LEGISLATIVE LITERATURE.

Lord C—f—n was very amusing to-day: every thing he said was cleverly said; full of information, and abounding in curious historic anecdote. I observe, that the elders of the English aristocracy have an amazing mass of historical knowledge. History is the mirror of aristocratical amour-propre. How I should read history if I were a Howard, or a Stanley, or a Russel! The knowledge of history is, besides, a part of the qualifications for an hereditary legislator; and, of necessity, it engages the attention of those nobles, who are not above, or beneath, all sense of duty and propriety. The mischief of it is, that their tastes and education lead them rather to anecdote, than to philosophy; and their knowledge consists more in facts, than in deductions. The ecclesiastical education of our English universities is at war with philosophy; and the great reject all philosophy that is not genteel and within bounds, like Paley’s. Dugald Stewart is their ne plus ultra. Of physiological philosophy, the philosophy of fact, they are usually ignorant. A single page of De Tracy would scare the whole House of Lords. Though they may very generally read the Heloise, they do not the less reject Rousseau’s other works, as too philosophical,—Rousseau, the least philosophical of thinkers, and as vehement a hater of philosophers, as the author of the Metromanie himself! “If,” said Lord L——, to his old friend, General C——, who wanted him to purchase a duplicate set of Voltaire’s works—“if I were to let your Voltaire into my house, I should expect the roof to fall and crush me.” Another lord, to compare great things with small, actually burned my France, having first called his whole household to witness the solemnity. From the beginning of time this flaming argument has been the favourite court moyen with the powers that be. In this they do but follow the natural instinct which leads us to fear whatever we do not understand. Philosophy is, in truth, but a democratical piece of business: it knows nothing of castes and privileges: its object is only the happiness of mankind at large; and it mounts not to the sublimity of vested rights, the transcendentals of politics. But anecdotes, facts, and dates, the sayings and doings of our ancestors, are so useful, so imposing, so applicable to every thing and to nothing, they are so ornamental in discourse, and they so set off a debate!! What a figure they made in the discussions on the catholic question—the arguments of the E.’s, and the eloquence of the W.’s.