them which had seemed obscure, and ineffective to their object, from indeterminate or involved enunciation. In the revised diction, as in the original writing, he has designedly and constantly avoided certain artificial forms of phraseology, much in conventional use among even good writers ; and aimed at falling on the words most immediately, naturally, and simply appropriate to the thoughts. If his book be of a quality to impart any useful in- struction, he will hope that the benefit may be con- veyed with perhaps a little more clearness and facility, in consequence of these last corrections it will receive from his hand. January, 1830. CONTENTS. ESSAY L OH A MAN'S WRITING MEMOIRS OP HIMSKLP. LETTER I. Affectionate interest with which we revert to our past life. ...It deserves a brief record for our own use.... Very few things to be noted of the multitude that have occurred. ...Direction and use of such a review as would be re- quired for writing a Memoir.... Importance of our past life considered as the beginning of an endless duration of existence. ...General deficiency of self-observation.. ..Oblivion of the greatest number of our past feelings.... Occasional glimpses of vivid recollection. ...Associations with things and places.. ..The different and unknown associations of different persons witt the same places ....^^..........PAGB 1 LETTER II. All past life an education. ...Discipline and influence from. ..direct instruction ...companionship. ..books. ..scenes of nature. ..and the state of society, p. 10 LETTER III. Very powerful impressions sometimes from particular facts, tending to form discriminated characters. ...Yet very few strongly discriminated and indi- vidual characters found.. ..Most persons belong to general classes of cha- racter.... Immense number and diversity of impressions, of indefinitely various tendency, which the moral being has undergone in the course of life. ...Might be expected that such a confusion of influences would not permit the formation of any settled character. ...That such a character is, nevertbvless, acquired and maintained, is owing to some one leading determination, given by whatever means, to the mind, generally in early life. ...Common self-deceptive belief that we have maintained moral recti- tude, and the exercise of sound reason, under the impressions that have been forming our characters ...............................................p. 18 LETTER IV. Most of the influences under which the characters of men are forming un favourable to wisdom, virtue, and happiness. ...Proof of this if a number of persons, suppose a hundred, were to give a clear account of the circum. fiances that have most effected the state of their minds. ...A few examples a misanthropist. ..a lazy prejudiced thinker...a man fancying himself a genius. ..a projector. ..an antiquary in excessa petty tyrant......... p. 28 LETTER V. An Atheist. ...Slight sketch of the process by which a man in the humbler order of abilities and attainments may become one p. 34 LETTER VI. Th Influence of Religion counteracted by almost all other influences.... Pensive reflections on the imperfect manifestation of the Supreme Being... on the inefficacy of the belief of such a being... on the strangeness of that inefficacy...and on the debasement and infelicity consequent on it.. ..Hap- piness of a devout mail ..... ,....*...M.M*......**....*......*^*....P> 4J XH CONTENTS. LETTER VII. Self-knowledge being supposed the principal object in writing the memoir, the train of exterior fortunes and actions will claim but a subordinate notice in it.. ..If it were intended for the amusement of the public, the writer would do well to fill it rather with incident and action. ...Yet the mere mental history of some men would be interesting to reflecting readers ...of a man, for example, of a speculative disposition, who has passed through many changes of opinion.. ..Influences that warp opinion. ...Effects of time and experience on the notions and feelings cherished in early life. ...Feelings of a sensible old man on viewing a picture of his own mind, drawn by himself when he was young.. ..Failure of excellent designs; disappointment of sanguine hopes. ...Degree of explicitness required in the record. ...Conscience.. ..Impudence and canting false pretences of many writers of " confessions."... Rousseau p. 51 ESSAY II. ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. LETTER I. Examples of the distress and humiliation incident to an Irresolute mind..*. Such a mind cannot be said to belong to itself.. ..Manner in which a man of decisive spirit deliberates, and passes into action. ...Caesar.. ..Such a spirit prevents the fretting away, in harassing alternations of will, of the ani mated feelings required for sustaining the vigour of action. ...Averts im pertinent interference. ...Acquires, if free from harshness of manner, an undisputed and beneficial ascendency over associates.. ..Its last resource inflexible pertinacity.. ..Instance in a man on a jury p. 67 LETTER II. Brief inquiry into the constituents of thi commanding quality.. ..Physical constitution.. ..Possibility, nevertheless, of a firm mind in a feeble body.... Confidence in a man's own judgment. ...This an uncommon distinction.... Picture of a man who wants it.. ..This confidence distinguished from obstinacy.. ..Partly founded on experience.... Takes a high tone of inde- pendence in devising schemes.. ..Distressing dilemmas p. 77 LETTER III. Energy of feeling as necessary as confidence of opinion. ...Conduct that results from their combination. ...Effect and value of a ruling passion.... Great decision of character invests even wicked beings with something which we are tempted to admire.... Satan. ...Zanga.... A Spanish assassin.... Remarkable example of this quality in a man who was a prodigal and became poor, but turned miser and became rich.... Howard. ...Whitefield.... Christian missionaries p. 86 LETTER IV. Courage a chief constituent of the character.. ..Effect of this in encountering censure and ridicule.. ..Almagro, Pizarro, and De Luques.... Defiance of danger.. ..Luther.. ..Daniel. ...Another indispensable requisite to decision is the full agreement of all the powers of the mind.. ..Lady Macbeth.... Richard 1 1 1.. ..Cromwell. ...A father who had the opportunity of saving one of two sons from death... .....p. yj CONTENTS. xiil LETTER V. formidable power of mischief which this high quality gives to bad men.... Care required to prevent its rendering good men unconciliating and over- bearing ...Independence and overruling manner In consultation ...Lord Chatham.. ..Decision of character not incompatible with sensibility and mild manners. ...But probably the majority of the most eminent examples of it deficient in the kinder affections.. ..King of Prussia. ...Situations in which it may be an absolute duty to act in opposition to the promptings of those affections p. 104 LETTER VI. Circumstances tending to consolidate this Character. ...Opposition.. ..Desertion. ...Marius ...Satan.. ..Charles de Moor. ...Success has the same tendency.... Caesar.. ..Habit of associating with inferiors. ...Voluntary means of forming or conforming this character.. ..The acquisition of perfect knowledge in the department in which we are to act.. ..The cultivation of a connected and conclusive manner of reasoning. ...The resolute commencement of action, In a manner to commit ourselves irretrievably.. ..Ledyard.... The choice of a dignified order of concerns.. ..The approbation of conscience.. ..Yet melan- choly to consider how many of the most distinguished possessors of the quality have been wicked p. Ill ESSAY III. ON THE APPLICATION OP THE EPITHET ROMANTIC. LETTER I. Great convenience of having a number of words that will answer the purposes of ridicule or reprobation without having any precise meaning.. ..Puritan. ...Methodist. ...Jacobin. ...The word Romantic of the greatest service to persons, who, wanting to show their scorn, have not wherewithal in the way of sense or wit.. ..Whenever this epithet is applied, '^t the exact meaning be demanded.. ..Does it attribute, to what it is applied to, the kind of absurdity prevalent in the works called Romances t... That absurdity was from the predominance, in various modes, of imagination over judg- ment.. ..Mental character of the early Romance writers.. ..Opposite cha racter of Cervantes.. ..Delightful, delusive, and mischievous operation of a predominant imagination.. ..Yet desirable, for several reasons, that the Imagination should have this ascendency in early life p. 127 LETTER II. One of the modes of this ascendency justly called Romantic, is, the unfounded persuasion of something peculiar and extraordinary in a person's destiny ...This vain expectation may he relative to great talent and achievement, or to great felicity. ...Things ardently anticipated which not only cannot be attained, but would be unadapted to the nature and condition cf man if they could. ...A person that hoped to out-do rather than imitate Gregory Lopez, the hermit.... Absurd expectations of parents.. ..Utopian anticipations of philosophers.. ..Practical absurdity of the age of chivalry. ...The extrava- gant and exclusive passion for what is grand p. 140 LETTER III. The epithet applicable to hopes and projects inconsistent with the known relations between ends and means.. ..Reckoning on happy casualties.... Musing on instances of good luck.. ..Novels go more than half the length of the older Romance in promoting this pernicious tendency of the mind. ...Specimen of what they do in this way.. ..Fancy magnifies the sinaMoct XIV CONTENTS. means into an apparent competence to the greatest ends.. ..This delosiro calculation apt to be admitted in schemes of benevolence. ...Projects for civilizing savage nations. ...Extravagant expectations of the efficacy of direct instruction, in the lessons of education, and in preaching.. ..Re- formers apt to overrate the power of means....The fancy abou* tne omni- potence of truth. ...Our expectations ought to be limited by what we actually see and know of human nature. ...Estimate of that nature.. ..Prevalence of passion and appetite against conviction... p. 150 LETTER IV. Christianity the grand appointed mean of reforming the world. ...But though the religion itself be a communication from heaven, the administration of it by human agents is to be considered as a merely human mean, excepting go far as a special divine energy is made to accompany it.. ..Its comparatively small success proves in what an extremely limited measure that energy, as yet, accompanies it.. ..Impotence of man to do what it leaves undone.... Irrational to expect from its progressive administration a measure of success indefinitely surpassing the present state of its operations, till we see some signs of a great change in the Divine Government of the world. ...Folly of projects to reform mankind which disclaim Religion.. ..Nothing in human nature to meet and give effect to the schemes and expedients of the moral revolutionist.... Wretched state of that nature.. ..Sample of the absurd esti- mates of its condition by the irreligious menders of society p. 166 LETTER V. Melancholy reflection....No consolation amidst the mysterious economy but in an assurance that an infinitely good Being presides, and will at length open out a new moral world. ...Yet many moral projectors are solicitous to keep their schemes for the amendment of the world clear of any reference to the Almighty.. ..Even good men are guilty of placing too much depend- ence on subordinate powers and agents. ...The representations in this Essay not intended to depreciate to nothing the worth and use of the whole stock of means, but to reduce them, and the effects to be expected from them, to a sober estimate.... A humble thing to be a man. ...Inculcation of devout submission, and diligence, and prayer.. ..Sublime quality and inde- finite efficacy of this last, as a mean. ...Conclusion; briefly marking out a few general characters of sentiment and action to which, though very un- common, the epithet Romantic is unjustly applied p. 175 ESSAY IV. ON SOME Of THE CAUSES BY WHICH EVANGELICAL RELIGION HAS BKKN RENDERED UNACCEPTABLE TO PERSONS OF CULTIVATED TASTE. LETTER I. Nature of the displacency wVth which some of the most peculiar features of Christianity are regarded by Essay on Man. ...Novels. ...Melancholy reflections on the Review.... Ce 1 --- clusion p. 314 ESSAY 1. ON A MAN'S WRITING MEMOIRS OP HIMSELF, LETTER I. MY DEAR FRIEND, EVERY one knows with what interest it is natural to retrace the course of our own lives. The past states and periods of a man's being are retained in a connexion with the present by that principle of self-love, which is unwilling to relinquish its hold on what has once been his. Though he cannot but be sensible of how little consequence his life can have been in the creation, compared with many other trains of events, yet he has felt it more important to himself than all other trains together ; and you will very rarely find him tired of narrating again the little history, or at least the favourite parts of the little history, of himself. To turn this partiality to some account, I recollect having proposed to two or three of my friends, that they should write, each principally however for his own use, memoirs of their own lives, endeavouring not M) much to enumerate the mere facts and events of life, as to discriminate the successive states of the mind, and so trace the progress of what may be called the character In this progress consists the chieJ imocr- B 2 ON A MAN'S WRITING tance of life ; but even on an inferior account also to this of what the character has become, and regarded merely as supplying a constant series of interests to the affections and passions, we have all accounted our life an inestimable possession which it deserved incessant rares and labours to retain, and which continues in most cases to be still held with anxious attachment. What has been the object of so much partiality, and has been delighted and pained by so many emotions, might claim, even if the highest interest were out of the question, that a short memorial should be retained by him who has possessed it, has seen it all to this moment depart, and can never recall it. To write memoirs of many years, as twenty, thirty, or forty, seems, at the first glance, a very onerous task. To reap the products of so many acres of earth indeed might, to one person, be an undertaking of mighty toil. But the materials of any value that all past life ca* supply to a recording pen, would be reduced by a dis- cerning selection to a very small and modest amount. Would as much as one page of moderate size be deemed by any man's self-importance to be due, on an average, to each of the days that he has lived ? No man would vidge more than one in ten thousand of all his thoughts, sayings, and actions, worthy to be mentioned, if memory were capable of recalling them.* Necessarily a very 'arge portion of what has occupied the successive years of life was of a kind to be utterly useless for a history df if ; being merely for the accommodation of the time. Perhaps in the space of forty or fifty years, millions of sentences are proper to be uttered, and many thousands of affairs requisite to be transacted, or of journeys to An exception may be admitted for the few individuals whose daily deliberations, discourses and proceedings, affect the interests on a grand scale. MEMOIRS OK HIMSELF. 3 be performed, which it would be ridiculous to record. They are a kind of material for the common expenditure and waste of the day. Yet it is often by a detail of this subordinate economy of life, that the works of fiction, the narratives of age, the journals of travellers, and even grave biographical accounts, are made so unreasonably long. As well might a chronicle of the coats that a man has worn, with the colour and date of each, be called his life, for any important uses of re- lating its history. As well might a man, of whom I inquire the dimensions, the internal divisions, and the use, of some remarkable building, begin to tell me how much wood was employed in the scaffolding, where the mortar was prepared, or how often it rained while the work was proceeding. But, in a deliberate review of all that we can re- member of past life, it will be possible to select a certain proportion which may with the most propriety be regarded as the history of the man. What I am recommending is, to follow the order of time, and reduce your recollections, from the earliest period to the present, into as simple a statement and explanation as you can, of your feelings, opinions, and habits, and of the principal circumstances through each stage that have influenced them, till they have become at last what they now are. Whatever tendencies nature may justly be deemed to have imparted in the first instance, you would pro- bably find the greater part of the moral constitution of your being composed of the contributions of many years and events, consolidated by degrees into what we call character ; and by investigating the progress of the accumulation, you would be assisted to judge more clearly how far the materials are valuable, the mixture congruous, and the whole conformation worthy ON A MANS WRITING to remain unaltered. With resoect to any friend who greatly ''nterests us, we have curiosity to obtain an accurate account of the past train of his life and feelings : and whatever other reasons there may be for such a wish, it partly springs from a consciousness how much this retrospective knowledge would assist to complete our estimate of that friend ; but our estimate of ourselves is of more serious consequence. The elapsed periods of life acquire importance too from the prospect of its continuance. The smallest thing rises into consequence when regarded as the commencement of what has advanced, or is advancing into magnificence. The first rude settlement of Ro- mulus would have been an insignificant circumstance, and might justly have sunk into oblivion, if Rome had not at length commanded the world. The little rill near the source of one of the great American rivers, is an interesting object to the traveller, who is apprised, as he steps across it, or walks a few miles along its bank, that this is the stream which runs so far, and which gradually swells into so vast a flood. So, while I anticipate the endless progress of life, and wonder through what unknown scenes it is to take its course, its past years lose that character of vanity which would seem to belong to a train of fleeting, perishing moments, and I see them assuming the dignity of a commencing eternity. In them I have begun to be that conscious existence which I am to be through endless duration ; md I feel a strange emotion of curiosity about this ttle life, in which I am setting out on such a progress ; i cannot be content without an accurate sketch of tin; windings thus far of a stream which is to bear me on for ever. I try to imagine how it will be to recollect, at a far distant point of my era, what I was when here ; nd wish if it were possible to retain, as I advance, soir.p MliMOJKU (Jtf IIIMSk-LF. 5 clear trace of the whole course of my existence within the scope of reflection ; to fix in my mind so strong an idea of what I have been in this original period of my time, that I may possess this idea in ages too remote for calculation. The review becomes still more important, when I learn the influence which this first part of the progress will have on the happiness or misery of the next. One of the greatest difficulties in the way of executing the proposed task will have been caused by the extreme deficiency of that self-observation, which is of no common habit either of youth or any later age. Men are content to have no more intimate sense of their existence than what they feel in the exercise of their faculties on ex- traneous objects. The vital being, with all its agency and emotions, is so blended and absorbed in these its exterior interests, that it is very rarelj collected and concentrated in the consciousness of its own absolute self, so as to be recognised as a thing internal, apart and alone, for its own inspection and knowledge. Men parry their minds as for the most part they carry their watches, content to be ignorant of the constitution and action within, and attentive only to the little exterior circle of things, to which the passions, like indexes, are pointing. It is surprising to see how little self-knowledge a person not watchfully observant of himself may have gained, in the whole course of an active, or even an inquisitive life. He may have lived almost an age, and traversed a continent, minutely examining its curiosities, and interpreting the half-obliterated characters on its monuments, unconscious the while of a process operating on his own mind, to impress or to erase characteristics of much more importance to him than all the figured brass or marble that Europe contains. After having explored many u cavern or dark ruinous avenue, he 6 ox A MAN'S WRITING. may have left undetected a darker recess within where there would be much more striking discoveries. He may have conversed with many people, in different lan- guages, on numberless subjects ; but, having neglected those conversations with himself by which his whole moral being should have been kept continually dis- closed to his view, he is better qualified perhaps to describe the intrigues of a foreign court, or the progress of a foreign trade ; to depict the manners of the Italians, or the Turks ; to narrate the proceedings of the Jesuits, or the adventures of the gypsies ; than to write the history of his own mind. If we had practised habitual self-observation, we could not have failed to be made aware of much that it had been well for us to know. There have been thousands of feelings, each of which, if strongly seized upon, and made the subject of reflection, would have shown us what our character was, and what it was likely to be become. There have been numerous in- cidents, which operated on us as tests, and so fully brought out our prevailing quality, that another person, who should have been discriminatively observing us, would speedily have formed a decided estimate. But unfortunately the mind is generally too much occupied by the feeling or the incident itself, to have the slightest care or consciousness that any thing could be learnt, or is disclosed. In very early youth it is almost inevitable for it to be thus lost to itself even amidst its own feelings, and the external objects of attention ; but it seems a contemptible thing, and certainly is a criminal and dangerous thing, for a man in mature life to allow himself this thoughtless escape from self-examination. We have not only neglected to observe what our feelings indicated, but have also in a very great degree erased to remember what they were. We may woiuiei MEMOIRS OP IllMShLP. 7 /tow we could pass away successively from so many scenes and conjunctures, each in its time of no trifling moment in our apprehension, and retain so light an impressio.% that we have now nothing distinctly to tell about whax once excited our utmost emotion. As to my own mind, I perceive that it is becoming uncertain of the exact nature of many feelings of considerable interest, even of com- paratively recent date ; and that the remembrance of what was felt in very early life has nearly faded away. I have just been observing several children of eight or ten years old, in all the active vivacity which enjoys the plenitude of the moment without " looking before or after ;" and while observing, I attempted, but without success, to recollect what I was at that age. I can indeed remember the principal events of the period, and the actions and projects to which my feelings im- pelled me ; but the feelings themselves, in their own pure juvenility, cannot be revived so as to be described and placed in comparison with those of later life. What is become of all those vernal fancies which had so much power to touch the heart ? What a number of sentiments have lived and revelled in the soul that are now irrevocably gone ! They died like the singing birds of that time, which sing no more. The life we then had, now seems almost as if it could not have been our own. We are like a man returning, after the absence of many years, to visit the embowered cottage where he passed the morning of his life, and finding only a relic of its ruins. Thus an oblivious shade is spread over that early tract of our time, where some of the acquired propensities which remain in force to this hour may have had their origin, in a manner of which we had then no thought or consciousness. When we met with the incident, or heard the conversation, or saw the spectacle, or felt the ON A MAN S WRITING emotion, which were the first causes or occasions of some of the chief permanent tendencies of future life, how little could we think that long afterwards we might be curiously and in vain desirous to investigate thosf tendencies back to their origin. In some occasional states of the mind, we can look back much more clearly, and much further, than at otner times. I would advise to seize those short in- tervals of illumination which sometimes occur without our knowing the cause, and in which the genuine aspect of some remote event, or long-forgotten image, is recovered with extreme distinctness in spontaneous glimpses of thought, such as no effort could have com- manded ; as the sombre features and minute objects of a distant ridge of hills become strikingly visible in the strong gleams of light which transiently fall on them. An instance of this kind occurred to me but a few hours since, while reading what had no perceptible connexion with a circumstance of my early youth, which probably I have not recollected for many years, and which was of no unusual interest at the time it happened. That circumstance came suddenly to my mind with a clearness of representation which I was nol able to retain to the end of an hour, and which I could uot at this instant renew by the strongest effort. 1 seemed almost to see the walls and windows of a par- ticular room, with four or five persons in it, who were so perfectly restored to my imagination, that I could recognise not only the features, but even the momentary expressions, of their countenances, and the tones of their voices. According to different states of the mind too, retro- spect appears longer or shorter. It may happen that some memorable circumstance of verv early life shall be so powerfully recalled, as to contract the wide MEMOIRS OP HIMSELF. 9 intervening space, by banishing from the view, a hlti" while, all the series of intermediate remembrances , but when this one object of memory retires again to its r emoteness and indifference, and all the others resume their proper places and distances, the retrospect appears long. Places and things which have an association with any of the events or feelings of past life, will greatly assist the recollection of them. A man of strong associations finds memorials of himself already traced on the places where he has conversed with happiness or misery. If an old man wished to animate for a moment the languid and faded ideas which he retains of his youth, he might walk with his crutch across the green, where he once played with companions who are now laid to repose probably in another green spot not far off. An aged saint may meet again some of the affecting ideas of his early piety, in the place where he first found it happy to pray. A walk in a meadow, the sight of a bank of flowers, perhaps even of some one flower, a landscape with the tints of autumn, the descent into a valley, the brow of a mountain, the house where a friend has been met, or has resided, or has lied, have often produced a much more lively recol- lection of our past feelings, and of the objects and events which caused them, than the most perfect description could have done ; and we have lingered a considerable time for the pensive luxury of thus resuming the long- departed state. But there are many to whom local associations present images which they fervently wish they could exorcise ; images which haunt the places where crimes had been perpetrated, and which seem to approach and glare on the criminal as he hastily passes by, especially f in the evening or the night. No local associations are 10 ON A MAN'S WRITING so impressive as those of guilt. It may here be observecl that as each one has his own separate remembrances, giving to some places an aspect and a significance which he alone can perceive, there must be an unknown number of pleasing, or mournful, or dreadful asso- ciations, spread over the scenes inhabited or visited by men. We pass without any awakened consciousness by the bridge, or the wood, or the house, where there is something to excite the most painful or frightful ideas in another man if he were to go that way, or it may be in the companion who walks along with us. How much there is in a thousand spots of the earth, that is invisible and silent to all but the conscious individual ! I hear a voice you cannot hear I see a hand you cannot see. LETTER II. WE may regard our past life as a continued thougn irregular course of education, through an order, or rather disorder of means, consisting of instruction, companionship, reading, and the diversified influences of the world. The young mind, in the mere natural impulse of its activity, and innocently unthinking of any process it was about to undergo, came forward to meet the operation of some or all of these plastic circumstances. It would be worth while to examine in what manner and measure they have respectively had their influence on us. Few persons can look back to the early period when they were most directly the subjects of instruction, without a regret for themselves, (which may be ex MEMOIRS OF HI.MSKL*. 11 tended to the huinun race,) that the result of instruction, excepting that which leads to evil, bears so small a proportion to its compass and repetition. Yet some good consequence must follow the diligent inculcation of truth and precept on the youthful mind ; and our consciousness of possessing certain advantages derived from it will be a partial consolation, in the review which will comprise so many proofs of its comparative in- efficacy. You can recollect, perhaps, the instructions to which you feel yourself permanently the most indebted, and some of those which produced the greatest effect at the time, those which surprised, delighted, or mor- tified you. You can partially remember the facility or difficulty of understanding, the facility or difficulty of believing, and the practical inferences which you drew from principles, on the strength of your own reason, and sometimes in variance with those made by your in- structors. You can remember what views of truth and duty were most frequently and cogently presented, what passions were appealed to, what arguments were employed, and which had the greatest influence. Per- haps your present idea of the most convincing and persuasive mode of instruction, may ue derived from your early experience of the manner of those persons with whose opinions you felt it the most easy and delightful to harmonize, who gave you the most agree- able consciousness of your faculties expanding to the light, like morning flowers, and who, assuming the least of dictation, exerted the greatest degree of power. You can recollect the submissiveness with which your mind yielded to instructions as from an oracle, or the hardihood with which you dared to examine and oppose them. You can remember how far they became, as to your own conduct, an internal authority 01 reason and conscience, when you wore not under the 12 ON A T.T AW 8 WRITING inspection of those who inculcated them ; and what classes of persons or things around you they contri- outed to make you dislike or approve. And you can perhaps imperfectly trace the manner and the particulars in which they sometimes aided, or sometimes counter- acted, those other influences which have a far stronger efficacy on the character than instruction can boast. Some persons can recollect certain particular sen- tences or conversations which made so deep an im- pression, perhaps in some instances they can scarcely tell why, that they have been thousands of times re- called, while innumerable others have been forgotten or they can revert to some striking incident, coming in aid of instruction, or being of itself a forcible instruction, which they seem even now to see as plainly as when it happened, and of which they will retain a perfect idea to the end of life. The most remarkable circumstances of this kind deserve to be recorded in the supposed memoirs. In some instances, to recollect the instructions of a former period will be to recollect too the excellence, the affection, and the death, of the persons who gave them. Amidst the sadness of such a remembrance, it will be a consolation that they are not entirely lost to us. Wise monitions, when they return on us with this melancholy charm, have more pathetic cogency than when they were first uttered by the voice of a living friend. It will be an interesting occupation of the pensive hour, to recount the advantages which we havve received from the beings who have left the world, and to reinforce our virtues from the dust of those who first taught them. In our review, we shall find that the companions of our childhood, and of each succeeding period, have bad a great influence on our characters. A creature so prone to conformity as man, and at the same time MEMOIRS OF HIMSELF. 11 so capable of being moulded into partial dissimilarity by social antipathies, cannot have conversed with his fellow beings thousands of hours, walked with them thousands of miles, undertaken with them numberless enterprises, smaller and greater, and had every passion, by turns, awakened in their company, without being immensely affected by all this association. A large share, indeed, of the social interest may have been of so common a kind, and with persons of so common an order, that the effect on the character has been too little peculiar to be perceptible during the progress. We were not sensible of it, till we came to some of those circumstances and changes in life, which make us aware of the state of our minds by the manner in which new objects are acceptable or repulsive to them. On re- moving into a new circle of society, for instance, we could perceive, by the number of things in which we found ourselves uncomplacent and unconformable with the new acquaintance, the modification which our senti- ments had received in the preceding social intercourse. But in some instances we have been in a short time sensible of a powerful force operating on our opinions, tastes, and habits, and reducing them to a greatly altered cast. This effect is inevitable, if a young sus- ceptible mind happens to become familiarly acquainted with a person in whom a strongly individual charactt-i is sustained and dignified by uncommon mental re- sources ; and it may be found that, generally, the greatest measure of effect has been produced by the influence of a very small number of persons ; often of one only, whose master-spirit had more power to surround and assimilate a young ingenuous being, than the collective influence of a multitude of the persons, whose characters were moulded in the manufactory of custom, and sent *nrtl likp images of clay of kinder 1 14 ON A MAN'S WRIT1HO si ape and varnish from a pottery. I am supposing, all along, that the person who writes memoirs of him- self, is conscious of something more peculiar than a mere dull resemblance of that ordinary form and in- significance of character, which it strangely depreciates our nature to see such a multitude exemplifying. As to the crowd of those who are faithfully stamped, like bank notes, with the same marks, with the difference only of being worth more guineas or fewer, they are mere particles of a class, mere pieces and bits of the great vulgar or the small ; they need not write their history, it may be found in the newspaper chronicle, or the gossip's or the sexton's narrative. It is obvious, in what I have suggested respecting the research through past life, that all the persons who are recalled to the min^, as having had an influence on us, must stand before it in judgment. It is impossible to examine our moral and intellectual growth without forming an estimate, as we proceed, of those who re- tarded, advanced, or perverted it. Our dearest relations and friends cannot be exempted. There will be in some instances the necessity of blaming where we would wish to give entire praise ; though perhaps some worthy motives and generous feelings may, at the same time, be discovered in the conduct, where they had hardly been perceived or allowed before. But, at any rate, it is important that in no instance the judgment be duped into delusive estimates, amidst the examination, and so as to compromise the principles of the examination, by which we mean to bring ourselves to rigorous justice. For if any indulgent partiality, or mistaken idea, of that duty which requires a kind and candid feeling to accompany the clearest discernment of defects, may be permitted to beguile our judgment out of the decisions ni justice in favour of others, self-love, a still more MEMOIRS OF HIMSELF 1.5 indulgent hnd partial feeling, will not fail to practise tlie same beguilemcnt in favour of ourselves. But indeed it would seem impossible, besides being absurd, tc apply one set of principles to judge of ourselves, an another to judge of those with whom \\e have associated. Every person of tolerable education has been con- siderably influenced by the books he has read ; and remembers with a kind of gratitude several of those that made without injury the earliest and the strongest impression. It is pleasing at a more advanced period to look again into the early favourites ; though the mature person may wonder how some of them had once power to absorb his passions, make him retire into a lonely wood in order to read unmolested, repel the approaches of sleep, or, when it came, infect it with visions. A capital part of the proposed task would be to recollect the books that have been read with the greatest interest, the periods when they were read, the partiality which any of them inspired to a particular mode of life, to a study, to a system of opinions, or to a rlass of human characters ; to note the counteraction of later ones (where we have been sensible of it) to the effect produced by the former ; and then to en- deavour to estimate the whole and ultimate influence. Considering the multitude of facts, sentiments, and characters, which have been contemplated by a person who has read much, the effect, one should think, must have been very great. Still, however, it is probable that a very small number of books will have the pre- eminence in our mental history. Perhaps your memory will promptly recur to six or ten that have contributed more to your present habits of feeling and thought than all the rest together. It may be observed here, that when a few books of the same kinii have pleased us emphatically, it is a possible ill consequence that 16 ON A MANS WRITING they may create an almost exclusive taste, which is carried through all future reading, and is pleased onlv with books of that kind. It might be supposed that the scenes of nature, ar amazing assemblage of phenomena if their effect v/ere not lost through familiarity, would have a powerful influence on opening minds, and transfuse into the in- ternal economy of ideas and sentiment something of a character and a colour correspondent to the beauty, /icissitude, and grandeur, which press on the senses. They have this effect on minds of genius; and Beattie's Minstrel maybe as just as it is a captivating description of the perceptions and emotions of such a spirit. But on the greatest number this influence operates feebly; you will not see the process in children, nor the result in mature persons. That significance is unfelt, which belongs to the beauties of nature aa something more than their being merely objects of the senses. And in many instances even the senses themselves are so deficient in attention, so idly passive, and therefore apprehend these objects so slightly, undefinedly, and transiently, that it is no wonder the impressions do not go so much deeper than the senses as to infuse a mood of sentiment, awaken the mind to thoughtful and imaginative action, and form in it an order of feelings and ideas congenial with what is fair and great in ex- ternal nature. This defect of sensibility and fancy is unfortunate amidst a creation infinitely rich with grand and beautiful objects, which can impart to a mind adapted and habituated to converse with nature an exquisite sentiment, that seems to <*.ome as by an emanation from a spirit dwelling in those objects. It js unfortunate I have thought within these few minutes while looking out on one jf the most enchanting jights of the most interesting reason of the year, and MEMOIRS OF HIMSELF. | f hearing the voices of a company of persons, to whom I can perceive that this soft and solemn shade over the earth, the calm sky, the beautiful stripes of cloud, the stars, the waning moon just risen, are things not in the least more interesting than the walls, ceiling, and randle-light of a room. I feel no vanity in this instance ;. for perhaps a thousand aspects of night not less striking than this, have appeared before my eyes and departed, not only without awaking emotion, but almost without attracting notice. If minds in general are not made to be strongly affected by the phenomena of the earth and heavens, they are however all subject to be powerfully influenced by the appearances and character of the human world. I suppose a child in Switzerland, growing up to a man, would Lave acquired incomparably more of the cast of his mind from the events, manners, and actions of the next village, though its inhabitants were but his occa- sional companions, than from all the mountain scenes, the cataracts, and every circumstance of beauty or sublimity in nature around him. We are all true to our species, and very soon feel its importance to us, (though benevolence be not the basis of the interest,) far beyond the importance of any thing that we see besides. Beginning your observation with children, you may have noted how instantly they will turn their attention away from any of the aspects of nature, how- ever rare or striking, if human objects present them- selves to view in any active manner. This " leaning to our kind" brings each individual not only under the influence attending immediate association with a few, but under the operation of numberless influences, from all the moral diversities of which he is a spectator in the living world ; a complicated though insensible tyranny, of which every fashion, folly, and vice, may exercise itsp.tr>. a ' ON A MAN'S WHITING Some persons woi'ld be able to recollect very strong and influential impressions made, in almost the first years of life, by some of the events and appearances which they witnessed in surrounding society. But whether the operation on us of the formative power of the community began with impressions of extraordinary force or not, it has been prolonged through the whole course of our acquaintance with mankind. It is no little effect for the living world to have had on us, that very many of our present opinions are owing to what we have seen and experienced in it. That thinking which has involuntarily been kept in exercise on it, however remiss and desultory, could not fail to result in a number of settled notions, which may be said to be shaped upon its facts and practices. We could not be in sight of it, and in intercourse with it, without the formation of opinions adjusted to what we found in it ; and thus far it has been the creator of our mental economy. But its operation has not stopped here. It will not confine itself to occupying the understanding, and yield to be a mere subject for judgments to be formed upon ; but all the while that the observer is directing on it the exercise of his judicial capacity, it is reactively throwing on him various moral influences and infections. LETTER III. A PERSON capable of being deeply interested, and accustomed to reflect on his feelings, will have observed in himself thia subjection to the influences of what has been presented to him in society. Their force may have been sufficient in some instances to go far toward MEMOJHS OF HIMSELF. 19 new-modelling the habit of the mind. Recollect your own experience. After witnessing some remarkabie transaction, :>r some new and strange department of life and manners, or some striking disclosure of character, or after listening to some extraordinary conversation, or impressive recital of facts, you may have been conscious that what you have heard or seen has given your mind some one strong determination of a nature resulting from the quality of that which has made tht impression. It is true, that your receiving the effect in this one manner implies the existence of an adapted predisposition, for many other persons might not have been similarly affected ; yet the newly acquired impulse might be so different from the former action of your mind, and at the same time so strong, as to give you the consciousness of a greatly altered moral being. In the state thus suddenly formed, some of the previously existing dispositions had sunk subordinate, while others, which had been hitherto inert, were grown into an im- perious prevalence : or even a new one appeared to have been originated.* While this state continues, a man is in character another man ; and if the moral tendency thus excited or created, could be prolonged into the sequel of his life, the difference might be such, that it would be by means only of his person that he would be recognised for the same ; while an observer ignorant of the cause would be perplexed and sur- prised at the change. Now this permanence of the new moral direction might be effected, if the impression which causes it were so intensely powerful as to haunt him ever after ; or if he were subjected to a long suc- cession of impressions of the same tendency, without So great an effect, however, as this last, is perhaps rarely ex penenced from even the most powerful causes, except in t-vly life. c 2 ox A MAN'S WRITING any powerfully opposite ones intervening to break the process. You have witnessed perhaps a scene of injustice and oppression, and have retired with an indignation which has imprecated vengeance. Now supposing that the image of this scene were to be revived in your mind in all its odiousness, as often as any iniquitous circum- stance in society should present itself to your notice, and that you had an entire persuasion that your feeling was the pure indignation of virtue ; or, supposing that you were rrpratedly to witness similar instances, without diminution oi the abhorrence by familiarity with them ; the consequence might be that you would acquire the spirit of Draco or Minos. It is easy to imagine the impression of a few atro- cious facts on an ardent constitution, converting a humane horror of cruelty into the vindictive fanaticism of Montbar, the Buccaneer.* A person of gentler sensibility, by accidentally witnessing a scene of distress, of which none of the circumstances caused disgust toward the sufferers, or indignation against others as the cause of the suffering, having once tasted the pleasure of soothing woes which perhaps death alone can terminate, might be led to seek other instances of distress, acquire both an aptitude and a partiality for the charitable office, and become a pensive philan- thropist. The repulsion which has struck the observer of some extravagance of ostentatious wealth, or some exces-s of frivolity and dissipation, and acted on him again at sight of every succeeding and inferior instance of the same kind, with a greater force than would have been felt in these inferior instances, if the offensive confirm. The mind of the greater proportion of human beings, if attempted to be wrought into any boldly specific form, proves like a half-fluid substance, in which angles or circles, or any otner figures may be cut, but which re- covers, while you are look'ng, its forme" state ai;/ SM ON A MAN S WRITING closes them up ; or like a quantity of dust, which may be raised into momentary reluctant shapes, but which is re- lapsing, amidst the operation, to wards its undefined mass. But if characters of strong individual peculiarity are somewhat rare, such as are marked with the respective distinctions which discriminate moral classes are very numerous ; the decidedly avaricious for instance ; the devoted slaves of fashion ; and the eager aspirers to power, in however confined a sphere, the little Alex- anders of a mole-hill, quite as ambitious, in their way, as the great Alexander of a world. It is observable here, how much more largely the worse prominences of human character meet our attention than the better. And it is a melancholy illustration of the final basis of character, human nature itself, that both the dis- tinctions which designate a bad class, and those which constitute a bad individual peculiarity, are attained with far the greatest frequency and facility. While, however, I have the most entire conviction of this mighty inclination to evil, which is the grand cause of all the diversified forms of evil ; and while, at the same time, I hold the vulgar belief of a great native dif- ference between men, in the original temperament of those principlesj which are to be unfolded by the progress of time i^ta intellectual powers and moral dispositions ; I yet cannot but perceive that the im- mediate and occasional causes of the greater portion of the prominent actual character of human beings, are to be found in those moral elements through which they pass. And if one might be pardoned for putting in words so fantastic an idea, as that of its being possible for a man to live back again to his infancy, through all the scenes of his life, and to give back from his mind and character, at each time and circumstance, as he it, exactly that which he took from it, when MKMOIIIS OF HIMSELF. 23 he was there before, it would be most curious to see the fragments and exvvite of the moral man lying here and there along the retrograde path, and to find what he was in the beginning of this train of modifications ana acquisitions. Nor can it be doubted that any man, whose native tendencies were ever so determinate, and who has passed through a course of events and interests adapted to develope and confirm them according to their determination, might, by being led through a dif- ferent train, counteractive to those native tendencies, have been an extremely different man from what he now is. I am supposing his mind to be in either case equally cultivated, and referring to another kind of difference than that which would in any case be made by the dif- ferent measure or quantity, if I may express it so, of intellectual attainment. Here a person of your age might pause, and "look back with great interest on the world of circumstances through which life has been drawn. Consider what thousands of situations, appearances, incidents, persons, you have been present with, each in its time. The review would carry you over something like a chaos, with all the moral, and all other elements, confounded together ; and you may reflect till you begin almost to wonder how an individual retains the same essence through all the diversities, vicissitudes, and counter- actions of influence, that operate on it during its progress through the confusion. While the essential being might, however, defy <' universe to extinguish, absorb, or transmute it, you will find it has come out with dispositions and habits which will shew where it bas been, and what it has undergone. You may desc-y ti it the marks and colours of many of the things by ^hich it has, in passing, been touched or arrested. Consider the number of meetings with acauaintance. 'J4- ON A MAN'S WRITING friends, or strangers ; the number c f conversations you have held or heard ; the number of exhibitions of good or evil, virtue or vice ; the number of occasions on which you have been disgusted or pleased, moved to admiration or to abhorrence ; the number of times that you have center plated the town, the rural cottage, or verdant fields ; the number of volumes you have read ; the times that you "Have /ooked over the present state of the world, or gone by means of history into past ages ; the number of comparisons of yourself with other persons, alive or dead, and comparisons of them with one another; the number of solitary musings, of solemn contemplations of night, of the successive subjects of thought, and of animated sentiments that have been kindled and extinguished. Add all the hours and causes of sorrow which you have known. Through this lengthened, and, if the number could be told, stupendous multiplicity of things, you have advanced, while all their heterogeneous myriads have darted in- fluences upon you, each one of them having some definable tendency. A traveller round the globe would not meet a greater variety of seasons, prospects, and winds, than you might have recorded of the circum- stance capable of affecting your character, during your journey of life. You could not wish to have drawn to yourself the agency of a vaster diversity of causes ; you could not wish, on the supposition that you had gained advantage from all these, to wear the spoils of a greater number of regions. The formation of the character from so many materials reminds one of that mighty appropriating attraction, which, on the fanciful hypothesis that the resurrection should re- assemble the same particles which composed the body before, must draw them from dust, and trees, and animals, from ocean, and winds. MEMOIRS OF HIMSELF. 2.5 Jt would scarcely be expected that a being which should be conducted through such anarchy of discipline, in which the endless crowd of influential powers seem waiting, each to take away what the last had given, should be permitted to acquire, or to retain, any settled form of qualities at all. The more probable result would be, either several qualities disagreeing with one another, or a blank neutrality. And in fact, a great number of nearly such neutralities are found every where ; persons, who, unless their sharing of the general properties of human nature, a little modified by the insignificant distinction of some large class, can be called character, have no character. It is therefore somewhat strange, if you, and if other individuals, have come forth with moral features of a strongly marked and consistently combined cast, from the infinity of miscellaneous impressions. If the process has been so complex, how comes the result to be apparently so simple ? How has it happened that the collective effect of these numerous and jarring operations on your mind, is that which only a, few of these operations would have seemed adapted to product), Jtiul quite different from that which many others of them should naturally have pro- duced, and do actually produce in many other persons ? Here you will perceive that some one capital determi- nation must long since have been by some means esta- blished in your mind, and that, during your progress, this predominant determination has kept you susceptible of the effect of some influences, and fortified against many others. Now, what was the prevailing determi- nation, whence did it come, how did it acquire its power ? Was it an original tendency and insuppressible impulse of your nature ; or the result of your earliest impressions ; or of some one class of impressions repeated oftener than any other ; or of one single iin- -6 ON A MANS pression of extreme force ? What was it, a.uJ whence did it come 'i This is the great secret in the history of character; for, it is scarcely necessary to observe, that as soon as the mind is under the power of a predo- minant tendency, the difficulty of growing into the maturity of that form of character, which this tendency promotes or creates, is substantially over. Because, when a determined principle is become ascendant, it not only produces a partial insensibility to all im- prpssions that would counteract it, but also continually augments its own ascendency, by means of a faculty or ratality of finding out every thing, and attracting to itself every cause of impression, that is adapted to coalesce with it and strengthen it ; like the instinct o. animals, which instantly selects from the greatest variety of substances those which are fit for their nu- triment. Let a man have some leading and decided propensity, and it will be surprising to see how many more things he will find, and Low many more events will happen, than any one could have imagined, of a nature to reinforce it. And sometimes even circum- stances which seemed of an entirely counteractive order, are strangely seduced by this predominant principle into an operation that confirms it; just in the ?ame manner as polemics most self-complacently avow their opinions to be more firmly established by the strongest objections of the opponent. It would be easy to enlarge without end on the influences of the surrounding world in forming the character of each individual. Yet while there is no denying that such influences are effectively operating, a man may be unwilling to allow that he has been quite so servilely passive, as he would probably find that he has been, if it were possible for him to make a complete examination. He may be disposed to think MEMOIRS OF HIMSULr. 27 that hia reason has been an independent power, lias kept a strict watch, and passed a right judgment oil his moral progress, has met the circumstances of the external world on terms of examination and authority, and has permitted only such impressions to be received, or at least only such consequences to follow from them, as it wisely approved. But I would tell him, that he has been a very extraordinary man, if the greater part of his time has not been spent entirely without a thought of reflecting what impressions were made on him, or what their tendency might be ; and even without a consciousness that the effect of any impressions was of importance to his moral habits. He may be assured that he has been subjected to many gentle gradual processes, and has met many critical occasions, on which, and on the consequences of which to himself, he exercised no attention or opinion. And again, it is unfortunately true, that even should attention be awake, and opinions be formed, the faculty which fortns them is very servile to the other parts of the human con- stitution. If it could be extrinsic to the man, a kind of domestic Pythia, or an attendant genius, like the demon of Socrates, it might then be a dignified regulator of the influences 'vhich are acting on his character, to decide what should or should not be per- mitted to affect him, and in what manner; though even then its disapproving dictates might fail against some extremely powerful impression which might give a temporary bias, and such repetitions of that impression as should confirm it. But the case is, that this faculty, though mocked with imperial names, being condemned to dwell in the company of far more active powers than itself, and earlier exercised, becomes humbly obsequious to them. The passio easily beguile this majestic reason, or judgment, into neglect, or bribe it into L'8 UN A MAN'S WRITING acquiescence, or repress it into silence, while they receive the impressions, and while they acquire from those impressions that determinate direction, which will constitute the character. If, after thus much is done during the weakness, or without the notice, or without the leave, or under the connivance or corruption of the judgment, it be called upon to perform its part in estimating the quality and actual effect of the modifying influences, it has to perform this judicial work with just that degree of rectitude which it can have acquired and maintained under the operation of those very in- fluences. In acting the judge, it is itself in subjection to the effect of those impressions of which its office was, to have previously decided whether they should not be strenuously repelled. Thus its opinions will unconsciously be perverted ; like the answers of the ancient oracles, dictated for the imaginary god bj beings of a very terrestrial sort, though the sly inter- vention could not be perceived. It is quite a vulgar observation, how pleased a UIHII may be with the for- mation of his own character, though you smile at the gravity of his persuasion, that his tastes, preferences, and qualities, have on the whole grown up under the sacred and faithful guardianship of judgment, while, in fact, his judgment has accepted every bribe that ha' been offered to betray him. LETTER IV. You will agree with me, that in a comprehensive view of the influences which have formed, and are forming, the characters of men, we shall find, religion excepted, bat little cause to felicitate our species. Make the sup MEMOIRS UK HIMSELF. 29 position that any assortment of persons, of sufficient number to comprise the most remarkable distinctions of character, should write memoirs of themselves, so exactly and honestly telling the story, and exhibiting so clearly the most effective circumstances, as to explain, to your discernment at least, if not to their own con- sciousness, the main process by which their minds have attained their present state. If they were to read these memoirs to you in succession, and if your benevolence could so long be maintained in full exercise, and your rules^ for estimating lost nothing of their determinate principle in thnir application to such a confusion of subjects, you would often, during the disclosure, regret to obscivc how many things may be the causes of irre- trievable mischief. Why is the path of life, you would say, so haunted as if with evil spirits of every diversity of noxious agency, some of which may patiently ac- company, or others of which may suddenly cross, the unfortunate wanderer? And you would regret to observe into how many forms of intellectual and moral perversion the human mind readily yields itself to be modified. As one of the number concluded the account of himself, your observation would be, I perceive with compassion the process under which you have become a misanthropist. If your juvenile ingenuous ardour had not been chilled on your entrance into society, where your most favourite sentiments were not at all comprehended by some, and by others deemed wise and proper enough perhaps for the people of the millen- nium ; if you had not felt the mortification of relations "oeing uncongenial, of persons whom you were anxious co render happy being indifferent to your kindness, or of apparent friendships proving treacherous or trans- tory; if you had not nipt with such striking instances 30 ON A MAN S WRITING of hopeless stupidity in the vulgar, or of vain self- importance in the learned, o~ of the coarse or super- cilious arrogance of the persons whose manners were always regulated by the consideration of the proportion of gold and cilver by which they were better than you ; if your mortifications had not given you a keen faculty of perceiving the all -pervading selfishness of mankind, while, in addition, you had perhaps a peculiar oppor- tunity to observe the apparatus of systematic villany, by which combinations of men are able to arm their selfishness to oppress or ravage the world you might even now, perhaps, have been the persuasive instructor of beings, concerning whom you are wondering why they should have been made in the form of rationals ; you might have conciliated to yourself and to goodness, where you repel and are repelled; you might have been the apostle and pattern of benevolence, instead of envying the powers and vocation of a destroying angel Yet not that the world should bear all the blame. Frail and changeable in virtue, you might perhaps have been good under a series of auspicious circumstances ; but the glory had- been to be victoriously good against malignant ones. Moses lost none of his generous concern for a people, on whom you would have invoked the waters of Noah or the fires of Sodom to return; and that Greater than Moses, who endured from men such a matchless excess of injustice, while for their sake alone ne sojourned and suffered on parth, was not alienated to misanthropy, in his life, or at his death. A second sketch might exhibit external circumstances not producing any effect more serious than an in- tellectual stagnation. When it was concluded, your reflection might be, if I did not know that mental freedom is a dangerous thing, peculiarly in situations where the possessor would feel it a singular attainment : MEMOIRS OF HIMSELF. Hi and if 1 did not prefer even the quiescence of un- examining belief, when tolerably right in the most material points, to the indifference or scepticism which feels no assurance or no importance in any belief, or to the weak presumption that darts into the newest and most daring opinions as therefore true I should deplore that your life was destined to preserve its sedate course so entirely unanimated by the intellectual novelties of the age, the agitations of ever-moving opinion ; and under the habitual and exclusive influence of one in- dividual, worthy perhaps and in a certain degree sen- sible, but of contracted views, whom you have been taught and accustomed to regard as the comprehensive repository of all the truth requisite for you to know, and from whom you have derived, as some of your chief acquisitions, a contented assurance that the trouble of inquiry is needless, and a superstitious horror of inno- vation, without even knowing what points are threatened by it. At the end of another's disclosure, you would say, How unfortunate, that you could not believe there might be respectable and valuable men, who were not born to be wits or poets. And how unfortunate were those first evenings that you were privileged to listen to a company of men, who could say more fine things in an hour than their biographers will be able, even with the customary aid of laudatory fiction, to record them to have done in the whole space of life. It was then you discovered that you too were of the progeny of Apollo, and that you had been iniquitously transferred at your nativity into the hands of ignorant foster-parents, who had endeavoured to degrade and confine you to the sphere of regular employments and sober satis- factions. But, you would "tower up to the region of jour sire." You saw what wonderful things might Ixa 32 ON A MAN'S WRITING found to be said on all subjects; you fouiid it not so very difficult yourself to say different things from other people : and every thing that was not common dulness, was therefore pointed, every thing that was not sense by any vulgar rule, was therefore sublime. You adopted a certain vastitude of phrase, mistaking extravagance of expression for greatness of thought. You set your- self to dogmatize on books, and the abilities of men, but especially on their prejudices; and perhaps to de- molish, with the air of an exploit, some of the trite observations and maxims current in society. You awakened and surprised your imagination, by imposing on it a strange new tax of colours and metaphors; a tax reluctantly and uncouthly paid, but perhaps in some one instance so luckily, as to gain the applause of the gifted (if they were not merely eccentric) men, into whose company you had been elated by admittance. This was to you the proof and recognition of fraternity r and it has since been the chief question that has inter- ested you with each acquaintance and in each company, whether they too could perceive what you were so happy to have discovered, yet so anxious that the acknow- ledgment of others should confirm. Your own per- suasion, however, became as pertinacious as ivy climbing a wall. It was almost of course to attend to necessary pursuits with reluctant irregularity, though suffering by the consequences of neglecting them, and to feel indignant that genius should be reproached for the disregard of these ordinary duties and employments to which it ought never to have been subjected. During a. projector's story of life and misfortunes, you might regret that he should ever have heard of Harri- son's time-piece, the perpetual motion, or the Greek fire. After an antiquary's history, you might be allowed .o congratulate yourself on not having fallen under MEMOIRS OF HIMSELF. 33 the spell which confines a human soul to inhabit, like a spider in one of the corners, a dusty room, con- secrated with religious solemnity to old coins, rusty knives, illuminated mass books, swords and spurs ol forgotten kings, and slippers of their queens; with perhaps a Roman helmet, the acquisition of which was the first cause of the collection and of the passion, elevated imperially over the relics of kings and queens and the whole museum, as the eagle was once in "proud eminence" over subjugated kingdoms. And you might be inclined to say, I wish that helmet had been a pan for charcoal, or had been put on the head of one of the quiet equestrian warriors in the Tower, or had aided the rattlings of Sir Godfrey, haunting the baron's castle where he was murdered, or had been worn by Don Quixote, instead of the barber's basin, or had been the cauldron of Macbeth's witches, or had been in any other shape, place, or use, rather than dug up an anti- quity, in a luckless hour, in a bank near your garden. I compassionate you, would, in a very benevolent hour, be your language to the wealthy unfeeling tyrant of a family and a neighbourhood, who seeks, in the overawed timidity and unretaliated injuries of the un- fortunate beings within his power, the gratification that should have been sought in their happiness. Unless you had brought into the world some extraordinary refractoriness to the influence of evil, the process that you have undergone could not fail of being efficacious. If your parents idolized their own importance in their son so much, that they never themselves opposed your iclinations, nor permitted it to be done by any subject to their authority; if the humble companion, sometimes summoned to the honour of amusing you, bore your caprices and insolence with the meekness without which he had lost his privilege; if you could despoil the garden ?! ON A MAN S WRITING of some harmless dependent neighbour of the carefully reared flowers, and torment his little do Would it he a good thing ? He thinks it would Lc a good thing. It certainly would be a very good thing. HA wishes it were done. He will attempt it almost imme- diately. The following day, he doubts whether it would be quite prudent. M my things are to be con- sidered. May there not be in tne change some evil of which he is not aware ? Is this a prooer time ? What will people say? And thus, thonh^ ue does not formally renounce his purpose, ho shrinks out of it, with an irksome wish that he could be fully satisfied of the propriety of renouncing it. Perhaps he wishes that the thought had never occurred to him, since it has diminished his self-complacency, without promoting his virtue. But next week, his conviction ol the wisdom and advantage of such a reform comes again with great force. Then, Is it so practicable as I \va.s at iirst willing to imagine? Why not? Other men have done much greater things ; a resolute mind may brave and accomplish every thing ; difficulty is a stimulus and a triumph to a strong spirit ; " the joys of conquest are the joys of man." What need I care for people's opinion r It shall be done. He makes the first attempt. But some unexpected obstacle presents itself; he feels the awkwardness of attempting an unaccustomed manner of acting ; the questions or the ridicule of his friends disconcert him ; his ardour abates and expires. He again begins to question, whether it be wise, whether it be necessary, whether it be possible ; and at last surrenders his purpose to be perhaps resumed when the same feelings return, and to be in the same manner again relinquished. While animated by some magnanimous sentiments which he has heard or read, or while musing on some great example, a man may conceive the design, and }>ai tlv sketch the plan, of a generous enterprise ; and 70 ON DECISION OF CHAR AC TEH. his imagination revels in the felicity, to others and himself, that would follow from its accomplishment. The splendid representation always centres in himself as the hero who is to realize it. In a moment of remitted excitement, a faint whisper from within may doubtfully ask, Is this more than a dream ; or am I really destined to achieve such an enterprise ? Destined ! and why are not this con- viction of its excellence, this conscious duty of per- forming the noblest things that are possible, and this passionate ardour, enough to constitute a destiny ? He feels indignant that there should be a failing part of his nature to defraud the nobler, and cast him below the ideal model and the actual examples which he is admiring ; and this feeling assists him to resolve, tha* he will undertake this enterprise, that he certainly will, though the Alps or the Ocean lie between him and the object. Again, his ardour slackens ; distrustful of himself, he wishes to know how the design would appear to other minds ; and when he speaks of it to Ins associates, one of them wonders, another laughs, and another frowns. His pride, while with them, attempts a manful defence ; but his resolution gradually crumbles down toward their level ; he becomes in a little while ashamed to entertain a visionary project, which therefore, like a rejected friend, desists from intruding on him or following him, except at lingering distance ; and he subsides, at last, into what he labours to believe a man too rational for the scnemes of ill- calculating enthusiasm. And it were strange if the effort to make out this favourable estimate of himself did not succeed \v ile it is so much more pleasant to attribute one's deftct of enterprise to wisdom, which on maturer thought disapproves it, than to imbecility which shrinks from it ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 71 A person of undecisive character wonders how all the embarrassments in the world happened to meet exactly in fiis way, to place him just in that one situa- tion for which he is peculiarly unadapted, but in which he is also willing to think no other man could have acted with facility or confidence. Incapable of setting up a firm purpose on the basis of tilings as they are, he is often employed in vain speculations on some different supposable state of things, which would have *uved him from all this perplexity and irresolution. He thinks what a determined course he could have pursued, // his talents, his health, his age, had been different ; if he nad been acquainted with some ono person sooner ; if his friends were, in this or the other point, different from what they are ; or if fortune had showered her favours on him. And he gives himself as much license to complain, as if all these advantages had been among the rights of his nativity, but refused, by a malignant or capricious fate, to his life. Thus ne is occupied instead of marking with a vigilant eye, and seizing with a strong hand, all the possibi- lities of his actual situation. A man without decision can never be said to belong to himself; since, if he dared to assert that he did, the puny force of some cause, about as powerful, you would have supposed, as a spider, may make a seizure of the hapless boaster the very next moment, and contemptuously exhibit the futility of the determina tions by which he was to have proved the independence of his understanding at/d his will. He belongs to whatever can make capture of him ; and one thing after another vindicates its right to him, by arresting him while he is trying to go on ; as twigs and chips, Hoating near the edge of a river, are intercepted by every weed, and whirled in every little eddy. Having 72 ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. concluded on a design, he may pledge himself to accom- plish it if the hundred diversities of feeling which may come within the week, will let him. His character precluding all foresight of his conduct, he may sit and wonder what form and direction his views and actions are destined to take to-morrow ; as a farmer has often to acknowledge that next day's proceedings are at the disposal of its winds and clouds. This man's notions and determinations always depend very much on other human beings ; and what chance for consistency and stability, while the persons with whom he may converse, or transact, are so various ? This very evening, he may talk with a man whose sentiments will melt away the present form and outline of his purposes, however firm and defined he may have fancied them to be. A succession of persons whose faculties were stronger than his own, might, in spite 01 his irresolute re-action, take him and dispose of him as they pleased. Such infirmity of spirit practically con- fesses him made for subjection, and he passes, like a slave, from owner to owner. Sometimes indeed it happens, that a person so constituted falls into the train, and under the permanent ascendency, of some one stronger miiid, which thus becomes through life the oracle and guide, and gives the inferior a steady will and plan. This, when the governing spirit is wise and virtuous, is a fortunate relief to the feeling, and an advantage gained to the utility, of the subordinate, and as it were, appended mind. The regulation of every man's plan must greatly depend on the course of events, which come in an order not to be foreseen or prevented. l?ut in accommodating the plans of conduct to the train of events, the dif- ference between two men may be no less than that, in the one instance, the man is subservient to the events, ON DECISION OF CIIAUACTKK. 7i$ and ill tlie other, the events are made subservient to the man. Some men seem to have been taken along by a succession of events, and, as it were, handed forward in helpless passiveness ti om one to another ; having no determined principle in their own characters, by which they could constrain those events to serve a design formed antecedently to them, or apparently in defiance of them. The events seized them as a neutral material, not they the events. Others, advancing through life v/ith an internal invincible determination, have seemed to make the train of circumstances, what- ever they were, conduce as much to their chief design as if they had, by some directing interposition, been brought about on purpose. It is wonderful how even the casual- ties of life seem to bow to a spirit that will not bow to them, and yield to subserve a design which they may, in their first apparent tendency, threaten to frustrate. You may have known such examples, though they are comparatively not numerous. You may have seen a man of this vigorous character in a state of indecision concerning some affair in which it was necessary for him to determine, because it was necessary for him to act. But in this case, his manner would assure vou that he would not remain long undecided ; you would wonder if you found him still balancing and hesitating the next day. If he explained his thoughts, you would perceive that their clear process, evidently at each effort gaining something toward the result, must certainly reach it ere long. The deliberation of such a mind is a very different thing from the fluc- tuation of one whose second thinking only upsets the first, and whose third confounds both. To know how to obtain a determination, is one of the first requisites and indications of a rationally decisive character. the decision was arrived at, and a plan of ?* ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. action approved, you would feel an assurance that something would absolutely be done. It is charac- teristic of such a mind, to think for effect ; and the pleasure of escaping from temporary doubt gives an additional impulse to the force with which it is earned into action. The man will not re-examine his con, elusions with endless repetition, and he will not be delayed long by consulting other persons, after he had ceased to consult himself. He cannot bear to sit still among unexecuted decisions and unattempted projects. We wait to hear of his achievements, and are confident we shall not wait long. The possibility or the means may not be obvious to us, but we know that every thing will be attempted, and that a spirit of such de- termined will is like a river, which, in whatever manner it is obstructed, will make its way somewhere. It must have cost Caesar many anxious hours of deliberation, before he decided to pass the Rubicon ; but it is pro- bable he suffered but few to elapse between the decision and the execution. And any one of his friends, who should have been apprised of his determination, and understood his character, would have smiled contemp- tuously to hear it insinuated that though Caesar had resolved, Caesar would not dare ; or that though he might cross the Rubicon, whose opposite bank pre- sented to him no hostile legions, he might come to other rivers, which he would not cross ; or that either rivers, or any other obstacle, would deter him from prosecuting his determination from this ominous com- mencement to its very last consequence. One signal advantage possessed by a mind of this character is, that its passions are not wasted. The whole measure of passion of which any one, with im- portant transactions before him, is capable, is not more flian enough to supply interest and energy for the ON DliCIMON OF CHARACTER. 75 required practical exertions ; the therefore as little a* possible of this costly .flame should be expended in a way that does not augment the force of action. But nothing can less contribute or be more destructive to vigour of action, than protracted anxious fluctuation, through resolutions adopted, rejected, resumed, sus- pended ; while yet nothing causes a greater expense of feeling. The heart is fretted and exhausted by being subjected to an alternation of contrary excitements, with the ultimate mortifying consciousness of their con- tributing to no end. The long-wavering deliberation, whether to perform some bold action of difficult virtue, has often cost more to feeling than the action itself, or a series of such actions, would have cost; with the great disadvantage too of not being relieved by any of that invigoration which the man in action finds in the activity itself, that spirit created to renovate the energy which the action is expending. When the passions are not consumed among dubious musings and abortive resolutions, their utmost value and use can be secured by throwing all their animating force into effective operation. Another advantage of this character, is, that it exempts from a great deal of interference and ob- structive annoyance, which an irresolute man may be almost sure to encounter. Weakness, in every form, tempts arrogance ; and a man may be allowed to wish for a kind of character with which stupidity and im- pertinence may not make so free. When a firm decisive spirit is recognised, it is curious to see how the space clears around a man, and leaves him room and freedom. The disposition to interrogate, dictate, or banter, pre- serves a respectful and politic distance, judging it not unwise to keep the peace with a person of so much energy. A conviction that lie understands and that h 76 ON T DECISION OF CHARACTER wills with extraordinary force, silences the conceit that intended to perplex or instruct him, and intimidates the malice that was disposed to attack him. There is a feeling, as in respect to Fate, that the decrees of so inflexible a spirit must be right, or that, at least, they will be accomplished. But not only will he secure the freedom of acting for himself, he will obtain also by degrees the coinci- dence of those in whose company he is to transact the business of life. If the manners of such a man be free from arrogance, and he can qualify his firmness with a moderate degree of insinuation ; and if his measures have partly lost the appearance of being the dictates of his will, under the wider and softer sanction of some experience that they are reasonable ; both competition and fear will be laid to sleep, and his will may acquire an unresisted ascendency over many who will be pleased to fall into the mechanism of a system, which they find makes them more successful and happy than they could have been amidst the anxiety of ad- justing plans and expedients of their own, and the consequences of often adjusting them ill. I have known severa 1 parents, both fathers and mothers, whose management of their families has answered this de- scription ; and has displayed a striking example of the facile complacency with which a number of persons, of different ages and dispositions, will yield to the decisions of a firm mind, acting on an equitable and enlightened system. The last resource of this character, is, hard inflexible pertinacity, on which it may be allowed to rest its strength after finding it can be effectual in none of its milder forms. I remember admiring an instance of this kind, in a firm, sagacious and estimable old man, *-hoiu I well knew and who has long been dead. Being CM DECISION O* CHAKACTKR. 77 on a jury, in a trial of life and death, he was satisfied of the innocence of the prisoner; the other eleven were of the opposite opinion. But he was resolved the man should not be condemned; and as the first effort for pre- venting it, very properly made application to the minds of his associates, spending several hours in labouring to convince them. But he found he made no impression, while he was exhausting the strength which it was necessary to reserve for another mode of operation. He then calmly told them that it should now be a trial who could endure confinement and famine the longest, and that they might be quite assured he would sooner die than release them at the expense of the prisoner's life. In this situation they spent about twenty-four hours ; when at length all acceded to his verdict of acquittal. It is not necessary to amplify on the indispensable importance of this quality, in order to the accomplish- ment of any thing eminently good. We instantly see, that every path to signal excellence is so obstructed and beset, that none but a spirit so qualified can pass. But it is time to examine what are the elements of that mental constitution which is displayed in the character in question. LETTER II. F'ERHAPS the best mode would be, to bring into our thoughts, in succession, the most remarkable examples of this character that we have known in real life, or that we have read of in history or even in fiction ; and attentively to observe, in their conversations, manners, and actions, what principles appear to produce, or to constitute, this commanding distinction You w'J 78 ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. easily pursue this investigation yourself. I lately made a partial attempt, and shall offer you a number o* suggestions. As a previous observation, it is beyond all doubt that very much depends on the constitution of the body. It would be for physiologists to explain, if it were expli- cable, the manner in which corporeal organization affects the mind; I only assume it as a fact, that there is in the material construction of some persons, much more than of others, some quality which augments, if it do not create, both the stability of their resolution, and the energy of their active tendencies. There is something that, like the ligatures which one class of the Olympic combatants bound on their hands and wrists, braces round, if I may so describe it, and compresses the powers of the mind, giving them a steady forcible spring and reaction, which they would presently lose if they could be transferred into a constitution of soft, yielding, treacherous debility. The action of strong character seems to demand something firm in its mate- rial basis, as massive engines require, for their weight and for their working, to be fixed on a solid foundation. Accordingly I believe it would be found, that a majority of the persons most remarkable for decisive character, have possessed great constitutional physical firmness. I do not mean an exemption from disease and pain, nor any certain measure of mechanical strength, but a tone of vigour, the opposite to lassitude, and adapted to great exertion and endurance. Tiiis is clearly evinced in respect to many of them, by the prodigious labours and deprivations which they have borne in prosecuting their designs. The physical nature has seemed a proud ally of the moral one, and with a hardness that would never shrink, nas sustained the energy that could never remit ON DECISION OF CHARACTUt. 79 A view of the disparities between the different races of animals inferior to man, will show the effect of' organization on disposition. Compare, for instance, a lion with the common beasts ot' our fields, many of them larger in bulk of animated substance. What a vast superiority of courage, and impetuous and determined action ; which difference we attribute to some great dissimilarity of modification in the composition of the animated material. Now it is probable that a difference somewhat analogous subsists between some human beings and others in point of what we may call mere physical constitution ; and that this is no small part of the cause of the striking inequalities in respect to deci- sive character. A man who excels in the power of decision has probably more of the physical quality of a lion in his composition than other men. It is observable that women in general have less in- flexibility of character than men ; and though many moral influences contribute to this difference, the prin- cipal cause may probably be something less firm in the corporeal constitution. Now that physical quality, whatever it is, from the smaller measure of which in tha constitution of the frame, women have less firmness than men, may be possessed by one man more than by men in general in a greater degree of difference than that by which men in general exceed women. If there have been found some resolute spirits power- fuMy asserting themselves in feeble vehicles, it is so much the better; since this would authorize a hope, that if all the other grand requisites can be combined, they may form a strong character, in spite of an un- adapted constitution. And on the other hand, no constitutional hardness will form the true character, without those superior properties ; though it may pro- duce that false and contemptible kind of decisi m which tfO ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. we term obstinacy; a stubbornness of temper, wliicii can assign no reasons but mere will, for a constancy which acts in the nature of dead weight rather than of strength ; resembling less the reaction of a powerful spring than the gravitation of a big stone. The first prominent mental characteristic of the person whom I describe, is, a complete confidence in his own judgment. It will perhaps be said, that this is not so uncommon a qualification. I however think it is uncommon. It is indeed obvious enough, that almost all men have a flattering estimate of their own under- standing, and that as long as this understanding has no harder task than to form opinions which are not to be tried in action, they have a most self-complacent assurance of being right. This assurance extends to the judgments which they pass on the proceedings of others. But let them be brought into the necessity of adopting actual measures in an untried situation, where, unassisted by any previous example or practice, they are reduced to depend on the bare resources of judgment alone, and you will see in many cases, this confidence of opinion vanish away. The mind seems all at once placed in a misty vacuity, where it reaches round on all sides, but can find nothing to take hold of. Or if not lost in vacuity, it is overwhelmed in confusion ; and feels as if its faculties were annihilated in the attempt to think of schemes and calculations among the possibilities, chances, and hazards which overspread a wide untrodden field ; and this conscious imbecility becomes severe distress, when it is believed that con- sequences, of serious or unknown good or evil, are depending on the decisions which are to be formed amidst so much uncertainty. The thought painfully recurs at each step and turn, I may by chance be right, but it is fully as probable I am wronjr. It is like the ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 81 case of a rustic walking in London, who, having nc (crtaiu direction through the vast confusion of street* to the place where he wishes to be, advances, and hesi- tates, and turns, and inquires, and becomes, at each corner, still more inextricably perplexed.* A man in this situation feels he snail be very unfortunate if ho cannot accomplish more than he can understand. i- rot this frequently, when brought to the practical test, the state of a mind not disposed in general to under- value its own judgment? In cases where judgment is not so completely be- wildered, you will yet perceive a great practical distrust of it. A man has perhaps advanced a considerable way towards a decision, but then lingers at a small distance from it, till necessity, with a stronger hand than conviction, impels him upon it. lie cannot see the whole length of the question, and suspects the part beyond his sight to be the most important, for the most essential point and stress of it may be there. He fears that certain possible consequences, if they should follow, would cause him to reproach himself for his present determination. He wonders how this or the other person would have acted in the same circum- stances ; eagerly catches at any thing like a respectable precedent; would be perfectly willing to forego the pride of setting an example, for the safety of following one ; and looks anxiously round to know what each person may think on the subject ; while the various and opposite opinions to which he listens, perhaps only serve to confound his perception of the track of thought u Why does not the man call a hackney-coach 7" a gay reader, I am aware, will say of the person so bemazed ii> the great town. So he might, certainly; (that is. if he know where to find one ;) and the gay reader and 1 hare only to deplore that there is no parallel convenience for the assistance of perplexed understandings. U 82 C> DECISION OF CHARACTER. by which he had hoped to reach his conclusion. Even when that conclusion is obtained, there are not many .uinds that might not be brought a few degrees back into dubious hesitation, by a man of respected un- derstanding saying, in a confident tone, Your plan is injudicious ; your selection is unfortunate ; the event will disappoint you. It cannot be supposed that I am maintaining such an absurdity as that a man's complete reliance on his own judgment is a proof of its strength and rectitude. Intense stupidity may be in this point the rival of clear-sighted wisdom. I had once some knowledge of a person whom no mortal could have surpassed, not Cromwell or Straflbrd, in confidence in his own judgment and consequent inflexibility of conduct ; while at the same time his successive schemes were ill-judged to a degree that made his disappointments ridiculous still more than pitiable. He was not an example of that simple obstinacy which I have men tioned before ; for he considered his measures, and did not want for reasons which seriously satisfied himself of their being most judicious. This confidence of opinion may be possessed by a person in whom it will be contemptible or mischievous ; but its proper place is in a very different character, and without it there can be no dignified actors in human affairs. If, after it is seen how foolish this confidence appears as a feature in a weak character, it be inquired what, in a rightfully decisive person's manner of thinking it is that authorizes him in this firm assurance that his view of the concerns before him is comprehensive and accurate ; he may, in answer, justify his confidence on such grounds as these : that he is conscious that objects arc presented to his mind with an exceedingly distinct and perspicuous aspect, not like the shapes of moon- ON DECISION OF CHARACTKK. 8H light, or like Ossmn's ghosts, dim forms of uncircun. scribed shade ; that he sees the different parts of the subject in an arranged order, not in unconnected fragments : that in each deliberation the main object keeps its clear pre-eminence, and he perceives the bearings which the subordinate and conducive ones have on it ; that perhaps several trains of thought, drawn from different points, lead him to the same con- clusion ; and that he finds his judgment does not vary in servility to the moods of his feelings. It may be presumed that a high degree of this cha- racter is not attained without a considerable measure of that kind of certainty, with respect to the relations of things, which can be acquired only from experience! and observation. A very protracted course of time, however, may not be indispensable for this discipline. An extreme vigilance in the exercise of observation, and a strong and strongly exerted power of generalizing on experience, may have made a comparatively short time enough to supply a large share of the wisdom derivable from these sources ; so that a man may long before he is old be rich in the benefits of experience, and therefore may have all the decision of judgment legitimately founded on that accomplishment. ThN knowledge from experience he will be able to apply iii a direct and immediate manner, and without refining it into general principles, to some situations of affairs, so as to anticipate the consequences of certain actions in .those situations by as plain a reason, and as confi- dently, as the kind of fruit to be produced by a given kind of tree. Thus far the facts of his experience will serve him as precedents ; cases of such near resem- blance to those in which he is now to act as to afford him a rule by the most immediate inference. At the next step, he will be able to apply this knowledge, now c 2 84> Ow DECISION OF CHARACTER. converted into general principles, to a multitude of cases bearing but a partial resemblance to any thing he has actually witnessed. And then, in looking forward to the possible occurrence of altogether new combi- nations of circumstances, he can trust to the resources which he is persuaded his intellect will open to him, 01 is humbly confident, if he be a devout man, that the Supreme Intelligence will not suffer to be wanting to him, when the occasion arrives. In proportion as his views include, at all events, more certainties than those of other men, he is with good reason less fearful of contingencies. And if, in the course of executing his design, unexpected disastrous events should befall, but which are not owing to any thing wrong in the plan and principles of that design, but to foreign causes ; it will be characteristic of a strong mind to attribute these events discriminatively to their own causes, and not to the plan, which, therefore, instead of being dis- liked and relinquished, will be still as much approved as before, and the man will proceed calmly to the sequel of it without any change of arrangement ; unless indeed these sinister events should be of such consequence as to alter the whole state of things to which the plan was correctly adapted, and so create a necessity to form an entirely new one, adapted to that altered state. Though he do not absolutely despise the under- standings of other men, he will perceive their dimen- sions as compared with his own, which will preserve its independence through every communication and encounter. It is however a part of this very inde- pendence, that he will hold himself free to alter his opinion, if the information which may be communi- cated to him shall bring sufficient reason. And as no one in so sensible of the importance ot a complete ON ULCISION OF CHARACTER. 85 tcquaintaiice with a subject as the man who is alwayr endeavouring to t'nink conclusively, he will listen with the utmost attention to the information, which may sometimes be received from persons for whose judyment he has no great respect. The information which they may afford him is not at all the less valuable for the circumstance, that his practical inferences from it may be quite different from theirs. If they will only give him an accurate account of facts, he does not care how indifferently they may reason on them. Counsel will in general have only so much weight with him as it supplies knowledge which may assist his judgment ; he will yield nothing to it implicitly as authority, except when it comes from persons of approved and emiruMit wisdom ; but he may hear it with more candom and good temper, from being conscious of this inde- pendence of his judgment, than the man who is afraid '>st the first person that begins to persuade him, should oaffle his determination. He feels it entirely a work of his own to deliberate and to resolve, amidst all the advice which may be attempting to control him. If, with an assurance of his intellect being of the highest order, he also holds a commanding station, he will feel it gratuitous to consult with anyone, excepting merely to receive statements of facts. This appears to be exemplified in the man, who has lately shown the nations of Europe how large a portion of the world may, when Heaven permits, be at the mercy of tho solitary workings of an individual mind. The strongest trial of this determination of judgment ;s in those cases of urgency where something must immediately be done, and the alternative of rieiit or wrong iti of important consequence-- as in the oiiy of a medical man, treating a patient whose situation at ouce requires a daring practve, and puts it in paiului 86 ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. doubt what to dare. A still stronger illustration is the case of a general who is compelled, in the very instant, to make dispositions on which the event of a battle, the lives of thousands of his men, or perhaps almost the fate of a nation, may depend. He may even be placed in a dilemma which appears equally dreadful on both sides. Such a predicament is described in Denon's Account of one of the sanguinary conflicts between the French and Mamelukes, as having for a while held in the most distressing hesitation General Desaix, though a prompt and intrepid commander. LETTER III. THIS indispensable basis, confidence of opinion, is however not enough to constitute the character in question. For many persons, who have been conscious and proud of a much stronger grasp of thought than ordinary men, and have held the most decided opinions on important things to be -done, have yet exhibited, in the listlessness or inconstancy of their actions, a contrast and a disgrace to the operations of their understandings. For want of some cogent feeling impelling them U carry every internal decision into action, they have bee still left where they were ; and a dignified judg- ment has been seen in the hapless plight of having no etfpctive forces to execute its decrees. It is evident then, (and I perceive I have partly anticipated this article in the first letter,) that another essential principle of the character is, a total incapa- oility of surrendering to indifference or delay the serious determinations of the mind. A strenuous will must accompany the conclusions of thought, and ton- ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 87 Bluntly incite the utmost efforts to give them a prac- tical result. The intellect must be invested, if I ma) so describe it, with a glowing atmosphere of passion, under the influence of which, the cold dictates of reason take fire, arid spring into active powers. Revert once more in your thoughts to the persons most remarkably distinguished by this quality. You will perceive, that instead of allowing themselves tc sit down delighted after the labour of successful think- ng, as if they had completed some great thing, the) regard this labour but as a circumstance of preparation, and the conclusions resulting from it as of no more value, (till going into effect,) than the entombed lamps of the Rosicrucians. They are not disposed to be content in a region of mere ideas, while they ought to be advancing into the field of corresponding realities ; they retire to that region sometimes, as ambitious adventurers anciently went to Delphi, to consult, but not to reside. You will therefore find them almost uniformly in determined pursuit of some object, on which they fix a keen and steady look, never losing sight of it while they follow it through the confused multitude of other things. A person actuated by such a spirit, seems by his manner to say, Do you think that I would not disdain to adopt a purpose which I would not devote my utmost force to effect; or that having thus devoted my exertions, I will intermit or withdraw them, through indolence, debility, or caprice ; or that I will surren- der my object to any interference except the uncon- trollable dispensations of Providence ? No, I am linked to my determination with iron bands ; it clings to me as if a part of my destiny ; and if its frustration be, on the contrary, doomed a part of that destiny, it is doomed so only through calamity or death. 88 ON DECISION OF OHAEACTER. This display of systematic energy seems to indicate a constitution of mind in which the passions are com- mensurate with the intellectual part, and at the same time hold an inseparable correspondence with it, i:ke the faithful sympathy of the tides with the phases of the moon. There is such an equality and connexion, that subjects of the decisions of judgment become pro- portionally and of course the objects of passion. When the judgment decides with a very strong preference, that same strength of preference, actuating also the passions, devotes them with energy to the object, as long as it is thus approved; and this will produce such a con- duct as I have described. When therefore a firm, self- confiding, and unaltering judgment fails to make a decisive character, it is evident either that the passions in that mind are too languid to be capable of a strong and unremitting excitement, which defect makes an indolent or irresolute man ; or that they perversely sometimes coincide with judgment and sometimes clash with it, which makes an inconsistent or versatile man. There is no man so irresolute as not to act with determination in many single cases, where the motive is powerful and simple, and where there is no need of plan and perseverance ; but this gives no claim to the term character, which expresses the habitual tenour of a man's active being. The character may be displayed in the successive unconnected undertakings, which are each of limited extent, and end with the attainment of their particular objects. But it is seen in its most commanding aspect in those grand schemes of action, which have no necessary point of conclusion, \vhicli continue on through successive years, and extend even to that dark period when the agent himself is with- drawn from human sight. I have repeatedly, iu conversation, remarked to you ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 89 the effect of what has been called a Ruling Passion. When its object is noble, and an enlightened under- standing regulates its movements, it appears to me a great felicity; but whether its object be noble or not, it infallibly creates, where it exists in great force, that active ardent constancy, which I describe as a capital feature of the decisive character. The Subject of such a commanding passion wonders, if indeed he were at leisure to wonder, at the persons who pretend to attach importance to an object which they make none but the most languid efforts to secure. The utmost powers of the man are constrained into the service of the favourite Cause by this passion, which sweeps away, as it advances, all the trivial objections and little opposing motives, and seems almost to open a way through impossibilities. This spirit comes on him in the morning as soon as he recovers his conscious- ness, and commands and impels him through the day, with a power from which he could not emancipate himself if he would. When the force of habit is added, the determination becomes invincible, and seems to assume rank with the great laws of nature, making it nearly as certain that such a man will persist in his course as that in the morning the sun will rise. A persisting untameable efficacy of soul gives a seductive and pernicious dignity even to a character which every moral principle forbids us to approve. Often in the narrations of history and fiction, an agent of the most dreadful designs compels a sentiment of deep respect for the unconquerable mind displayed in their execution. While we shudder at his activity, we say with regret, mingled with an admiration which borders on partiality, What a noble beine this would have been, if goodness had been his destiny ! The uartiality is evinced in the very selection of terms, 90 OtJ DECISION OF CHARACTER. by which we show that we are tempted to refer his atrocity rather to his destiny than to his choice. I wonder whether an emotion like this, have not been experienced by each reader of Paradise Lost, relative to the Leader of the infern.il spirits; a proof, if such were the fact, of some insinuation of evil into the magnificent creation of the poet. In some of the hign examples of ambition (the ambition which is a vice), we almost revere the force of mind which impelled them forward through the longest series of action, superior to doubt and fluctuation, and disdainful of ease, of pleasures, of opposition, and of danger. We bend in homage before the ambitious spirit which reached the true sublime in the reply of Pompey to his friends, who dissuaded him from hazarding his life on a tempestuous sea in order to be at Rome on an important occasion : " It is necessary for me to go, it is not necessary for me to live." Revenge has produced wonderful examples of this unremitting constancy to a purpose. Zanga is a well- supported illustration. And you may have read of a real instance of a Spaniard, who, being injured by another inhabitant of the same town, resolved to destroy him the other was apprised of this, and removed with the utmost secresy, as he thought, to another town at a considerable distance, where however he had not been more than a day or two, before he found that his enemy also was there. He removed in the same manner to several parts of the kingdom, remote from each other; but in every place quickly percehed that his deadly pursuer was near him. At last he went to South America, where he had enjoyed his security but a very short time, before his relentless pursuer came up with him, and accomplished his purpose. VGU may recollect the Mention in one of our cou- ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 91 versations, of a young man who wasted in two or three .years a large patrimony, in profligate revels with a number of worthless associates calling themselves his friends, till his last means were exhausted, when they of course treated him with neglect or contempt. Re- duced to absolute want, he one day went out of the house with an intention to put an end to his life ; but wandering awhile almost unconsciously, he came to the brow of an eminence which overlooked what were lately his estates. Here he sat down, and remained fixed in thought a number of hours, at the end of which he sprang from the ground with a vehement exulting emotion. He had formed his resolution, whicli was that all these estates should be his again ; he had formed his plan too, which he instantly began to execute. He walked hastily forward, determined to seize the very first opportunity, of however humble a kind, to gain any money, though it were ever so de- spicable a trifle, and resolved absolutely not to spend, if he could help it, a farthing of whatever he might obtain. The first thing that drew his attention was a heap of coals shot out of carts on the pavement before a house. He offered himself to shovel or wheel them into the place where they were to be laid, and was employed. He received a few pence for the labour; and then, in pursuance of the saving part o his plan, requested some small gratuity of meat and drink, which was given him. He then looked out for the next thing that might chance to offer; and went, with inde- fatigable industry, through a succession of servile employments, in different places, of longer and shorter duration, still scrupulously avoiding, as far as possible, the expense of a penny. He promptly seized every opportunity which could advance his design, without tg:irding the meanness of occupation or appearance. 92 ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. By this method he had gained, after a Considerable time, money enough to purchase, in order to se!5 again, a few cattle, of which he had taken pains to understand the value. He speedily but cautiously turned his first gains into second advantages ; retained without a single deviation his extreme parsimony ; and thus advanced by degrees into larger transactions and incipient wealth. I did not hear, or have forgotten the continued course of his life ; but the final result was, that he more than recovered his lost possessions, and died an inveterate miser, worth 60,()00/. I have always recollected this as a signal instance, though in an unfortunate and ignoble direction, of decisive character, and of the extraordinary effect, which, according to general laws, belongs to the strongest form of such a character. But not less decision has been displayed by men o virtue. In this distinction no man ever exceeded, or ever will exceed, for instance, the late illustrious Howard. The energy of his determination was so great, that if, instead of being habitual, it had been shown only for a short time on particular occasions, it would have appeared a vehement impetuosity; but by being unintei- mitted, it had an equability of manner which scarcely appeared to exceed the tone of a calm constancy, it was so totally the reverse of any thing like turbulence or agitation. It was the calmness of an intensity kept uniform by the nature of the human mind forbidding it to be more, and by the character of the individual forbidding it to be less. The habitual passion of his mind was a pitch of excitement and impulsion almost equal to the temporary extremes and paroxysms of common minds ; as a great river, in its customary state, is equal to a small or model ate one when swollen to & torrent, ON DECISION OK CliAKACTLK. & The moment of finishing his plans in deliberation, and commencing them in action, was the same. I tvonder what must have been the amount of that bribe, in emolument cr pleasure, that would have detained him a week inactive after their final adjustment. The law which carries water down a declivity was not more unconquerable and invariable than the determination of his feelings toward the main object. The importance of this object held his faculties in a state of determi- nation which was too rigid to be affected by lighter interests, and on which therefore the beauties of nature and of art had no power. He had no leisure feeling which he could spare to be diverted among the innu- merable varieties of the extensive scene which he traversed ; his subordinate feelings nearly lost their separate existence and operation, by falling into the grand one. There have not been wanting trivial minds, to mark this as a fault in his character. But the mere men of taste ought to be silent respecting such a man as Howard ; he is above their sphere of judgment. The invisible spirits, who fulfil their commission of philanthropy among mortals, do not care about pictures, statues, and sumptuous buildings ; and no more did he. when the time in which he must have inspected and admired them, would have been taken from the work to which he had consecrated his life. The curiosity which he might feel, was reduced to wait till the hour should arrive, when its gratification should be presented by conscience, (which kept a scrupulous charge of all his time,) as the duty of that hour. If he was still at every hour, when it came, fated to feel the attractions of the fine arts but the second claim, they might be pure of their revenge ; for no other man will ever visit Home under such a despotic acKnowiedft^d ruie of iutv * to refuse himsell tiiue tor Hiirveyiu lue 94 ON DECISION OF CHARACTER nificence of its ruins. Such a sin against taste is very far beyond the reach of common saintship to commit. It implied an inconceivable severity of conviction, that he had one thing to do, and that he who would do some great thing in this short life, must apply himself to tho work with such a concentration of his forces, as, to id!" spectators, who live only to amuse themselves, looks like insanity. His attention was so strongly and tenaciously fixed on his object, that even at the greatest distance, as the Egyptian pyramids to travellers, it appeared to him with a luminous distinctness as if it had been nigh, and beguiled the toilsome length of labour and enterprise by which he was to reach it. So conspicuous was it before him, that not a step deviated from the direction, and every movement and every day was an approxi- mation. As his method referred every thing he did and thought to the end, and as his exertion did not relax for a moment, he made the trial, so seldom made, what is the utmost effect which may be granted to the last possible efforts of a human agent : and therefore what he did not accomplish, he might conclude to be placed beyond the sphere of mortal activity, and calmlv ieave to the immediate disposal of Providence. Unless the eternal happiness of mankind be an in- significant concern, and the passion to promote it an inglorious distinction, I may cite George Whitefield as a noble instance of this attribute of the decisive cha- racter, this intense necessity of action. The great cause which was so languid a thing in the hands of many of its advocates, assumed in his administrations an unmitigab'le urgency. Many of the Christian missionaries among the heathens, such as Brainerd, Elliot, and Schwartz, have displayed memorable examples of this dedication of ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 96 their whole being to their office, this abjuration of all the quiescent feelings. This would be the proper place for introducing (if I did not hesitate to introduce in any connexion with merely human instances) the example of him who said, " I must be about my Father's business. My meat and drink is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work. I have a baptism to be baptized with and how am I straitened till it be accomplished !" LETTER IV. AFTER the illustrations on the last article, it will seem but a very slight transition when J proceed to specify Courage, as an essential part of the decisive character. An intelligent man, adventurous only in thought, may sketch the most excellent scheme, and after duly ad- miring it, and himself as its author, may be reduced to say, What a noble spirit that would be which should dare to realize this ! A noble spirit ! is it I ? And his heart may answer in the negative, while he glonces a mortified thought of inquiry round to recollect persons who would venture what he dares not, and almost hopes not to find them. Or if by extreme effort tie has brought himself to a resolution of braving the difficulty, he is compelled to execrate the timid Im- gerings that still keep him back from the trial. A man endowed with the complete character, might say, with a sober consciousness as remote from the spirit of bravado as it is from timidity, Thus, and thus, is my conviction and my determination ; now for the phantoms of fear; let me look them in the face; their menacing glare and ominous tones will be lost on me ; "I dare 90 ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. do all that may become a man." I trust I shall firm.) confront every thing that threatens me while prosecuting my purpose, and I am prepared to meet the conse- quences of it when it is accomplished. I should despise a being, though it were myself, whose agency could be held enslaved by the gloomy shapes of imagination, by the haunting recollections of a dream, by the whistling or the howling of winds, by the shriek of owls, by the shades of midnight, or by the threats or frowns of man. I should be indignant to feel that, in the commencement of an adventure, I could think of nothing but the deep pit by the side of the way where I must walk, into which I may slide, the mad animal which it is not im- possible that I may meet, or the assassin who may lurk in a thicket of yonder wood. And I disdain to com- promise the interests that rouse me to action, for the privilege of an ignoble security. As the conduct of a man of decision is always in- dividual, and often singular, he may expect some serious trials of courage. For one thing, he may be encoun- tered by the strongest disapprobation of many of his connexions, and the censure of the greater part of the society where he is known. In this case, it is not a man of common spirit that can show himself just as at other times, and meet their anger in the same undis- turbed manner as he would meet some ordinary in- clemency of the weather ; that can, without harshness or violence, continue to eftect every moment some part of his design, coolly replying to each ungracious look and indignant voice, I am sorry to oppose you : I am not unfriendly to you, while thus persisting in what excites your displeasure ; it M r ould please me to have your approbation and concurrence, and I tnink I should have them if you would seriously consider my reasons ; but meanwhile, I am superior to opinion, I am \iot to ON DECISION OF OHARACTEH. 97 bo intimidated by reproaches, nor would your favour and applause be any reward for the sacrifice of my object. As you can do without my approbation, I can certainly do without yours ; it is enough that I oan approve myself, it i> enough that I appeal to tne last authority in the creation. Amuse yourselves as you may, by continuing to censure or to rail ; 1 must con- tinue to act. The attack of contempt and ridicule is perhaps a still greater trial of courage. It is felt by all to be an admirable thing, when it can in no degree be ascribed to the hardness of either stupidity or confirmed de- pravity, to sustain for a considerable time, or in nume- rous instances, the looks of scorn, or an unrestraineu shower of taunts and jeers, with perfect composure, and proceed immediately after, or at the time, on the business that provokes all this ridicule. This invinci- bility of temper will often make even the scoffers themselves tired of the sport : they begin to feel that against such a man it is a poor sort of hostility to joke and sneer ; and there is nothing that people are more mortified to spend in vain than their scorn. Till, however, a man shall become a veteran, he must reckon on sometimes meeting this trial in the course of virtuous enterprise. And if, at the suggestion of some meri- torious but unprecedented proceeding, I hear him ask, with a look and tone of shrinking alarm, But will they not laugh at me ? I know that he is not the person whom this essay attempts to describe. A man of the right kind would say, They will smile, they will laugh, will they ? Much good may it do them. I have something else to do than to trouble myself about their mirth. I do not care if the whole neighbourhood were to laugh in a chorus. I should indeed be sorry to see or hear such a number of fools, but pleased em. jgh to H 98 ON DECIS/ON OF CHARACTER. find that they considered me as an outlaw to their tribe. The good to result from my project will not be less, because vain and shallow minds that cannot understand it, are diverted at it and at me. What should I think of my pursuits, if every trivial thoughtless being could comprehend or would applaud them ; and of myself, if my courage needed levity and ignorance for their allies, or could be abashed at their sneers ? I remember, that on reading the account of the project for conquering Peru, formed by Almagro, Pizarro, and De Luques, while abhorring the actuating principle of the men, I could not help admiring the hardihood of mind which made them regardless of scorn. These three individuals, before they had obtained any associates, or arms, or soldiers, or more than a very imperfect knowledge of the power of the kingdom they were to conquer, celebrated a solemn mass in one 01 .he great churches, as a pledge and a commencement of the enterprise, amidst the astonishment and contempt expressed by a multitude of people for what was deemed a monstrous project. They, however, proceeded through the service, and afterwards to their respective depart- ments of preparation, with an apparently entire insen- sibility to all this triumphant contempt ; and thus gave the first proof of possessing that invincible firmness with which they afterwards prosecuted their design, till they attained a success, the destructive process and many of the results of which humanity has ever deplored. Milton's Abdiel is a noble illustration of the courage that rises invincible above the derision not only of the multitude, but of the proud and elevated. But there may be situations where decision of cha- racter will e brought to trial against evils of a darker aspect than disapprobation or contempt There may ON DECISION OF CHAUACTBR. 99 be the threatening of serious sufferings ; and very often, to dare as far as conscience or a great cause required, has been to dare to die. In almost all plans of great enterprise, a man must systematically dismiss, at the entrance, every wish to stipulate with his destiny for safety. He voluntarily treads within the precincts of danger ; and though it be possible he may escape, he ought to be prepared with the fortitude of a self- devoted victim. This is the inevitable condition on which heroes, travellers or missionaries among savage nations, and reformers on a grand scale, must commence their career. Either they must allay their fire of enterprise, or abide the liability to be exploded by it from the world. The last decisive energy of a rational courage, which confides in the Supreme Power, is very sublime. It makes a man who intrepidly dares every thing that can oppose or attack him within the whole sphere of mortality ; who will still press toward his object while death is impending over him ; who would retain his purpose unshaken amidst the ruins of the world. It was in the true elevation of this character that Luther, when cited to appear at the Diet of Worms, under a very questionable assurance of safety from high authority, said to his friends, who conjured him not to go, and warned him by the example of John Huss, whom, in a similar situation, the same pledge of protection had not saved from the fire, " I am called in the name of God to go, and I would go, though I were certain to meet as many devils in Worms as there are tiles on the houses." A reader of the Bible will not forget Daniel, braving in calm devotion the decree which virtually consigned him to the den of lions : or Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego, saying to the tyrant, " We are not careful Hi 100 ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. to answer thee in this matter," when the " burning tiery" furnace was in sight. The combination of these several essential principles Constitutes that state of mind which is a grand requisite to decision of character, and perhaps its most striking distinction the full agreement of the mind with tself, the consenting oo-operation of all its powers ind all its dispositions. What an unfortunate task it would be for a cha- rioteer, who had harnessed a set of horses, however strong, if he could not make them draw together ; if while one of them would go forward, another was restiff, another struggled backward, another started aside. If even one of the four were unmanageably perverse, while the three were tractable, an aged beggar with his crutch might leave Phaeton behind. So in a human oeing, unless the chief forces act consentaneously, there can be no inflexible vigour, either of will or execution. One dissentient principle in the mind not only deducts so much from the strength and mass of its agency, but counteracts and embarrasses all the rest. If the judgment holds in low estimation that which yet the passions incline to pursue, the pursuit will be irregular and inconstant, though it may have occasional fits of animation, when those passions happen to be highly stimulated. If there is an oppo- sition between judgment and habit, though the man will probably continue to act mainly under the sway of habit in spite of his opinions, yet sometimes the intrusion of those opinions will have for the moment an effect like that of Prospero's wand on the limbs of Ferdinand ; and to be alternately impelled by habit, and checked by opinion, will be a state of vexatious (lability. If two principal passions are opposed to ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 10l each other, they will utterly distract any mind, what- ever might be the force of its faculties if acting without embarrassment. The one passion may h-.* somewhat stronger than the other, and therefore just prevail barely enough to give a feeble impulse to the conduct of the man ; a feebleness which will continue till there be a greater disparity between these rivals, in consequence of a reinforcement to the slightly ascendent one, by new impressions, or the gradual strengthening of habit forming in its favour. The disparity must be no less than an absolute predomi- nance of the one and subjection of the other, before the prevailing passion will have at liberty from the intestine conflict any large measure of its force to throw activity into the system of conduct. If, foi instance, a man feels at once the love of fame which is to be gained only by arduous exertions, and an equal degree of the love of ease or pleasure which precludes those exertions ; if he is eager to show off in splendour, and yet anxious to save money ; if he has the curiosity of adventure, and yet that solicitude for safety, which forbids him to climb a precipice, descend into a cavern, or explore a dangerous wild; if he has the stern will of a tyrant, and yet the relent- ings of a man ; if he has the ambition to domineer over his fellow-mortals, counteracted by a reluctance w> inflict so much mischief as it might cost to subdue them ; we may anticipate the irresolute contradictory tenour of bis actions. Especially if conscience, that great troubier of the human breast, loudly declares against a man's wishes or project*., it will be a iktal enemy to decision, till it either reclaim the delinquent passions, or be debauched or laid dead by them. Lady Macbeth may be cited as a harmonious cha* racter, though the epithet seem strangely applied. She had capacity, ambition, and courage ; and she 102 OV UECIMON Ok' CHARACTER. vilied the death of the king. Macbeth had still more capacity, ambition, and courage ; and he also willed ilie murder of the king. But he had, besides, hu- manity, generosity, conscience, and some measure of rt hat forms the power of conscience, the fear of a .'juperior Being. Consequently, when the dreadful moment approached, he flt an insupportable conflict between these opposite principles, and when it was arrived his utmost courage began to fail. The worst part of his nature fell prostrate under the pow^r of the better ; the angel of goodness arrested the demon that grasped the dagger ; and would have taken that dagger away, if the pure demoniac firmness of his wife, who had none of these counteracting principles, had not sliamed and hardened him to the deed. The poet's delineation of Richard III. offers a dreadful specimen of this indivisibility of mental im- pulse. Alter his determination was fixed, the whole mind with the compactest fidelity supported him in prosecuting it. Securely privileged from all interference of doubt that could linger, or humanity that could soften, or timidity that could shrink, he advanced witb a concentrated constancy through scene after scene of atrocity, still fulfilling his vow to " cut his way through with a bloody axe." He did not waver while he pursued his object, nor relent when he seized it. Cromwell (whom I mention as a parallel, of course not to Richard's wickedness, but to his inflexible vigour,) lost his mental consistency in the latter end (if a career which had displayed a superlative example of decision. It appears that the wish to be a king, at last arose in a mind which had contemned royalty, and 1 muled it from the land. As far as he really had any republican principles and partialities, this new desire must have been a very untoward associate for them, and must have, nro luced a schism in the breast where ON DECISION OF CIiAKACTER. 103 ah the strong forces of thought and passion had acted till then in concord. The new form of ambition became just predominant enough to carry him, by slow degrees, through the embarrassment and the shame of this incongruity, into an irresolute determination to assume the crown ; so irresolute, that he was reduced again to a mortifying indecision by the remonstrances of some of his friends, which he could have slighted, and by an apprehension of the public disapprobation, which he could have braved, if some of the principles of his own mind had not shrunk or revolted from the design. When at last the motives for relinquishing this design prevailed, it was by so small a degree of preponderance, that his reluctant refusal of the offered crown was the voice of only half his soul. Not only two distinct counteracting passions, but one passion interested for two objects, both equally desirable, but of which the one must be sacrificed, may annihilate in that instance the possibility of a resolute promptitude of conduct. I recollect reading in an old divine, a story from some historian, applicable to this remark. A father went to the agents of a tyrant, to endeavour to redeem his two sons, military men, who, with some other captives of war, were condemned to die. He offered, as a ransom, a sum of money, and to surrender his own life. The tyrant's agents who had them in charge, informed him that this equivalent would be accepted for one of his sons, and for OLC only, because they should be accountable for the execu- tion of two persons ; he might therefore choose which he would redeem. Anxious to save even one of them thus at the expense of his own life, he yet was unable to decide which should die, by choosing the other to live, and remained in the agony of this dilemma so long that they were both irreversibly ordered for execution. 10* OX DECISION OF CHARACTER LETTER V. IT were absurd to suppose that any human being can attain a state of mind capable of acting in all instances invariably with the full power of determination ; but it is obvious that many have possessed a habitual and very commanding measure of it ; and I think the pre- ceding remarks have taken account of its chief cha- racteristics and constituent principles. A number of additional observations remains. The slightest view of human affairs shows what fatal and wide-spread mischief may be caused by men of this character, when misled or wicked. You have but to recollect the conquerors, despots, bigots, unjust conspirators, and signal villains of every class, who have blasted society by the relentless vigour which could act consistently and heroically wrong. Till therefore the virtue of mankind be greater, there is reason to be pleased that so few of them are endowed with extraordinary decision. Even when dignified by wisdom and principle, this quality requires great care in the possessors of it to prevent its becoming unamiable. As it involves much practical assertion of superiority over other human beings, it should be as temperate and conciliating as possible in manner ; else pride will feel provoked, affection hurt, and weakness oppressed. But this is not the manner which will be most natural to such a man ; rather it will be high-toned, laconic, and careless of pleasing. He will have the appearance of keeping himself always at a distance from social equality ; and his friends will feel as if their friendship were continually sliding into Mibserviency ; while his intimate connexions will think ON DECISION OK CHARACTER. 105 lie does not attach the due importance either to their opinions or *<> their regard. His mariner, when they differ from him, or complain, will be too much like the expression of slight estimation, and sometimes of disdain. When he can accomplish a design by his own personal means alone, he may be disposed to separate himself to the work with the cold self-enclosed in- dividuality on which no one has any hold, which seems to recognise no kindred being in the world, which takes little account of good wishes and kind concern, any more than it cares for opposition ; which seeks neither aid nor sympathy, and seems to say, I do not want any of you, and I am glad that I do not ; leave me alone to succeed or die. This has a very repellent pffect on the friends who wished to feel themselves of some importance, in some way or other, to a persor whom they are constrained to respect. When assistance is indispensable to his undertakings, his mode of signi- fying it will seem to command, rather than invite, the co-operation. In consultation, his manner will indicate that when he is equally with the rest in possession of the circum- stances of the case, he does not at all expect to hear any opinions that shall correct his own ; but is satisfied that either his present conception of the subject is the just one, or that his own mind must originate that which shall be so. This difference will be apparent- between him and his associates, that their manner of receiving his opinions is that of agreement or dissent; his manner of receiving theirs is judicial that of sanction or rejection. He has the tone of authori- tatively deciding on what they say, but never of sub- mitting to decision what himself says. Their coincidence with his views does not give him a firmer assurance of 106 ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. his being right, nor their dissent any other impression than that of their incapacity to judge. If his feeling took the distinct form of a reflection, it would be, Mine is the business of comprehending and devising, and I am here to rule this company, and not to consult them ; I want their docility, and not their arguments ; I am come, not to seek their assistance in thinking, but to determine their concurrence in executing what is already thought for them. Of course, many sugges- tions and reasons which appear important to those they come from will be disposed of by him with a transient attention, or a light facility, that will seem very dis- respectful to persons who possibly hesitate to admit that he is a demi-god, and that they are but idiots. Lord Chatham, in going out of the House of Commons, ust as one of the speakers against him concluded his speech by emphatically urging what he perhaps rightly thought the unanswerable question, " Where can we find means to support such a war?" turned round a moment, and gaily chanted, " Gentle shepherd tell me where ?" Even the assenting convictions, and practical com- pliances, yielded by degrees to this decisive man, may be somewhat undervalued ; as they will appear to him no more than simply coming, and that very slowly, to a right apprehension ; whereas he understood and decided justly from the first, and has been right all this while. He will be in danger of rejecting the just claims of charity for a little tolerance to the prejudices, hesitation, and timidity, of those with whom he has to act. He will say to himself, I wish there were any thing like manhood among the beings called men ; and that they could have the sense and spirit not to let themselves be hampered b.v so many silly notions and childish UN DECISION OF CHARACTER. 107 fears ! Why cannot they either determine with some promptitude, or let me., that can, do it for them ? Am I to wait till debility become strong, and folly wise ? If full scope be allowed to these tendencies, they may give too much of the character of a tyrant to even a man of elevated virtue, since, in the conscious- ness of the right intention, and the assurance of the wise contrivance, of his designs, he will hold himself justified in being regardless of every thing but the ac- complishment of them. He will forget all respect for the feelings and liberties of beings who are accounted but a subordinate machinery, to be actuated, or to be thrown aside when not actuated, by the spring of h:s commanding spirit. I have before asserted that this strong character may be exhibited with a mildness, or at least temperance, of manner; and that, generally, it will thus best secure its efficacy. But this mildness must often be at the cost of great effort ; and how much considerate policy or benevolent forbearance it will require, for a man to exert his utmost vigour in the very task, as it will appear to him at the time, of cramping that vigour ! Lycurgus appears to have been a high example of conciliating patience in the resolute pro- secution of designs to be effected among a perverse multitude. It is probable that the men most distinguished for decision, have not in general possessed a large share of tenderness ; and it is easy to imagine, that the laws of our nature will, with great difficulty, allow the combi- nation of the refined sensibilities with a hard, never- shrinking, never-yielding firmness. Is it not almost of the essence of this temperament to be free from even the perception of such impressions as cause a mind, weak through susceptibility, to relax or waver ; just as 108 ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. the skin of the elephant, or the armour of the rhino- ceros, would be but indistinctly sensible to the applica- tion of a force by which a small animal, with a skin of thin and delicate texture, would be pierced or lacerated to death ? No doubt, this firmness consists partly in a commanding and repressive power over feelings, but it may consist fully as much in not having them. To be exquisitely alive to gentle impressions, and yet to be able to preserve, when the prosecution of a design requires it, an immovable heart amidst the most im- perious causes of subduing emotion, is perhaps not an impossible constitution of mind, but it must be the rarest endowment of humanity. If you take a view of the first rank of decisive men, you will observe that their faculties have been too much bent to arduous effort, their souls have been kept in too military an attitude, they have been begirt with too much iron, for the melting movements of the heart. Their whole being appears too much arrogated and occupied by the spirit of severe design, urging them toward some defined end, to be sufficiently at ease for the indolent complacency, the soft lassitude of gentle affections, which love to surrender themselves to the present felicities, forgetful of all " enterprises of great pith and moment." The man seems rigorously intent still on his own affairs, as he walks, or regales, or mingles with domestic society ; and appears to despise all the feelings that will not take rank with the grave labours and decisions of intellect, or coalesce with the unremitting passion which is his spring of action ; he values not feelings which he cannot employ either as weapons or as engines. He loves to be actuated by a passion so strong as to compel into exercise the utmost force of his being, and fix him in a tone, compared with which, the gentle affections, if ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 109 :w had felt them, would be accounted lameness, and their exciting causes insipidity. Yet we cannot willingly admit that those gentle affections are totally incompatible with the most im- pregnable resolution and vigour; nor can we help believing that such men as Timoleon, Alfred, and Gustavus Adolphus, must have been very fascinating associates in private and domestic life, whenever the urgency of their affairs would allow them to withdraw from the interests of statesmen and warriors, to indulge the affections of men : most fascinating, for, with relations or friends who had any right perceptions, an effect of the strong character would be recognised ir a peculiar charm imparted by it to the gentle moods and seasons. The firmness and energy of the man whom nothing could subdue, would exalt the quality of the tenderness which softened him to recline. But it were much easier to enumerate a long train of ancient and modern examples of the vigour un- mitigated by the sensibility. Perhaps indeed these indomitable spirits have yielded sometimes to some species of love, as a mode of amusing their passions for an interval, till greater engagements have sum- moned them into their proper element; when they have shown how little the sentiment was an element of the heart, by the ease with which they coivld re- linquish the temporary favourite. In other cases, where there have not been the selfish inducements, which this passion supplies, to the exhibition of some- ining like softness, and where they have been left to the trial of what they might feel of the sympathies of uumanity in their simplicity, no rock on earth could be harder. The celebrated King of Prussia occurs to me, as s capital instance cf the decisive character ; and theie 110 ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. occurs to me, at the same time, one of the anecdotes related of him.* Intending to make, in the night, an important movement in his camp, which was in sight of the enemy, he gave orders that by eight o'clock all the lights in the camp should be put out, on pain of death. The moment that the time was passed, he walked out himself to see whether all were dark. He found a light in the tent of a Captain Zietern, which he entered just as the officer was folding up a letter. Zietern knew him, and instantly fell on his knees to entreat his mercy. The king asked to whom he had been writing; he said it was a letter to his wife, which he had retained the candle these few minutes beyond the time in order to finish. The king coolly ordered him to rise, and write one line more, which he should dictate. This line was to inform his wife, without any explanation, that by such an hour the next day, he should be a dead man. The letter was then sealed, and despatched as it had been intended ; and, the next day, the captain was executed. I say nothing of the justice of the punishment itself; but this cool barbarity to the affection both of the officer and his wife, proved how little the decisive hero and reputed philosopher was capable of the tender affections, or of sympathizing with their pains. At the same time, it is proper to observe, that the case may easily occur, in which a man, sustaining a * The authenticity of this anecdote, which I read in some trifling fugitive publication many years since, lias been questioned. Possibly enough it might be one of the many stories only half true which could not fail to go abroad concerning a man who made, in his day, so great a figure. But as it does not at all misrepresent the general character of his mind, since there are many incontrovertible facts proving against him as great a degree of cruelty as this anecdotu would charge on him. the want of means to prove this one fact doe: not seem to impose any necessity for omitting the illustration. OK DECISION OF CHARACTER. Ill nigh responsibility, must be resolute to act in a marmot which may make him appear to want the finer feeling?. He may be placed under the necessity of doing what lie knows will cause pain to persons of a character tc feel it severely. He may be obliged to resist affec- tionate wishes, expostulations, entreaties, and tears. Take this same instance. Suppose the wife of Zietern had come to supplicate for him, not only the remission of the punishment of death, but an exemption from any other severe punishment, which was perhaps justly due to the violation of such an order issued no doubt for important reasons; it had then probably been the duty and the virtue of the commander to deny the most interesting suppliant, and to resist the most pathetic appeals which could have been made to his feelings. LETTER VI. VARIOUS circumstances might be specified as addptni to confirm such a character as I have attempted to describe. I shall notice two or three. And first, opposition. The passions which inspirit men to resistance, and sustain them in it, such as anger, indignation, and resentment, are evidently far stronger than those which have reference to friendly objects ; and if any of these strong passions are fre- quently excited by opposition, they infuse a certain quality into the general temperament of the mind, which remains after the immediate excitement is past. They continually strengthen the principle of re-action ; they put the mind in the habitual array of defence and self-assertion, and often give it the aspect and the uosture of a gladiator, when there appears uo con- 112 ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. fronting combatant. When these passions arc provoked in such a person as I describe, it is probable that each excitement is followed by a greater increase of this principle of re-action than in other men, because this result is so congenial with his naturally resolute dis- position. Let him be opposed then, throughout the prosecution of one of his designs, or in the general tenour of his actions, and this constant opposition would render him the service of an ally, by augmenting the resisting and defying power of his mind. An irre- solute spirit indeed might be quelled and subjugated by a formidable and persisting opposition ; but the strong wind which blows out a taper, exasperates a powerful fire (if there be fuel enough) to an indefinite intensity. It would be found, in fact, on a recollection of instances, that many of the persons most conspicuous for decision, have been exercised and forced to this aigh tone of spirit in having to make their way through opposition and contest ; a discipline under which they were wrought to both a prompt acuteness of faculty, and an inflexibility of temper, hardly attainable even by minds of great natural strength, if brought forward Into the affairs of life under indulgent auspices, and in habits of easy and friendly coincidence with those around them. Often, however, it is granted, the firmness matured by such discipline is, in a man of virtue, accompanied with a Catonic severity, and in a mere man of the world is an unhumanized repulsive hardness. Desertion may be another cause conducive to the consolidation of this character. A kind mutually reclining dependence, is certainly for the happiness of human beings ; but this necessarily prevents the development of some great individual powers which would be forced into action by a state of abandonment ON DECISION OF CIIAKACTER. 113 ( lately happened to notice, with some surprise, an ivy, which, finding nothing to cling to beyond a certain poinv had shot off into a bold elastic stem, with an air of as much independence as any branch of oak in the vicinity. So a human being thrown, whether by cruelty, justice, or accident, from all social support and kindness, if he have any vigour of spirit, and be not in the bodily debility of either childhood or age, will begin to act for himself with a resolution which will appear like a new faculty. And the most absolute inflexibility is likely to characterize the iv-<>- lution of an individual who is obliged to deliberate without consultation, and execute without assistance. He will disdain to yield to beings who have rejected him, or to forego a particle of his designs or advantages in concession to the opinions or the will of all the world. Himself, his pursuits, and his interests are emphatically his own. " The world is not his friend, nor the world's law;" and therefore he becomes re- gardless of every thing but its power, of which his policy carefully takes the measure, in order to ascer- tain his own means of action and impunity, as set against the world's means of annoyance, prevention, and retaliation. If this person have but little humanity or priojiple. lie will become a misanthrope, or perhaps a villain, who will resemble a solitary wild beast of the night, which makes prey of every thing it can overpower, and cares for nothing but fire. If he be capable of grand conception and enterprise, he may, like Spar- tacus, make a daring attempt against the whole social order of the state where he has been oppressed. If he be of great humanity and principle, he may become one of the noblest of mankind, and display a generous virtue to which society had no claim, and which it is not I lit ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. worthy to reward, if it should at last become inclined. No, he will say, give your rewards to another ; as it has been no part of my object to gain them, they are not necessary to my satisfaction. I have done good, without expecting your gratitude, and without caring for your approbation. If conscience and my Creator had not been more auspicious than you, none of these virtues would ever have opened to the day. When 1 ought to have been an object of your compassion, I might have perished ; now, when you find I can serve your interests, you will affect to acknowledge me and reward me ; but I will abide by my destiny to verify the principle that virtue is its own reward. In either case, virtuous or wicked, the man who has been com- pelled to do without assistance, will spurn interference. Common life would supply illustrations of the effect of desertion, in examples of some of the most resolute men having become such partly from being left friend- less in early life. The case has also sometimes happened, that a wife and mother, remarkable perhaps for orentleness and acquiescence before, has been com- pelled, after the death of her husband on whom she depended, and when she has met with nothing but neglect or unkindness from relations and those who had been accounted friends, to adopt a plan of her own, and has executed it with a resolution which has astonished even herself. One regrets that the signal examples, real or ficti- tious, that most readily present themselves, are still of the depraved order. I fancy mvself to see Marius sitting on "the ruins of Carthage, where no arch or column, that remained unshaken amidst the desolation, could present a stronger image of a firmness beyond the power of disaster to subdue. The rigid constancy which had before distinguished his character, would be ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. I 1 ."> aggravated by his finding himself thus an outcast from all human society ; and he would proudly shake off every sentiment that had ever for an instant checked his designs in the way of reminding him of social obligations. The lonely individual was places! in the alternative of becoming the victim or tlte anta- gonist of the power of the empire. While, with a spirit capable of confronting that power, he resolved, amidst those ruins, on a great experiment, he would enjoy a kind of sullen luxury in surveying the dreary situation into which he was driven, and recollecting the circumstances of his expulsion ; since they would seem to him to sanction an unlimited vengeance ; to present what had been his country as the pure legiti- mate prize for desperate achievement ; and to give him a proud consequence in being reduced to maintain singly a mortal quarrel against the bulk of mankind. He would exult that the very desolation of his con- dition tendered but the more complete the proof of his possessing a mind which no misfortunes could repress or intimidate, and that it kindled an animosity intense enough to force that mind from firm endurance into impetuous action. He would -feel that he became stronger for enterprise, in proportion as his exile and destitution rendered him more inexorable ; and the sentiment with which he quitted his solitude would be, Rome expelled her patriot, let her receive her evil genius. The decision of Satan, in Paradise Lost, is repre- sented as consolidated by his reflections on his hopeless banishment from heaven, which oppress him with >;!f thoughts and fancies which follow one another without deduction or dependence, and which can there- fore no more bring a subject to a proper issue, than a number of separate links will answer the mechanical purpose of a chain. The conclusion which terminates such a series, does not deserve the name of result or conclusion, since it has little more than a casual con- nexion with what went before ; the conclusion might as fPoperly have taken place at an earlier point of the traia, or have been deferred till that train had been extended much further. Instead of having been busily employed la this kind of thinking, for perhaps many 1Q2 ON DECISION OF CHARACTER hours, a man might possibly as well have been sleeping all the time ; since the single thought which is now to determine his conduct, might have happened to be the first thought that occurred to him on awaking. It only happens to occur to him now ; it does not follow from what he has been thinking these hours; at least, he cannot prove that some other thought might not just as appropriately have come in its place at the end, and to make an end, of this long series. It is easy to see how feeble that determination is likely to be, which is formed on so narrow a ground as the last accidental idea that comes into the mind, or on so loose a ground as this crude uncombined assemblage of ideas. Indeed it is difficult to form a determination at all on such slight ground. A man delays, and waits for some more satisfactory thought to occur to him ; and perhaps he has not waited long, before an idea arises in his mind of a quite contrary tendency to the last. As this addi- tional idea is not, more than that whicl preceded it, the result of any process of reasoning, nor brings with it any arguments, it may be expected to give place soon to another, and still another ; and they are all in suc- cession of equal authority, that is properly of none. If at last an idea occurs to him which seems of consi- derable authority, he may here make a stand, and adopt his resolution, with firmness, as he thinks, and com- mence the execution. But still, if he cannot see whence the principle which has determined him derives its authority on what it holds for that authority his resolution is likely to prove treacherous and evanescent in any serious trial. A principle so little verified by sound reasoning, is not terra firma for a man to trust himself upon ; it is only as a slight incrustation on a yielding element ; it is like the sand compacted into a thin surface on the lake Serbonis, which broke away ON DECISION OF CHARACTER 123 under the unfortunate army which had begun tu advance on it, mistaking it for solid ground. These remarks may seem to refer only to a single instance of delibe- ration ; but they are equally applicable to all the deli- berations and undertakings of a man's life ; the same connected manner of thinking, which is so necessary to give firmness of determination and of conduct in a particular instance, will, if habitual, greatly contribute to form a decisive character. Not only should thinking be thus reduced, by a strong and patient discipline, to a train or process, in which all the parts at once depend upon and support one another, but also this train should be followed on to a full con- clusion. It should be held as a law generally in force, that the question must be disposed of before it is let alone. The mind may carry on this accurate process to some length, and then stop through indolence, or start away through levity ; but it can never possess that rational confidence in its opinions which is requisite to the character in question, till it is conscious of acquiring them from an exercise of thought continued on to its result. The habit of thinking thus completely is indis- pensable to the general character of decision ; and in an) 'articular instance, it is found that short pieces of coui * of reasoning, though correct as far as they go, are inadequate to make a man master of the immediate concern. They are besides of little value for aid to future thinking; because from being left thus incom- plete they are but slightly retained by the mind, and soon sink away ; in the same manner as the walls of a structure left unfinished speedily moulder. After these remarks, I should take occasion to observe, that a vigorous exercise of thought may sometimes foi a while seem to increase the difficulty of decision, b) discovering a great number of unthought-of reason* 124 ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. for a measure and against it, so that the most disci* minating mind may, during a short space, find itself iu the state of the magnetic needle under the equator. But no case, in the world can really have a perfect equality of opposite reasons ; nor will it long appear to have it, in the estimate of a clear and well-disciplined intellect, which after some time will ascertain, though the difference is small, which side of the question has ten, and which has but nine. At any rate this is the mind to come nearest in the approximation. Another thing that would powerfully assist toward complete decision, both in the particular instance. and in the general spirit of the character, is for a man to place himself in a situation analogous to that in which Caesar placed his soldiers, when he burnt, the ships which brought them to land. If his judg- ment is really decided, let him commit himself irre trievably, by doing something which shall oblige him to do more, which shall lay on him the necessity of doing all. If a man resolves as a general intention to be a philanthropist, I would say to him, Form some actual plan of philanthropy, and begin the execution of it to-morrow, (if I may not say to-day,) so explicitly that you cannot relinquish it without becoming degraded even in your own estimation. If a man would be a hero, let him, if it be possible to find a good cause in arms, go presently to the carnp. If a man is desirous of a travelling adventure through distant countries, and de- liberately approves both his purpose and his scheme, let him actually prepare to set off. Let him not still dwell, in imagination, on mountains, rivers, and temples ; but give directions about his remittances, his personal equip- ments, or the carriage, or the vessel, in which he is to go. Ledyard surprised the official person who asked him how soou he could be ready to set off for the interior ON DECISION OF CHARACTER. 125 of Africa, by replying promptly and firmly, " To- morrow." Again, it is highly conducive to a manly firmness, that the interests in which it is exerted should be of a dignified order, so as to give the passions an ample scope, and a noble object. The degradation they suffer in being devoted to mean and trivial pursuits, often perceived to be such in spite of every fallacy of the imagination, would in general, I should think, also de- bilitate their energy, and therefore preclude strength ui' character, to which nothing can be more adverse, than to have the fire of the passions damped by the mortification of feeling contempt for the object, as often as its meanness is betrayed by failure of the delusion which invests it. And finally, I would repeat that one should think a man's own conscientious approbation of his conduct must be of vast importance to his decision in the outset, and his persevering constancy ; and I would attribute it to defect of memory that a greater proportion of the examples, introduced for illustration in this essay, do not exhibit goodness in union with the moral and intel- lectual power so conspicuous in the quality described. Certainly a bright constellation of such examples might be displayed ; yet it is the mortifying truth that much the greater number of men pre-eminent for decision, have been such as could not have their own serious approbation, except through an utter perversion of judgment or abolition of conscience. And it is melan- choly to contemplate beings represented in our imagi- nation as of adequate power, (when they possessed great external means to give effect to the force of their minds,) for the grandest utility, for vindicating each good cause which has languished in a world adverse to all goodness, and for intimidating the collective vices of a nation cr 126 OW DECISION OF CHARACTER. an age to contemplate such beings as becoming them- selves the mighty exemplars, giants, and champions o< those vices ; and it is fearful to follow them in thought, from this region, of which not all the powers and diffi- culties and inhabitants together could have subdued their adamantine resolution, to the Supreme Tribunal that resolution must tremble and melt away. ESSAY III. ON THE APPLICATION OF THK EPITHET ROMANT1CI LETTER J. MY DEAR FRIEND, A THOUGHTFUL judge of sentiments, books, and men, will often find reason to regret that the language of censure is so easy and so undefined. It costs no labour, and needs no intellect, to pronounce the words, foolisn, stupid, dull, odious, absurd, ridiculous. The weakest or most uncultivated mind may therefore gratify its vanity, laziness, and malice, all at once, by a prompt application of vague condemnatory words, where a wise and liberal man would not feel himself warranted to pronounce without the most deliberate consideration, and where such consideration might perhaps result in applause. Thus excellent perfor- mances, in the department of thinking or of action, might be consigned to contempt, if there were no better judges, on the authority of those who could not so much as understand them. A man who wishes some decency and sense to prevail in the circulation jf opinions, will do well, when he hears these decisions of ignorant arrogance, to call for a precise explication of J*e manner in which the terms of the verdict apply to the subject. 128 ON Tilt APPLICATION OF There is a competent number of words for this use of cheap censure ; but though a man doubts not he is giving a tolerable proof of sagacity in the confident readiness to condemn, even with this impotence of language, he may however have an irksome conscious- ness that there is wanting to him a certain dexterity of biting expression that would do more mischief than the words dull, stupid, and ridiculous, which he is re- peating many times to compensate for the incapacity of hitting off the right thing at once. These vague epithets describe nothing, discriminate nothing ; they express no species, are as applicable to ten thousand things as to this one, and he has before employed them on a numberless diversity of subjects. He has a fretted feeling of this their inefficiency ; and can perceive that censure or contempt has the smartest effect, when its expressions have a special cast which tits them more peculiarly to the present subject than to another ; and he is therefore secretly dissatisfied in uttering the expressions which say "about it and about it," b'ut do not say the thing itself; which showing hii good will betray his deficient power. He wants words and phrases which would make the edge of his clumsy meaning fall just where it ought. Yes, he wants words; for his meaning is sharp, he knows, if only the words would come. Discriminative censure must be conveyed, either by a marked expression of thought in a sentence, or by an epithet or other term so specifically appropriate, that the single word is sufficient to fix the condemnation by the mere precision with which it describes. But as the censurer perhaps cannot succeed in either of these ways, he is willing to seek some other resource. And he may often find it in cant terms, which have a more spiteful force, and seem to have more particularity of meaning, THE EPITHET ROMAHTIr. 129 than plain common words, while yet needing no shrewd- ness for their application. Each of these is supposed to denominate some one class or character of scorned or reprobated things, but so little defines it, that dull malice may venture to assign to the class any thing which it would desire to throw under the odium of the denomination. Such words serve for a mode of collective execution, somewhat like the vessels which, in a season of outrage in a neighbouring country, received a pro- miscuous crowd of reputed criminals, of unexamined and dubious similarity, and were then sunk in the iiood. You cannot wonder that such compendious words of decision, which can give quick vent to crude impatient censure, emit plenty of antipathy in a few syllables, and save the condemner the difficulty of telling exactly what he wants to mean, should have had an extensive circulation. Puritan was, doubtless, welcomed as a term mos* luckily invented or revived, when it began to be applied in contempt to a class of men of whom the world was not worthy. Its odd peculiarity gave it almost such an advantage as that of a proper name among the lumber of common words by which they were described and reviled ; while yet it meant any thing, every thing, which the vain world disliked in the devout and con- scientious character. To the more sluggish it saved, and to the more loquacious it relieved, the labour of endlessly repeating " demure rogues," " sanctimonious pretenders," " formal hypocrites." The abusive faculty of this word has long been extinct, and left it to become a grave and almost vene- rable term in history ; but some word of a similar cas"t was indispensably necessary to the vulgar of both kinds. The vain and malignant spirit which had decried the elevated piety of the Puritans, sought about (as Miltou J30 ON THE APPLICATION OF describes tne wickeu one in Paradise) for some con- venient form in which it might again come forth to his at zealous Christianity ; and in another lucky moment fell on the term Methodist. If there is no sense in the word, as now applied, there seems however to be a great deal of aptitude and execution. It has the advan- tage of being comprehensive as a general denomination, and yet opprobrious as a special badge, for every thing that ignorance and folly may mistake for fanaticism, or that malice may wilfully assign to it. Whenever a formalist feels it his duty to sneer at those operations of religion on the passions, by which he has never been disturbed, he has only to call them metliodistical ; and though the word be both so trite and so vague, he feels as if he had uttered a good pungent thing. There is a satiric smartness in the word, though there be none in the man. In default of keen faculty in the mind, it is delightful thus to find something that will do as well, ready bottled up in odd terms. It is not less convenient to a profligate, or a coxcomb, whose propriety of cha- racter is to be supported by laughing indiscriminately at religion in every form ; the one, to evince that his courage is not sapped by conscience, the other, to make the best advantage of his instinct of catching at impiety as a compensative substitute for sense. The word Methodism so readily sets aside all religion as super- stitious folly, that they pronounce it with an air as if no more needed to be said. Such terms have a pleasant facility of throwing away the matter in question to scorn, without any trouble of making a definite in- telligible charge of extravagance or delusion, and attempting to prove it. In politics, Jacobinism has, of late years, been the brand by which all sentiments referring to the principles of liberty, in a way to censure the measures of the THE EPITHET RO.NfANTIC. 131 atrerxlent party in the State, have been sentenced to execration. What a quantity of noisy zeal would have been quashed in dead silence, if it had been possible to enforce the substitution of statements and definitions for this vulgar, senseless, but most efficacious term of reproach ! What a number of persons have vented the superabundance of their loyalty, or their rancour, by means of this and two or three similar words, who, if by some sudden lapse of memory they hail lost these two or three words, and a few names of persons, would have looked round with an idiotic vacancy, totally at a loss what was the subject of their anger or their approbation. One may here catch a glimpse of the policy of men of a superior class, in employing these terms as much as the vulgar, in order to keep them in active currency. If a rude populace, whose understandings they despise, and do not wish to improve, could not be excited and kept up to loyal animosity, but by means of a clear comprehension of what they were to oppose, and of tho reasons why, a political party would have but feeble hold on popular zeal, and might vociferate, and intrigue, and fret itself to nothing. But if a single word, devised in hatred and defamation of political liberty, can be made the symbol of all that is absurd and execrable, so that the very sound of it shall irritate the passions of this ignorant and scorned multitude, as dogs have been taught to bark at the name of a neighbouring tyrant, it is a commodious expedient for rendering these passions available and subservient to the interests of those who despise, while they cajole, their duped auxi- liaries. The popular passions are the imps and demons of the political conjuror, and he can raise them, as other conjurors affect to do theirs, by terms of gibberish.* * It is curious that, within no long time after this was first printed, the terms jacobin and jacobinism became completely worn out anil K 2 132 OU THE APPLICATION OF The epithet romantic has obviously no similarity to these words in its coinage, but it is considerably like them in tho mode and effect of its application. For having partly quitted the rank of plain epithets, it has become a convenient exploding word, of more special deriding significance than the other words of its order, such as wild, extravagant, visionary. It is a standard expression of contemptuous despatch, which you have often heard pronounced with a very self-complacent air, that said, " How much wiser I am than some people," by the indolent and inanimate on what they would not acknowledge practicable, by the apes of prudence on what they accounted foolishly adventurous, and by the slaves of custom on what startled them as singular. The class of absurdities which it denominates is left so undefined, that all the views and sentiments which a narrow cold mind could not like or understand in an ample and fervid one, might be referred thither; and yet the word seems, or assumes, to discriminate their character so conclusively as to put them out of argu- ment. With this cast of sapience and vacancy of sense, it is allowed to depreciate without being acountable ; it has the license of a parrot, to call names without being taxed with insolence. And when any sentiments are decisively stigmatized with this denomination, it would require con- siderable courage to attempt their rescue and defence ; since the imputation which the epithet fixes on them will pass upon the advocate ; and he may expect to be him- self enrolled among the heroes of whom Don Quixote is from time immemorial the commander-in-chief. At leasi he may be assigned to that class which occupies a du- bious frontier space between the rational and the insane. obsolete. It is not worth a guess how long the term radical, to which the duty of the defunct ones was transferred, may continue of anj service against the doctrines and persons of reformists. THE KP1THET ROMANTIC. 133 If, however, the suggestions and sketches which 1 had endeavoured to exhibit as interesting and practi- cable, were attempted to be turned into vanity and "thin air" by the enunciation of this epithet, I would say, Pray now what do you mean by romantic ? Have you, as you pronounce it, any precise conception in your mind, which you can give in some other words, and then distinctly fix the charge ? Or is this a word, which because it is often used in some such way as you now use it, may be left to tell its own meaning better than the speaker knows how to explain it ? Or perhaps you mean, that the notions which I am ex- pressing recall to your mind, as kindred ideas, the fan- tastic images of Romance ; and that you cannot help thinking of enchanted castles, encounters with giants, solemn exorcisms, fortunate surprises, knights and wizards. You cannot exactly distinguish what the absurdity in my notions is, but you fancy what it is like. You therefore condemn it, not by defining its nature and exposing its irrationality, but by applying an epithet which arbitrarily assigns it to a class of things of which the absurdity stands notorious and un- questioned : for evidently the epithet should signify a re- semblance to what is the prominent folly in the works of romance. Well then, take advantage of this resemblance, to bring your censure into something of a definite form. Delineate precisely the chief features of the absurdity of the works of romance, and then show how the same characteristics are flagrant on my notions or schemes. 1 will then renounce at once all my visionary follies, and be henceforward at least a very sober, if I cannot be a very rational man. The great general characteristic of those works has been the ascendency of imagination over judgment And the description is correct as applied to tin books 134- ON THE APPLICATION CF however well endowed with intellect the authors 01 them might be. If they chose, for their own and others' amusement, to dismiss a sound judgment awhile from its office, to stimulate their imagination to the wildest extravagances, and to depicture the fantastic career in writing, the book might be partly the same ihing as if produced by a mind in which sound judg- ment had no place ; it would exhibit imagination actually ascendent by the writer's voluntary indulgence, though not necessarily so by the constitution of his mind. It was a different case, if a writer kept his judgment active amidst these very extravagances, with the intention of shaping and directing them to some particular end, of satire or sober truth. But however, the romances of the ages of chivalry and the preceding times were composed under neither of these intellectual conditions. They were not the productions either of men who, possessing a sound judgment, chose formally to suspend its exercise, in order to riot awhile in scenes of extravagant fancy, only keeping that judgment so far awake as to retain i continual consciousness in what degree they were extravagant ; or of men designing to give effect to truth or malice under the diguise of a fan- tastic exhibition. It is evident that the authors were under the real ascendency of imagination; so that, though they must at times have been conscious of committing great excesses, yet they were on the whole wonderfully little sensible of the enormous extravagance of their fictions. They could drive on their career through monstrous absurdities of description and narration, without, apparently, any check from a sense of incon- sistency, improbability, or impossibility ; and with an air as if they really reckoned on being taken for the veritable describers of something that could exist or happen within the mundane system And the general THE EPITHET ROMANTIC. 135 state of intellect of the age in which they lived seems to have been well fitted to allow them the utmost license. The irrationality of the romancers, and of the age, provoked the observing and powerful mind of Cervantes to expose it by means of a parallel and still more extravagant representation of the prevalence of imagination over reason, drawn in a ludicrous form, by which he rendered the folly palpable even to the sense of that age. From that time the delirium abated ; the works which inspirited its ravings have been blown away beyond the knowledge and curiosity of any but biblio- maniacs ; and the fabrication of such is gone among the lost branches of manufacturing art. Yet romance was in some form to be retained, as in- dispensable to the craving of the human mind for some- thing more vivid, more elated, more wonderful, than the plain realities of life ; as a kind of mental balloon, for mounting into the air from the ground of ordinary ex- perience. To afford this extra-rational kind of luxury, it was requisite that the fictions should still partake, in a limited degree, of the quality of the earlier romance. The writers were not to be the dupes of wild fancy ; they were not to feign marvels in such a manner as it they knew no better ; they were not wholly to lose sight of the actual system of things, but to keep within some measures of relation and proportion to it; and yet they were required to disregard the strict laws of verisimi- litude in shaping their inventions, and to magnify and diversify them with an indulgence of fancy very con- siderably beyond the bounds of probability. Without this their fictions would have lost what was regarded as the essential quality of romance. If, therefore, the epithet Romantic, as now employe! for description and censure of character, sentiments, and schemes, is to be understood as expressive of the 136 ON THE APPLICATION OF quality which is characteristic of that class of fictions, it imputes, in substance, a great excess of imagination in proportion to judgment ; and it imputes, in parti- culars, such errors as naturally result from that excess. It may be worth while to look for some of the prac- tical exemplifications of this unfortunate disproportion between these two powers of the mind. It should first be noted that a defective judgment is not necessarily accompanied by any thing in the least romantic in disposition, since the imagination may be as inert as the judgment is weak ; and this double and equal deficiency produces mere dulness. But it is obvious that a weak judgment may be associated with an active strength of that faculty which is of such lively power even in childhood, in dreams, and in the state of insanity. Again, there may be an intellect not positively feeble (supposing it estimated separately from the other power) yet practically reduced to debility by a disproportionate imagination, which continually invades its sphere, and takes every thing out of its hands. And then the case is made worse by the unfortunate circumstance, that the exercise of the faculty which should be repressed, is incomparably more easy and delightful, than of that which should be promoted. Indeed the term exercise is hardly applicable to the activity of a faculty which can be active without effort, which is so far from needing to be stimulated to its works of magic, that it often scorns the most serious injunctions to forbear. It is not exercise, but indulgence; and even minds possessing much of the power of understanding, may be little disposed to undergo the labour of it, when amidst the ease of the deepest indolence they can revel in the activity of a more animating employment. Imagination may be indulged till it usurp an entire ascendency over THE EPITHET ROMANTIC. 137 the mind, and then every subject presented to that mind will be taken under the action of imagination, instead of understanding; imagination will throw its colours where the intellectual faculty ought to draw its lines ; will accumulate metaphors where reason ought to deduce arguments ; images will take the place of thoughts, and scenes of disquisitions. The whole mind may become at length something like a hemisphere of cloud-scenery, filled with an ever-moving train of changing melting forms, of every colour, mingled with rainbows, meteors, and an occasional gleam of pure sun- light, all vanishing away, the mental like this natural imagery, when its hour is up, without leaving any thing behind but the wish to recover the vision. And yet, the while, this series of visions may be mistaken for operations of thought, and each cloudy image be ad- mitted in the place of a proposition or a reason ; or ! 4 may even be mistaken for something sublimer than thinking. The influence of this habit of dwelling on the beautiful fallacious forms of imagination, will ac- company the mind into the most serious speculations, or rather musings, on the real world, and what is to be done in it, and expected ; as the image from looking at any dazzling object still appears before the eye wherever it turns. The vulgar materials that constitute the actual economy of the world, will rise up to sight in fictitious forms, which the mind cannot disenchant into plain reality ; which indeed it may hardly suspect of being illusory ; and would not be very desirous to reduce to the proof if it did. For such a mind is not disposed to examine, with any severity of inspection, the real condition of things. It is content with ig- norance, because environed with something far more delicious than such knowledge, in the paradise which imagination creates. In that paradise it walks delighted, 138 ON THE APPLICATION OF till some imperious circumstance of real life cal] it thence, and gladly escapes thither again as soon as the cause of the avocation can be got rid of. There, every- thing is beautiful and noble as could be desired to form the residence of angels. If a tenth part of the felicities that have been cloyed, the great actions that have been performed, the beneficent institutions that have been established, and the beautiful objects that have been seen, in that happy region, could have been im- Dortcd into this terrestrial place what a delightful ,hing, my dear friend, it would have been each morning to awake and look on such a world once more. It is not strange that a faculty, of which the exercise is so easy and bewitching, and the scope infinite, should obtain a predominance over judgment, especially in young persons, and in such as may have been brought up, like Rasselas and his companions, in great seclusion from the sight and experience of the world. Indeed, a considerable vigour of imagination, though it be at the expense of a frequent predominance over juvenile understanding, seems necessary, in early life, to cause a generous expansion of the passions, by giving the most lively aspect to the objects which must attract them in order to draw forth into activity the faculties of our nature. It may also contribute to prepare the mind for the exercise of that faith which converses with things unseen, but converses with them through the medium of those ideal forms in which imagination presents them, and in which only a strong imagination i-an present them impressively.* And I should deem it the indication of a character not destined to excel in * The Divine Being is the only one of these objects which a Christian would wish it possible to contemplate without the aid of imagination ; and every reflective man has felt how difficult it is to apprehend even this Object without the intervention of an image. In THE EPITllKT ROMAKTIC. J39 the liberal, the energetic, or the devout qualities, if I observed in the youthful age a close confinement of thought to bare truth and minute accuracy, with an entire aversion to the splendours, amplifications, and excursions of fancy. The opinion is warranted by instances of persons so distinguished in youth, who have become subsequently very intelligent indeed, in a certain way, but dry, cold, precise, devoted to detail, and incapable of being carried away one moment by any inspiration of the beautiful or the sublime. They seem to have only the bare intellectual mechanism of the human mind, without the addition of what is to give it life and sentiment. They give one an impression analogous to that of the leafless trees observed in winter, admirable for the distinct exhibition of their branches and minute ramifications so clearly defined on the sky, but destitute of all the green soft luxury of foliage which is requisite to make a perfect tree. And the affections which may exist in such minds seem to have a bleak abode, somewhat like those bare deserted nests which you have often seen in such trees. If, indeed, the signs of this exclusive understanding indicated also such an extraordinary vigour of the faculty, as to promise a very great mathematician or metaphysician, one would perhaps be content to forego some of the properties which form a complete mind, for the sake of this pre-eminence of one of its endow- ments ; even though the person were to be so defective in sentiment and fancy, that, as the story goes of an eminent mathematician, he could read through a most animated and splendid epic poem, and on being asked thinking of the transactions and personages of history, the final events of time foretold by prophecy, the state of good men in another world, the superior ranks of intelligent agents, &c. he has often had occasion to wish his humiliation much more vivid. 140 THIS APPLICATION OF what he thought of it, gravely reply, What does it Drove ?" But the want of imagination is never an evidence, and perhaps but rarely a concomitant, of superior understanding. Imagination may be allowed the ascendency in early youth ; the case should be reversed in mature life ; and if it is not, a man may consider his mind either as not the most happily constructed, or as unwisely disci- plined. The latter indeed is probably true in every such instance LETTER II. THE ascendency of imagination operates in various modes ; I will endeavour to distinguish those which may justly be called romantic. The extravagance of imagination in romance has very much consisted in the display of a destiny and course of life totally unlike the common condition of mankind. And you may have observed in living indi- viduals, that one of the effects sometimes produced by the predominance of this faculty is, a persuasion in a person's own mind that he is born to some peculiar and extraordinary destiny, while yet there are no extra- ordinary indications in the person or his circumstances. There was something rational in the early presentiment tvhich some distinguished men have entertained of their future career. When a celebrated general of the present times exclaimed, after performing the common military exercise, as one of a company of juvenile volunteers, " I shall be a commander-in-chief,"* a sagacious observer of the signs of talents yet but partially developed, might hav thought it 'ndced a Related of Moreau. THE EPITHET ROMANTIC. 141 rather sanguine but probably not a quite absurd antici- pation. An elder and intelligent associate of Milton'* youth might without much difficulty have believed himself listening to an oracle, when a spirit which was shaping in such gigantic proportions avowed to him a confidence, of being destined to produce a work which should distinguish the nation and the age. The opening of uncommon faculties may be sometimes inspirited by such anticipations ; which the young genius may be allowed to express, perhaps as a stimulus encouraged to indulge. But in most instances these magnificent presumptions form, in the observer's eye, a ludicrous contrast with the situation and apparent abilities of the person who entertains them. And in the event, how few such anticipations have been proved the genuine promptings of an extraordinary mind. The visionary presumption of a peculiar destiny is entertained in more forms than that which implies a confidence of possessing uncommon talent. It is often the flattering self-assurance simply of a life of singular felicity. The captive of fancy fondly imagines his prospect of life as a delicious vale, where from each side every stream of pleasure is to flow down to his feet ; and while it cannot but be seen that innumerable evils do harass other human beings, some mighty spell is to protect him against them all. He takes no de- liberate account of what is inevitable in the lot of humanity, of the sober probabilities of his own situation, or of any principles in the constitution of his mind which are perhaps very exactly calculated to frustrate the anticipation and the scheme of happiness. If this excessive imagination is combined with ten- dencies to affection, it makes a person sentimentally romantic. With a great, and what might, in a mind \tf finer element, be a just contempt of the o-ditiary 14-2 ON THE APPLICATION OF rate of attachments, both in friendship and love, he indulges a most assured confidence that his peculiar lot is to realize all the wonders of generous, virtuous, noble, unalienable friendship, or of enraptured, unin- terrupted, and unextinguishable love, that the inebria- tion of fiction and poetry ever sung ; while perhaps a shrewd indifferent observer can descry nothing in the horoscope, or the character, or the actual circumstances of the man, or in the qualities of the human creatures that he adores, or in the nature of his devotion, to promise an elevation or permanence of felicity beyond the destiny of common mortals. If a passion for variety and novelty accompanies this extravagant imagination, it will exclude from its bold sketches of future life every thing like confined regularity, and common plodding occupations. It will suggest that / was born for an adventurer, whose story will one day be a wonder of the world. Perhaps I an* to be an universal traveller ; and there is not on the globe a grand city, or ruin, or volcano, or cataract, but I must see it. Debility of constitution, deficiency of means, innumerable perils, unknown languages, op- pressive toils, extinguished curiosity, worn out fortitude, c ailing health, and the shortness of life, are very possibly all left out of the account. If there is in the disposition a love of what is called glory, and an idolatry of those capacious and intrepid spirits one of which has often, in a portentous crisis, decided, by an admirable series of exertions, or by one grand exploit of intelligence and valour, the destiny of armies and of empires, a predominant imagination may be led to revel amidst the splendours of military achievement, and to flatter the man that he too is to be a hero, a great commander. When a mind under this influence recurs to prece- THE ET-ITHET ROMANTIC. 143 dents as a foundation and a warrant of its expectations, they are never the usual, but always the extraordinary examples, that are contemplated. An observer of the ordinary instances of friendship is perhaps heard to assert that the sentiment is sufficiently languid in general to admit of an almost unqualified self-interest, of absence without pain, and of ultimate indifference. Well, so let it be ; Damon and Pythias were friends of a different order, and our friendship is to be like theirs. Or if the subject of musing and hope is the union in which love commonly results, it may be true and ob- vious enough that the generality of instances would not seem to tell of more than a mediocrity of happiness in this relation ; but a visionary person does not -live within the same world with these examples. The few instances which have been recorded of tender and never-dying enthusiasm, together with the numerous ones which romance and poetry have created, form the class to which he belongs, and from whose enchant- ing history, excepting their misfortunes, he reasons to his own future experience. So too the man, whose fancy anticipates political or martial distinction, allows his thoughts to revert continually to those names which a rare conjunction of talents and circumstances has elevated into fame ; forgetting that many thousands of men of great ability have died in at least comparative obscurity, for want of situations in which to display themselves ; and never suspecting it possible that his own abilities are not competent to any thing great, if some extraordinary event were just now to place him in the most opportune concurrence of circumstances. That there has been one very signal man to a million, more avails to the presumption that he shall be a signal man, than there having been a million to one signal man, in- ters a probability of his remaining one of the multitude. 144 ON THE APPLICATION OF You will generally observe, that persons thos self- appointed, of either sex, to be exceptions to the usual lot of humanity, endeavour at a kind of consistency of character, by a great aversion to the common modes of action and language, and a habitual affectation of some- thing extraordinary. They will perhaps disdain regular hours, punctuality to engagements, usual dresses, a homely diction, and common forms of transacting business ; this you are to regard as the impulse of a spirit whose high vocation authorizes it to renounce all signs of relation to vulgar minds. The epithet romantic then may be justly applied to those presumptions (if entertained after the childish or very youthful age) of a peculiarly happy or important destiny in life, which are not clearly founded on certain palpable distinctions of character or situation, or which greatly exceed the sober prognostics afforded by those distinctions. It should be observed here that wishes merely do not constitute a character romantic. A person may sometimes let his mind wander into vain wishes for all the fine things on earth, and yet be too sober to expect any of them. In this case however he will often check and reproach himself for the folly of indulging in such mental dissoluteness. The absurdity of such anticipations consists simply in the improbability of their being realized, and not in their objects being uncongenial with the human mind ; but another effect of the predominance of imagination may be a disposition to form schemes or indulge ex- pectations essentially incongruous with the nature of man. Perhaps however you will say, What is that na- ture ? Is it not a mere passive thing, variable almost to infinity, according to climate, to institutions, and to the different ages of t'me ? Even taking it in a civi- lized state, n-hat relation is there between such a fom THE EPITHET ROMANTIC. 14-5 of human nature as that displayed at Sparta, and, for instance, the modern society denominated Quakers, or the Moravian Fraternity ? And how can we ascertain what is congenial with it or not, unless itself were first ascertained ? Allow me to say, that I speak of human nature in its most general principles only, as social, self- interested, inclined to the wrong, slow to improve, passing through several states of capacity and feeling in the successive periods of life, and the few other such permanent distinctions. Any of these distinctions may vanish from the sight of a visionary mind, while forming, for itself, or for others, such schemes as could h&v sprung only from an imagination become wayward through its uncontrolled power, and its victory over eober reason. I remember, for example, a person, very young I confess, who was so enchanted with the stories of Gregory Lopez, and one or two more pious hermits, as almost to form the resolution to betake himself to some wilderness and live as Gregory did. At any time, the very word hermit was enough to transport him, like the witch's broomstick, to the solitary hut, which was delightfully surrounded by shady solemn groves, mossy rocks, crystal streams, and gardens of radishes. While this fancy lasted, he forgot the most obvious of all facts, that man is not made for habitual solitude, nor can endure it without misery, except when transformed into a genuine superstitious ascetic ; questionable whether ven then.* Contrary to human nature, is the proper description * Lopez indeed was often visited by pious persons who sought his instructions ; this was a great modification of the loneliness, and of the trial involved in enduring it; but my hermit was fond of the Idea of an uninhabited island, or of a wilderness so deep that these good people would not have been able to come at him, without a more formidable pilgrimage than was ever yet made for the sake of ubtiining instruction. 146 ON THE APPLICATION OF of these theories of education, and those flatteries of parental hope, which presume that young people in general may be matured to eminent wisdom, and adorned with the universality of noble attainments, by the period at which in fact the intellectual faculty is but beginning to operate with any thing like clearness and sustained force. Because some individuals, remarkable exceptions to the natural character of youth, have in their very childhood advanced beyond the youthful giddiness, and debility of reason, and have displayed, at the age perhaps of twenty, a wonderful assemblage of all the strong and all the graceful endowments, it therefore only needs a proper system of education to make other young people, (at least those of my family, the parent thinks,) be no longer what nature has always made /outh to be. Let this be adopted, and we shall see multitudes at that age possessing the judgment of sages, or the diversified acquirements and graces of all-accom- plished gentlemen and ladies. And what, pray, are the beings which are to become, by the discipline of ten or a dozen years, such finished examples of various excellence ? Not, surely, these boys here, that love nothing so much as tops, marbles and petty mischief and those girls, that have yet attained but few ideas beyond the dressing of dolls ? Yes, even these ! The same charge of being unadapted to man, falls on the speculations of those philosopher? and philan- thropists, who have eloquently displayed the happiness, and asserted the practicability, of something near an equality of property and modes of life throughout society. Those who really anticipated or projected the practical trial of the system, must have forgotten on what planet those apartments were built, or those arbours were growing, in which they were favoured with such visions. For in these visions they beheld the- !IR EftiHET ROMANTIC. 1+7 ambition of one part of the inhabitant. 4 , the craft ur audacity of another, the avarice of another, the stupi- dity or indolence of another, and the selfishness of almost all, as mere adventitious faults, super-induced on the character of the species, and instantly flying ott at the approach of better institutions, which shall prove, to the confusion of all the calumniators of humaii nature, that nothing is so congenial to it as industry, moderation, and disinterestedness. It is at the same time but just to acknowledge, that many of them have admitted the necessity of such a grand transformation as to make man another being previously to the adoption of the system. This is all very well : when the proper race of men shall come from Utopia, the system and polity may very properly come along with them ; or these sketches of it, prepared for them by us, may be carefully preserved here, in volumes more precious than those of the Sibyls, against their arrival. Till then, the sober observers of the human character will reaii these beautiful theories as romances, offering the fairest game for sarcasm in their splenetic hours, when they are disgusted with human nature, and infusing melan- choly in their benevolent ones, when they look on it with a commiserating and almost desponding sentiment. The character of the age of chivalry presents itself conspicuously among this class of illustrations. One of its most {imminent distinctions was, an immense in- congruity with the simplest principles of human nature. For instance, in the concern of love : a generous young man became attached to an Interesting young woman interesting as he believed, from having once seen her ; for probably he never heard her speak. His heart would naturally prompt him to seek act-ess to the object whoso society, it told him, would make him happy ; and if in a great measure debarred from that society, L'2 148 ON THE APPLICATION OF he would surrender himself to the melting mood of the passion, in the musings of pensive retirement. But this was not the way. He must exile himself for successive years from her society and vicinity, and every soft indulgence of feeling, and rush boldly into all sorts of hardships and perils, deeming no misfortune so great as not to find constant occasions of hazarding his life among the roughest foes, or, if he could find or fancy them, the strangest monsters ; and all this, not as the alleviation of despair, but as the courtship of hope. And when he was at length betrayed to flatter himself that such a probation, through every kind of patience and danger, might entitle him to throw his trophies and himself at her imperial feet, it was very possible she might be affronted at his having presumed to be still alive. It is unnecessary to refer to the other parts of the institution of chivalry, the whole system of which would seem more adapted to any race of beings exhibited in the Arabian Nights, or to any still wilder creation of fancy, than to a community of creatures appointed to live by cultivating the soil, anxicas to avoid pain and trouble, seeking the reciprocation of affection on the easiest terms, and nearest to happiness in regular pursuits and quiet domestic life. One cannot help reflecting here, how amazingly ac commodating this human nature has been to all insti- tutions but wise and good ones ; insomuch that an order of life and manners conceived in the wildest deviation from all plain sense and native instinct, could be prac- ticpJly adopted, by some of those who had rank and courage enough, and adored and envied by the rest of mankind. Still, the genuine tendencies of nature have survived the strange but transient sophistications of time, and remain the same after the age of chivalry is gone far toward that oblivion, to which you will not THE EPITHET ROMANTIC. 149 fail to wish that many other institutions might speedily follow it. Forgive the prolixity of these illustration* intended to show, that schemes and speculations re- specting the interests either of an individual or of society, which are inconsistent with the natural con- stitution of man, may, except where it should be reasonable to expect some supernatural intervention, be denominated romantic. The tendency to this species of romance, may be caused, or very greatly promoted, by an exclusive taste for what is grand, a disease with which some few minds are affected. They have no pleasure in contemplating the system of things as the Creator has ordered it, a combination of great and little, in which the great is much more dependent on the little, than the little on the great. They cut out the grand objects, to dispose them into a world of their own. All the images in their intel- lectual scene must be colossal and mountainous. They are constantly seeking what is animated into heroics, what is expanded into immensity, what is elevated above the stars. But for great empires, great battles, great en- terprises, great convulsions, great geniuses, great temples, great rivers, there would be nothing worth naming in this part of the creation.* All that belongs to connexion, gradation, harmony, regularity, and utility, is thrown out of sight behind these forms of vastness. The influence of this exclusive taste will reach into the system of projects and expectations. The man will wish to summon the world to throw aside its tame accustomed pursuits, and adopt at once more magnificent views and objects, and will be indignant at mankind that they Just as, to employ a humble comparison, a votary of fashion, after visiting a crowded public place which happened at that time hot to be graced by the presence of many people of consequence, tella you, with an affected tone, " There waa not a creature there." 150 ON THE APPLICATION OF cannot or will not be sublime. Impatient of little ineau and slow processes, he will wish for violent transitions and entirely new institutions. He will perhaps determine to set men the example of performing something great, in some ill-judged sanguine project in which he will fail ; and, after being ridiculed by society, both for the scheme and its catastrophe, may probably abandon aJ- the activities of life, and become a misanthrope the rest of his days. At any rate, he will disdain all labour to perform well in little or moderate things, when fate has frowned on his higher ambition. LETTER III. ONE of the most obvious distinctions of the works of romance is, an utter violation of all the relations between ends and means. Sometimes such ends are pro- posed as seem quite dissevered from means, inasmuch as there are scarcely any supposable means on earth to accomplish them : but no matter ; if we cannot ride we must swim, if we cannot swim we must fly; the obje-ct is effected by a mere poetical omnipotence that wills it. And very often practicable objects are at- tained by means the most fantastic, improbable, or in- adequate ; so that there is scarcely any resemblance between the method in which they are accomplished by the dexterity of fiction, and that which we are con- demned to follow if we will attempt the same things in the actual economy of the world. Now, when you see this absurdity of imagination prevailing in the calcu- lations of real life, you may justly apply the epithet romantic. Indeed a strong and habitually indulged imagination may be absorbed in the end, if it be not a concern of THE EPITHET ROMAN1IC. 151 absolute immediate urgency, as for a while quite to forget the process of attainment That power has incantations to dissolve the rigid laws of time and distance, and place a man in something so like the presence of his object, as to create the temporary hallucination of an ideal pos- session ; and it is hard, when occupying the verge of Paradise, to be flung far back in order to find or make a path to it, with the slow and toilsome steps of reality. In the luxury of promising himself that what he wishes will by some means take place at ?ome time, he forgets that he is advancing no nearer to it- except on the wise and patient calculation that he must, by the simple fact of growing older, be coming somewhat nearer to every event that is yet to happen to him. He is like a tra- veller, who, amidst his indolent musings in some soft bower, where he has sat down to be shaded a little while from the rays of noon, falls asleep, and dreams he is in the midst of all the endearments of home, insensible that there are many hills and dales for him yet to traverse. But the traveller will awake ; so too will our other dreamer; and if he has the smallest capacity of just reflection he will regret to have wasted in reveries the time which ought to have been devoted to practical exertions. But even though reminded of the necessity of inter- vening means, the man of imagination will often be tempted to violate their relation with ends, by permitting himself to dwell on those happy casualties, which the prolific sorcery of his mind will promptly figure to hinf as the very things, if they would but occur, to ac- complish his wishes at once, without Uiv* toil of a sober process. If they would occur and things as strange might and do happen : he reads in the newspapers that an estate of ten thousand per annum was lately adjudged to a man who was working on the road. He has evea 152 ON THE APPLICATION OF hoard of people dreaming that in such a place something valuable was concealed ; and that, on searching or digging that place, they found an old earthen pot, full, of gold and silver pieces of the times of good King Charles the Martyr. Mr. B. was travelling by the mail- coach, in which he met with a most interesting young lady whom he had never seen before ; they were mu- tually delighted, and were married in a few weeks. Mr. C., a man of great merit in obscurity, was walking across a field when Lord D., in chase of a fox, leaped over the hedge and fell off his horse into a ditch. Mr C. with the utmost alacrity and kind solicitude helped his lordship out of the ditch, and recovered for him IPS escaped horse. The consequence was inevitable ; his lordship, superior to the pride of being mortified to have been seen in a condition so unlucky for giving the im pression of nobility, commenced a friendship with Mr. C., and introduced him into honourable society and the road to fortune. A very ancient maiden lady of a large fortune happening to be embarrassed in a crowd, a young clergyman offered her his arm and politely at- tended her home ; this attention so captivated her, that she bequeathed and soon after left him her whole estate though she had many poor relations. That class of fictitious works called navels, though much more like real life than the romances which preceded, is yet full of these lucky incidents and adventures, which are introduced as the chief means toward the ultimate success. A young man, without fortune, for instance, is precluded from making his addresses to a young female in a superior situation, whom he believes not indifferent to him, until he can approach her with such worldly advantages as it might not be imprude-. t or degrading for her to cast a look upon. Now how is this to be accomplished ? Why, THE EPITHET ROMANTIC. 159 I suppose, by the exertion of his talents in some practicable and respectable department ; and perhaps the lady, besides, will generously and spontaneously condescend to abdicate from partiality to him, some of the trappings and luxuries of rank. You really sup- pose this is the plan ? I am sorry you have so much less genius than a novel-writer. This young man has an uncle, who has been absent many years, nobody knew where, except the young man's lucky stars. During his absence, the old uncle has made a large fortune, with which he returns to his native land, at a time most opportune for every one but a highwayman, who, attacking him in a road through a wood, is frightened away by the young hero, who happens to come there at the instant, to rescue and recognize his uncle, and to be in return recognized and made the heir to as many thousands as the lady or her family could wish. Now what is the intended impression of all this on the reader's mind ? What if he certainly have no uncle in any foreign fortune-making country ? But there are rich old gentlemen who are uncles to nobody, Is our novel-reader to reckon on it as a likely and a desirable chance, that one of these, just after returning from the Indies with a ship-load of wealth, shall be set upon by a highwayman ; and to take it for certain that in that case he, the novel-reader, shall have the luck to come to the very spot in the nick of time, tc send the dastard robber galloping off, to make an instant and entire seizure of the old gentleman's affections, find himself constrained to go and take a present share of the opulence, and the heirship of the whole, and have his patron to join his pleading that Amelia, or Alicia, or Cecilia, (as the case may be,) may now be willing and be permitted to favour his addresses? One's indignation is excited at the iiu- 154- ON THE APPLICATION OK moral tendency of such lessons to young readers, who are thus taught to undervalue and reject all sober regular plans for compassing an object, and to muse on improbabilities till they become foolish enough to expect them ; thus betrayed, as an inevitable con- sequence, into one folly more, that of being melan- choly when they find they may expect them in vain. It is unpardonable that these pretended instructors by example should thus explode the calculations and exertions of manly resolution, destroy the connexion between ends and means, and make the rewards of virtue so dependent on chance, thai if the reader does not either regard the whole fable with contempt, or promise himself he shall receive the favours of fortune in some similar way, he must close the book with the conviction that he may hang or drown himself as soon as he pleases ; that is to say, unless he has learnt from some other source a better morality and religion than these books will ever teach him. Another deception in respect to means, is the facility with which fancy passes along the train of them, and reckons to their ultimate effect at a glance, without resting at the successive stages, and considering the labours and hazards of the protracted .slow process from each point to the next. If a given number of years are allowed requisite for the accomplishment of an object, the romantic mind vaults from one last day of December to another, and seizes at once the whole product of all the intermediate days, without condescending to recol- lect that the sun never shone yet on three hundred and sixty-five days at once, and that they must be slowly told and laboured 010 by one. If a favourite plan is to be accomplished by means of a certain large amount of property, which is to be produced from what is at present a very small one, the calculations of a sanguine THE EPITHET ROMANTIC. ISB mind can change shillings into guineas, and guineas into hundreds of pounds, a thousand times faster thar, in the actual experiment, those lazy shillings and guineas can be compelled to mount to these higher denominations of value. You remember the noble calculation of Alnaschar on his basket of earthenware, which was so soon to obtain him the Sultan's daughter. Where imagination is not delusive enough to em- body future casualties as effective means, it may yet represent very inadequate means as competent. In a well-balanced mind, no conception will grow into a favourite purpose, unaccompanied by a process of tho judgment, deciding its practicability by an estimate of the means ; in a mind under the ascendency of imagina- tion this is a subordinate after-task. By the time that this comes to be considered, the projector is too much enamoured of an end that is deemed to be great, to abandon it because the means are suspected to be little. But then they must cease to appear little ; for there must be an apparent proportion between the means and the end. Well, trust the whole concern to the plastic faculty, and presently every insignificant particle of instrumentality, and every petty contrivance for its management, will swell into magnitude ; pigmies and Lilliputians with their tiny arrows will soon grow up into giants wielding spears; and the diffident con- sciousness which was at first somewhat afraid to measure the plan, as to its means of execution, against the object, will give place to a generous scorn of the timidity of doubting. The mind will most ingeniously place the apparatus between its eye and the object at a distance, and be deluded by the false position which makes the one look as large as the other. The consideration of the deceptive calculations on the effect of insufficient means, would lead to a wide variety 156 ON THE APPLICATION OF of particulars ; I will only touch slightly on a few Various projects of a benevolent order would come undet this charge. Did you ever listen to the discussion 01 plans for the civilization of barbarous nations without the intervention of conquest? I have, with the most sceptical kind of interest.* That very many millions of the species should form only a brutal adjunct to civilized and enlightened man is a disasterous thing, notwithstanding the whimsical attempts of some inge- nious men to represent the state of roving savages as pre- ferable to every other condition of life; a state for which, no doubt, they would have been willing, if they could have the requisite physical seasoning for it, to abandon their fame and proud refinements. But where are the means to reclaim these wretched beings into the civi- lized family of man ? A few examples indeed are found in history, of barbarous tribes being formed into well ordered and considerably enlightened states by one man, who began the attempt without any power but that of persuasion, and perhaps delusion. There are other in- stances, of the success obtained by a small combinatior of men employing the same means ; as in the great undertaking of the Jesuits in South America. But have not these moral phenomena been far too few to be made a standard for the speculations of sober men ? And have they not also come to us with too little explanation to illustrate any general principles ? To me it appears extremely difficult to comprehend how the means, re- corded by historians to have been employed by some of the unarmed civili/ers, could have produced so great an effect. In observing the half-civilized condition of a large part of the population of these more improved countries, and in reading what travellers describe of the I here place out of view that religion by which Omnipotence will at lejiuth transform the world. THE EPITHET ROMANTIC. 1^7 itate and dispositions of the various orders of savages, it would seem a presumption unwarranted by any thing we ever saw of the powers of the human mind to suppose that any man, or any ten men now on earth, if landed and left on a savage coast, would be able to transform ft number of stupid or ferocious tribes into a commu- nity of mild intelligence and regular industry. We are therefore led to believe that the few unaccountable in- stances conspicuous in the history of the world, of the success of one or a few men in this work, must have been the result of such a combination of favourable circumstances, cooperating with their genius and per- severance, as no other man can hope to experience. Such events seem like Joshua's arresting the sun and moon, things that have been done, but can be done no more. Pray, which of you, I should say, could expect to imitate with success, if indeed he could think it right to try, the deception of Manco Capac, and awe a wild multitude into order by something analogous to a pre- tended commission from the sun ? What would be your first expedient in the attempt to substitute that regularity and constraint which they hate, for that lawless liberty which they love ? How could you reduce them to be conscious, or incite them to be proud, of those wants, for being subject to which they would regard you as their inferiors ; wants of which, unless they could comprehend the refinement, they must neces- sarily despise the debility ? By what magic are you to render visible and palpable any part of the world of science or of abstraction, to beings who have hardly words to denominate even their sensations ? And by what concentrated force of all kinds of magic together, that Egypt or Chaldea ever pretended, are you to in- troduce humanity and refinement among such creatures as the Northern Indians, described by Mr. Hearne ? 158 ON THE APPLICATION OP If an animated young philanthropist still zealous!? maintained that it might be done, I should bu amuseu to think how that warm iamgination would be quelled, if he were obliged to make the experiment. It is easy for him to be romantic while enlivened by the inter- course of cultivated society, while reading of the contri- vances and the patience of ancient legislators, or while infected with the enthusiasm of poetry. He feels as if he could be the moral conqueror of a continent. He becomes a Hercules amidst imaginary labours ; he traverses untired, while in his room, wide tracts of the wilderness ; he surrounds himself with savage men, without either trembling or revolting at their aspects or fierce exclamations, or the proudly exhibited and vaunted trophies of theii sanguinary exploits ; he makes eloquent speeches to them, not knowing a word of their language, which language, if he did know it, he would find a wretched vehicle for the humblest of his meanings ; they jsten with the deepest attention, are convinced of the necessity of adopting new habits of life, and speedily soften into humanity and brighten into wisdom. Bu, he would become sober enough, if compelled to travel half a thousand miles through the desert, or over the snow, with some of these subjects of his lectures and legislation ; to accompany them in a hunting excursion ; to choose in a stoimy night between exposure in the open air and the smoke and grossness of their cabins ; to observe the intellectual faculty narrowed almost to a point, limited to a scanty number of the meanest class of ideas ; to find by repeated experiments that his kind of ideas could neither reach their understanding nor escite their curiosity ; to see the ravenous appetite of wolves succeeded for a season by a stupefaction insensible even to the few interests which kindle the ardour of a savage ; to witness loathsome habits occasionally diver- THE EPITHET ROMANTIC. 159 sified by abominable ceremonies ; or to be for once the spectator of some of the circumstances attendant on the wars of savages. But there are many more familiar illustrations of the extravagant estimate of means. One is, the expec- tation of far too much from mere direct instruction. This is indeed so general, that it will hardly be denomi- nated romantic, except in the most excessive instances Observe it, however, a moment in the concern of edu- cation. Nothing seems more evident than the influence of external circumstances, distinct from the regular dis- cipline of the parent or tutor, in forming the character of youth. Nothing again seems more evident than that direct instruction, though an useful cooperator with the influence of these circumstances when they are auspicious, is a feeble counteractor if they be malignant. And yet this mere instruction is enough, iu the account of thousands of parents, to lead the youth to wisdom and happiness ; even that very youth whom the united influence of almost all things else which he is exposed to see, and hear, and participate, is drawing, with the unrelaxing grasp of a fiend, to destruction. A too sanguine opinion of the efficacy of instruction, has sometimes possessed those who teach from the pulpit. Till the dispensations of a better age shall be opened on the world, the measure of effect which may reasonably bo expected from preaching, is to be determined by a view of the visible effects which are actually produced on congregations from week to week ; and this view is far from flattering. One might appeal to preachers in general What striking improvements are apparent in your societies ? When you inculcate charity on the Sunday, do the misers in your con gregations liberally open their chests and purses to the distressed on Monday ? Might I not ask as well, 160 ON THE APPLICATION OF whethei the stones and trees really did move at the voice of Orpheus ? After you have unveiled even the scenes of eternity to the gay and frivolous, do you find in more than some rare instances a dignified serious- ness take place of their follies ? What is the effect, on the splendid, sumptuous, and fashionable professors of Christianity, of your inculcation (if indeed you venture it) of that solemn interdiction of their habits, " Be not conformed to this world ?" Yet, notwithstanding this melancholy state of facts, some preachers, from the persuasion of a mysterious apostolic sacredness in the office, or from a vain estimate of their talents, or from mistaking the applause with which the preacher has been flattered, for the proof of a salatary effect on the minds of the hearers, or, in some instances, from a much worthier cause, the affecting influence of sacred truth on their own minds, have been inclined to anti- cipate striking effects from their public ministrations. Melancthon was a romantic youth when he began to preach. He expected that all must be inevitably and immediately persuaded, when they should hear what he had to tell them. But he soon discovered, as he said, that old Adam was too hard for young Melancthon. In addition to the grand fact of the depravity of tha human heart, there are so many causes operating in* juriously through the week on the characters of those who form a congregation, that a thoughtful man often feels an invading melancholy amidst his religious addresses, from the reflection that he is making a feeble effort against a powerful evil, a single effort against a combination of evils, a temporary and trans- ient effort against evils of almost continual operation, and a purely intellectual effort against evils, many of which act on the senses. When the preacher con- siders the effect naturally resulting from the sight of THE EPITHET ROMANTIC. 161 so many bad examples, the communications of so many injurious acquaintance, the hearing and talking of what would be, if written, so many volumes of vanity and nonsense, the predominance of fashionable dissi- pation in a higher class, and of a coarser corruption in a lower ; he must indeed imagine himself endowed with a super-human power of eloquence, if the instruc- tions expressed in an hour or two on the sabbath, and soon, as he might know, forgotten by most of his hearers, are to leave in the mind something which shall be, through the week, the efficacious repellant to the contact and contamination of all these forces of mischief. But how soon he would cease to imagine such an efficacy in his exhortations, if the greater number of his hearers could sincerely and accurately tell him, toward the end of the week, in what degree these admonitions had affected and governed them, in opposition to their corrupt tendencies, their habits, and their temptations I What would be, in the five or six days, the number of the moments and the in- stances in which these instructions would be proved to have been effectual, compared with the whole number of moments and circumstances to which they were ap- plicable by appropriateness of instruction and warning ? How often, while hearing such a week's detail of the lives of a considerable proportion of a congregation, -a man would have occasion to say, By whose instructions were these persons influenced then, in that neglect of devout exercises, that excess of levity, that waste of time, that avowed noritempt of rnieion, that language of profaneness ana imorecation, those contrivances of selfishness, those paroxysms of passion, that study of sensuality, or that habitual general obduracy in evil ? But the preacher to whose sanguine temperament I am reluctantly applying these cooling suggestions, M 162 ON THE APPLICATION OF may tell me, that it is not by means of any force which he can throw into his religious instructions, that he expects them to be efficacious ; but that he believes a divine energy will accompany what is undoubtedly a message from heaven. I am pleased with the piety, and the sound judgment, (as I esteem it,) with which he expects the conversion of careless or hardened men from nothing less than an operation strictly considered as of divine power. But I would remind him, that the probability, at any given season, that such a power will intervene, must be in proportion to the frequency or infrequency with which its intervention is actually manifested in the general course of experi- ence ; that is, in proportion to the number of happy transformations of character which we see taking place under the efficacy of religious truth. He must admit this to br substantially the rule: if he require that it be modified by the consideration of promises and signs from the Supreme Power of the near approach of an augmented divine interference for the efficacy of re- ligion I shall willingly admit what I can of such a reason for conceding such a modification. Reformers in general are very apt to overrate the power of the means by which their theories are to be realized. They are for ever introducing the story of Archimedes, who was to have moved the world if he could have found any second place on which to plant his engines ; and imagination discloses to moral and political projectors a cloud-built and truly extra- mundane position, which they deem to be exactly such a convenience in their department, as the mathema- tician, whose converse with demonstrations had saved part of his reason from being run away with by his fancy, confessed to be a desideratum in his This terra firma is named the Omnipotence of Truth. THE EPITHE1 ROMANTIC.. 163 It is presumed, that truth must at length, through the indefatigable exertions of intellect, become generally victorious ; and that all vice, being the result of a mistaken judgment of the nature or the means of hap- piness, must therefore accompany the exit of error. By the same rule it is presumed of the present times also, or at least of those immediately approaching, that in every society and every mind where truth is clearly admitted, the reforms which it dictates must substantially follow. I have the most confident faith that the prevalence of truth, making its progress by a far mightier agency than mere philosophic inquiry, is appointed to irradiate the latter ages of a dark and troubled world ; and, on the strength of prophetic intimations, I anticipate its coming sooner, by at least a. thousand ages, than a disciple of that philosophy which rejects revelation, as the first proud step toward the improvement of the world, is warranted, by a view of the past and present state of mankind, to predict. The assurance from the same oracle is the authority for believing that when truth shall have acquired the universal dominion over the understanding, it will evince a still nobler power in the general effect of conforming the heart and the life to its laws. But in the present state of the moral system, our expec- tations of the effect of truth oh the far greater numoer of the persons who shall assent to its dictates, have no right to exceed such measures of probability as have been given by experience. It would be gratify- ing no doubt to believe, that the several powers in the human constitution are in such faithful combination, that to gain the judgment would be to secure the whole man. And if all history, and the memory of our own observation and experience, could be merged in Lethe, t might be believed perhaps for two or three hours. M 2 J64 ON THE APPLICATION OK How could an attentive observer or reflector believe t longer ? How long would it be that a keenly self- inspecting mind could detect no schism, none at all, between its convictions and inclinations ? And as to others, is it not flagrantly evident that very many persons, with a most absolute conviction, by their own ingenuous avowal, that one certain course of action is virtue and happiness, and another, vice and misery, do yet habitually choose the latter? It is not improbable that several millions of human beings are at this very hour thus acting in violation of the laws of rectitude, while those laws are acknowledged by them, not only as impositions of moral authority, but as vital prin- ciples of their own true self-interest.* And do not even the best men confess a fierce discord between the tendencies of their imperfectly renovated nature, and the dictates of that truth which they revere ? They say with St. Paul, " That which I do, I allow not ; for what I would, that I do not ; but what I hate, that I do ; to will is present with me, but how to perform that which is good, I find not ; the good that I would, that I do * The criminal h:n-.?elf has the clearest consciousness that he violates the dictates of his judgment. How trifling is the subtilty which affects to show that he does not violate them, by alleging, that every act of choice must be preceded by a determination of the judgment, and that therefore in choosing an evil, a man does at the time judge it to be on some account preferable, though he may know it to be wrong. It is not to be denied that the choice does imply such a conclusion of the judgment. But this conclusion ia made according to a narrow and subordinate scale of estimating good and evil, while the mind is conscious that, judging according to a larger scale, that is, the rightfully authoritative one, the opposite conclusion is true. It judges a thing better for immediate pleasure, which it know^ to be wore for ultimate advantage. The criminal therefore may be correctly said to act according to his judgment, in choosing it for present pleasure. But since it is the great office 01 the judgment to decide what is wisest and best on the whole, the man maj i.ruly be said to act against his judgment, who acts io opposition to the conclusion which it forms on this greater sin. THE EPITHET ROMANTIC. ] 6/> not, and the evil which I would not, that I do." The serious self-observer recollects instances, ('what a sin- gularity of happiness if he cannot !) in which a tempta- tion, exactly addressed to his passions or his habits, has prevailed in spite of the sternest interdict of his judgment, pronounced at the very crisis. Perhaps the most awful sanctions by which the judgment can ever enforce its authority, were distinctly brought to his view at the same moment with its dictates. In the sub- sequent hour he had to reflect, that the ideas of God, a future account, a world of retribution, could not pre- vent him from violating his conscience. That he did not at the critical moment dwell deliberately on these remonstrant ideas, in order to give them effect on his will, is nothing against my argument. It is of the very essence of the fatal disorder, that the passions will not let the mind strongly fix on the preventive considerations. And what greater power than this could they need to defeat the power of truth ? If the passions can thus prevent the mind from strongly fixing on the most awful considerations when distinctly presented by truth in counteraction to temptation, they can destroy the efficacy of the truth which presents them. Truth can do no more than discriminate the good from the evil before us, enforce the inducements to choose right, and declare the consequences of our choice. When this is inefficacious, its power has failed. And no fact can be more evident than that perceptive truth, apprehended and acknowledged, often thus fails. Let even its teacher and advocate confess honestly whether he have not had to deplore number- less times the deficient efficacy of his own clearest convictions. And if we survey mankind as under an experiment relative to this point, it will be found, in instances innumerable, that to have informed awl 166 ON THE APPLICATION OF convinced a man may be but little toward emancipating him from the habits which he sincerely acknowledges to be wrong. There is then no such inviolable connexion as some men have supposed between the admission of truth, and consequent action. And therefore, most im- portant though it is that truth be exhibited and admitted, the expectations that presume its omnipotence, without extraordinary intervention, are romantic delusion. You will observe that in this case of trying the efficacy of the truth on others, I have supposed the great previous difficulty, of presenting it to the under- standing so luminously as to impress irresistible convic- tion, to be already overcome ; though the experimental reformer will find this introductory work such an arduous undertaking, that he will be often tempted to abandon it as hopeless. LETTER IV. WHEN the gloomy estimate of means and of plans for the amendment of mankind does not make an exception of the actual human administration of the religion of Christ, I am anxious not to seem to fail in justice to that religion, by which I believe that every improvement of a sublime order yet awaiting our race must be effected. I trust I do not tail ; since I keep in my mind a clear distinction between Christianity itself as a thing of divine origin and nature, and the administration of it by a system of merely human powers and means. These means are indeed of divine appointment, and to a certain extent are accompanied by a special divine agency. But how far this agency accompanies them is seen in the measure and limit of their success. Where that stands arrested, the fact itself THE El'ITHET ROMANTIC. 167 is the proof that further than so the superior operation does not attend the human agents and means. There It stops, and leaves them to accomplish, if they can, what remains. What is it that remains? If the general transformation of mankind into such persons as could be justly deemed true disciples of Christ, were regarded as the object of his religion, how mysteriously small a part of that object has the divine agency ever yet been exerted to accomplish ! And then, the awful and immense remainder evinces the inexpressible imbe- cility of the means, when left to be applied as a mere human administration. The manifestation of its incom- petency is fearfully conspicuous in the vast majority, the numerous millions of Christendom, and the millions of even our own country, on whom this religion has no direct influence. I need not observe what numbers of these latter have heard or read the evangelic declaration thousands of times, nor how very many of them are fortified in an insensibility, on which its most momentous announcements strike as harmless as the slenderest arrows on the shield of Ajax. Probably each religious teacher can recollect, besides his general experience, very particular instances, in which he has set himself to exert the utmost force of his mind, in reasoning, illustration, and serious appeal, to impress some one important idea, on some one class of persons to whom it was most specifically applicable and needful ; and has perceived the plainest indications, both at the instant and immediately afte , that it was an attempt of thfe. same kind as that of demolishing a tower by assaulting it with pebbles. Nor do I need to observe how gene- rally, if a momentary impression be made, it is forgotten the following hour. A ma i convinced of the truth and excellence of Christianity, yet entertaining a more flattering notion 168 ON THE APPLICATION Of of the reason and moral dispositions of man than any doctrine of that religion agrees to, may be very reluc- tant to admit that there is such a fatal disproportion between the apparatus, if I may call it so, of the Christian means as left to be actuated by mere human energy, and the object which is to be attempted. But how is he to help himself? Will he reject the method of conclusion from facts, in an affair where they so peculiarly constitute the evidence? He cannot look at the world of facts and contradict the representation in the preceding paragraph, unless his imagination is so illusive as to interpose an absolute phantasm between his eyes and the obvious reality. He cannot affirm that there is not an immense number of persons, even educated persons, receiving the Christian declarations with indifference, or rejecting them with a carelessness partaking of contempt. The right means are applied, and with all the force that human effort can give them out with a uspension, in these instances, of the divine agency, and this is the effect ! While the fact stands out so palpably to view, I listen with something of wonder, and something of curiosity, when some pro- fessed believers and advocates of the gospel are avowing high anticipations of its progressive efficacy, chiefly or solely by means of the intrinsic force which it carries as a rational address to rational creatures. I cannot belp inquiring what length of time is to be allowed for /he experiment, which is to prove the adequacy of the means independently of special divine intervention. Nor can it be impertinent to ask what is, thus far, the state of the experiment and the success, among those who scout the idea of such a divine agency, as a dream of fanaticism. Might it not be prudent, to moderate the expressions of contempt for the persuasion which excites an importunity for extraordinary influence from THE EPITHET ROMAN7IC. 169 the Almighty, till the success without it shall be greater? The utmost arrogance of this contempt will venture no comparison between the respective success, in the conversion of vain and wicked men, of the Christian means as administered by those who implore and rely upon this special agency of heaven, and by those who deny any such operation on the mind ; deny it in sense and substance, whatever accommodating phrases they may sometimes employ. Has there indeed been any success at all, in that great business of conversion, to vindicate the calculations of this latter class from the imputation of all the vainest folly that should be meant by the word Romantic? But, when I introduced the mention of reformers and their projects, I was not intending any reference to delusive presumptions of the operations of Christi- anity, but to those speculations and schemes for >he amendment of mankind which anticipate their effect independently of its assistance; some of them perhaps silently coinciding with several of its principles, while others expressly disclaim them. Unless these schemes bring with them, like spirits from heaven, an intrinsic competence to the great operation, without requiring to be met or aided by forwardness in the nature of the Subject, it may be predicted they will turn to the mortification of their fond oroiectors. There is no avoiding the ungracious perception, in surveying the general character of the race, that, after some allowance for what is called natural affection, and for compas- sionate sympathy, (an excellent principle, but extremely limited and often capricious in its operation,) the main strength of human feelings consists in the love of sensual gratification, of trifling amusement, of dis- tinction, of power, and of money. And by what suicidal inconsistency are these principles to lend their 17(> ON THE APPLICATION OP force to accomplish the schemes of pure reason and virtue, which, they will not fail to perceive, are plotting against them ? * And if they have far too perfect an instinct to be trepanned into such an employment of their force, and yet are the preponderating agents in the human heart, what otfter active principles of it can the renovator of human character call to his effec- tual aid, against the evils which are accumulated and defended by what is at once the baser and the stronger part ? Whatever principles of a better kind there may be in the nature, they can hold but a feeble and inert existence under this predominance of the worse, and could make but a faint insurrection in favour of the invading virtue. The very worst of them may indeed seem to become its allies when it happens, as it occa- sionally will, that the course of action which reforming virtue enforces, falls in the same line in which some of these meaner principles can attain their own ends. Then, and so far, an unsound coincidence may take place, and the external effect of those principles may be clad in specious appearances of virtue ; but the moment that the reforming projector summons their co-operation to a service in which they must desert their own object and their corrupt character, they will desert him. As long as he is condemned to depend, for the efficacy of his schemes, on the aid of so much pure propensity as he shall find in the corrupted subject, he will be nearly in the case of a man attempting to climb a tree by laying hold, first on this side, and then on that, of some rotten twig, which still breaks off in his hand, and lets him fall among the nettles. * I am here reminded of the Spanish story, of a village where the devil, having made the people excessively wicked, was punished by being compelled to assume the appearance and habit of a friar, and to preach so eloquently, in spite of his internal repugnance and rage, that the inhabitants were completely reformed. THE EPITHET ROMANTIC. 171 Look again to the state of facts. Collective man if human nature ; and the conduct of this assemblage, under the diversified experiments continually made on it, expresses its true character, and indicates what may be expected from it. Now then, to what principle in human nature, as thus illustrated by trial, could you with confidence appeal in favour of any of the great objects which a benevolent man desires to see accom- plished ? If there were in it any one grand principle of goodness which an earnest call, and a great occasion, would raise into action, to assert or redeem the character of the species, one should think it would be what we call, incorrectly enough, Humanity. Consider then, in this nation for instance, which extols its own generous virtues to the sky, what lively and rational appeals have been made to the whole community, respecting the slave trade,* the condition of the poor, the immensity of cruelty perpetrated on brute animals, and the general, national, desperate complacency manifested for what is named honourable war, during a whole half century of lofty Christian pretension, appeals substantially in vain. And why in vain ? If humanity were a powerful principle in the nature of the community, they would not, in contempt of knowledge, expostulation, and spectacles of misery, persist in the most enormous violations of it. Why in vain? but plainly because * Happily this topic of accusation is in a measure now set aside ; but it would have remained as immovable as the continent of Africa, if the legislature had not been forced into a conviction that, on the whole, the slave trade was not advantageous in point of pecuniary interest. At least the guilt would so have remained upon the nation acting in its capacity of a state. This note is added subsequently to the first edition It maybe subjoined, in qualification of the reproach relative to the next article, the condition of the poor, that during a later period there has been an increase of the attention and exer- tion directed to that condition; which has, nevertheless, become worse and worse. 172 ON THE APPLICATION OF there is not enough of that virtue of humanity, even in what is deemed a highly cultivated state of the human nature, to answer to the importunate call. O r if this be not the cause, let the idolaters of human divinity call, like the worshippers of Baal, in a loudof voice. Their success is likely to be the same ; the will obtain no extraordinary exertion of power, though they cry from morning till the setting sun. And meanwhile the observer, who foresees their disap- pointment, would think himself warranted, but for the melancholy feeling that the nature in question is his own, to deride their expectations. You know that a multitude of exemplifications might be added. And the thought of so many great and interesting objects, concerning the welfare of the human economy, as a sober appreciation of means, seems to place beyond the reach of the moral revolutionist,* will often, if he has a genuine benevolence, make him sad. He will repeat to himself, " How easy it is to conceive these inestimable improvements, and how nobly they would exalt my species ; but how to work them into the actual condition of man ! Are there somewhere in possibility," he will ask, "intellectual and moral engines mighty enough to perform the great process ? Where in darkness is the sacred repository in which they lie ? What Marraton-f- shall explore the unknown way to it ? The man who would not as part of the price of \ It is obvious that I am not supposing this moral revolutionist to Be armed with any power but that of persuasion. If he were a monarch, and possessed virtue and talents equal to his power, the case would be materially dillerent. Even then, he would accomplish but little compared with what he could imagine, and would desire; yet, to all human appearance, he might be the instrument of wonder- fully changing the condition of society within his empire. If tha qpui of Alfred could return to the earth ! * Spectator, No. 56. THE KPITHET ROMANTIC. ] 73 the discovery, be glad to close up all the transatlantic mines, would deserve to be immured as the last victim of those deadly caverns." But each projecting visionary thinks the discovery is made ; and while surveying his own great magazine of expedients, consisting of Fortunatus's cap, the phi- losopher's stone, Aladdin's lamp, and other equally efficient articles, he is confident that the work may speedily be done. These powerful instruments of melioration perhaps lose their individual names under the general denomination of Philosophy, a term that would be venerable, if it could be rescued from the misfortune of being hackneyed into cant, and from serving the impiety which substitutes human ability to divine power. But it is of little consequence what denomination the projectors assume to themselves or their schemes : it is by their fruits that we shall know them. Their .work is before them ; the scene of moral disorder presents to them the plagues which they are to stop, the mountain which they are to remove, the torrent which they are to divert, the desert which they are to clothe in verdure and bloom. Let them make their experiment, and add each his page to the humi- liating records in which experience contemns the folly of elated imagination.* In reading lately same part of a tolerably well-written book published a few years since, I came to the following passage, which though in connexion indeed with the subject of elections, expresses the author's general opinion of the state of society, and of the means of exalting it to wisdom and virtue. " The bulk of the community begin to examine, to feel, to understand, their rights and duties. They only require (he fostering care of the Philosopher to ripen them into complete rationality, and furnish them with the requisites of political and moral action." Here I paused in wondering mood. The fostering care of the Philosopher ! Why then is not the Philo- sopher about his business? Why does he not go and indoctrinate a company of peasants in the intervals of a ploughing or a harvest 174- ON THE APPLICATION OP All the speculations and schemes of the sanguine projectors of all ages, have left the world still a prey to infinite legions of vices and miseries, an immortal band, which has trampled in scorn on the monuments and the dust of the self-idolizing men, who dreamed, each in his day, that they were born to chase these evils out of the earth. If these vain demigods of an hour, who trusted to change the world, and who. perhaps wished to change it only to make it a temple to their fame, could be awaked from the unmarked graves into which they sunk, to look a little while round on the scene for some traces of the success of their projects, would they not be eager to retire again into the chambers of death, to bide the shame of their re- day, when he will find them far more eager for his instructions than for drink ? Why does he not introduce himself among a circle 01 farmers, who cannot fail, as he enters, to he very judiciously dis- cussing, with the aid of their punch and their pipes, the most refined questions respecting their rights and duties, and wanting tmt exactly his aid, instead of more punch and tobacco, to possess themselves completely of the requisites of political and moral action? The populace of a manufactory, is another most promising seminary, where all the moral and intellectual endowments are so nearly " ripe," that he will seem less to have the task of cultivating than the pleasure of reaping. Even among the company in the ale-house, though the Philosopher might at first be sorry, and might wonder, to perceive a slight merge of the moral part of the man in the sensual, and to find in so vociferous a mood that inquiring reason which, he had supposed, would be waiting for him with the silent anxious docility of a pupil of Pythagoras, yet he would find a most powerful predisposition to truth and virtue, and there would be every thing to hope from the accuracy of his logic, the comprehensiveness of his views, and the beauty of his moral sentiments. But perhaps it will be explained, that the Philosopher does not mean to visit all these people in person ; hut that having first secured the source of influence, having taken entire possession of princes, nobility, gentry, and clergy, which he expects to do in a very short time, he will manage them like an electrical machine, to operate on the bulk of the community. Either way the achievement will be great and Hilmirable; the latter event seems to have been predicted in that sibylline sentence, " When the sky fails we shall catch larks " THE EPITHET ROMANTIC. 176 merabered presumption ? The wars and tyranny, the rancour, cruelty and revenge, together with all the other unnumbered vices and crimes with which the earth is still infested, are enough, if the whole mass could be brought within one section of the inhabited world, of the extent of a considerable kingdom, to constitute its whole population literally infernal, all but their being incarnate ; which last they would soon, through mutual destruction, cease to be. Hitherto the power of the radical cause of these many forms of evil, the corruption of the human heart, has sported with the weakness, or seduced the strength, of all human contrivances to subdue them. Nor are there as yet more than glimmering signs that we are com- mencing a better era, in which the means that have failed before, or the expedients of a new and more for- tunate invention, are appointed to victory and triumph. The nature of man still " casts ominous conjecture on the whole success.'' While that is corrupt, it will pervert even the very schemes and operations by which the world should be improved, though their first prin- ciples were pure as heaven. The innate principle of evil, instead of indifferently letting them alone, to work what good they can, will put forth a stupendous force to compel them into subserviency; so that revolutions, great discoveries, augmented science, and new forms of polity, shall become in effect what may be denomi- nated the sublime mechanics of depravity. LETTER V THIS view of moral and philosophical projects, added to that of the limited exertion of energy which the Almighty has made to attend, as yet, the dispea- 176 ON THE APPLICATION OP sation of true religion, and accompanied with the con- sideration of the impotence of human efforts to make that dispensation efficacious where his will does not, forms a melancholy and awful contemplation. In the hours when it casts its gloom over the mind of the thoughtful observer, unless he can fully resign the condition of man to the infinite wisdom and goodness of his Creator, he will feel an emotion of horror, as if standing on the verge of a hideous gulf, into which almost all the possibilities, and speculations, and efforts, and hopes, relating to the best improvements of man- kind, are brought down by the torrent of ages, in a long abortive series, to be lost in final despair. To an atheist of enlarged sensibility, if there could be such a man, how dark and hideous, beyond all power of description, must be the long review and the ^indefinable prospect of this triumph of evil, unaccom- panied, as it must be presented to his thoughts, by any sublime process of intelligent power, converting, in some manner unknown to mortals, this evil into good, either during the course or in the result. A devout theist, when he becomes sad amidst his contemplations, recovers a submissive tranquillity, by reverting to his assurance of such a wise and omnipotent sovereignty and agency. As a believer in revelation, he is con- soled by the confidence both that this dark train of evils will ultimately issue in transcendent brightness, and that the evil itself in this world will at a future period almost cease. He is persuaded that the Great Spirit, who presides over this mysterious scene, has ati energy of influence yet in reserve to beam forth on the earth, such as its inhabitants have never, except in a few momentary glimpses, beheld ; and that when the predestined period is completed for his kingdom to come, he will command this chaos of turbulent and THE EPITHET ROMANTIC. 177 malignant elements to become transformed into a fair and happy moral world. And is it not strange, my dear friend, to observe how carefully some philosophers, who deplore the con- dition of the world, and profess to expect its melio- ration, keep their speculations clear of every idea of divine interposition ? No builders of houses or cities were ever more attentive to guard against the access of flood or fire. If He should but touch their pro- spective theories of improvement, they would renounce them, as defiled and fit only for vulgar fanaticism. Their system of Providence would be profaned by the intrusion of the Almighty. Man is to effect an apo- theosis for himself, by the hopeful process of exhausting his corruptions. And should it take a long series of ages, vices, and woes, to reach this glorious attainment, patience may sustain itself the while by the thought lhat when it is realized, it will be burdened with no duty of religious gratitude. No time is too long to wait, no cost too deep to incur, for the triumph of proving that we have no need of a Divinity, regarded as possessing that one attribute which makes it delight- ful to acknowledge such a Being, the benevolence that would make us happy. But even if this noble self- sufficiency cannot be realized, the independence of spirit which has laboured for it must not sink at last into piety. This afflicted world, "this poor terrestrial citadel of man," is to lock its gates, and keep its miseries, rather than admit the degradation of receiv- ing help from God. I wish it were not true that even men who firmly believe in the general doctrine of the divine govern- ment of the world, are often betrayed into the impiety of attaching an excessive importance to human agency in its events. How easily a creature of thei OX THF APPLICATION OF own species is transformed by a sympathetic pride into a God before them ! If what they deem the cause of truth and justice, advances with a splendid front of distinguished names of legislators, or patriots, or martial heroes, it must then and must therefore triumph ; nothing can withstand such talents, accompanied by the zeal of so many faithful adherents. If these shining insects of fame are crushed, or sink into the despicable reptiles of corruption, alas, then, for the cause of truth and justice ! All this while, there is no due reference to the " Blessed and only Potentate." If, however, the foundations of their religious faith have not been shaken, and they possess any docility to the lessons of time, they will after awhile be taught to withdraw their dependence and confidence from all subordinate agents, and habitually regard the Supreme Being as the sole possessor of real and absolute power. Perhaps it is not improbable, that the grand moral improvements of a future age may be accomplished in a manner that shall leave nothing to man but humi- lity and grateful adoration. His pride so obstinately asOribes to himself whatever good is effected on the globe, that perhaps the Deity will evince his own interposition, by events as evidently independent of the might of man as the rising of the sun. It may be that some of them may take place in a manner but little connected even with human operation. Or it' the activity of men shall be employed as the means .f producing all of them, there will probably be as palpable a disproportion between the instruments and the events, as there was between the rod of Moses and the amazing phaenomena which followed when it was stretched forth. No Israelite was foolish enough to ascribe ro the rod the power that divided the sea ; nor will the witnesses of the moral wonders to come attribute THE EPITHET ROMANTIC. 179 them to man. " Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord of hosts." I hope these extended observations will not appear like an attempt to exhibit the whole stock of means, as destitute of all value, and the industrious application of them as a labour without reward. It is not to depreciate a thing, if, in the attempt to ascertain its real magnitude, it is proved to be little. It is no injustice to mechanical powers, to say that slender machines will not move rocks and massive timbers ; nor to chemical ones, to assert that though an earth- quake may fling a promontory from its basis, the explo- sion of a canister of gunpowder will not. Between moral forces also, and the objects to which they are to be applied, there are constituted measures of propor- tion ; and it would seem an obvious principle of good sense, that an estimate moderately correct of the value of each of our means according to those measures, as far as they can be ascertained, should precede every application of them. Such an estimate has no place in a mind under the ascendency of imagination, which, therefore, by extravagantly magnifying the virtue o? its means, inflates its projects with hopes which may ;ustly be called romantic. The best corrective of such irrational expectation is an appeal to experience. There is an immense record of experiments, which will assign the force of almost all the engines, as worked by human hands, in the whole moral magazine. And if a man expects any one of them to produce a greater effect than ever before, it must be because the talents >f him that repeats the trial are believed to transcend those of all former experimenters, or else because the season appears more auspicious. The estimate of the power of means, which comos - logy. If the technical terms of science, at least of the strictest kind of science, were to cease to mean what they had been defined to mean, they would cease to mean any thing, and the change would be only from knowledge to blank ignorance. But in the Christian theology, the change might be from truth to error ; since the peculiar words might cease to mean what they were once defined to mean, by being employed in a different sense. It may not be difficult to con- jecture in what sense the terms conversion and rege- neration, for example, were used by the reformers, and the men who may be called the fathers of the established church of this country ; but what sense have they sub- sequently borne in the writings of many of its divines? The peculiar words may remain, when the ideas which they were intended to perpetuate are gone. Thus instead of being the signs of those ideas, they become their monuments ; and monuments profaned into abodes for the living enemies of the departed. It must indeed be acknowledged, that in some instances innovations of doctrine have been introduced partly by declining the use of the words that designated the doctrines ^Yhich it was wished to render obsolete ; but they have been still more frequently and successfully introduced, under the advantage of retaining the terms while the prin- ciples were gradually subverted. And therefore I shall be pardoned for repeating this once more, that since the peculiar words can be kept in one invariable sig- nification cnly by keeping that signification clearly in sight in another way than the ba;ie use of these words themselves, it would be wise in Christian authors and speakers sometimes to express the ideas in common words, either in expletive and explanatory connexion with the peculiar terms, or, occasionally, instead ol TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 231 them. I would still be understood to approve entirely of the use of a few of this class of terms ; while the above observations may deduct very much from the usual estimate of their value and importance. These pages have attempted to show, in what parti- culars the language adopted by a great proportion of Christian divines might be modified, and yet remain faithful to the principles of Christian doctrine. Such common words as have acquired an affected cast in theological use, might give place to the other common words which express the ideas in a plain and unaffected manner, and the phrases formed of common words un- couthly combined, may be swept away. Many peculiar and antique words might be exchanged for other single words, of equivalent signification, and in general use. And the small number of peculiar terms acknow- ledged and established as of permanent use and ne- cessity, might, even separately from the consideration of modifying the diction, be often, with advantage to the explicit declaration and clear comprehension of Christian truth, made to give place to a fuller ex- pression, in a number of common words, of those ideas of which these peculiar terms are the single signs. Now such an alteration would bring the language of divines nearly to the classical standard. If evangelical sentiments could be faithfully presented, in an order of words of which so small a part should be of specific cast, they could be presented in what should be sub- stantially the diction of Addison or Pope. And if even Shaftesbury, Bolingbroke, and Hume, could have become Christians by some mighty and sudden efficacy of conviction, and had determined to write thenceforth in the spirit of the Apostles, they would have found, it' these observations be correct, no radical change 232 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE necessary in the consistence of their language. An enlightened believer in Christianity might have been sorry, if, in such a case, he had seen any of them su- perstitiously labouring to acquire all the phrases of a school, instead of applying at once to its new vocation a diction fitted for the vehicle of universal thought. Are not they yet sufficient masters of language, it might have been asked with surprise, to express all their thoughts \vith the utmost precision ? As their language had been found sufficiently specific to injure the gospel, it would have been strange if it had been too general to serve it. The required alteration would probably have been little more than to introduce familiarly the obvious denominations of the Christian topics and objects, such as, redemption, heaven, mediator, Christ, Redeemer, with the others of a similar kind, and ? very few of those almost technical words which 1 have admitted to be indispensable. The habitual use of guch denominations would have left the general order of their composition the same. And it would have been striking to observe by how comparatively small a difference of terms a diction which had appeared most perfectly pagan, could be christianized, when the writer had turned to Christian subjects, and felt the Christian spirit. On the whole then, I conclude that, with the exception which I have distinctly made, the evangelical principles may be clearly exhibited in what may be called a neutral diction. And if they may, I can imagine some reasons to justify the wish that it were generally employed. As one of these reasons, I may revert to the con- sideration of the impression made by the dialect which I have described, on those persons of cultivated taste whom this essay has chiefly in view. I am aware that they are greatly inclined to make an idol of their taste TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 233 and I am aware also that no species of irreligion can be much worse than to sacrifice to this idol any thing which essentially belongs to Christianity. If any part of evangelical religion, all injurious associations being detached, were still of a nature to displease a refined taste, the duty would evidently be to repress its claims and murmurs. We should dread the presumption which would require of the Deity that his spiritual economy should be, both in reality and evidently to our view, correspondent in all parts to the type of order, grandeur, or beauty presented to us in the constitution of the material world, or to those notions of them which have become conventionally established among culti- vated minds. But, at the same time, it is a most unwise policy for religion, that the sacrifice of taste which ought, if required, to be submissively made tc any part of either its essence or its form as really dis- played from heaven, should be exacted to any thing un- necessarily and ungracefully superinduced by man. As another reason, I would observe, that the dis- ciples of the religion of Christ would wish it to mingle more extensively and familiarly with social converse, and all the serious subjects of human attention. But then it should have every facility, that would not com- promise its genuine character, for doing so. And a peculiar phraseology is the direct contrary of such facility, as it gives to what is already by its own nature eminently distinguished from common subjects, an artificial strangeness, which makes it difficult for discourse to slide into it, and revert to it and from it, without a formal and uncouth transition. The subjec* is placed in a condition like that of an entire foreigner in company, who is debarred from taking any share in the conversation, till some one interrupts it by turning directly to him, and beginning to talk with him in the ?34- ON THE AVERSIOA OF MEN OF TASTB. foreign language. You have sometimes observed, wnen a person has introduced religious topics, in the course of perhaps a tolerably rational conversation on other interesting subjects, that, owing to the cast of ex- pression, fully as much as to the difference of the subject, it was done by an entire change of the whole tenour and bearing of the discourse, and with as formal an announcement as the bell ringing to church. Had his religious diction been more of a piece with the common cast of language of intelligent discourse, he might probably have introduced the subject sooner, and certainly with a much better effect. A third consideration, is, that evangelical sentiments would be less subject to the imputation of fanaticism, if their language were less contrasted with that of other classes of sentiments. Here it is unnecessary to say, that no pusillanimity were more contemptible than that which, to escape this imputation, would surrender the smallest vital particle of the religion of Christ. We are to keep in solemn recollection his declaration, 'Whosoever shall be ashamed of me and of my words, of him also shall the Son of man be ashamed." Any model of terras, which could not be superseded without precluding some idea peculiar to the gospel from the possibility of being faithfully expressed, it would be for his disciples to retain in spite of all the ridicule of the most antichristian age. But I am, at every step, assuming that every part of the evangelical system can be most perfectly exhibited in a diction but little pecu- .iar ; and, that being admitted, would it not be better to avert the imputation, as far as this difference of language could avert it? Better, I do not mean, in the way of protective convenience to any cowardly feeling, of the man who is liable to be called a fanatic for maintaining the evangelical principles ; he ought, TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 235 on the ground both of Christian fidelity and of manly independence, to be superior to caring about the charge; but better, as to the light in which these principles might appear to the persons who meet them with this prejudice. You may have observed that in attributing fanaticism, they often fix on the phrases, at least as much as on the absolute substance, of evangelical doctrines. Now would it not be better to show them what these doctrines are, as divested of these phrases, and exhibited clearly in that vehicle in which other important truths are presented ; and thus, at least, to defeat their propensity to seize on a mode of exhibition so convertible to the ludicrous, in defence against any claim made on them for seriousness respecting the sub- stantial matter ? If sometimes their grave attention, their corrected apprehension, their partial approbation might be gained, it were a still more desirable effect. And we can recollect instances in which a certain degree of this good eifect has resulted. Persons who had received unfavourable impressions of some of the peculiar ideas of the gospel, from having heard them advanced almost exclusively in the modes of phrase on which I have remarked, have acknowledged their pre- judices to be somewhat diminished, after these ideas had been presented in the simple general language of intellect. We cannot indeed so far forget the lessons of experience, and the inspired declarations concerning the dispositions of the human mind, as to expect that it would be more than very partially conciliated by any possible improvement in the mode of exhibiting Chris- tian truth. But it were to be wished that every thing should be done to bring reluctant minds into doubt, at least, whether, if they cannot be evangelical, it be because they are of an order too rectified and refined. As a further consideration in favour of adopting a 236 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE more general language, it may be observed, that hyp9- crisy would then find a much greater difficulty, as far as speech is concerned, in supporting its imposture. The usual language of hypocrisy, at least of vulgar hy- pocrisy, is cant ; and religious cant is often an affected use of the phrases which have been heard employed as appropriate to evangelical truth ; with which phrases the hypocrite has connected no distinct ideas, so that he would be confounded if an intelligent examiner were to require an accurate explanation of them ; while yet nothing is more easy to be sung or said. Now were this diction, for the greater part, to vanish from Christian society, leaving the truth in its mere essence behind, and were, consequently, the pretender reduced to assume the guise of religion on the more laborious condition of acquiring an understanding of its leading principles, so as to be able to give them forth dis criminatively in language of his own, the part of a hypocrite would be much less easily acted, and less frequently attempted. Religion would therefore be sel- domer dishonoured by the mockery of a false semblance. Again, if this alteration of language were introduced, some of the sincere disciples of evangelical religion would much more distinctly feel the necessity of a positive intellectual hole 1 on the principles of their pro- fession. A systematic recurring formality of words tends to prevent a perfect understanding of the subject, by furnishing for complex ideas a set of ready-framed signs, (like stereotype in printing,) which a man learns to employ without really having the ideas of which the combination should consist. Some of the simple ideas which belong to the combination may be totally absent from his mind, the others may be most faintly appre- hended ; there is HO precise construction therefore of the thought ; and thus the sign which he uses, stands TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 237 in fact for nothing. If, on hearing one of these phrases, you were to turn to the speaker, and say, Now what is that idea ? What do you plainly mean by that ex- pression ? you would often find with how indistinct a conception, with how little attention to the very idea itself, the mind had been contented. And this con- tentment you would often observe to be, not a humble acquiescence in a consciously defective apprehension of some principle, of which a man feels and confesses the difficulty of attaining more than a partial conception, but the satisfied assurance that he fully understands what he is expressing. On another subject, where there were no settled forms of words to beguile him into the feeling as if he thought and understood, when in fact he did not, and where words must have been selected to define his own formation of the thought, his embarrassment how to express himself would have made him aware that his notion had no shape, and have compelled an intellectual effort to give it one. But it is against all reason that Christian truth should be believed and professed with a less concern for precision, and at the expense of less mental exercise, than any other subject would require. And of how little con- sequence it would seem to be, in this mode of believing, whether a man entertains one system of principles or the opposite. But if such arguments could not be alleged, it would still seem far from desirable, without evident necessity, to clothe evangelical sentiment in a diction varying in more than a few indispensable terms from the general standard, for the simple reason, that it must be bar- barous ; unless, as I have observed, it be raised quite above the authority of this standard, and of the criticism Jttd the taste which appeal to it, by the venerable U38 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE dignity of inspiration, which we have no more to ex pect, or by the intellectual power of a genius almost surpassing human nature. I do not know whether it be absolutely impossible that there should arise a man whose manner of thinking shall be so transcendent in originality and demonstrative vigour, as to authorize him to throw the language into a new order, all his own : but it is questionable whether there ever ap- peared such a writer, in any language which had been cultivated to its maturity. Even Milton, who might, if ever mortal might, be warranted to sport with all established authority and usage, and to run the language into whatever unsanctioned forms would enlarge his freedom in grand mental enterprise, has been, for pre- suming in a certain degree to create for himself a pe- culiar diction, charged by Johnson with writing in a " Babylonish dialect" And Johnson's own mighty force of mind has not defended his Roman dialect from Ving condemned by all men of taste. The magic of Burke's eloquence is not enough to beguile the per- ception, that it is of less dignified and commanding tone, has less of the claim to be " for all time," than if the same marvellous affluence of thought and fancy had been conveyed in a language of less arbitrary, capricious, and mannerish character. To revert to the theological peculiarity of dialect ; we may look in vain for any theologian of genius so supereminently powerful as might impress on it either a dignity to overawe, or a grace to conciliate, literary taste. But indeed if we had such a one he would not attempt it. If he dis- regarded the classical standard, and chose to speak in an alien dialect, it would be a dialect of his own, formed in still more complete independence and dis- regard of the model which so many theological teachers have concurred to establish for the language of religion. TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 239 It may be said, perhaps, that any such splendid in- tervention, in authorization of that model, can be spared ; for that the class contains so many of great ability, and so many more of great piety and usefulness, that the peculiar diction will maintain its ground. Probably it will do so, in a considerable degree, for a long time. But no numbers, ability, or piety, will ever redeem it. from the character of barbarism. LETTER IV. IN defence of the diction which I have been describ- ing, it will be said, that it has grown out of the language of the Bible. To a great extent, this is evidently true. Many phrases indeed which casually occurred in the writings of divines, and many which were laboriously .nvented by those who wished to give to divinity a complete systematic arrangement, and therefore wanted denominations or titles for the multitude of articles in the artificial distribution, have been incorporated in the theological dialect. But a large proportion of its phrases consists partly in such combinations of words as were taken originally from the Bible, and still more in such as have, from familiarity with that book, partly grown in insensible assimilation, and partly been formed intentionally, but rudely, in resemblance, to its charac- teristic language. Before proceeding Airther, I do not know whether it may be necessary, in order to prevent misapprehension, to advert to the high advantage and propriety of often introducing sentences from the Bible, not only in theo- logical, but in any grave moral composition. Passages of the inspired writings must necessarily be cited, in some instances, in proof of the truth of opinions, and 24>0 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE may be most happily cited, in many others, to give a venerable and impressive air to serious sentiments which would be admitted as just though unsupported by such a reference to the authority. Both complete sentences, and striking short expressions, consisting perhaps sometimes of only two or three words, may be thus introduced with an effect at once useful and orna- mental, while they appear pure and unmodified amidst the composition, as simple particles of scripture, quite distinct from the diction in which they are inserted. When thus appearing in their own genuine quality, as lines or parts of lines taken from a venerable book which is written in a manner very different from our common mode of language, they are read as expressions foreign to the surrounding composition, and, without an effort, referred to the work from which they arc brought and of which they retain the unaltered consis- tence in the same manner as passages, or striking short expressions, adopted from some respected and well-known classic in our language. Whatever dignity therefore characterizes the great work itself, is possessed also by these detached pieces in the various places where they are inserted, but not, if I may so express it, infused. And if they be judiciously inserted, they impart their dignity to the sentiments which they are employed to enforce. This employment of the sacred expressions may be very frequent, as the Bible contains such an immense variety of ideas, applicable to all manner of interesting subjects. And from its being so familiarly known, its sentences or shortej expressions may be introduced without the formality of noticing, either in terms or by any other mark, from what voliHne they are drawn. These observations are more than enough, to obviate any imputation of wanting * due sense of the dignity and force which may be TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 24>1 imparted by a judicious introduction of the language of the Bible. It is a different mode of using biblical language, that constitutes so considerable a part of the dialect which I have ventured to disapprove. When insertions are made from the Bible in the manner here described as effective and ornamental, the composition exhibits two kinds of diction, each bearing its own separate character ; the one being the diction which belongs to the author, the other that of the sacred book whence the citations are drawn. We pass along the course of his language with the ordinary feeling of being ad- dressed in a common general phraseology ; and when the pure scripture expressions occur, they are recog- nised in their own peculiar character, and with the sense that we are reading, in small detached portions, just so much of the Bible itself. This distinct recog- nition of the two separate characters of language prevents any impression of an uncouth heterogeneous consistence. But in the theological dialect, that part of the phraseology which has a biblical cast, is neither the one of these two kinds of language nor the other, but an inseparable though crude amalgam of both. For the expressions resembling those of scripture are blended and moulded into the substance of the diction. I say resembling ; for though some of them are pre- cisely phrases from the Bible, yet most of them are phrases a little modified from the form in which they occur in the sacred book, by changing or adding words, by compounding two phrases into one, and by fitting the rest of the language to the biblical phrases by an imitative antique construction. In this manner the scriptural expressions, instead of appearing as distin- guished points on a common ground, as gems advan- tageously set in an inferior substance, are reduced to 242 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN Of TASTE become an ordinary and desecrated ingredient in an uncouth phraseology. They are no longer brought directly from the scriptures, by an act of thought and choice in the person who uses them, and with a recol- lection of their sacred origin ; but merely recur to him in the common usage of the diction, into which they have degenerated in the school of divines. They there- fore are now in no degree of the nature of quotations, introduced for their special appositeness in the par- ticular instance, as the expressions of an admired and revered human author would be repeated. This is the kind of biblical phraseology which I could wish to see less employed, unless it be either more venerable or more lucid than that which I have recommended. We may be allowed to doubt how far such language can be venerable, after considering, that it gives not the smallest assurance of striking or elevated thought, since in fact a vast quantity of most inferior writing has appeared in this kind of diction ; that it is not now actually drawn from the sacred fountains ; that the incessant repetition of its phrases in every kind of religious exercise and performance has worn out any solemnity it might ever have had ; and that it is the very usual concomitant and sign of a servilely systematic and cramped manner of thinking. It may be considered also, that, from whatever high origin any modes and figures of speech may be drawn, they are reduced, "n point of dignity, to the quality of the material with which they become interfused ; so that if the whole character of the dialect of divines in not adapted tc excito veneration, the proportion of it which gives a colour of scripture-phraseology, not standing out distinct from the composition, will have lost the virtue to excite it. And again, let it be con- sidered, that in almost all i-ases a-j attempt to imitate TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION 243 the peculiarity of form in which a venerable objeu is presented, not only fails to excite veneration, but pro- vokes the contrary sentiment ; especially when all things in the form of the venerable model are homo- geneous, while the imitation exhibits some features of resemblance incongruously combined with what is mainly and unavoidably of a different cast. A grand ancient edifice, of whatever order, or if it were of a construction peculiar to itself, would be an impressive object ; but a modern little one raised in its neighbour- hood, of a conformation for the greatest part glaringly vulgar, but with a number of antique windows and angles in imitation of the grand structure, would be a grotesque and ridiculous one. Scriptural phrases then can no longer make a solemn impression, when modified and vulgarized into the tex- ture of a language which, taken altogether, is the re- verse of every thing that can either attract or command. Such idioms may indeed remind one of prophets and apostles, but it is a recollection which prompts to say, Who are these men that, instead of respectfully intro- ducing at intervals the direct words of those revered dictators of truth, seem to be mocking the sacred lan- guage by a barbarous imitative diction of their own ? They may affect the forms of a divine solemnity, but there is no fire from heaven. They may show something like a burning bush, but it is without an angel. As to perspicuity, there will not be a question whether that be one of the recommendations of this corrupt modification of the biblical phraseology. Without our leave, the mode of expression habitually associated with the general exercise of our intelligence, conveys ideas to us the most easily and the most clearly. And not unfrequently even in citing the pure expressions of scripture, especially in doctrinal subjects, a religious R 2 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE instructor will find it indispensable to add a sentence in order to expose the sense in a plainer manner; and that not as comment, but as explanation. He has many occasions for seeing that unless he do this, there will not be, in the minds of the persons to be instructed oxactly and definitively the idea which he understands V> be expressed in the cited passage. Even to possess Aimself of a clear apprehension, there is, he might perceive in his mind, a kind of translating operation, embodying the idea in more common language, equi valent to the biblical. Hut would not the disuse of a language which seem to bear a constant reference to the Bible, by this in- timate blending of its phraseology, tend to put the Bible out of remembrance? It may be answered, that the Bible, as a book which will be read beyond all comparison more than any other, will keep itself in remembrance, among the serious part of mankind. Besides, it may be presumed that religious teachers and writers, however secularized the language they may adopt, will too often bring the sacred book in view by direct reference and citation, to admit any danger, from them, of its being forgotten. And though its distinct unmodified expressions should be introduced much seldomer in the course of their sentences, than the half-scriptural phrases are recurring in the diction under consideration, they would remind us of the Bible in a more advantageous manner, than a dialect which has lost the dignity of a sacred language without acquiring the grace of a classical one. I am sensible in how many points the illustration would be defective, but it would partly answer my purpose to observe, that if it were wished to promote the study of some vene- rated human author of a former age, suppose Hooker, the way would not be to attempt incorporating a great TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 245 number of his turns of expression into the essential structure of our own diction, which would generally have a most uncouth effect, but to make respectful references, and often to insert in our composition sen- tences, and parts of sentences, distinctly as his, while our own cast of diction was conformed to the general modern standard. Let the oracles of inspiration be cited continually, both as authority and illustration, in a manner that shall make the mind instantly refer each expression that is introduced to the venerable book whence it is taken ; but let our part of religious language be simply ours, and let those oracles retain their characteristic form of expression unimitated, unparodied, to the end of time.* An advocate for the theological diction, who should hesitate to maintain its necessity or utility on the ground * In the above remarks, I have not made any distinction hetween the sacred books in their own language, and as translated. It might not however be improper to notice, that though there is a great pe- culiarity of language in the original, yet a certain proportion of the phraseology, as it stands in the translated scriptures, does not properly belong to the structure of the original composition, but is to be ascribed to the complexion of the language at the time when the translation was made. A translation, therefore, made now, and con- formed to the present state of the language, in the same degree in which the earlier translation was conformed to the state of the lan- guage at that time, would make an alteration in some parts of that phraseology which the theological dialect has attempted to incor- porate and imitate. If therefore it were the duty of divines to take the biblical mode of expression for their model, it would still be quite a work of supererogation to take this model in a wider degree of difference from the ordinary language suited to serious thoughts than as it would appear in such a later version. This would be a homage, not to the real diction of the sacred scriptures, but to the earlier cast of our own language. At the same time it must be admitted, both that the change of expression which a later version might, on merely philological princ.ples, be justified by the progress {Hid present standard of our language for making, would not be great: and that every sentiment of prudence and devotional taste 246 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE that a considerable proportion of it has grown out of the language of scripture, may yet think it has become necessary in consequence of so many people having been so long accustomed to it. I cannot but be aware, that many respectable teachers of Christianity would h'nd a very great difficulty to depart from their inveterate usage. Nor could they acquire, if the change were attempted, a happy command of a more general lan- guage, without being considerably conversant with good writers on general subjects, and sedulously exer- cising themselves to throw their thoughts into a some- what similar current of language. Unless, therefore, this study has been cultivated, or is intended to be cultivated, it will perhaps be better for them, especially f far advanced in life, to retain the accustomed mode of expression with all disadvantages. Younger theo- logical students, however, are supposed to become forbids to make quite so much alteration as those principles might warrant. All who have long venerated the scriptures in their some- what antique version, would protest against their being laboriously modernized into every nice conformity with the present standard of the language, and against any other than a very literal translation. If it could be supposed that our language had not yet attained a fixed state, but would progressively change for ages to come, it would be desirable that the translation of the Bible should always continue, except in what might essentially aifect the sense, a century or two behind, for the sake of that venerable air which a shade of antiquity confers on the form, of what is so sacred and authoritative in substance. .But I cannot allow that the same law is to be extended to the language of divines. They have no right to assume the same ground and the same distinctions as the Bible ; they ought not to affect to keep it company. There is no solemn dignity in their writings, which can claim to be invested with a venerable peculiarity. Imitate the Bible or not, their composition is merely of the ordinary human quality, and subject to the same rules as that of their con- temporaries who write on other subjects. And if they remain behind the advanced state of the classical diction, those contemporaries will not allow them to excuse themselves by pretending to identify themselves with the Bible. TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 247 acquainted with those authors who have displayed the utmost extent and powers of language in its freest form : and it is right for them to be told that evan- gelical doctrine would incur no necessary corruption or profanation by being conveyed in so liberal, diversified, and what I may call natural a diction ; a language which may be termed the day-light of thought, as compared with the artificial lights of the peculiar dialect. With regard also to a considerable proportion of Christian readers and hearers, I am sensible that a reformed language would be excessively strange to them. But may I not allege, without any affectation of paradox, that its being so strange to them would b" a proof that it is quite time it were adopted ? For the manner in which some of them would receive this altered dialect, would prove that the customary phra- seology had scarcely given them any clear notions. It would be found, as I have observed before, that to them the peculiar phrases had been not so much the vehicles of ideas, as substitutes for them. So undefined has been their understanding of the sense, while they me- chanically chimed to the sound, that if they hear the very ideas which these phrases signify, or did or should signify, expressed ever so plainly in other language, they do not recognise them ; and are instantly on the alert with the epithets, sound, orthodox, and all the watch-words of ecclesiastical suspicion. For such Christians, the diction is the convenient asylum of ig- norance, indolence, and prejudice. But I have enlarged far beyond my intention, which was only to represent, with a short illustration, that this peculiar dialect is unfavourable to a cordial re- ception of evangelical doctrines in minds of cultivated taste. This I know o be a fact from many observations in real life, especially among intellectual young persons. 24-8 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE not altogether regardless of serious subjects, and not seduced, though not out of danger of being so, by the cavils against the divine authority of Christianity itself. After dismissing the consideration of the language, which has unfortunately been made the canonical garb of religion, I meant to have taken a somewhat more general view of the accumulation of bad writing, under which the evangelical theology has been buried ; and which has contributed to bring its principles in dis- favour with too many persons of accomplished mental habits. A large proportion of that writing may be sentenced as bad, on more accounts than merely the peculiarity of dialect. But this is an invidious topi?, and I shall make only a few observations. Proofs of an intellect considerably above the com- mon level, with a literary execution disciplined to great correctness, and partaking somewhat of elegance, are requisite on the lowest terms of acceptance for good writing, with cultivated readers. Superlatively strong sense will indeed command attention, and even ad- miration, in the absence of all the graces, and not- withstanding much incorrectness or clumsiness in the workmanship of the composition. But when thus standing the divested and sole excellence, it must be pre-eminently conspicuous to have this power. Below this pitch of single or of combined merit, a book cannot please persons of discerning judgment and refined taste, though its subject be the most interesting on earth ; and for acceptableness, therefore, the subject is unfortunate in coming to those persons in that book. A disgusting cup will spoil the finest element which can be conveyed in it, though that were the nectar of immortality. Now, in this view, I suppose it will be acknowledged that the evangelical cause has been, on the whole, far TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 249 from happy in its prodigious list of authors. A number of them have displayed a high order of ex- cellence ; but one regrets as to a much greater number, that they did not revere the dignity of their religion too much, to beset and suffocate it with their super- fluous offerings. To you I need not expatiate on the character of the collective Christian library. It will have been obvious to you that there is a multitude of books which form the perfect vulgar of religious authorship ; a vast exhibition of the most subordinate materials that can be called thought, in language too grovelling to be called style. Some of these writers seem to have concluded that the greatness of the subject was to do every thing, and that they had but to pronounce, like David, the name of " the Lord of Hosts," to give pebbles the force of darts and spears. Others appear to have really wanted the perception of any great difference, in point of excellence, between the meaner and the superior modes of writing. If they had read alternately Barrow's or South's pages and their own, they probably might have doubted on which side to assign the palm. A number of them, citing, in a perverted sense, the language of St. Paul, " not with excellency of speech," " not with enticing words of man's wisdom," " not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth," expressly disclaim every thing that belongs to fine writing, not exactly as what they , to follow our speculations very much in our own way, taking from those schemes, indifferently, any notions that we may approve, and facts or fictions that we may admire. You would have supposed that these writers had heard of one Jesus Christ, as they had heard of one Confucius, as a teacher whose instructions are admitted to contain many excellent things, and to whose system a liberal mind will occasionally advert, well pleased to .see China, Greece, and Judea, as well as England, pro- ducing their philosophers, of various degrees and modes of illumination, for the honour of their respective coun- tries and periods, and for the concurrent promotion of human intelligence. All the information which they would have supplied to your understanding, and all the conjectures to which they might have excited your curiosity, would have left you, if not instructed from other sources, to meet the real religion itself, when at length disclosed to you, as a thing of which you had but slight recognition, further than its name ; as a won- derful novelty. How little you would have expected, from their literary and ethical glimpses, to find the case to be, that the system so insignificantly and carelessly acknowledged in the course of their fine sentiments, la TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 291 the actual and sole economy by the provisions of which their happiness can be secured, by the laws of which they will be judged, which has declared the relations of man with his Creator, and specified the exclusive ground of acceptance; which is theiefore of infinite consequence to you, and to them, and to all their readers, as fixing the entire theory of the condition and destinies of man on the final principles, to which all theories and sen- timents are solemnly required to be " brought into obedience." Now, if the fine spirits, who have thus preserved an ample, rich, diversified, crowded province of our litera- ture, clear of evangelical intrusion, are really the chief instructors of persons of taste, and form, from early life, their habits of feeling and thought, the natural result must be a state of mind very uncongenial with the gospel. Views habitually presented to the mind in its most susceptible periods, and during the prolonged course of its improvements, in the varied forms and lights of sublimity and beauty, with every fascination of the taste, ingenuity, and eloquence, which it has admired still more each year as its faculties have ex- panded, will have become the settled order of its ideas. And it will feel the same complacency in this intellectual order, that we feel, as inhabitants of the material world, in the great arrangement of nature, in the green bloom- ing earth, and the splendid hemisphere of heaven. LETTER VIII. IT will be proper to specify, somewhat more dis- tinctly, several of the particulars in which I consider the majority of our fine writers as at variance with the tenour of the Christian revelation, and therefore u2 'J9'2 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTB beguiling their readers into a complacency in an order of sentiments that sometimes virtually, and sometimes directly, disowns it. One thing extremely obvious to remark is, that the good man, the man of virtue, who is necessarily coming often in view in the volumes of these writers, is not a Christian. His character could have been formed though the Christian revelation had never been opened on the earth, or though the New Testament had perished ages since , and it might have been a fine spectacle, but of no striking peculiarity. It has no such complexion and aspect as would have appeared foreign and unaccount- able in the absence of the Christian truth, and have excited wonder what it should bear relation to, and on what model, or in what school, such a conformation of principles and feelings could have taken its consistence. Let it only be said, that this man of virtue had been conversant whole years with such oracles and examples ;is Socrates, Plato, Cicero, Antoninus, and Seneca, se- lecting what in any of them appeared the wisest or best, and all would be explained ; there would be nothing to suggest the question, " But if so, with whom has he conversed since, to lose so strangely the proper cha- racter of his school, under the broad impression of some other mightier influence?" The good man of our polite literature never talks with affectionate devotion of Christ, as the great High Priest of his profession, as the exalted friend and lord, whose injunctions are the laws of his virtues, whose work and sacrifice are the basis of his hopes, whose doctrines guide and awe his reasonings, and whose ox- ample is the pattern which he is earnestly aspiring to resemble. The last intellectual and moral designations in the world by which it would occur to you to describe him, would be those by which the apostles so much TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 293 exulted to be recognised, a disciple, and a servant, of Jesus Christ ; nor could you imagine him as at all gratified by being so described. You do not hear him express, that he accounts the habitual remembrance of Christ essential to the nature of that excellence which he is cultivating. He rather seems, with the utrm/st coolness of choice, adopting virtue as according with the dignity of a rational agent, than to be in the least degree impelled to the high attainment by any relations with the Saviour of the world. If you suppose a person of such character to have fallen into the company of St. Paul, you can easily imagine the total want of congeniality. Though both avowedly devoted to truth, to virtue, and perhaps to religion, the difference in the cast of their sentiments would have been as great as that between the physical constitution and habitudes of a native of the country at the equator, and those of one from the arctic regions. Would not that determination of the apostle's mind, by which there was a continual intervention of ideas con- cerning one great object, in all subjects, places, and times, have appeared to this man of virtue and wisdom inconceivably mystical ? In what manner would he have listened to the emphatical expressions respecting the !ove of Christ constraining us, living not to ourselves, ,ut to him that died for us and rose again, counting all .hings but loss for the knowledge of Christ, being ardent to win Christ and be found in him, and trusting that Christ should be magnified in our body, whether by life or by death ? Perhaps St. Paul's energy of tempera- ment, evidently combined with a vigorous intellect, might have awed him into silence. But amidst tha* silence, he must have decided, in order to defend his self-complacency, that the apostle's mind had fallen, notwithstanding its strength, under the dominion of -in 294" ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTK irrational association ; for he would have been conscious that no such ideas had ever kindled his affections, and that no such affections had ever animated his actions ; and yet he was indubitably a good man, according to a generally approved standard, and could, in another style, be as eloquent for goodness as St. Paul himself. He would therefore have assured himself, either that it was not necessary to be a Christian, or that this order of eelings was not necessary to that character. But if die apostle's sagacity had detected the cause of this reserve, and the nature of his associate's reflections, he would most certainly have declared to him with em- phasis that both these things were necessary or that he had been deceived by inspiration ; and he would have parted from this self-complacent man with admonition and compassion. Would St. Paul have been wrong ? But if he would have been right, what becomes of those authors, whose works, whether from neglect or design, tend to satisfy their readers of the perfection of a form of character which he would have pronounced essen- tially unsound ? Again, moral writings are instructions on the subject of happiness. Now the doctrine of this subject is declared in the evangelical testimony: it had been strange indeed if it had not, when the happiness of man was expressly the object of the communication. And what, according to this communication, are the essential requisites to that condition of the mind without which no man ought to be called happy; without which ignorance or insensibility alone can be content, and folly alone can be cheerful ? A simple reader of the Christian scriptures will reply that they are a change of heart, called conversion, the assur- ance of the pardon of sin through Jesus Christ, a habit of devotion approaching so near to intercourse TO EVANGELICAL HELIOIOX { 29? the Supreme Object of devotion that revelatiot has called it " communion with God," a process, named sanctification, of improvement in all internal and ex- ternal virtue, a confidence in the divine Providence that all things shall work together for good, and a conscious preparation for another life, including a firm hope of eternal felicity. And what else can he reply? Did the lamp of heaven ever shine more clearly since omnipotence lighted it, than these ideas display them- selves through the Christian revelation ? /* this then absolutely and exclusively the true account of hap- piness? It is not that which our accomplished writers in general have chosen to sanction. Your recollection will tell you that they have most certainly presumed to avow, or to insinuate, a doctrine of happiness which implies much of the Christian doctrine to be a needless intruder on our speculations, or an imposition on our belief; and I wonder that this grave fact should so little have alarmed the Christian students of elegant literature. The wide difference between the dictates of the two authorities is too evident to be overlooked; for the writers in question have very rarely, amidst an immense assemblage of sentiments concerning happi- ness, made any reference to what the inspired teachers so explicitly declare to be its constituent and vital principles. How many times you might read the sun or the moon to its repose, before you would find an assertion or a recognition, for instance, of a change of the mind being requisite to happiness, in any terms commensurate with the significance which this article seems to bear, in all the varied propositions and notices respecting it in the New Testament ! Some of these writers appear hardly to have admitted or to have recollected even the maxim, that happiness must essen- tially consist in something so fixed in the mind itself, 296 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTK as to bo substantially independent of worldly condition for their most animated representations of it are merely descriptions of fortunate combinations of external cir- cumstances, and of the feelings so immediately de- pending on them, that they will expire the moment that these combinations are broken up. The greater number, however, have fully admitted so plain a truth, and have given their illustrations of the doctrine of happiness accordingly. And what appears in these illustrations as the brightest image of happiness ? It is, probably, that of a man feeling an elevated com- placency in his own excellence, a proud consciousness of rectitude ; privileged with freedom of thought, and extended views, cleared from the mists of prejudice and superstition ; displaying the generosity of his nature in the exercise of beneficence, without feeling, however, any grateful incitement from remembrance of the transcendent generosity of the Son of Man ; maintaining, in respect to the events and bustle of the surrounding scene, a dignified indifference, which can let the world go its own way, undisturbed by its dis- ordered course ; temperately enjoying whatever good grows on his portion of the field of life, and living in a cool resignation to fate, without any strong expressions of a specific hope, or even solicitude, with regard to the termination of life and to all futurity. Now, not- withstanding a partial coincidence of this description with the Christian theory of happiness,* it is evident that on the whole the two modes are so different that no man can realize them both. The consequence is No one can be to absurd as to represent the notions which pervade the works of polite literature as totally, and at all points, opposite to the principles of Christianity ; what I am asserting is, that in some important points they are substantially and essentially Different, and that in others they disown the Christian modification. TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 297 clear ; the natural effect of incompetent and fallacious schemes, prepossessing the mind by every grace and force of genius, will be an aversion to the Christian scheme ; which will be seen to piace happineso in elements and relations much less flattering to what will be called a noble pride ; to make it consist in some- thing of which it were a vain presumption for the man to fancy that himself can be the sovereign creator. It is, again, a prominent characteristic of the Christian revelation, that having declared this life to be but the introduction to another, it systematically preserves the recollection of this great truth through every repre- sentation of every subject ; so that the reader is not allowed to contemplate any of the interests of life in a view which detaches them from the grand object and conditions of life itself. An apostle could not address his friends on the most common concerns, for the length of a page, without the final references. 'He is like a person whose eye, while he is conversing with you about an object, or a succession of objects, immediately near, should glance every moment toward some great spectacle appearing on the distant horizon. He seen.s to talk to his friends in somewhat of that manner of expression with which you can imagine that Elijah spoke, if he remarked to his companion any circum- stance in the journey from Bethel to Jericho, and from Jericho to the Jordan; a manner betraying the sublime anticipation which was pressing on his thoughts. The correct consequence of conversing with our Lord and his apostles would be, that the thought of immortality should become almost as habitually present and fami liaiized to the mind as the countenance of a domestic friend; that it should be the grand test of the value of all pursuits, friendships, and speculations ; and that it should mingle a certain nobleness with every thing 2'98 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTft which it permitted to occupy our time. Now, how far will the discipline of modern polite literature coincide? I should be pleased to hear a student of that literature seriously profess that he is often and impressively re- minded of futurity; and to have it shown that ideas relating to this great subject are presented in sufficient number, and in a proper manner, to produce an eifect which should form a respectable proportion of the whole effect produced by these authors on susceptible minds. But there is no ground for expecting this satisfaction. It is true that the idea of immortality is so exceed- ingly grand, that many writers of genius who have felt but little genuine interest in religion, have been led by their perception of what is sublime to introduce an allusion which is one of the most powerful means of elevating the imagination : and, in point of energy and splendour, their language has been worthy of the subject. In these instances, however, it is seldom found that the idea is presented in that light which, while displaying it prominent in its individual grandeur, shows also its extensive necessary connexion with other ideas: it appears somewhat like a majestic tower, which a traveller in some countries may find standing in a solitary scene, no longer surrounded by the great as- semblage of buildings, the ample city, of which it was raised to be the centre, the strength, and the ornament. Immortality has been had recourse to in one page of an ingenious work as a single topic of sublimity, in the same manner as a magnificent phenomenon, or a bril- liant achievement, has been described in another. The author's object might rather seem to have been tc supply an occasional gratification to taste, than tc reduce the mind and all its feelings under the dominioi. of a flrand practical principle. TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 299 It is true also, that a graver class of fine writers, who have expressed considerable respect for religion and for Christianity, and who, though not writing syste- matically on morals, have inculcated high moral prin- ciples, have made references to a future state as the hope and sanction of virtue. But these references are made less frequently, and with less enforcement and emphasis, than the connexion between our present conduct and a future life must be acknowledged to claim. The manner in which they are made seems to betray either a deficiency of interest in the great subject, or a pusillanimous anxiety not to offend those readers who would think it too directly religious. It is sometimes adverted to as if rather from a compelling sense, that if there is a future state, moral speculation must be defective, even to a degree of absurdity, without some allusions to it, than from feeling a pro- found delight in the contemplation. When the idea of another life is introduced to aggravate the force of moral principles, and the authority of conscience, it is done so as to appear like a somewhat reluctant ac- knowledgment of the deficiency of inferior sanctions. The consideration comes and vanishes in transient light, after the writer has eloquently expatiated on every circumstance by which the present life can supply motives to goodness. In some instances, a watchful reader will also perceive what appears too much like care to divest the idea, when it must be introduced, of all direct references to that sacred Person who first completely opened the prospect of immortality, or to some of those other doctrines which he taught in im- mediate connexion with this great truth. There seems reason to suspect the writer of being pleased that, though it is indeed to the gospel alone that we owe the positive assurance of immortality, yet it was a subject so much 300 ON THE AVERSION OF MEX OF TASTK in the conjectures and speculation of the heathen sages, that he may mention it without therefore so expressly recognising the gospel, as he must in the case of introducing some truth of which not only the evi- dence, but even the first explicit conception, was com- municated by that dispensation. Taking this defective kind of acknowledgment of a future state, together with that entire oblivion of the subject which prevails through an ample po.tion of elegant literature, I think there is no hazard in saying that a reader who is satisfied without any other in- structions, will learn almost every lesson sooner than the necessity of habitually living for eternity. Many of these writers seem to take as much care to guard against the inroad of ideas from that solemn quarter as the inhabitants of Holland do against the irruption of the sea; and their writings do really form a kind of moral dyke against the invasion from the other world. They do not instruct a man to act, to enjoy, and to suffer, as a being that may by to-morrow have finally abandoned this orb : every thing is done w> beguile the feeling of his being a stranger and a pilgrim on the earth." The relation which our nature bears to the circumstances of the present state, and which indi- v]duals bear to one another, is mainly the ground on wh,ch their considerations of duty proceed and conclude And their schemes of happiness, though formed for beings at once immortal and departing, include little which avowedly relates to that world to which they are removing, nor reach beyond the period at which thev will properly but begin to live. They endeavour to ra,se the groves of an earthly paradise, to shade from sight that vista which opens to the distance of eternity. Another article in which the anti-christian tendency TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. SJ1 of a great part of our productions of taste and genius is apparent, is, the kind of consolation administered to distress, old age, and death. Things of a mournful kind make so large a oortion of the lot of humanity, that it is impossible for writers who take human life and feelings for their subject to avoid, (nor indeed have they endeavoured to avoid,) contemplating man in those conditions in which he needs every benignant aid to save him from despair. And here, if any where, we may justly require an absolute coincidence of all moral in- structions with the religion of Christ : since consolation is eminently its distinction and its design ; since a being in distress has peculiarly a right not to be trifled with by the application of unadapted expedients ; and since insufficient consolations are hut to mock it, and decep- tive ones are to betray. It should then be clearly ascertained by the moralist, and never forgotten, what are the consolations provided by this religion, and under what condition they are offered. Christianity offers even to the irreligious, who relent amidst their sufferings, the alleviation springing from .'nestimable promises made to penitence : any other system, which should attempt to console them, simply as suffering, and without any reference to the moral and religious state of their minds, would be mischievous, if it were not inefficacious. What are the principal sources of consolation to the pious, is immediately ap- oarent. The subjects of adversity and sorrow are assured that God exercises his paternal wisdom and kindness in afflicting his children : that this necessary discipline is to refine and exalt them by making them " partakers of his holiness ;" that he mercifully regards their weakness and pains, and will not let them suffer beyond what they shall be able to bear; that their great Leader has suffered for them more than they can 302 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE suffer, and compassionately sympathizes with them still ; that this short life was far less designed to confer a present happiness, than to mature them to a fitness for being happy for ever ; and that patient constancy shall receive a resplendent crown. An aged Christian is soothed by the assurance that his Almighty Friend will not despise the enfeebled exertions, nor desert the op pressed and fainting weakness, of the last stage of his servant's life. When advancing into the shade of death itself, he is animated by the faith that the great sacrifice has taken the malignity of death away ; and that the divine presence will attend the dark steps of this last and lonely enterprise, and shew the dying traveller and combatant that even this melancholy gloom is to him the utmost limit of the dominion of evil, the very con- fine of paradise, the immediate access to the region of eternal life. Now, in the greater number of the works under review, what are the modes of consolation which sensi- bility, reason, and eloquence, have most generally ex- erted themselves to apply to the mournful circumstances of life, and to its close ? You will readily recollect such as these : a man is suffering well, it is the common destiny, every one suffers sometimes, and some much more than he ; it is well it is no worse. If he is unhappy now, he has been happy, and he could not expect to be so invariably. It were folly to complain that his nature was constituted capable of suffering, or placed in a world where it is exposed to the infliction. If it were not capable of pain, it would not of pleasure. Would he be willing to lose his being, to escape these ills ? Or would he consent, if such a thing were possible, to be any person else ? The sympathy of each kind relation and friend will not be wanting. His condition may probably change for the better; there is hope in TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 303 every situation ; and meanwhile, it is an oppoTtunity foi displaying manly fortitude. A strong mind can proudly triumph over the oppression of pain, the \exations of disappointment, and the tyranny of fortune. If the cause of distress is some irreparable deprivation, it will be softened by the lenient hand of time.* The lingering months of an aged man are soothed inmost, it is pretended, into cheerfulness, by the re- spectful attention of his neighbours ; by the worldly prosperity and dutiful regard of the far.iily he has brought up ; by the innocent gaiety and amusing activity of their children ; and by the consideration of his fair character in society. If he is a man of thought, he has the added advantage of some philosophical consi- derations ; the cares and passions of his former life are calmed into a wise tranquillity ; he thinks he has had a competent share of life ; it is as proper and necessary for mankind to have their " exits," as their " entrances ;" and his business will now be to make a " well-graced retreat from the stage, like a man that has properly acted his part, and may retire with applause. As to the means of sustaining the spirit in death, the general voice of these authors asserts the chief and only alb-sufficient one to be the recollection of a well-spent life. Some minor repellents of fear are added ; <*s for instance, that death is in fact a far less tremendous thing than that dire form of it by which imagination and superstition are haunted ; that the sufferings in death Can it be necessary to notice here again, that every system of moral sentiments must inevitably contain some principles not dis- claimed by Christianity ; with whose dictates various particulars in this assemblage of consolations are not inconsistent if held in a subordinate rank ? But the enumeration taken altogether, and exclusively of the grand Christian principles, forms a scheme of consolation essentially different from that so beneficently displayed in the religion of Christ. 304- ON THE AVERSION OF MEX OF TASTE are less than men often endure in the course of life ; that it is only like one of those transformations with which the world of nature abounds ; and that it is easy to conceive, and reasonable to expect, a more com- modious vehicle and habitation. It would seem almost unavoidable to glance a thought toward what revelation has signified to us of "the house not made with hands," of the " better country, that is, the heavenly." But the greater number of the writers of taste advert to the scene beyond this world with apparent reluctance, unless it can be done, on the one hand, in the manner of pure philosophical conjecture, or on the other, under the form of images, bearing some analogy to the visions of classical poetry.* The arguments for resignation to death are not so much drawn from future scenes, as from a consideration of the evils of the present life ; the necessity of yielding to a general and irreversible law ; the dignity of sub- mitting with that calmness which conscious virtue is entitled to feel ; and the improbability (as these writers sometimes intimate) that any formidable evils are to be apprehended after death, except by a few of the very worst of the human race. Those arguments are in general rather aimed to quiet fear than to animate hope. The pleaders of them seem more concerned to convey the dying man in peace and silence out of the worid, than to conduct him to the celestial felicity. Let us but see * I am very far from disliking philosophical speculation, or daring flights of fancy, on this high subject. On the contrary, it appears to me strange that any one firmly holding the belief of a life to come, should not have both the intellectual faculty and the imagination excited to the utmost effort in the trial, however unavailing, to give some outlines of definite form to the unseen realities. What I mean to censure in the mode of referring to another life, is, the care to avoid any direct resemblance or recognitio i of the ideas which the New Testament has given to guide, in some small, very small decree, our conjectures. TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 305 him embarked on his unknown voyage in fair weather, and we are not accountable for what he may meet, or whither he may be carried, when he is gone out of sight. They seldom present a lively view of the distant hap- piness, especially in any of those images in which the Christian revelation has intimated its nature. In whicli of these books, and by which of the real or fictitious characters whose last hours and thoughts they some- times display, will you find, in terms or in spirit, the apostolic sentiments adopted, " To depart and be with Christ is far better;" "Willing rather to be absent from the body, and present with the Lord ? " The very existence of that sacred testimony which has given the only genuine consolations in death, and the only just conceptions of what is beyond it, seems to be scarcely recollected; while the ingenious moralists are searching the exhausted common places of the stoic philosophy, or citing the treacherous maxims of a religion perverted to accordance with the corrupt wishes of mankind, or even recollecting the lively sayings of the few whose wit has expired only in the same moment with life, to fortify the pensive spirit for its last removal. " Is it not because there is not a God in Israel, that ye have sent to inquire of Baalzebub the God of Ekron?" Another order of sentiments concerning death, of a character too bold to be called consolations, has been represented as animating one class of human beings. In remarking on Lucan, I noticed that desire of death which has appeared in the expressions of great minds, sometimes while merely indulging solemn reflections when no danger or calamity immediately threatened, but often in the conscious approach towards a fatal cata- strophe. Many writers of later times have exerted their whole strength, and have even excelled themselves, in re- presenting the high sentiments in which this d 'sire has x 306 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE displayed itself; genius has found its very gold mine in this field. If this grandeur of sentiment had been of the genuine spirit to animate piety while it exalts the passions, some of the poets would have ranked among our greatest benefactors. Powerful genius, aiding to inspire a Christian triumph in the prospect of death, might be revered as a prophet, might be almost loved as a benignant angel. Few men's emotions can have approached nearer to enthusiasm than mine, in reading the sentiments made to be uttered by sages and reflective heroes in this prospect I have felt these passages as the last and mightiest of the enchantments of poetry, of power to inspire for a little while a contempt of all ordinary interests, of the world which we inhabit, and of life itself. While the enthusiast is elated with such an emotion, nothing may appear so captivating as some noble occasion of dying; such an occasion as that when Socrates died for virtue ; or that when Brutus at Philippi fell with falling liberty-* Poetry has delighted to display personages of this high order, in the same fatal predicament; and the situation of such men has appeared inexpressibly enviable, by means of those sublime sentiments by which they illuminated the gloom of death. The reader has loved to surround himself in imagination with that gloom, for the sake of irradiating it with that sublimity. All other greatness iias been for a while eclipsed by the greatness of thought displayed by these contemplative and magnanimous * Poetry will not easily exceed many of the expressions which mere history has recorded. I should little admire the capability of feeling, or greatly admire the Christian temper, of the man who could without emotion read, for instance, the short observations of Brutus to his friend, (in contemplation even of a self-inflicted death,) on the eve of the battle which extinguished all hope of freedom ; " We shall either be victorious, or pass away beyond the power of those that are so. We shall deliver our country by victory, or ourselves by death " TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 307 spirits, though untaught by religion, when advancing to meet their fate. But the Christian faith recalls the mind from this en- chantment, to recollect that the Christian spirit in dying can be the only right and noble one, and to consider whether these examples be not exceedingly different Have not the most enlightened and devout Christians, whether they have languished in their chambers, or passed through the fire of martyrdom, manifested their elevation of mind in another strain of eloquence ? The examples of greatness in death, which poetry has ex- hibited, generally want all those sentiments respecting the pardon of sin, and a Mediator who has accomplished and confers the deliverance, and often the explicit idea most pernicious. These assertions are certainly in the spirit of the New Testament, which, not exacting a total extinction of the love of human applause, yet alludes to most of its operations with censure, exhibits, probably, no ap- proved instance of its indulgence, and abounds with em- phatically cogent representations, both of its pernicious influence when it predominates, and of its powerful tendency to acquire the predominance. The honest disciple of that divine school, being at the same time a self-observer, will be convinced that the degree beyond which the passion is not tolerated by the Christian law, is a degree which it will be sure to reach and to exceed in his mind in suite of the most systematical opposition. The most resolute and persevering repression will still leave so much of this passion as Christianity will pro- nounce a fault or a vice. He will be anxious to assemble, in aid of the repressive discipline, all the arguments of reason, all striking examples, and all the interdictions of the Bible. Now I think I cannot be mistaken in asserting, that a great majority of our fine writers have gone directly counter to any such doctrine and discipline. No advo- cate will venture to deny, that they have commended and instigated the love of applause, of fame, of glory, or whatever it may be called, in a degree which, if the T 322 ON THE AVFRSION OF MEN OF TASTE preceding representation be just, places them in pointed ho tility to the Christian religion. Sometimes, indeed, when it was the planetary hour for high philosophy, or when they were in a splenetic mood, occasioned perhaps by some chagrin of disappointed vanity, they have ac- knowledged, and even very rhetorically exposed, the inanity of this same glory. Most of our ingenious authors have, in one place or another, been moral or satirical at the expense of what Pope so aptly deno- minates the " fool to fame." They perceived the truth, but as the truth did not make them free, they were willing after all to dignify a passion to which they felt themselves irretrievable slaves. And they have laboured to do it by celebrating, with every splendid epithet, the men who were impelled by this passion through the career in which they were the idols of servile mankind and their own; by describing glory as the best incentive to noble actions, and their worthiest reward; by placing the temple of Virtue (proud station of the goddess) in the situation to be a mere introduction to that of Fame ; by lamenting that so few, and th^ir unfortunate selves not of the number, can " climb the steep where that proud temple shines afar :" and by intimating a charge of meanness of spirit against those, who have no generous ardour to distinguish themselves from the crowd, by Jeeds calculated and designed to pitch them aloft in gazing admiration. If sometimes the ungracious recol- lection strikes them, and seems likely to strike their readers, that this admiration is provokingly capricious and perverse, since men have gained it without rightful claims, and lost it without demerit, and since all kinds of fools have offered the incense to all kinds of villains, they escape from the disgust and from the benefit of this recollection by saying, that it is honourable fame that noble spirits seek ; for they despise the ignoraut TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 323 multitude, and seek applause ty none but worthy actions, and from none but worthy judges. Almost every one of these writers will sometimes, perhaps, advert to the approbation of the Supreme Being, as what wise and good men will value most ; but such an occasional acknowledgment feebly counteracts the effect of many glowing sentiments and descriptions of a contrary tendency. If this be a correct animad- version on our popular fine writers, there can be no question whether they be likely to animate their readers with Christian motives of action. I vrill remark only on one particular more, namely, the culpable license, careless, if not sometimes malig- nant, taken by the lighter order of these writers, and by some even of the graver, in their manner of ridi- culing the cant and extravagance by which hypocrisy, fanaticism, or the peculiarities of a sect or a period, may have disgraced or falsified Christian doctrines. Sometimes, indeed, they have selected and burlesqued modes of expression which were not cant, and which ignorance and impiety alone would have dared to ridi- cule. And often, in exposing to contempt the follies of notion or language or manners, by which a Christian of good taste deplores that the profession of the gospel should ever have been deformed, they take not the smallest care to preserve a clear separation between vhat taste and sense have a right to explode, and what piety bids to reverence. By this criminal carelessness, (to give it no stronger denomination,) they have fixed repulsive and irreverent associations on the evangelical truth itself, for which many persons, when afterwards they have yielded their faith and affection to that truth, have had cause to wish that certain volumes had goi.e into the fire, instead of coining into their hands. Many if 2 34- ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE others, who have not thus become its converts, retain the bad impression unabated, and cherish the disgust. Gay writers ought to know that this is dangerous ground. I am sorry that this extended censure on works of genius and taste could not be prosecuted with a more marked application, and with more discriminative re- ferences than the continual repetition of the expressions, " elegant literature," and " these writers." It might be a service of some value to the evangelical cause, if a work were written containing a faithful estimate, indi- vidually, of the most popular writers of the last century and a half, in respect to the important subject of these comments ; with formal citations from some of their works, and a candid statement of the general tendency of others. In an essay like this it is impossible to make an enumeration of names, or pass a judgment, except in a very cursory manner, on any particular author. Even the several classes of authors, which I mentioned some time back, as coming under the accu- sation, shall detain you but a short time. The Moral Philosophers for -the most part seem anxious to avoid every thing that might render them liable to be mistaken for Christian Divines. They regard their department as a science complete in itself; and they investigate the foundation of morality, define its laws, and affix its sanctions, in a manner generally so much apart from Christianity, that the reader would almost conclude that religion to be another science complete in itself.* An entire separation, it is true, When it happens sometimes, that a moral topic hardly can be dis- posed of without some recognition of its involving, or being intimately connected with, a theological doctrine, it is curious to notice, with what an air of indifference, somewhat partaking of contempt, one of thest writers will observe, that that view of the matter is the business of the Jivines, with whose department he does not r *etend to interfere. TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 325 cannot well be preserved ; since Christianity has decided some moral questions on which reason was dubious or silent ; and since that final retribution, which the New Testament has so luminously foreshown, brings evi- dently the greatest of sanctions. To make no reference in the course of inculcating moral principles, to a judgment to come, if there be an understood admission that it is actually revealed, would look like systematic irreligion. But still it is striking to observe how small a portion of the ideas, (relative to this and other points of the greatest moral interest,) which distinguish the New Testament from other books, many moral philo- sophers have thought indispensable to a theory in which they professed to include the sum of the duty and interests of man. A serious reader is constrained to feel that either there is too much in that book, or too little in theirs. He will perceive that, in the inspired book, the moral principles are intimately interwoven with all those doctrines which could not have been known but through revelation. He will find also in this superior book, a vast number of ideas avowedly designed to interest the affections in favour of all moral principles and virtues. The " quickening spirit," thus breathed among what might else be dry and lifeless, is drawn from considerations of the divine mercy, the compassion of the Redeemer, the assurance of aid from heaven in the difficult strife to be what the best prin- ciples prescribe, the relationship subsisting between good men on earth and those who are departed ; and other kindred topics, quite out of the range to which the mere moral preceptors appear to hold themselves limited. The system of morals, as placed in the tem- perature of such considerations, has the character and effect of a different zone. Thus, while any given virtue, equally prescribed in the treatise of the moral philo- 326 ON THE AVE11SION OP MEN OF TASTE sopher and the Christian code, would in mere definition be the same in both, the manner in which it bears on the heart and conscience must be greatly different. It is another difference also of momentous conse- quence, if it be found that the Christian doctrine declares the virtues of a good man not to be the cause of his acceptance with God, and that the philosophic moralists disclaim any other On the whole it must be concluded, that there cannot but be something very defective in that theory of morality which makes so slight an ac- knowledgment of the religion of Christ, and takes so little of its peculiar character. The philosophers place the religion in the relation of a diminutive satellite to the sphere of moral interests ; useful as throwing a few rays on that side of it on which the solar light of human wisdom could not directly shine ; but that it can impart a vital warmth, or claims to be acknowledged paramount in dignity and influence, some of them seem not to have a suspicion. No doubt, innumerable reasonings and conclusions may be advanced on moral subjects which shall be true on a foundation of their own, equally in the presence of the evangelical system and in its absence. Inde- pendently of that system, it were easy to illustrate the utility of virtue, the dignity which it confers on a rational being, its accordance to the "reason and fitness of things," its conformity and analogy to much of what may be discerned in the order of the universe. It would also have been easy to pass from virtue in the abstract, into an illustration and enforcement of the several distinct virtues, as arranged in a practical system. And if it should be asked, Why may not some writers employ their speculations on those parts and views of moral truth which are thus independent of the gospel, leaving it to other men to christianize the whole TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. S27 by the addition of the evangelical relations, motives, and conditions ? I readily answer, that this may some- times very properly be done. An author may render good service by demonstrating, for instance, the utility of virtue in general, or of any particular virtue, as shown in its effect on the prosperity of states, of smaller communities, and of individuals ; in its conduciveness to health, mental tranquillity, social confidence, and the like. In doing this, he would expressly take a marked ground, and aim at a specific object. He would not (or should not) let it be imagined for a moment that such particular views embrace all that is of essential interest in the reasons and relations of moral rectitude. It would be plainly understood that other conside- rations, of the highest importance, recognising, in all our obligations to virtue, our relations with God, with a spiritual economy, with a future life, are indispensable to a complete moral theory. But the charge against the moral philosophers is meant to be applied to those who, not professing to have any such specific and limited scope, but assuming the office of moralist in its most comprehensive character, and making themselves responsible as teachers of virtue in its whole extent, have yet quite forgotten the vital implication of ethical with evangelical truth. When I mention our Historians, it will instantly occur to you, that the very foremost names in this department import every thing that is deadly to the Christian religion itself, as a divine communication, and therefore lie under a condemnation of a different kind. But may not many others, who would have repelled the imputation of being enemies to the Christian cause, be arraigned of having forgotten what was due from its friends ? The historian intends his work to have the 328 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE effect of a series of moral estimates of the persons whose actions he records ; now, if he believes that a Judge if the world will come at length, and pronounce on the tery characters that his work adjudges, it is one of the plainest dictates of good sense, that all the awards of the historian should be faithfully coincident with the judg- ments which may be expected ultimately from that supreme authority. Those distinctions of character which tho historian applauds as virtues, or censures as vices, should be exactly the same qualities, which the language already heard from that Judge certifies us that he will approve or condemn. It is worse than foolish to erect a literary court of morals and human character, of which the maxims, the language, the decisions, and the judges, will be equally the objects of contempt before Him, whose intelligence will in- stantly distinguish and place in light the right and the wrong of all time. What a wretched abasement will overwhelm on that day some of the pompous historians, who were called by others, and accounted by themselves, the high authoritative censors of an age, and whose verdict was to fix on each name perpetual honour or infamy, if they shall find many of the questions and the decisions of that tribunal proceed on principles which they would have been ashamed to apply, or never took the trouble to understand ! How will they be con- founded, if some of the men whom they had extolled, are consigned to ignominy, and some that they had despised, are applauded by the voice at which the world will tremble and be silent ! But such a sad humiliation may, I think, be apprehended for many of the historians, by every serious Christian reader who shall take the hint of this subject along with him through their works. He will not seldom feel that the writers seem uninformed, while they remark and decide on actions aurt characters TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 329 that a final Lawgiver has come from heaven, or that he will come, or on what account he will come, yet once more. Their very diction often abjures the plain Chris- tian denominations of good and evil ; nor do I need to recount the specious and fallacious terms which they have employed in their place. How then can a mind which learns to think in their manner, learn at the same time to think in his from whom it will, however, be found no light matter to have dissented, when his judg- ment shall be declared for the last time in this world ? The various interesting sets of short Essays, with the Spectator and Rambler at their head, must have had a very considerable influence, during a season at least, and not yet entirely extinct, on the moral taste of the public. Perhaps, however, it is too late in the day for any interest to be taken in religious animadversions which might with propriety have been ventured upon the Spectator, when it was the general and familiar favourite with the reading portion of the community.* A work of such wide compass, and avowedly assuming the office of guardian and teacher of all good principles, gave fair opportunities for a Christian writer to in- Within the thirty or forty years antecedent to the date of the present edition, and even within the shorter interval since the slight remarks in the text were written, there has been a surprising change in the tone of our literature, and in the public taste which it both consults and forms. The smooth elegance, the gentle graces, the amusing, easy, and not deep current of sentiment, of which Addison is our finest example, have come to be regarded as languid, and almost insipid ; and the passion is for force, energy, bold develope- ment of principles, and every kind of high stimulus. This has been the inevitable accompaniment of the prodigious commotion in the state of the world, the rousing of the general mind from its long lethargy, to an activity and an exertion of power which nothing can quell, which is destined to a continually augmenting operation till the condition of the world be changed. This new spirit of our lite- 330 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE troduce, excepting what is strictly termed science, a little of every subject affecting the condition and happiness of men. Why then was it fated that the stupendous circumstance of the redemption by the Messiah, of which the importance is commensurate with the whole interests of man, with the value of his immortal spirit, with the government of his Creator in this world, and with the happiness of eternity, should not a few times, in the long course and extensive moral jurisdiction of that work, be set forth in the most explicit, uncompromising, and solemn manner, in the full asnect and importance whic'h it bears in the chris- tian revelation, with the directness and emphasis of apostolic fidelity ? Why should not a few of the most pe- culiar of the doctrines, comprehended in the primary one of salvation by the Mediator, have been clothed with the fascinating elegance of Addison, from whose pen many persons would have received an occasional evan- gelical lesson with incomparably more candour than from any professed divine ? A pious and benevolent man, such as the avowed advocate of Christianity ought to be, should not have been contented that so many thou- sands of minds as his writings were adapted to instruct rature is a great advantage gained; but gained at a grievous cost: for we have in its train an immense quantity of affectation : all sorts and sizes of authors must be aiming at vigour, point, bold strokes, originality. The consequence is, an ample exhibition of contortion, tricks of surprise, paradox, headlong dash, factitious fulmination, and turgid inanity. In some of the grossest instances, this ape of mental force and freedom stares and swaggers, and spouts a half- drunken rant. One wonders to see how much even some of the ablest among the writers of the present times have gone into the bad fashion, have discarded the masculine simplicity so graceful to in- tellectual power, and spoiled compositions admirable for vigorous thinking by a continual affectation, which carries them along in a dashing capering sort of style, as if determined that the '' mnrrJ of intellect'' shall be a dance to a fiddle. TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 33) and to charm, should have been left, for any thing that he very unequivocally attempted to the contrary in his most popular works, to end a life which he had contributed to refine, acquainted but slightly with the grand security of happiness after death. Or if it could not be deemed his duty to introduce in a formal manner any of the most specifically evangelical subjects, it might at least have been expected, that some of the many serious essays scattered through the Spectator should have more of a Christian strain, more recognition of the great oracle, in the speculations concerning the Deity, and the gravest moral subjects. There might, without hazard of symbolizing with the dreaded fanaticism of the preceding age, have been more assimilation of what may be called, as it now stands, a literary fashion of religion, to the spirit of the New Testament. From him also," as a kind of dictator among the elegant writers of the age, it might have been expected that he would set himself, with the same decision and virtuous indignation which he made his Cato display against the betrayers of Roman liberty and laws, to denounce that ridicule which has wounded religion by a careless or by a crafty manner of holding up its abuses to scorn : but of this impropriety (to use an accommodating term,) the Spectator itself is not free from examples. Addison wrote a book expressly in defence of the religion of Christ ; but to be the dignified advocate of a cause, and to be its humble disciple, may be very different things. An advocate has a feeling of making himself important; he seems to confer something on the cause ; but as a disciple, he must surrender to feel littleness, humility, and submission. Self-importance might find more to gratify it in becoming the patron of a beggar, than the servant of a potentate. Addison was, moreover, very unfoitunate, for any thing like justice to 332 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE genuine Christianity, in the class of persons with whom he associated, and among whom he did not hold his pre-eminence by any such imperial tenure, as could make him careless of the policy of pleasing them by a general conformity of sentiment One can imagine with what a perfect storm of ridicule he would have been greeted, on entering one of his celebrated coffee-houses of wits on the day after he should have published in the Spec- tator a paper, for instance, on the necessity of being devoted to the service of Jesus Christ. The friendship of the world ought to be a " pearl of great price," for its cost is very serious. The powerful and lofty spirit of Johnson was far more capable of scorning the ridicule, and defying the opposition, of wits and worldlings. And yet his social life must have been greatly unfavourable to a deep and simple consideration of Christian truth, and the cul- tivation of Christian sentiment. Might not even his imposing and unchallenged ascendency itself betray him to admit, insensibly, an injurious influence on his mind ? He associated with men of whom many were very learned, some extremely able, but comparatively few made any decided profession of piety ; and perhaps a considerable number were such as would in other society have shown a strong propensity to irreligion. This however dared not to appear undisguisedly in Johnson's presence ; and it is impossible not to revere the strength and noble severity that made it so cautious. But this constrained abstinence from overt irreligion had the effect of preventing the repugnance of his ju'lg- ment and religious feelings to the frequent society of men from whom he would have recoiled, if the real temper of their minds, in regard to the most important subjects, had been unreservedly forced on his view. Decorum toward religion being preserved, he would TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 333 take no rigorously judicial account of the internal character of those who brought so finely into play his mental powers and resources, in conversations on lite- rature, moral philosophy, and general intelligence ; and who could enrich every matter of social argument by their learning, their genius, or their knowledge of mankind. But if, while every thing unequivocally hostile to Christianity was kept silent in his company, there was nevertheless a latent impiety in possession of the heart, it would inevitably, however unobviously, infuse something of its spirit into the communications of such men. And, through the complacency which he felt in the high intellectual intercourse, some in- fection of the noxious element would insinuate its way into his own ideas and feelings. For it is hardly possible for the strongest and most vigilant mind, under the genial influence of eloquence, fancy, novelty, and bright intelligence, interchanged in amicable collision, to avoid admitting some effluvia (if I may so express it) breathing from the most interior quality of such associates, and tending to produce an insensible assimi- lation ; especially if there should happen to be, in ad- dition, a conciliating exterior of accomplishment, grace, and liberal manners. Thus the very predominance by which Johnson could repress the direct irreligion of statesmen, scholars, wits, and accomplished men of the world, might, by retaining him their intimate or frequent associate, subject him to meet the influence of that irreligion acting in a manner too indirect and refined to excite either hostility or caution. But indeed if his caution was excited, there might still be a possibility of self-deception in the case. The great achievement and conscious merit of upholding, by his authority, a certain standard of good principles among such men, and compelling an acquiescence a. 534 ON T THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE least, wherever he was present, might tend to make himself feel satisfied with that order of sentiments, though materially lower than the standard which his conscientious judgment must have adopted, if he had formed it under the advantage of long and thoughtful retirement and exemption from the influence of such associates. It would be difficult for him to confess to himself that what was high enough for a repressive domination over impiety, might yet be below the level of true Christianity. It is hard for a man to suspect himself deficient in that very thing in which he not only excels other men, but mends them. Nothing can well be more unfortunate for Christian attainments, evew in point of right judgment, than to be habitually in society where a man will feel as if he held a saintly eminence of character in merely securing a decent neutrality, or a semblance of slight partial assent, in other words a forbearance of hostility, to that divine law of faith and morals, which is set up over that society and all mankind, as the grand distinguisher between those who are in light and those who are in darkness, those who are approved and those who are condemned ; and which has been sent on eartli with a demand, not of this worthless non-aggression, but of cordial entire addiction and devoted zeal. If there be any truth in the representations which make so large a part of this essay, Johnson's continual immersion in what is denominated polite literature, must have subjected him to the utmost action and pervasion of an influence of which the antichristian effect cannot be neutralized, without a more careful study than we have reason to believe he gave, or even had time to give, to the doctrine of religion as a distinct independent subject. It must however be admitted that this illustrious TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 355 author, who, though here mentioned only in the class of essayists, is to be ranked among the greatest moral philosophers, is less at variance with the essentials of the Christian economy, than the very great majority of either of these classes of authors. His speculations tend in a far less degree to beguile the approving and admiring reader into a spirit, which feels repelled in estrangement and disgust on turning to the instructions of Christ and his apostles ; and he has more explicit and solemn references to the grand purpose of human life, to a future judgment, and to eternity, than almost any other of our elegant moralists has had the piety or the courage to make. There is so much that most powerfully coincides and cooperates with Christian truth, that the disciple of Christianity the more regrets to meet occasionally a sentiment, respecting, perhaps, the rule to judge by in the review of life, the con- solations in death, the effect of repentance, or the terms of acceptance with God, which he cannot reconcile with the evangelical theory, nor with those principles of Christian faith in which Johnson avowed his belief. In such a writer he cannot but deem si'ch deviations a matter of grave culpability. Omission is his other fault. Though he did introduce in his serious speculations more distinct allusions to religious ideas, than most other moralists, yet he did not introduce them so often as may be claimed from a writer who frequently carries seriousness to the utmost pitch of solemnity. There scarcely ever was an author, not formally theological, in whose works a large pro- portion of explicit Christian sentiment was more re- quisite for a consistent entireness of character, than in the moral writings of Johnson. No writer ever more completely exposed and blasted the folly and vanity of the greatest number of human pursuits. The visage 33t) ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE of Medusa could not have darted a more fatal glance against the tribe of gay tritters, the competitors of ambition, the proud exhibitors in the parade of wealth, the rhapsodists on the sufficiency of what they call phi- losophy for happiness, the grave consumers of life in useless speculations, and every other order of " walkers in a vain show." His judicial sentence is directed, as with a keen and mephitic blast, on almost all the most favourite pursuits of mankind. But it was so much the more peculiarly his duty to insist, with fulness and emphasis, on that one model of character, that one grand employment of life, which is enjoined by heaven, and will stand the test of that unshrinking severity of judgment, which should be exercised by every one who looks forward to the test which he is finally to abide. No author has more impressively displayed the misery of human life ; he laid himself under so much the stronger obligation to unfold most explicitly the only effectual consolations, the true scheme of felicity as far as it is attainable on earth, and that delightful prospect of a better region, which has so often inspired exultation in the most melancholy situations. No writer has more expressively illustrated the rapidity of time, and the shortness of life ; he ought so much the more fully to have dwelt on the views of that great futurity at which his readers are admonished by the illustration that they will speedily arrive. No writer can make more poignant reflections on the pains of guilt ; was it not indispen- sable that he should oftener have directed the mind suffering this bitterest kind of distress to that great sacrifice once offered for sin ? No writer represents with more striking, mortifying, humiliating truth the failure of human resolutions, and the feebleness of human efforts, in the contest with corrupt propensity, evil habit, and adapted temptation ; why did not this TO EVANGELICAL RELiGIOtf. 33 melancholy observation a*id experience prompt a very frequent recollection, and emphatical expression of the importance of that assistance from on high, without which the divine word has so often repeated the warning that our labours will fail ? In extending the censure to the Poets, it is gratifying to meet an exception in the most elevated of all their tribe. Milton's consecrated genius might harmoniously have mingled with the angels that announced the Messiah to be come, or that, on the spot and at the moment of his departure, predicted his coming again ; might have shamed to silence the muses of paganism ; or softened the pains of a Christian martyr. Part of the poetical works of Young, those of Watts, and of Cowper, have placed them among the permanent bene- factors of mankind ; as owing to them there is a popular poetry in the true spirit of Christianity ; a poetry which has imparted, and is destined to impart, the best sentiments to innumerable minds. Works of great poetical genius u*at should be thus faithful to true religion, might be regarded as trees by the side of that " river of the water of life," having in their fruit ana. foliage a virtue to contribute to " the healing of the nations." But on the supposition that there were a man sufficiently discerning, impartial, and indefatigable for a research throughout the general body of our poetical literature, it would be curious to see what kiud of religious system, and what account of the state of man, as viewed under moral estimate, and in relation to the future destiny, would be afforded by a digested assemblage of all the most marked sentiments, supplied by the vast majority of the poets, for such a scheme of moral and religious doctrine. But if it would bfl exceedingly amusing to observe the process aiid the z 838 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE fantastic result, it would in the next place be very ui to consider, that these fallacies have been insinuated by the charms of poetry into countless thousands of minds, with a beguilement that has, first, diverted them from a serious attention to the gospel, then confirmed them Jn a habitual dislike of it, and finally operated to betray some of them to the doom which, beyond the grave, awaits the neglect or rejection of the religion of Christ. You have probably seen Pope cited as a Christian poet, by some pious authors, whose anxiety to impress reluctant genius into an appearance of favouring Chris- tianity, has credulously seized on any occasional verse, which seemed an echo of the sacred doctrines. No reader can exceed me in admiring the discriminative thought, the shrewd moral observation, the finished and felicitous execution, and the galaxy of poetical beauties, which combine to give a peculiar lustre to the writings of Pope. But I cannot refuse to perceive, that almost every allusion in his lighter works to the names, the facts, and the topics, that specially belong to the religion of Christ, is in a style and spirit of profane banter ; and that, in most of his graver ones, where he meant to be dignified, he took the utmost care to divest his thoughts of all the mean vulgarity of Christian associations. " Off, ye profane I " might seem to have been his signal to all evangelical ideas, when he began his Essay on Man ; and they were obedient, and fled ; for if you detach the detail and illustrations, so as to lay bare the outline and general principles of the work, it will stand confest an elaborate attempt to redeem the whole theory of the condition and interests of man, both in life and death, from all the explanations imposed on it by an unphilosophical revelation from heaven. And in the happy riddance of this despised though celestial light, it exhibits a sort TO EVANGELICAL RZLIGIOW. 339 of moon-light vision, of thin impalpable abstraction, at which a speculatist may gaze, with a dubious wonder whether they be realities or phantoms ; but which a practical man will in vain try to seize and turn to account ; and which an evangelical man will disdain to accept in exchange for those forms of truth which his religion brings to him as real living friends, instructors, and consolers ; which present themselves to him, at his return from a profitless adventure in that shadowy dreary region, with an effect like that of meeting the countenances of his affectionate domestic associates, on his awaking from the fantastic succession of vain efforts and perplexities, among strange objects, incidents, and people, in a bewildering dream. But what defe- rence to Christianity was to be expected, when such a man as Bolingbroke was the genius whose imparted splendour was to illuminate, and the demigod* whose approbation was to crown, the labours which, accord- ing to the wish and presentiment of the poet, were to conjoin these two venerable names in endless fame ? I it be said for some parts of these dim speculations, that though Christianity comes forward as the practical dispensation of truth, yet there must be, in remote abstraction behind, some grand, ultimate, elementary truths, which this dispensation does not recognise, but even intercepts from our view by a system of less re- fined elements, in which doctrines of a more contracted, palpable, and popular form, of comparatively local purport and relation, are imposed in substitution for the higher and more general and abstracted truths I answer, And what did the poet, or " the master of the poet and the song," know about those truths, and how did they come by their information. * He is so named somewhere in Pope's Works. 340 ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTE. A serious observer must acknowledge with regiet, tht.t such a class of productions as novels, in which fo ly has tried to please in a greater number of shapes that the poet enumerates in the Paradise of Fools, is capable of producing a very considerable effect on the moral taste of the community. A large proportion of them however are j robably of too slight and \nsipid a consistence to have any more specific counteraction to Christian principles than that of mere folly in general ; excepting indeed that the most flimsy of them will occa- sionally contribute their mite of mischief, by alluding to a Christian profession, in a manner that identifies it with the cant by which hypocrites have aped it, or the extravagance with which fanatics have inflated or dis- torted it. But a great and direct force of counterf.cting influence is emitted from those, which eloquently display characters of eminent vigour and virtue, when it is a virtue having no basis in religion ; a factitious thing resulting from the mixture of dignified pride with generous feeling ; or constituted of those philosophical principles which are too often accompanied, in these works, by an avowed or strongly intimated contempt of the interference of any religion, especially the Chris- tian. If the case is mended in some of these productions into which an awkward religion has found its way, it is rather because the characters excite less interest of any kind, than because any which they do excite is favour- able to religion. No reader is likely to be impressed with the dignity of being a Christian by seeing, in one of these works, an attempt to combine that character with the fine gentleman, by means of a most ludicrous apparatus of amusements and sacraments, churches and theatres, morning-prayers and evening-balls. Nor will it perhaps be of any great service to the Christian cause, that some others of them profess to exemplify TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 341 aud defend, against the cavils and scorn of infidels, a religion of which it does not appear that the writers would have discovered the merits, had it not been established by law. One may doubt whether any one will be more than amused by the venerable priest, who is introduced probably among libertine lords and giddy girls, to maintain the sanctity of terms, and attempt the illustration of doctrines, which these well-meaning writers do not perceive thai the worthy gentleman's college, diocesan, and library, have but very imperfectly enabled him to understand. If the reader even wished to be more than amused, it is easy to imagine how much he would be likely to be instructed and affected, by such an illustration or defence of the Christian religion, as the writer of a fashionable novel would deem a graceful or admissible expedient for filling up his plot. One cannot close such a review of our fine writers without melancholy reflections. That cause which will raise all its zealous friends to a sublime eminence on the last and most solemn day the world has to behold, and will make them great for ever, presented its claims full in sight of each of these authors in his time. The very lowest of those claims could not be less than a conscientious solicitude to beware of every thing that could in any point injure the sacred cause. This claim has been slighted by so many as have lent attraction to an order of moral sentiments greatly discordant with its principles. And so many are gone into eternity under the charge of having employed their genius, as the magicians their enchantments against Moses, to counteract the Saviour of the world. Under what restrictions, then, ought the study of polite literature to be conducted ? I cannot but have foreseen that this question must return at the end of these observations ; and I am sorry to have no better I ON THE AVERSION OF MEN OF TASTJ?, &C. answer to give than before, when the question came in the way, inconveniently enough, to perplex the con elusion to be drawn from the considerations on the tendency of the classical literature. Polite literature will necessarily continue to be a large department of the grand school of intellectual and moral cultivation. The evils therefore which it may contain, will as cer- tainly affect in some degree the minds of the successive pupils, and teachers also, as the hurtful influence of the climate, or of the seasons, will affect their bodies. To be thus affected, is a part of the destiny under which they are born, in a civilized country. It is indispensable to acquire the advantage ; it is inevitable to incur the evil. The means of counteraction will amount, it is to be feared, to no more than palliatives. Nor can these be proposed in any specific method. All that I can do, is, to urge on the reader of taste the very serious duij of continually recalling to his mind, and if he be a parent or preceptor, of cogently representing to those he instructs, the real character of religion as exhibited in the Christian revelation, and the reasons which command on inviolable adherence to it. LOWDOH : PRINTKD DT WILLIAM CLOWCS iNI> SONS, L1MI7KD, DUIK STREET. ST.IXFOKD STBKKT. S^., ARD QKEAT W1XUUIIJ, STItKET, W. AN ALPHABETICAL LIST OF BOOKS CONTAINED IN BOHN'S LIBRARIES. Detailed Catalogue, arranged according to the various Libraries, will be sent on application. ADDISON'S Works. With the Notes of Bishop Hurd, Portrait, and 8 Plates of Medals and Coins. Edited by H. G. Bohn. 6 vols. 3;. 6d. each. AESCHYLUS, The Dramas of. Translated into English Verse by Anna Swanwick. 4th Edition, revised. 5.1. The Tragedies of Newly translated from a revised text by Walter Ileadlam, Litt.D., and C. E. S. 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