TABLE TALK (continued 3)

August 20. 1830.

FRENCH REVOLUTION, 1830.—CAPTAIN R. AND THE AMERICANS.

The French must have greatly improved under the influence of a free and regular government (for such it, in general, has been since the restoration), to have conducted themselves with so much moderation in success as they seem to have done, and to be disposed to do.

* * * * *

I must say I cannot see much in Captain B. Hall's account of the Americans, but weaknesses—some of which make me like the Yankees all the better. How much more amiable is the American fidgettiness and anxiety about the opinion of other nations, and especially of the English, than the sentiments of the rest of the world.[1]

As to what Captain Hall says about the English loyalty to the person of the King—I can only say, I feel none of it. I respect the man while, and only while, the king is translucent through him: I reverence the glass case for the Saint's sake within; except for that it is to me mere glazier's work,— putty, and glass, and wood.

[Footnote 1: "There exists in England a gentlemanly character, a gentlemanly feeling, very different even from that which is most like it,—the character of a well-born Spaniard, and unexampled in the rest of Europe. This feeling originated in the fortunate circumstance, that the titles of our English nobility follow the law of their property, and are inherited by the eldest sons only. From this source, under the influences of our constitution and of our astonishing trade, it has diffused itself in different modifications through the whole country. The uniformity of our dress among all classes above that of the day labourer, while it has authorized all ranks to assume the appearance of gentlemen, has at the same time inspired the wish to conform their manners, and still more their ordinary actions in social intercourse, to their notions of the gentlemanly the most commonly received attribute of which character is a certain generosity in trifles. On the other hand, the encroachments of the lower classes on the higher, occasioned and favoured by this resemblance in exteriors, by this absence of any cognizable marks of distinction, have rendered each class more reserved and jealous in their general communion; and, far more than our climate or natural temper, have caused that haughtiness and reserve in our outward demeanour, which is so generally complained of among foreigners. Far be it from me to depreciate the value of this gentlemanly feeling: I respect it under all its forms and varieties, from the House of Commons * to the gentleman in the one-shilling gallery. It is always the ornament of virtue, and oftentimes a support; but it is a wretched substitute for it. Its worth, as a moral good, is by no means in proportion to its value as a social advantage. These observations are not irrelevant: for to the want of reflection that this diffusion of gentlemanly feeling among us is not the growth of our moral excellence, but the effect of various accidental advantages peculiar to England; to our not considering that it is unreasonable and uncharitable to expect the same consequences, where the same causes have not existed to produce them; and lastly, to our prorieness to regard the absence of this character (which, as I have before said, does, for the greater part, and in the common apprehension, consist in a certain frankness and generosity in the detail of action) as decisive against the sum total of personal or national worth; we must, I am convinced, attribute a large portion of that conduct, which in many instances has left the inhabitants of countries conquered or appropriated by Great Britain doubtful whether the various solid advantages which they have derived from our protection and just government were not bought dearly by the wounds inflicted on their feelings and prejudices, by the contemptuous and insolent demeanour of the English, as individuals."—Friend, vol. iii. p, 322.

This was written long before the Reform Act.—ED.]

September 8. 1830.

ENGLISH REFORMATION.

The fatal error into which the peculiar character of the English Reformation threw our Church, has borne bitter fruit ever since,—I mean that of its clinging to court and state, instead of cultivating the people. The church ought to be a mediator between the people and the government, between the poor and the rich. As it is, I fear the Church has let the hearts of the common people be stolen from it. See how differently the Church of Rome—wiser in its generation—has always acted in this particular. For a long time past the Church of England seems to me to have been blighted with prudence, as it is called. I wish with all my heart we had a little zealous imprudence.

September 19. 1830.

DEMOCRACY.——IDEA OF A STATE.——CHURCH.

It has never yet been seen, or clearly announced, that democracy, as such, is no proper element in the constitution of a state. The idea of a state is undoubtedly a government [Greek: ek ton aristou]—an aristocracy. Democracy is the healthful life-blood which circulates through the veins and arteries, which supports the system, but which ought never to appear externally, and as the mere blood itself.

A state, in idea, is the opposite of a church. A state regards classes, and not individuals; and it estimates classes, not by internal merit, but external accidents, as property, birth, &c. But a church does the reverse of this, and disregards all external accidents, and looks at men as individual persons, allowing no gradation of ranks, but such as greater or less wisdom, learning, and holiness ought to confer. A church is, therefore, in idea, the only pure democracy. The church, so considered, and the state, exclusively of the church, constitute together the idea of a state in its largest sense.

September 20. 1830.

GOVERNMENT.——FRENCH GEND'ARMERIE.

All temporal government must rest on a compromise of interests and abstract rights. Who would listen to the county of Bedford, if it were to declare itself disannexed from the British empire, and to set up for itself?

* * * * *

The most desirable thing that can happen to France, with her immense army of gensd'armes, is, that the service may at first become very irksome to the men themselves, and ultimately, by not being called into real service, fall into general ridicule, like our trained bands. The evil in France, and throughout Europe, seems now especially to be, the subordination of the legislative power to the direct physical force of the people. The French legislature was weak enough before the late revolution; now it is absolutely powerless, and manifestly depends even for its existence on the will of a popular commander of an irresistible army. There is now in France a daily tendency to reduce the legislative body to a mere deputation from the provinces and towns.

September 21. 1830.

PHILOSOPHY OF YOUNG MEN AT THE PRESENT DAY.

I do not know whether I deceive myself, but it seems to me that the young men, who were my contemporaries, fixed certain principles in their minds, and followed them out to their legitimate consequences, in a way which I rarely witness now. No one seems to have any distinct convictions, right or wrong; the mind is completely at sea, rolling and pitching on the waves of facts and personal experiences. Mr. —— is, I suppose, one of the rising young men of the day; yet he went on talking, the other evening, and making remarks with great earnestness, some of which were palpably irreconcilable with each other. He told me that facts gave birth to, and were the absolute ground of, principles; to which I said, that unless he had a principle of selection, he would not have taken notice of those facts upon which he grounded his principle. You must have a lantern in your hand to give light, otherwise all the materials in the world are useless, for you cannot find them; and if you could, you could not arrange them. "But then," said Mr. ——, "that principle of selection came from facts!"—"To be sure!" I replied; "but there must have been again an antecedent light to see those antecedent facts. The relapse may be carried in imagination backwards for ever,—but go back as you may, you cannot come to a man without a previous aim or principle." He then asked me what I had to say to Bacon's induction: I told him I had a good deal to say, if need were; but that it was perhaps enough for the occasion to remark, that what he was evidently taking for the Baconian _in_duction was mere _de_duction—a very different thing.[1]

[Footnote 1: As far as I can judge, the most complete and masterly thing ever done by Mr. Coleridge in prose, is the analysis and reconcilement of the Platonic and Baconian methods of philosophy, contained in the third volume of the Friend, from p. 176 to 216. No edition of the Novum Organum should ever be published without a transcript of it.—ED.]

September 22. 1830.

THUCYDIDES AND TACITUS.——POETRY.——MODERN METRE.

The object of Thucydides was to show the ills resulting to Greece from the separation and conflict of the spirits or elements of democracy and oligarchy. The object of Tacitus was to demonstrate the desperate consequences of the loss of liberty on the minds and hearts of men.

* * * * *

A poet ought not to pick nature's pocket: let him borrow, and so borrow as to repay by the very act of borrowing. Examine nature accurately, but write from recollection; and trust more to your imagination than to your memory.

* * * * *

Really the metre of some of the modern poems I have read, bears about the same relation to metre properly understood, that dumb bells do to music; both are for exercise, and pretty severe too, I think.

* * * * *

Nothing ever left a stain on that gentle creature's mind, which looked upon the degraded men and things around him like moonshine on a dunghill, which shines and takes no pollution. All things are shadows to him, except those which move his affections.

September 23. 1830.

LOGIC.

There are two kinds of logic: 1. Syllogistic. 2. Criterional. How any one can by any spinning make out more than ten or a dozen pages about the first, is inconceivable to me; all those absurd forms of syllogisms are one half pure sophisms, and the other half mere forms of rhetoric.

All syllogistic logic is—1. _Se_clusion; 2. _In_clusion; 3. _Con_clusion; which answer to the understanding, the experience, and the reason. The first says, this ought to be; the second adds, this is; and the last pronounces, this must be so. The criterional logic, or logic of premisses, is, of course, much the most important; and it has never yet been treated.

* * * * *

The object of rhetoric is persuasion,—of logic, conviction,—of grammar, significancy. A fourth term is wanting, the rhematic, or logic of sentences.

September 24. 1830.

VARRO.—SOCRATES.—GREEK PHILOSOPHY.—PLOTINUS.—TERTULLIAN.

What a loss we have had in Varro's mythological and critical works! It is said that the works of Epicurus are probably amongst the Herculanean manuscripts. I do not feel much interest about them, because, by the consent of all antiquity, Lucretius has preserved a complete view of his system. But I regret the loss of the works of the old Stoics, Zeno and others, exceedingly.

* * * * *

Socrates, as such, was only a poetical character to Plato, who worked upon his own ground. The several disciples of Socrates caught some particular points from him, and made systems of philosophy upon them according to their own views. Socrates himself had no system.

* * * * *

I hold all claims set up for Egypt having given birth to the Greek philosophy, to be groundless. It sprang up in Greece itself, and began with physics only.

Then it took in the idea of a living cause, and made pantheism out of the two. Socrates introduced ethics, and taught duties; and then, finally, Plato asserted or re-asserted the idea of a God the maker of the world. The measure of human philosophy was thus full, when Christianity came to add what before was wanting—assurance. After this again, the Neo-Platonists joined theurgy with philosophy, which ultimately degenerated into magic and mere mysticism.

Plotinus was a man of wonderful ability, and some of the sublimest passages I ever read are in his works.

I was amused the other day with reading in Tertullian, that spirits or demons dilate and contract themselves, and wriggle about like worms— lumbricix similes.

September 26. 1830.

SCOTCH AND ENGLISH LAKES.

The five finest things in Scotland are—1. Edinburgh; 2. The antechamber of the Fall of Foyers; 3. The view of Loch Lomond from Inch Tavannach, the highest of the islands; 4. The Trosachs; 5. The view of the Hebrides from a point, the name of which I forget. But the intervals between the fine things in Scotland are very dreary;—whereas in Cumberland and Westmoreland there is a cabinet of beauties,—each thing being beautiful in itself, and the very passage from one lake, mountain, or valley, to another, is itself a beautiful thing again. The Scotch lakes are so like one another, from their great size, that in a picture you are obliged to read their names; but the English lakes, especially Derwent Water, or rather the whole vale of Keswick, is so rememberable, that, after having been once seen, no one ever requires to be told what it is when drawn. This vale is about as large a basin as Loch Lomond; the latter is covered with water; but in the former instance, we have two lakes with a charming river to connect them, and lovely villages at the foot of the mountain, and other habitations, which give an air of life and cheerfulness to the whole place.

* * * * *

The land imagery of the north of Devon is most delightful.

September 27. 1830.

LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP OPPOSED.—MARRIAGE.—CHARACTERLESSNESS OF WOMEN.

A person once said to me, that he could make nothing of love, except that it was friendship accidentally combined with desire. Whence I concluded that he had never been in love. For what shall we say of the feeling which a man of sensibility has towards his wife with her baby at her breast! How pure from sensual desire! yet how different from friendship!

Sympathy constitutes friendship; but in love there is a sort of antipathy, or opposing passion. Each strives to be the other, and both together make up one whole.

Luther has sketched the most beautiful picture of the nature, and ends, and duties of the wedded life I ever read. St. Paul says it is a great symbol, not mystery, as we translate it.[1]

[Footnote 1: Greek: —— ]

* * * * *

"Most women have no character at all," said Pope[1] and meant it for satire. Shakspeare, who knew man and woman much better, saw that it, in fact, was the perfection of woman to be characterless.

Every one wishes a Desdemona or Ophelia for a wife,—creatures who, though they may not always understand you, do always feel you, and feel with you.

[Footnote 1: "Nothing so true as what you once let fall— 'Most women have no character at all,'— Matter too soft a lasting mark to bear, And best distinguish'd by black, brown, and fair." Epist. to a Lady, v. I.],

September 28. 1830.

MENTAL ANARCHY.

Why need we talk of a fiery hell? If the will, which is the law of our nature, were withdrawn from our memory, fancy, understanding, and reason, no other hell could equal, for a spiritual being, what we should then feel, from the anarchy of our powers. It would be conscious madness—a horrid thought!

October 5. 1830.

EAR AND TASTE FOR MUSIC DIFFERENT.——ENGLISH LITURGY.——BELGIAN REVOLUTION.

In politics, what begins in fear usually ends in folly.

* * * * *

An ear for music is a very different thing from a taste for music. I have no ear whatever; I could not sing an air to save my life; but I have the intensest delight in music, and can detect good from bad. Naldi, a good fellow, remarked to me once at a concert, that I did not seem much interested with a piece of Rossini's which had just been performed. I said, it sounded to me like nonsense verses. But I could scarcely contain myself when a thing of Beethoven's followed.

* * * * *

I never distinctly felt the heavenly superiority of the prayers in the English liturgy, till I had attended some kirks in the country parts of Scotland, I call these strings of school boys or girls which we meet near London—walking advertisements.

* * * * *

The Brussels riot—I cannot bring myself to dignify it with a higher name —is a wretched parody on the last French revolution. Were I King William, I would banish the Belgians, as Coriolanus banishes the Romans in Shakspeare.[1]

It is a wicked rebellion without one just cause.

[Footnote 1: "You common cry of curs! whose breath I hate As reek o' the rotten fens, whose loves I prize As the dead carcasses of unburied men That do corrupt my air, I banish you; And here remain with your uncertainty!" Act iii. sc. 3.]

October 8. 1830.

GALILEO, NEWTON, KEPLER, BACON.

Galileo was a great genius, and so was Newton; but it would take two or three Galileos and Newtons to make one Kepler.[1] It is in the order of Providence, that the inventive, generative, constitutive mind—the Kepler— should come first; and then that the patient and collective mind—the Newton—should follow, and elaborate the pregnant queries and illumining guesses of the former. The laws of the planetary system are, in fact, due to Kepler. There is not a more glorious achievement of scientific genius upon record, than Kepler's guesses, prophecies, and ultimate apprehension of the law[2] of the mean distances of the planets as connected with the periods of their revolutions round the sun. Gravitation, too, he had fully conceived; but, because it seemed inconsistent with some received observations on light, he gave it up, in allegiance, as he says, to Nature. Yet the idea vexed and haunted his mind; "Vexat me et lacessit," are his words, I believe.

We praise Newton's clearness and steadiness. He was clear and steady, no doubt, whilst working out, by the help of an admirable geometry, the idea brought forth by another. Newton had his ether, and could not rest in—he could not conceive—the idea of a law. He thought it a physical thing after all. As for his chronology, I believe, those who are most competent to judge, rely on it less and less every day. His lucubrations on Daniel and the Revelations seem to me little less than mere raving.

[Footnote 1: Galileo Galilei was born at Pisa, on the 15th of February, 1564. John Kepler was born at Weil, in the duchy of Wirtemberg, on the 2lst of December, 1571.—ED.]

[Footnote 2: Namely, that the squares of their times vary as the cubes of their distances,—ED.]

* * * * *

Personal experiment is necessary, in order to correct our own observation of the experiments which Nature herself makes for us—I mean, the phenomena of the universe. But then observation is, in turn, wanted to direct and substantiate the course of experiment. Experiments alone cannot advance knowledge, without observation; they amuse for a time, and then pass off the scene and leave no trace behind them.

* * * * *

Bacon, when like himself—for no man was ever more inconsistent—says, "Prudens qiuestio—dimidium scientiæ est."

October 20. 1830.

THE REFORMATION.

At the Reformation, the first reformers were beset with an almost morbid anxiety not to be considered heretical in point of doctrine. They knew that the Romanists were on the watch to fasten the brand of heresy upon them whenever a fair pretext could be found; and I have no doubt it was the excess of this fear which at once led to the burning of Servetus, and also to the thanks offered by all the Protestant churches, to Calvin and the Church of Geneva, for burning him.

November 21. 1830.

HOUSE OF COMMONS.

—— never makes a figure in quietude. He astounds the vulgar with a certain enormity of exertion; he takes an acre of canvass, on which he scrawls every thing. He thinks aloud; every thing in his mind, good, bad, or indifferent, out it comes; he is like the Newgate gutter, flowing with garbage, dead dogs, and mud. He is preeminently a man of many thoughts, with no ideas: hence he is always so lengthy, because he must go through every thing to see any thing.

* * * * *

It is a melancholy thing to live when there is no vision in the land. Where are our statesmen to meet this emergency? I see no reformer who asks himself the question, What is it that I propose to myself to effect in the result?

Is the House of Commons to be re-constructed on the principle of a representation of interests, or of a delegation of men? If on the former, we may, perhaps, see our way; if on the latter, you can never, in reason, stop short of universal suffrage; and in that case, I am sure that women have as good a right to vote as men.[1]

[Footnote 1: In Mr. Coleridge's masterly analysis and confutation of the physiocratic system of the early French revolutionists, in the Friend, he has the following passage in the nature of a reductio ad absurdum. "Rousseau, indeed, asserts that there is an inalienable sovereignty inherent in every human being possessed of reason; and from this the framers of the Constitution of 1791 deduce, that the people itself is its own sole rightful legislator, and at most dare only recede so far from its right as to delegate to chosen deputies the power of representing and declaring the general will. But this is wholly without proof; for it has been already fully shown, that, according to the principle out of which this consequence is attempted to be drawn, it is not the actual man, but the abstract reason alone, that is the sovereign and rightful lawgiver. The confusion of two things so different is so gross an error, that the Constituent Assembly could scarce proceed a step in their declaration of rights, without some glaring inconsistency. Children are excluded from all political power; are they not human beings in whom the faculty of reason resides? Yes! but|in them the faculty is not yet adequately developed. But are not gross ignorance, inveterate superstition, and the habitual tyranny of passion and sensuality, equally preventives of the developement, equally impediments to the rightful exercise, of the reason, as childhood and early youth? Who would not rely on the judgment of a well-educated English lad, bred in a virtuous and enlightened family, in preference to that of a brutal Russian, who believes that he can scourge his wooden idol into good humour, or attributes to himself the merit of perpetual prayer, when he has fastened the petitions, which his priest has written for him, on the wings of a windmill? Again: women are likewise excluded; a full half, and that assuredly the most innocent, the most amiable half, of the whole human race is excluded, and this too by a Constitution which boasts to have no other foundations but those of universal reason! Is reason, then, an affair of sex? No! but women are commonly in a state of dependence, and are not likely to exercise their reason with freedom. Well! and does not this ground of exclusion apply with equal or greater force to the poor, to the infirm, to men in embarrassed circumstances, to all, in short, whose maintenance, be it scanty, or be it ample, depends on the will of others? How far are we to go? Where must we stop? What classes should we admit? Whom must we disfranchise? The objects concerning whom we are to determine these questions, are all human beings, and differenced from each other by degrees only, these degrees, too, oftentimes changing. Yet the principle on which the whole system rests, is that reason is not susceptible of degree. Nothing, therefore, which subsists wholly in degrees, the changes of which do not obey any necessary law, can be the object of pure science, or determinate by mere reason,"—Vol. i. p. 341, ED.]

March 20. 1831.

GOVERNMENT.—EARL GREY.

Government is not founded on property, taken merely as such, in the abstract; it is founded on unequal property; the inequality is an essential term in the position. The phrases—higher, middle, and lower classes, with reference to this point of representation—are delusive; no such divisions as classes actually exist in society. There is an indissoluble blending and interfusion of persons from top to bottom; and no man can trace a line of separation through them, except such a confessedly unmeaning and unjustifiable line of political empiricism as 10_l_. householders. I cannot discover a ray of principle in the government plan, —not a hint of the effect of the change upon the balance of the estates of the realm,—not a remark on the nature of the constitution of England, and the character of the property of so many millions of its inhabitants. Half the wealth of this country is purely artificial,—existing only in and on the credit given to it by the integrity and honesty of the nation. This property appears, in many instances, a heavy burthen to the numerical majority of the people, and they believe that it causes all their distress: and they are now to have the maintenance of this property committed to their good faith—the lamb to the wolves!

Necker, you remember, asked the people to come and help him against the aristocracy. The people came fast enough at his bidding; but, somehow or other, they would not go away again when they had done their work. I hope Lord Grey will not see himself or his friends in the woeful case of the conjuror, who, with infinite zeal and pains, called up the devils to do something for him. They came at the word, thronging about him, grinning, and howling, and dancing, and whisking their long tails in diabolic glee; but when they asked him what he wanted of them, the poor wretch, frightened out his of wits, could only stammer forth,—"I pray you, my friends, be gone down again!" At which the devils, with one voice, replied,—

"Yes! yes! we'll go down! we'll go down!— But we'll take you with us to swim or to drown!"[1]

[Footnote 1: Mr. Coleridge must have been thinking of that "very pithy and profitable" ballad by the Laureate, wherein is shown how a young man "would read unlawful books, and how he was punished:"—

"The young man, he began to read He knew not what, but he would proceed, When there was heard a sound at the door, Which as he read on grew more and more.

"And more and more the knocking grew, The young man knew not what to do: But trembling in fear he sat within, Till the door was broke, and the devil came in.

"'What would'st thou with me?' the wicked one cried; But not a word the young man replied; Every hair on his head was standing upright, And his limbs like a palsy shook with affright.

"'What would'st thou with me?' cried the author of ill; But the wretched young man was silent still," &c.

The catastrophe is very terrible, and the moral, though addressed by the poet to young men only, is quite as applicable to old men, as the times show.

"Henceforth let all young men take heed How in a conjuror's books they read!" Southey's Minor Poems, vol. iii. p. 92.—ED.]

* * * * *

June 25. 1831.

GOVERNMENT.—POPULAR REPRESENTATION.

The three great ends which a statesman ought to propose to himself in the government of a nation, are,—1. Security to possessors; 2. Facility to acquirers; and; 3. Hope to all.

* * * * *

A nation is the unity of a people. King and parliament are the unity made visible. The king and the peers are as integral portions of this manifested unity as the commons.[1]

In that imperfect state of society in which our system of representation began, the interests of the country were pretty exactly commensurate with its municipal divisions. The counties, the towns, and the seaports, accurately enough represented the only interests then existing; that is say,—the landed, the shop-keeping or manufacturing, and the mercantile. But for a century past, at least, this division has become notoriously imperfect, some of the most vital interests of the empire being now totally unconnected with any English localities. Yet now, when the evil and the want are known, we are to abandon the accommodations which the necessity of the case had worked out for itself, and begin again with a rigidly territorial plan of representation! The miserable tendency of all is to destroy our nationality, which consists, in a principal degree, in our representative government, and to convert it into a degrading delegation of the populace. There is no unity for a people but in a representation of national interests; a delegation from the passions or wishes of the individuals themselves is a rope of sand. Undoubtedly it is a great evil, that there should be such an evident discrepancy between the law and the practice of the constitution in the matter of the representation. Such a direct, yet clandestine, contravention of solemn resolutions and established laws is immoral, and greatly injurious to the cause of legal loyalty and general subordination in the minds of the people. But then a statesman should consider that these very contraventions of law in practice point out to him the places in the body politic which need a remodelling of the law. You acknowledge a certain necessity for indirect representation in the present day, and that such representation has been instinctively obtained by means contrary to law; why then do you not approximate the useless law to the useful practice, instead of abandoning both law and practice for a completely new system of your own?

[Footnote 1: Mr. Coleridge was very fond of quoting George Withers's fine lines:—

"Let not your king and parliament in one, Much less apart, mistake themselves for that Which is most worthy to be thought upon: Nor think they are, essentially, The STATE. Let them not fancy that th' authority And privileges upon them bestown, Conferr'd are to set up a majesty, A power, or a glory, of their own! But let them know, 't was for a deeper life, Which they but represent— That there's on earth a yet auguster thing, Veil'd though it be, than parliament and king!"—ED.]

* * * * *

The malignant duplicity and unprincipled tergiversations of the specific Whig newspapers are to me detestable. I prefer the open endeavours of those publications which seek to destroy the church, and introduce a republic in effect: there is a sort of honesty in that which I approve, though I would with joy lay down my life to save my country from the consummation which is so evidently desired by that section of the periodical press.

June 26. 1831.

NAPIER.—BUONAPARTE.—SOUTHEY.

I have been exceedingly impressed with the evil precedent of Colonel Napier's History of the Peninsular War. It is a specimen of the true French military school; not a thought for the justice of the war,—not a consideration of the damnable and damning iniquity of the French invasion. All is looked at as a mere game of exquisite skill, and the praise is regularly awarded to the most successful player. How perfectly ridiculous is the prostration of Napier's mind, apparently a powerful one, before the name of Buonaparte! I declare I know no book more likely to undermine the national sense of right and wrong in matters of foreign interference than this work of Napier's.

If A. has a hundred means of doing a certain thing, and B. has only one or two, is it very wonderful, or does it argue very transcendant superiority, if A. surpasses B.? Buonaparte was the child of circumstances, which he neither originated nor controlled. He had no chance of preserving his power but by continual warfare. No thought of a wise tranquillization of the shaken elements of France seems ever to have passed through his mind; and I believe that at no part of his reign could be have survived one year's continued peace. He never had but one obstacle to contend with—physical force; commonly the least difficult enemy a general, subject to courts- martial and courts of conscience, has to overcome.

* * * * *

Southey's History[1] is on the right side, and starts from the right point; but he is personally fond of the Spaniards, and in bringing forward their nationality in the prominent manner it deserves, he does not, in my judgment, state with sufficient clearness the truth, that the nationality of the Spaniards was not founded on any just ground of good government or wise laws, but was, in fact, very little more than a rooted antipathy to all strangers as such.

In this sense every thing is national in Spain. Even their so called Catholic religion is exclusively national in a genuine Spaniard's mind; he does not regard the religious professions of the Frenchman or Italian at all in the same light with his own.

[Footnote 1: Mr. Coleridge said that the conclusion of this great work was the finest specimen of historic eulogy he had ever read in English;—that it was more than a campaign to the duke's fame.—ED.]

July 7. 1831.

PATRONAGE OF THE FINE ARTS.—OLD WOMEN.

The darkest despotisms on the Continent have done more for the growth and elevation of the fine arts than the English government. A great musical composer in Germany and Italy is a great man in society, and a real dignity and rank are universally conceded to him. So it is with a sculptor, or painter, or architect. Without this sort of encouragement and patronage such arts as music and painting will never come into great eminence. In this country there is no general reverence for the fine arts; and the sordid spirit of a money-amassing philosophy would meet any proposition for the fostering of art, in a genial and extended sense, with the commercial maxim,—Laissez faire. Paganini, indeed, will make a fortune, because he can actually sell the tones of his fiddle at so much a scrape; but Mozart himself might have languished in a garret for any thing that would have been done for him here.

* * * * *

There are three classes into which all the women past seventy that ever I knew were to be divided:—1. That dear old soul; 2. That old woman; 3. That old witch.

July 24. 1831.

PICTURES.[1]

Observe the remarkable difference between Claude and Teniers in their power of painting vacant space. Claude makes his whole landscape a plenum: the air is quite as substantial as any other part of the scene. Hence there are no true distances, and every thing presses at once and equally upon the eye. There is something close and almost suffocating in the atmosphere of some of Claude's sunsets. Never did any one paint air, the thin air, the absolutely apparent vacancy between object and object, so admirably as Teniers. That picture of the Archers[2] exemplifies this excellence. See the distances between those ugly louts! how perfectly true to the fact!

But oh! what a wonderful picture is that Triumph of Silenus![3] It is the very revelry of hell. Every evil passion is there that could in any way be forced into juxtaposition with joyance. Mark the lust, and, hard by, the hate. Every part is pregnant with libidinous nature without one spark of the grace of Heaven. The animal is triumphing—not over, but—in the absence, in the non-existence, of the spiritual part of man. I could fancy that Rubens had seen in a vision—

All the souls that damned be Leap up at once in anarchy, Clap their hands, and dance for glee!

That landscape[4] on the other side is only less magnificent than dear Sir George Beaumont's, now in the National Gallery. It has the same charm. Rubens does not take for his subjects grand or novel conformations of objects; he has, you see, no precipices, no forests, no frowning castles,— nothing that a poet would take at all times, and a painter take in these times. No; he gets some little ponds, old tumble-down cottages, that ruinous château, two or three peasants, a hay-rick, and other such humble images, which looked at in and by themselves convey no pleasure and excite no surprise; but he—and he Peter Paul Rubens alone—handles these every- day ingredients of all common landscapes as they are handled in nature; he throws them into a vast and magnificent whole, consisting of heaven and earth and all things therein. He extracts the latent poetry out of these common objects,—that poetry and harmony which every man of genius perceives in the face of nature, and which many men of no genius are taught to perceive and feel after examining such a picture as this. In other landscape painters the scene is confined and as it were imprisoned;—in Rubens the landscape dies a natural death; it fades away into the apparent infinity of space.

So long as Rubens confines himself to space and outward figure—to the mere animal man with animal passions—he is, I may say, a god amongst painters. His satyrs, Silenuses, lions, tigers, and dogs, are almost godlike; but the moment he attempts any thing involving or presuming the spiritual, his gods and goddesses, his nymphs and heroes, become beasts, absolute, unmitigated beasts.

[Footnote 1: All the following remarks in this section were made at the exhibition of ancient masters at the British Gallery in Pall Mall. The recollection of those two hours has made the rooms of that Institution a melancholy place for me. Mr. Coleridge was in high spirits, and seemed to kindle in his mind at the contemplation of the splendid pictures before him. He did not examine them all by the catalogue, but anchored himself before some three or four great works, telling me that he saw the rest of the Gallery potentially. I can yet distinctly recall him, half leaning on his old simple stick, and his hat off in one hand, whilst with the fingers of the other he went on, as was his constant wont, figuring in the air a commentary of small diagrams, wherewith, as he fancied, he could translate to the eye those relations of form and space which his words might fail to convey with clearness to the ear. His admiration for Rubens showed itself in a sort of joy and brotherly fondness; he looked as if he would shake hands with his pictures. What the company, which by degrees formed itself round this silver-haired, bright-eyed, music-breathing, old man, took him for, I cannot guess; there was probably not one there who knew him to be that Ancient Mariner, who held people with his glittering eye, and constrained them, like three years' children, to hear his tale. In the midst of his speech, he turned to the right hand, where stood a very lovely young woman, whose attention he had involuntarily arrested;—to her, without apparently any consciousness of her being a stranger to him, he addressed many remarks, although I must acknowledge they were couched in a somewhat softer tone, as if he were soliciting her sympathy. He was, verily, a gentle-hearted man at all times; but I never was in company with him in my life, when the entry of a woman, it mattered not who, did not provoke a dim gush of emotion, which passed like an infant's breath over the mirror of his intellect.—ED.]

[Footnote 2: "Figures shooting at a Target," belonging, I believe, to Lord Bandon.—ED.]

[Footnote 3: This belongs to Sir Robert Peel.—ED.]

[Footnote 4: "Landscape with setting Sun,"—Lord Farnborough's picture.—ED.]

* * * * *

The Italian masters differ from the Dutch in this—that in their pictures ages are perfectly ideal. The infant that Raffael's Madonna holds in her arms cannot be guessed of any particular age; it is Humanity in infancy. The babe in the manger in a Dutch painting is a fac-simile of some real new-born bantling; it is just like the little rabbits we fathers have all seen with some dismay at first burst.

* * * * *

Carlo Dolce's representations of our Saviour are pretty, to be sure; but they are too smooth to please me. His Christs are always in sugar-candy.

* * * * *

That is a very odd and funny picture of the Connoisseurs at Rome[1] by Reynolds.

[Footnote 1: "Portraits of distinguished Connoisseurs painted at Rome,"—belonging to Lord Burlington.—ED.]

* * * * *

The more I see of modern pictures, the more I am convinced that the ancient art of painting is gone, and something substituted for it,—very pleasing, but different, and different in kind and not in degree only. Portraits by the old masters,—take for example the pock-fritten lady by Cuyp[1]—are pictures of men and women: they fill, not merely occupy, a space; they represent individuals, but individuals as types of a species.

Modern portraits—a few by Jackson and Owen, perhaps, excepted—give you not the man, not the inward humanity, but merely the external mark, that in which Tom is different from Bill. There is something affected and meretricious in the Snake in the Grass[2] and such pictures, by Reynolds.

[Footnote 1: I almost forget, but have some recollection that the allusion is to Mr. Heneage Finch's picture of a Lady with a Fan.—ED.]

[Footnote 2: Sir Robert Peel's.—ED.]

July 25. 1831.

CHILLINGWORTH.—SUPERSTITION OF MALTESE, SICILIANS, AND ITALIANS.

It is now twenty years since I read Chillingworth's book[1]; but certainly it seemed to me that his main position, that the mere text of the Bible is the sole and exclusive ground of Christian faith and practice, is quite untenable against the Romanists. It entirely destroys the conditions of a church, of an authority residing in a religious community, and all that holy sense of brotherhood which is so sublime and consolatory to a meditative Christian. Had I been a Papist, I should not have wished for a more vanquishable opponent in controversy. I certainly believe Chillingworth to have been in some sense a Socinian. Lord Falkland, his friend, said so in substance. I do not deny his skill in dialectics; he was more than a match for Knott[2] to be sure.

I must be bold enough to say, that I do not think that even Hooker puts the idea of a church on the true foundation.

[Footnote 1: "The Religion of Protestants a safe Way to Salvation; or, an Answer to a Booke entitled 'Mercy and Truth; or, Charity maintained by Catholicks,' which pretends to prove the contrary."]

[Footnote 2: Socinianism, or some inclination that way, is an old and clinging charge against Chillingworth. On the one hand, it is well known that he subscribed the articles of the church of England, in the usual form, on the 20th of July, 1638; and on the other, it is equally certain that within two years immediately previous, he wrote the letter to some unnamed correspondent, beginning "Dear Harry," and printed in all the Lives of Chillingworth, in which letter he sums up his arguments upon the Arian doctrine in this passage:—"In a word, whosoever shall freely and impartially consider of this thing, and how on the other side the ancient fathers' weapons against the Arrians are in a manner only places of Scripture (and these now for the most part discarded as importunate and unconcluding), and how in the argument drawn from the authority of the ancient fathers, they are almost always defendants, and scarse ever opponents, he shall not choose but confesses or at least be very inclinable to beleeve, that the doctrine of Arrius is eyther a truth, or at least no damnable heresy." The truth is, however, that the Socinianism of Chillingworth, such as it may have been, had more reference to the doctrine of the redemption of man than of the being of God.

Edward Knott's real name was Matthias Wilson.—ED.]

* * * * *

The superstition of the peasantry and lower orders generally in Malta, Sicily, and Italy exceeds common belief. It is unlike the superstition of Spain, which is a jealous fanaticism, having reference to their catholicism, and always glancing on heresy. The popular superstition of Italy is the offspring of the climate, the old associations, the manners, and the very names of the places. It is pure paganism, undisturbed by any anxiety about orthodoxy, or animosity against heretics. Hence, it is much more good-natured and pleasing to a traveller's feelings, and certainly not a whit less like the true religion of our dear Lord than the gloomy idolatry of the Spaniards.

* * * * *

I well remember, when in Valetta in 1805, asking a boy who waited on me, what a certain procession, then passing, was, and his answering with great quickness, that it was Jesus Christ, who lives here (sta di casa qui), and when he comes out, it is in the shape of a wafer. But, "Eccelenza," said he, smiling and correcting himself, "non è Cristiano."[1]

[Footnote 1: The following anecdote related by Mr. Coleridge, in April, 1811, was preserved and communicated to me by Mr. Justice Coleridge:—"As I was descending from Mount AEtna with a very lively talkative guide, we passed through a village (I think called) Nicolozzi, when the host happened to be passing through the street. Every one was prostrate; my guide became so; and, not to be singular, I went down also. After resuming our journey, I observed in my guide an unusual seriousness and long silence, which, after many hums and hahs, was interrupted by a low bow, and leave requested to ask a question. This was of course granted, and the ensuing dialogue took place. Guide. "Signor, are you then a Christian?" Coleridge. "I hope so." G. "What! are all Englishmen Christians?" C. "I hope and trust they are." G. "What! are you not Turks? Are you not damned eternally?" C. "I trust not, through Christ." G. "What! you believe in Christ then?" C. "Certainly." This answer produced another long silence. At length my guide again spoke, still doubting the grand point of my Christianity. G. "I'm thinking, Signor, what is the difference between you and us, that you are to be certainly damned?" C. "Nothing very material; nothing that can prevent our both going to heaven, I hope. We believe in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost." G. (interrupting me) "Oh those damned priests! what liars they are! But (pausing) we can't do without them; we can't go to heaven without them. But tell me, Signor, what are the differences?" C. "Why, for instance, we do not worship the Virgin." G. "And why not, Signor?" C. "Because, though holy and pure, we think her still a woman, and, therefore, do not pay her the honour due to God." G. "But do you not worship Jesus, who sits on the right hand of God?" C. "We do." G. "Then why not worship the Virgin, who sits on the left?" C. "I did not know she did. If you can show it me in the Scriptures, I shall readily agree to worship her." "Oh," said my man, with uncommon triumph, and cracking his fingers, "sicuro, Signor! sicuro, Signor!""—ED.]

July 30. 1831.

ASGILL.—THE FRENCH.

Asgill was an extraordinary man, and his pamphlet[1] is invaluable. He undertook to prove that man is literally immortal; or, rather, that any given living man might probably never die. He complains of the cowardly practice of dying. He was expelled from two Houses of Commons for blasphemy and atheism, as was pretended;—really I suspect because he was a staunch Hanoverian. I expected to find the ravings of an enthusiast, or the sullen snarlings of an infidel; whereas I found the very soul of Swift—an intense half self-deceived humorism. I scarcely remember elsewhere such uncommon skill in logic, such lawyer-like acuteness, and yet such a grasp of common sense. Each of his paragraphs is in itself a whole, and yet a link between the preceding and following; so that the entire series forms one argument, and yet each is a diamond in itself.

[Footnote 1: "An argument proving, that, according to the covenant of eternal life, revealed in the Scriptures, man may be translated from hence, without passing through death, although the human nature of Christ himself could not be thus translated, till he had passed through death." Asgill died in the year 1738, in the King's Bench prison, where he had been a prisoner for debt thirty years.—ED.]

* * * * *

Was there ever such a miserable scene as that of the exhibition of the Austrian standards in the French house of peers the other day?[1] Every other nation but the French would see that it was an exhibition of their own falsehood and cowardice. A man swears that the property intrusted to him is burnt, and then, when he is no longer afraid, produces it, and boasts of the atmosphere of "honour," through which the lie did not transpire.

Frenchmen are like grains of gunpowder,—each by itself smutty and contemptible, but mass them together and they are terrible indeed.

[Footnote 1: When the allies were in Paris in 1815, all the Austrian standards were reclaimed. The answer was that they had been burnt by the soldiers at the Hôtel des Invalides. This was untrue. The Marquis de Semonville confessed with pride that he, knowing of the fraud, had concealed these standards, taken from Mack at Ulm in 1805, in a vault under the Luxemburg palace. "An inviolable asylum," said the Marquis in his speech to the peers, "formed in the vault of this hall has protected this treasure from every search. Vainly, during this long space of time, have the most authoritative researches endeavoured to penetrate the secret. It would have been culpable to reveal it, as long as we were liable to the demands of haughty foreigners. No one in this atmosphere of honour is capable of so great a weakness," &c.—ED.]

August 1. 1831.

As there is much beast and some devil in man; so is there some angel and some God in him. The beast and the devil may be conquered, but in this life never destroyed.

* * * * *

I will defy any one to answer the arguments of a St. Simonist, except on the ground of Christianity—its precepts and its assurances.

August 6. 1831.

THE GOOD AND THE TRUE.—ROMISH RELIGION.

There is the love of the good for the good's sake, and the love of the truth for the truth's sake. I have known many, especially women, love the good for the good's sake; but very few, indeed, and scarcely one woman, love the truth for the truth's sake. Yet; without the latter, the former may become, as it has a thousand times been, the source of persecution of the truth,—the pretext and motive of inquisitorial cruelty and party zealotry. To see clearly that the love of the good and the true is ultimately identical—is given only to those who love both sincerely and without any foreign ends.

* * * * *

Look through the whole history of countries professing the Romish religion, and you will uniformly find the leaven of this besetting and accursed principle of action—that the end will sanction any means.

August 8. 1831.

ENGLAND AND HOLLAND.

The conduct of this country to King William of Holland has been, in my judgment, base and unprincipled beyond any thing in our history since the times of Charles the Second. Certainly, Holland is one of the most important allies that England has; and we are doing our utmost to subject it, and Portugal, to French influence, or even dominion! Upon my word, the English people, at this moment, are like a man palsied in every part of his body but one, in which one part he is so morbidly sensitive that he cannot bear to have it so much as breathed upon, whilst you may pinch him with a hot forceps elsewhere without his taking any notice of it.

August 8. 1831.

IRON.—GALVANISM.—HEAT.

Iron is the most ductile of all hard metals, and the hardest of all ductile metals. With the exception of nickel, in which it is dimly seen, iron is the only metal in which the magnetic power is visible. Indeed, it is almost impossible to purify nickel of iron.

* * * * *

Galvanism is the union of electricity and magnetism, and, by being continuous, it exhibits an image of life;—I say, an image only: it is life in death.

* * * * *

Heat is the mesothesis or indifference of light and matter.

August 14. 1831.

NATIONAL COLONIAL CHARACTER, AND NAVAL DISCIPLINE.

The character of most nations in their colonial dependencies is in an inverse ratio of excellence to their character at home. The best people in the mother-country will generally be the worst in the colonies; the worst at home will be the best abroad. Or, perhaps, I may state it less offensively thus:—The colonists of a well governed-country will degenerate; those of an ill-governed country will improve. I am now considering the natural tendency of such colonists if left to themselves; of course, a direct act of the legislature of the mother-country will break in upon this. Where this tendency is exemplified, the cause is obvious. In countries well governed and happily conditioned, none, or very few, but those who are desperate through vice or folly, or who are mere trading adventurers, will be willing to leave their homes and settle in another hemisphere; and of those who do go, the best and worthiest are always striving to acquire the means of leaving the colony, and of returning to their native land. In ill-governed and ill-conditioned countries, on the contrary, the most respectable of the people are willing and anxious to emigrate for the chance of greater security and enlarged freedom; and if they succeed in obtaining these blessings in almost any degree, they have little inducement, on the average, to wish to abandon their second and better country. Hence, in the former case, the colonists consider themselves as mere strangers, sojourners, birds of passage, and shift to live from hand to mouth, with little regard to lasting improvement of the place of their temporary commerce; whilst, in the latter case, men feel attached to a community to which they are individually indebted for otherwise unattainable benefits, and for the most part learn to regard it as their abode, and to make themselves as happy and comfortable in it as possible. I believe that the internal condition and character of the English and French West India islands of the last century amply verified this distinction; the Dutch colonists most certainly did, and have always done.

Analogous to this, though not founded on precisely the same principle, is the fact that the severest naval discipline is always found in the ships of the freest nations, and the most lax discipline in the ships of the most oppressed. Hence, the naval discipline of the Americans is the sharpest; then that of the English;[1] then that of the French (I speak as it used to be); and on board a Spanish ship, there is no discipline at all.

At Genoa, the word "Liberty" is, or used to be, engraved on the chains of the galley-slaves, and the doors of the dungeons.

[Footnote 1: This expression needs explanation. It looks as if Mr. Coleridge rated the degree of liberty enjoyed by the English, after that of the citizens of the United States; but he meant no such thing. His meaning was, that the form of government of the latter was more democratic, and formally assigned more power to each individual. The Americans, as a nation, had no better friend in England than Coleridge; he contemplated their growth with interest, and prophesied highly of their destiny, whether under their present or other governments. But he well knew their besetting faults and their peculiar difficulties, and was most deliberately of opinion that the English had, for 130 years last past, possessed a measure of individual freedom and social dignity which had never been equalled, much less surpassed, in any other country ancient or modern. There is a passage in Mr. Coleridge's latest publication (Church and State}, which clearly expresses his opinion upon this subject: "It has been frequently and truly observed that in England, where the ground-plan, the skeleton, as it were, of the government is a monarchy, at once buttressed and limited by the aristocracy (the assertions of its popular character finding a better support in the harangues and theories of popular men, than in state documents, and the records of clear history), afar greater degree of liberty is, and long has been, enjoyed, than ever existed in, the ostensibly freest, that is, most democratic, commonwealths of ancient or modern times; greater, indeed, and with a more decisive predominance of the spirit of freedom, than the wisest and most philanthropic statesmen of antiquity, or than the great commonwealth's men,—the stars of that narrow interspace of blue sky between the black clouds of the first and second Charles's reigns—believed compatible, the one with the safety of the state, the other with the interests of morality. Yes! for little less than a century and a half, Englishmen have, collectively and individually, lived and acted with fewer restraints on their free-agency, than the citizens of any known republic, past or present." (p. 120.) Upon which he subjoins the following note: "It will be thought, perhaps, that the United States of North America should have been excepted. But the identity of stock, language, customs, manners, and laws scarcely allows us to consider this an exception, even though it were quite certain both that it is and that it will continue such. It was at all events a remark worth remembering, which I once heard from a traveller (a prejudiced one, I must admit), that where every man may take, liberties, there is little liberty for any man; or, that where every man takes liberties, no man can enjoy any." (p. 121.) See also a passage to the like effect in the Friend, vol. i. p. 129—ED.]

August 15. 1831.

ENGLAND.—HOLLAND AND BELGIUM.

I cannot contain my indignation at the conduct of our government towards Holland. They have undoubtedly forgotten the true and well-recognized policy of this country in regard to Portugal in permitting the war faction in France to take possession of the Tagus, and to bully the Portuguese upon so flimsy—indeed, false—a pretext[1] yet, in this instance, something may be said for them.

Miguel is such a wretch, that I acknowledge a sort of morality in leaving him to be cuffed and insulted; though, of course, this is a poor answer to a statesman who alleges the interest and policy of the country. But, as to the Dutch and King William: the first, as a nation, the most ancient ally, the alter idem of England, the best deserving of the cause of freedom and religion and morality of any people in Europe; and the second, the very best sovereign now in Christendom, with, perhaps, the single exception of the excellent king of Sweden[2]—was ever any thing so mean and cowardly as the behaviour of England!

The Five Powers have, throughout this conference, been actuated exclusively by a selfish desire to preserve peace—I should rather say, to smother war —at the expense of a most valuable but inferior power. They have over and over again acknowledged the justice of the Dutch claims, and the absurdity of the Belgian pretences; but as the Belgians were also as impudent as they were iniquitous,—as they would not yield their point, why then—that peace may be preserved—the Dutch must yield theirs! A foreign prince comes into Belgium, pending these negotiations, and takes an unqualified oath to maintain the Belgian demands:—what could King William or the Dutch do, if they ever thereafter meant to call themselves independent, but resist and resent this outrage to the uttermost? It was a crisis in which every consideration of state became inferior to the strong sense and duty of national honour. When, indeed, the French appear in the field, King William retires. "I now see," he may say, "that the powers of Europe are determined to abet the Belgians. The justice of such a proceeding I leave to their conscience and the decision of history. It is now no longer a question whether I am tamely to submit to rebels and a usurper; it is no longer a quarrel between Holland and Belgium: it is an alliance of all Europe against Holland,—in which case I yield. I have no desire to sacrifice my people."

[Footnote 1: Meaning, principally, the whipping, so richly deserved, inflicted on a Frenchman called Bonhomme, for committing a disgusting breach of common decency in the cathedral of Coimbra, during divine service in Passion Week.—ED.];

[Footnote 2: "Every thing that I have heard or read of this sovereign has contributed to the impression on my mind, that he is a good and a wise man, and worthy to be the king of a virtuous people, the purest specimen of the Gothic race."—Church and State, p. 125. n.—ED.]

* * * * *

When Leopold said that he was called to "reign over four millions of noble Belgians," I thought the phrase would have been more germane to the matter, if he had said that he was called to "rein in four million restive asses."

August 20. 1831.

GREATEST HAPPINESS PRINCIPLE.——HOBBISM.

O. P. Q. in the Morning Chronicle is a clever fellow. He is for the greatest possible happiness for the greatest possible number, and for the longest possible time! So am I; so are you, and every one of us, I will venture to say, round the tea-table. First, however, what does O. P. Q. mean by the word happiness? and, secondly, how does he propose to make other persons agree in his definition of the term? Don't you see the ridiculous absurdity of setting up that as a principle or motive of action, which is, in fact, a necessary and essential instinct of our very nature—an inborn and inextinguishable desire? How can creatures susceptible of pleasure and pain do otherwise than desire happiness? But, what happiness? That is the question. The American savage, in scalping his fallen enemy, pursues his happiness naturally and adequately. A Chickasaw, or Pawnee Bentham, or O. P. Q., would necessarily hope for the most frequent opportunities possible of scalping the greatest possible number of savages, for the longest possible time. There is no escaping this absurdity, unless you come back to a standard of reason and duty, imperative upon our merely pleasurable sensations. Oh! but, says O. P. Q., I am for the happiness of others! Of others! Are you, indeed? Well, I happen to be one of those others, and, so far as I can judge from what you show me of your habits and views, I would rather be excused from your banquet of happiness. Your mode of happiness would make me miserable. To go about doing as much good as possible to as many men as possible, is, indeed, an excellent object for a man to propose to himself; but then, in order that you may not sacrifice the real good and happiness of others to your particular views, which may be quite different from your neighbour's, you must do that good to others which the reason, common to all, pronounces to be good for all. In this sense your fine maxim is so very true as to be a mere truism.

* * * * *

So you object, with old Hobbes, that I do good actions for the pleasure of a good conscience; and so, after all, I am only a refined sensualist! Heaven bless you, and mend your logic! Don't you see that if conscience, which is in its nature a consequence, were thus anticipated and made an antecedent—a party instead of a judge—it would dishonour your draft upon it—it would not pay on demand? Don't you see that, in truth, the very fact of acting with this motive properly and logically destroys all claim upon conscience to give you any pleasure at all?

August 22. 1831.

THE TWO MODES OF POLITICAL ACTION.

There are many able and patriotic members in the House of Commons—Sir Robert Inglis, Sir Robert Peel, and some others. But I grieve that they never have the courage or the wisdom—I know not in which the failure is— to take their stand upon duty, and to appeal to all men as men,—to the Good and the True, which exist for all, and of which all have an apprehension. They always set to work—especially, his great eminence considered, Sir Robert Peel—by addressing themselves to individual interests; the measure will be injurious to the linen-drapers, or to the bricklayers; or this clause will bear hard on bobbin-net or poplins, and so forth. Whereas their adversaries—the demagogues—always work on the opposite principle: they always appeal to men as men; and, as you know, the most terrible convulsions in society have been wrought by such phrases as Rights of Man, Sovereignty of the People, &c., which no one understands, which apply to no one in particular, but to all in general.[1]

The devil works precisely in the same way. He is a very clever fellow; I have no acquaintance with him, but I respect his evident talents. Consistent truth and goodness will assuredly in the end overcome every thing; but inconsistent good can never be a match for consistent evil. Alas! I look in vain for some wise and vigorous man to sound the word Duty in the ears of this generation.

[Footnote 1: "It is with nations as with individuals. In tranquil moods and peaceable times we are quite practical; facts only, and cool common sense, are then in fashion. But let the winds of passion swell, and straightway men begin to generalize, to connect by remotest analogies, to express the most universal positions of reason in the most glowing figures of fancy; in short, to feel particular truths and mere facts as poor, cold, narrow, and incommensurate with their feelings."—Statesman's Manual, p. 18.

"It seems a paradox only to the unthinking, and it is a fact that none but the unread in history will deny, that, in periods of popular tumult and innovation, the more abstract a notion is, the more readily has it been found to combine, the closer has appeared its affinity, with the feelings of a people, and with all their immediate impulses to action. At the commencement of the French Revolution, in the remotest villages every tongue was employed in echoing and enforcing the almost geometrical abstractions of the physiocratic politicians and economists. The public roads were crowded with armed enthusiasts, disputing on the inalienable sovereignty of the people, the imprescriptible laws of the pure reason, and the universal constitution, which, as rising out of the nature and rights of man as man, all nations alike were under the obligation of adopting."— Statesman's Manual.]

August 24. 1831.

TRUTHS AND MAXIMS.

The English public is not yet ripe to comprehend the essential difference between the reason and the understanding—between a principle and a maxim— an eternal truth and a mere conclusion generalized from a great number of facts. A man, having seen a million moss roses all red, concludes from his own experience and that of others that all moss roses are red. That is a maxim with him—the greatest amount of his knowledge upon the subject. But it is only true until some gardener has produced a white moss rose,— after which the maxim is good for nothing. Again, suppose Adam watching the sun sinking under the western horizon for the first time; he is seized with gloom and terror, relieved by scarce a ray of hope that he shall ever see the glorious light again. The next evening, when it declines, his hopes are stronger, but still mixed with fear; and even at the end of a thousand years, all that a man can feel is a hope and an expectation so strong as to preclude anxiety. Now compare this in its highest degree with the assurance which you have that the two sides of any triangle are together greater than the third. This, demonstrated of one triangle, is seen to be eternally true of all imaginable triangles. This is a truth perceived at once by the intuitive reason, independently of experience. It is and must ever be so, multiply and vary the shapes and sizes of triangles as you may.

* * * * *

It used to be said that four and five make nine. Locke says, that four and five are nine. Now I say, that four and five are not nine, but that they will make nine. When I see four objects which will form a square, and five which will form a pentagon, I see that they are two different things; when combined, they will form a third different figure, which we call nine. When separate they are not it, but will make it.

September 11. 1831.

DRAYTON AND DANIEL.

Drayton is a sweet poet, and Selden's notes to the early part of the Polyolbion are well worth your perusal. Daniel is a superior man; his diction is pre-eminently pure,—of that quality which I believe has always existed somewhere in society. It is just such English, without any alteration, as Wordsworth or Sir George Beaumont might have spoken or written in the present day.

Yet there are instances of sublimity in Drayton. When deploring the cutting down of some of our old forests, he says, in language which reminds the reader of Lear, written subsequently, and also of several passages in Mr. Wordsworth's poems:—

——"our trees so hack'd above the ground, That where their lofty tops the neighbouring countries crown'd, Their trunks (like aged folks) now bare and naked stand, As for revenge to Heaven each held a wither'd hand." [1]

That is very fine.

[Footnote 1: Polyol VII.

"He (Drayton) was a poet by nature, and carefully improved his talent; one who sedulously laboured to deserve the approbation of such as were capable of appreciating and cared nothing for the censures which others might pass upon him." 'Like me that list,' he says,

——'my honest rhymes Nor care for critics, nor regard the times.'

And though he is not a poet virum volitarc per ora, nor one of those whose better fortune it is to live in the hearts of their devoted admirers,—yet what he deemed his greatest work will be preserved by its subject; some of his minor poems have merit enough in their execution to ensure their preservation; and no one who studies poetry as an art will think his time misspent in perusing the whole, if he have any real love for the art he is pursuing. The youth who enters upon that pursuit without a feeling of respect and gratitude for those elder poets, who by their labours have prepared the way for him, is not likely to produce any thing himself that will be held in remembrance by posterity."-The Doctor, &c. c. 36. P.I.

I heartily trust that the author or authors, as the case may be, of this singularly thoughtful and diverting book will in due time continue it. Let some people say what they please, there has not been the fellow of it published for many a long day.—ED.]

September 12. 1831.

MR. COLERIDGE'S SYSTEM OF PHILOSOPHY.

My system, if I may venture to give it so fine a name, is the only attempt, I know, ever made to reduce all knowledges into harmony. It opposes no other system, but shows what was true in each; and how that which was true in the particular, in each of them became error, because it was only half the truth. I have endeavoured to unite the insulated fragments of truth, and therewith to frame a perfect mirror. I show to each system that I fully understand and rightfully appreciate what that system means; but then I lift up that system to a higher point of view, from which I enable it to see its former position, where it was, indeed, but under another light and with different relations;—so that the fragment of truth is not only acknowledged, but explained. Thus the old astronomers discovered and maintained much that was true; but, because they were placed on a false ground, and looked from a wrong point of view, they never did, they never could, discover the truth—that is, the whole truth. As soon as they left the earth, their false centre, and took their stand in the sun, immediately they saw the whole system in its true light, and their former station remaining, but remaining as a part of the prospect. I wish, in short, to connect by a moral copula natural history with political history; or, in other words, to make history scientific, and science historical—to take from history its accidentality, and from science its fatalism.

* * * * *

I never from a boy could, under any circumstances, feel the slightest dread of death as such. In all my illnesses I have ever had the most intense desire to be released from this life, unchecked by any but one wish, namely, to be able to finish my work on Philosophy. Not that I have any author's vanity on the subject: God knows that I should be absolutely glad, if I could hear that the thing had already been done before me.

* * * * *

Illness never in the smallest degree affects my intellectual powers. I can think with all my ordinary vigour in the midst of pain; but I am beset with the most wretched and unmanning reluctance and shrinking from action. I could not upon such occasions take the pen in hand to write down my thoughts for all the wide world.

October 26. 1831.

KEENNESS AND SUBTLETY.

Few men of genius are keen; but almost every man of genius is subtle. If you ask me the difference between keenness and subtlety, I answer that it is the difference between a point and an edge. To split a hair is no proof of subtlety; for subtlety acts in distinguishing differences—in showing that two things apparently one are in fact two; whereas, to split a hair is to cause division, and not to ascertain difference.

October 27. 1831.

DUTIES AND NEEDS OF AN ADVOCATE.

There is undoubtedly a limit to the exertions of an advocate for his client. He has a right, it is his bounden duty, to do every thing which his client might honestly do, and to do it with all the effect which any exercise of skill, talent, or knowledge of his own may be able to produce. But the advocate has no right, nor is it his duty, to do that for his client which his client in foro conscientiae has no right to do for himself; as, for a gross example, to put in evidence a forged deed or will, knowing it to be so forged. As to mere confounding of witnesses by skilful cross-examination, I own I am not disposed to be very strict. The whole thing is perfectly well understood on all hands, and it is little more in general than a sort of cudgel-playing between the counsel and the witness, in which, I speak with submission to you, I think I have seen the witness have the best of it as often as his assailant. It is of the utmost importance in the administration of justice that knowledge and intellectual power should be as far as possible equalized between the crown and the prisoner, or plaintiff and defendant. Hence especially arises the necessity for an order of advocates,—men whose duty it ought to be to know what the law allows and disallows; but whose interests should be wholly indifferent as to the persons or characters of their clients. If a certain latitude in examining witnesses is, as experience seems to have shown, a necessary mean towards the evisceration of the truth of matters of fact, I have no doubt, as a moralist, in saying, that such latitude within the bounds, now existing is justifiable. We must be content with a certain quantum in this life, especially in matters of public cognizance; the necessities of society demand it; we must not be righteous overmuch, or wise overmuch; and, as an old father says, in what vein may there not be a plethora, when the Scripture tells us that there may under circumstances be too much of virtue and of wisdom?

Still I think that, upon the whole, the advocate is placed in a position unfavourable to his moral being, and, indeed, to his intellect also, in its higher powers. Therefore I would recommend an advocate to devote a part of his leisure time to some study of the metaphysics of the mind, or metaphysics of theology; something, I mean, which shall call forth all his powers, and centre his wishes in the investigation of truth alone, without reference to a side to be supported. No studies give such a power of distinguishing as metaphysical, and in their natural and unperverted tendency they are ennobling and exalting. Some such studies are wanted to counteract the operation of legal studies and practice, which sharpen, indeed, but, like a grinding-stone, narrow whilst they sharpen.

November 19. 1831.

ABOLITION OF THE FRENCH HEREDITARY PEERAGE.

I cannot say what the French peers will do; but I can tell you what they ought to do. "So far," they might say, "as our feelings and interests, as individuals, are concerned in this matter—if it really be the prevailing wish of our fellow-countrymen to destroy the hereditary peerage—we shall, without regret, retire into the ranks of private citizens: but we are bound by the provisions of the existing constitution to consider ourselves collectively as essential to the well-being of France: we have been placed here to defend what France, a short time ago at least, thought a vital part of its government; and, if we did not defend it, what answer could we make hereafter to France itself, if she should come to see, what we think to be an error, in the light in which we view it? We should be justly branded as traitors and cowards, who had deserted the post which we were specially appointed to maintain. As a House of Peers, therefore,—as one substantive branch of the legislature, we can never, in honour or in conscience, consent to a measure of the impolicy and dangerous consequences of which we are convinced.

"If, therefore, this measure is demanded by the country, let the king and the deputies form themselves into a constituent assembly; and then, assuming to act in the name of the total nation, let them decree the abolition. In that case we yield to a just, perhaps, but revolutionary, act, in which we do not participate, and against which we are, upon the supposition, quite powerless. If the deputies, however, consider themselves so completely in the character of delegates as to be at present absolutely pledged to vote without freedom of deliberation, let a concise, but perspicuous, summary of the ablest arguments that can be adduced on either side be drawn up, and printed, and circulated throughout the country; and then, after two months, let the deputies demand fresh instructions upon this point. One thing, as men of honour, we declare beforehand—that, come what will, none of us who are now peers will ever accept a peerage created de novo for life."

November 20. 1831.

CONDUCT OF MINISTERS ON THE REFORM BILL.—THE MULTITUDE.

The present ministers have, in my judgment, been guilty of two things preeminently wicked, sensu politico, in their conduct upon this Reform Bill. First, they have endeavoured to carry a fundamental change in the material and mode of action of the government of the country by so exciting the passions, and playing upon the necessary ignorance of the numerical majority of the nation, that all freedom and utility of discussion, by competent heads, in the proper place, should be precluded. In doing this they have used, or sanctioned the use of, arguments which may he applied with equal or even greater force to the carrying of any measure whatever, no matter how atrocious in its character or destructive in its consequences. They have appealed directly to the argument of the greater number of voices, no matter whether the utterers were drunk or sober, competent or not competent; and they have done the utmost in their power to rase out the sacred principle in politics of a representation of interests, and to introduce the mad and barbarizing scheme of a delegation of individuals. And they have done all this without one word of thankfulness to God for the manifold blessings of which the constitution as settled at the Revolution, imperfect as it may be, has been the source or vehicle or condition to this great nation,—without one honest statement of the manner in which the anomalies in the practice grew up, or any manly declaration of the inevitable necessities of government which those anomalies have met. With no humility, nor fear, nor reverence, like Ham the accursed, they have beckoned, with grinning faces, to a vulgar mob, to come and insult over the nakedness of a parent; when it had become them, if one spark of filial patriotism had burnt within their breasts, to have marched with silent steps and averted faces to lay their robes upon his destitution!

Secondly, they have made the king the prime mover in all this political wickedness: they have made the king tell his people that they were deprived of their rights, and, by direct and necessary implication, that they and their ancestors for a century past had been slaves: they have made the king vilify the memory of his own brother and father. Rights! There are no rights whatever without corresponding duties. Look at the history of the growth of our constitution, and you will see that our ancestors never upon any occasion stated, as a ground for claiming any of their privileges, an abstract right inherent in themselves; you will nowhere in our parliamentary records find the miserable sophism of the Rights of Man. No! they were too wise for that. They took good care to refer their claims to custom and prescription, and boldly—sometimes very impudently—asserted them upon traditionary and constitutional grounds. The Bill is bad enough, God knows; but the arguments of its advocates, and the manner of their advocacy, are a thousand times worse than the Bill itself; and you will live to think so.

I am far, very far, from wishing to indulge in any vulgar abuse of the vulgar. I believe that the feeling of the multitude will, in most cases, be in favour of something good; but this it is which I perceive, that they are always under the domination of some one feeling or view;—whereas truth, and, above all, practical wisdom, must be the result of a wide comprehension of the more and the less, the balance and the counter- balance.

December 3. 1831.

RELIGION.

A religion, that is, a true religion, must consist of ideas and facts both; not of ideas alone without facts, for then it would be mere Philosophy;— nor of facts alone without ideas, of which those facts are the symbols, or out of which they arise, or upon which they are grounded, for then it would be mere History.

December 17. 1831.

UNION WITH IRELAND.—IRISH CHURCH.

I am quite sure that no dangers are to be feared by England from the disannexing and independence of Ireland at all comparable with the evils which have been, and will yet be, caused to England by the Union. We have never received one particle of advantage from our association with Ireland, whilst we have in many most vital particulars violated the principles of the British constitution solely for the purpose of conciliating the Irish agitators, and of endeavouring—a vain endeavour—to find room for them under the same government. Mr. Pitt has received great credit for effecting the Union; but I believe it will sooner or later be discovered that the manner in which, and the terms upon which, he effected it, made it the most fatal blow that ever was levelled against the peace and prosperity of England. From it came the Catholic Bill. From the Catholic Bill has come this Reform Bill! And what next?

* * * * *

The case of the Irish Church is certainly anomalous, and full of practical difficulties. On the one hand, it is the only church which the constitution can admit; on the other, such are the circumstances, it is a church that cannot act as a church towards five sixths of the persons nominally and legally within its care.

December 18. 1831.

A STATE.—PERSONS AND THINGS.—HISTORY.

The difference between an inorganic and an organic body lies in this:—In the first—a sheaf of corn—the whole is nothing more than a collection of the individual parts or phenomena. In the second—a man—the whole is the effect of, or results from, the parts; it—the whole—is every thing, and the parts are nothing.

A State is an idea intermediate between the two—the whole being a result from, and not a mere total of, the parts, and yet not so merging the constituent parts in the result, but that the individual exists integrally within it. Extremes, especially in politics, meet. In Athens each individual Athenian was of no value; but taken altogether, as Demus, they were every thing in such a sense that no individual citizen was any thing. In Turkey there is the sign of unity put for unity. The Sultan seems himself the State; but it is an illusion: there is in fact in Turkey no State at all: the whole consists of nothing but a vast collection of neighbourhoods.

* * * * *

When the government and the aristocracy of this country had subordinated persons to things, and treated the one like the other,—the poor, with some reason, and almost in self-defence, learned to set up rights above duties. The code of a Christian society is, Debeo, et tu debes—of Heathens or Barbarians, Teneo, teneto et tu, si potes.[1]

[Footnote 1: "And this, again, is evolved out of the yet higher idea of person in contradistinction from thing, all social law and justice being grounded on the principle that a person can never, but by his own fault, become a thing, or, without grievous wrong, be treated as such; and the distinction consisting in this, that a thing may be used altogether, and merely as the means to an end; but the person must always be included in the end; his interest must always form a part of the object,—a mean to which he, by consent, that is, by his own act, makes himself. We plant a tree, and we fell it; we breed the sheep, and we shear, or we kill it,—in both cases wholly as means to our ends: for trees and animals are things. The woodcutter and the hind are likewise employed as means; but on agreement, and that too an agreement of reciprocal advantage, which includes them as well as their employer in the end; for they are persons. And the government under which the contrary takes place is not worthy to be called a state, if, as in the kingdom of Dahomey, it be unprogressive; or only by anticipation, where, as in Russia, it is in advance to a better and more manworthy order of things."—Church and State, p. 10.]

* * * * *

If men could learn from history, what lessons it might teach us! But passion and party blind our eyes, and the light which experience gives is a lantern on the stern, which shines only on the waves behind us!

December 27. 1831.

BEAUTY.—GENIUS.

The old definition of beauty in the Roman school of painting was, il più nell' uno—multitude in unity; and there is no doubt that such is the principle of beauty. And as one of the most characteristic and infallible criteria of the different ranks of men's intellects, observe the instinctive habit which all superior minds have of endeavouring to bring, and of never resting till they have brought, into unity the scattered facts which occur in conversation, or in the statements of men of business. To attempt to argue any great question upon facts only, is absurd; you cannot state any fact before a mixed audience, which an opponent as clever as yourself cannot with ease twist towards another bearing, or at least meet by a contrary fact, as it is called. I wonder why facts were ever called stubborn things: I am sure they have been found pliable enough lately in the House of Commons and elsewhere. Facts, you know, are not truths; they are not conclusions; they are not even premisses, but in the nature and parts of premisses. The truth depends on, and is only arrived at, by a legitimate deduction from all the facts which are truly material.

* * * * *

December 28. 1831.

CHURCH.—STATE.—DISSENTERS.

Even to a church,—the only pure democracy, because in it persons are alone considered, and one person à priori is equal to another person,—even to a church, discipline is an essential condition. But a state regards classes, and classes as they represent classified property; and to introduce a system of representation which must inevitably render all discipline impossible, what is it but madness-the madness of ignorant vanity, and reckless obstinacy?

* * * * *

I have known, and still know, many Dissenters, who profess to have a zeal for Christianity; and I dare say they have. But I have known very few Dissenters indeed, whose hatred to the Church of England was not a much more active principle of action with them than their love for Christianity. The Wesleyans, in uncorrupted parts of the country, are nearly the only exceptions. There never was an age since the days of the apostles, in which the catholic spirit of religion was so dead, and put aside for love of sects and parties, as at present.

* * * * *

January 1. 1832.

GRACEFULNESS OF CHILDREN.—DOGS.

How inimitably graceful children are in general before they learn to dance!

* * * * *

There seems a sort of sympathy between the more generous dogs and little children. I believe an instance of a little child being attacked by a large dog is very rare indeed.

January 28. 1832.

IDEAL TORY AND WHIG.

The ideal Tory and the ideal Whig (and some such there have really been) agreed in the necessity and benefit of an exact balance of the three estates: but the Tory was more jealous of the balance being deranged by the people; the Whig, of its being deranged by the Crown. But this was a habit, a jealousy only; they both agreed in the ultimate preservation of the balance; and accordingly they might each, under certain circumstances, without the slightest inconsistency, pass from one side to the other, as the ultimate object required it. This the Tories did at the Revolution, but remained Tories as before.

I have half a mind to write a critical and philosophical essay on Whiggism, from Dryden's Achitophel (Shaftesbury), the first Whig, (for, with Dr. Johnson's leave, the devil is no such cattle,) down to ——, who, I trust, in God's mercy to the interests of peace, union, and liberty in this nation, will be the last. In it I would take the last years of Queen Anne's reign as the zenith, or palmy state, of Whiggism in its divinest avatar of common sense, or of the understanding, vigorously exerted in the right direction on the right and proper objects of the understanding; and would then trace the rise, the occasion, the progress, and the necessary degeneration of the Whig spirit of compromise, even down to the profound ineptitudes of their party in these days. A clever fellow might make something of this hint. How Asgill would have done it!

February 22. 1832.

THE CHURCH.

The church is the last relic of our nationality. Would to God that the bishops and the clergy in general could once fully understand that the Christian church and the national church are as little to be confounded as divided! I think the fate of the Reform Bill, in itself, of comparatively minor importance; the fate of the national church occupies my mind with greater intensity.

February 24. 1832.

MINISTERS AND THE REFORM BILL.

I could not help smiling, in reading the report of Lord Grey's speech in the House of Lords, the other night, when he asked Lord Wicklow whether he seriously believed that he, Lord Grey, or any of the ministers, intended to subvert the institutions of the country. Had I been in Lord Wicklow's place, I should have been tempted to answer this question something in the following way:—"Waiving the charge in an offensive sense of personal consciousness against the noble earl, and all but one or two of his colleagues, upon my honour, and in the presence of Almighty God, I answer, Yes! You have destroyed the freedom of parliament; you have done your best to shut the door of the House of Commons to the property, the birth, the rank, the wisdom of the people, and have flung it open to their passions and their follies. You have disfranchised the gentry, and the real patriotism of the nation: you have agitated and exasperated the mob, and thrown the balance of political power into the hands of that class (the shopkeepers) which, in all countries and in all ages, has been, is now, and ever will be, the least patriotic and the least conservative of any. You are now preparing to destroy for ever the constitutional independence of the House of Lords; you are for ever displacing it from its supremacy as a co-ordinate estate of the realm; and whether you succeed in passing your bill by actually swamping our votes by a batch of new peers, or by frightening a sufficient number of us out of our opinions by the threat of one,—equally you will have superseded the triple assent which the constitution requires to the enactment of a valid law, and have left the king alone with the delegates of the populace!"

March 3. 1832.

DISFRANCHISEMENT.

I am afraid the Conservative party see but one half of the truth. The mere extension of the franchise is not the evil; I should be glad to see it greatly extended;—there is no harm in that per se; the mischief is that the franchise is nominally extended, but to such classes, and in such a manner, that a practical disfranchisement of all above, and a discontenting of all below, a favoured class are the unavoidable results.