the assertion, that in the whole chapter of contents of European ruin, every article might be unanswerably deduced from the neglect of some maxim that had been repeatedly laid down, demonstrated, and enforced with a host of illustrations, in some one or other of the works of Machiavelli, Bacon, or Harrington.* Indeed I can remember no one event of importance which was not distinctly foretold, and this not by a lucky prize drawn among a thousand blanks out of the lottery wheel of conjecture, but legitimately deduced as certain consequences from established premises. It would be a melancholy, but a very profitable employment, for some vigorous mind, intimately acquainted with the recent history of Europe, to collect the weightiest aphorisms of Machiavelli alone, and illustrating by appropriate facts the breach or observation of each, to render less mysterious the present triumph of lawless violence. The apt motto to such a work would be,-"The children of darkness are wiser in their generation than the children of light.”

So grievously, indeed, have men been deceived by the showy mock theories of unlearned mock thinkers, that there seems a tendency in the public mind to shun all thought, and to expect help from any quarter rather than from seriousness and reflection: as if some invisible power would think for us, when we gave up the pretence of thinking for ourselves. But in the first place, did those, who opposed the theories of innovators, conduct their untheoretic opposition with more wisdom or to a happier result? And secondly, are societies now constructed on prineiples so few and so simple, that we could, even if we wished it, act as it were by instinct, like our distant forefathers in the infancy of states? Doubtless, to act is nobler than to think ;but as the old man doth not become a child by means of his second childishness, as little can a nation exempt itself from the necessity of thinking, which has once learnt to think. Miserable was the delusion of the late mad realizer of mad dreams, in his belief that he should ultimately succeed in transforming the nations of Europe into the unreasoning hordes of a Babylonian or Tartar empire, or even in reducing the age to the simplicity, (so desirable for tyrants) of those times, when the sword and the plough were the sole implements of human skill. Those are epochs in the history of a people which having been can never more recur. Extirpate all civilization and all its arts by the sword, trample down all ancient institutions, rights, distinctions, and privileges, drag us backward to our old barbarism, as beasts to the den of Cacus-deem you that thus you could recreate the unexamining and boisterous youth of the world, when the sole questions were-"What is to be conquered? and who is the most famous leader ?"

In an age in which artificial knowledge is received almost at the birth, intellect, and thought alone can be our upholder and judge. Let the * See the Statesman's Manual: a Lay Sermon, by the Author.

importance of this truth procure pardon for its repetition. Only by means of seriousness and meditation, and the free infliction of censure in the spirit of love, can the true philanthropist of the present time, curb in himself and his contemporaries; only by these can he aid in preventing the evils which threaten us, not from the terrors of an enemy so much as from our fear of our own thoughts, and our aversion to all the toils of reflection. For all must now be taught in sport-science, morality, yea, religion itself. And yet few now sport from the actual impulse of a believing fancy and in a happy delusion. Of the most influensive class, at least, of our literary guides, (the anonymous authors of our periodical publications,) the most part assume this character from cowardice or malice, till having begun with studied ignorance and a premeditated levity, they at length realize the lie, and end indeed in a pitiable destitution of all intellectual power.

To many I shall appear to speak insolently, because the public, (for that is the phrase which has succeeded to "The Town," of the wits of the reign of Charles II.)—the public is at present accustomed to find itself appealed to as the infallible judge, and each reader complimented with excellencies, which if he really possessed, to what purpose is he a reader, unless, perhaps, to remind himself of his own superiority. I confess that I think widely different. I have not a deeper conviction on earth, than that the principles of taste, morals, and religion, which are taught in the commonest books of recent composition, are faise, injurious, and debasing. If these sentiments should be just, the consequences must be so important, that every well-educated man, who professes them in sincerity, deserves a patient hearing. He may fairly appeal even to those whose persuasions are most opposed to his own in the words of the Philosopher of Nola: "Ad isthæc quæso vos, qualiacunque primo videantur aspectu, adtendite, ut qui vobis forsan insanire videar, saltem quibus insaniam rationibus cognoscatis." What I feel deeply, freely will I utter. Truth is not detraction; and assuredly we do not hate him, to whom we tell the Truth. But with whomsoever we play the deceiver and flatterer, him at the bottom we despise. We are, indeed, under a necessity to conceive a vileness in him, in order to diminish the sense of the wrong we have committed, by the worthlessness of the object.

Through no excess of confidence in the strength of my talents, but with the deepest assurance of the justice of my cause, I bid defiance to all the flatterers of the folly and foolish self-opinion of the half-instructed many; to all who fill the air with festal explosions and false fires sent up against the lightnings of heaven, in order that the people may neither distinguish the warning flash nor hear the threatening thunder! How recently did we stand alone in the world? And though the one storm has blown over, another may even now be gathering: or

haply the hollow murmur of the earthquake within the bowels of our own commonweal may strike a direr terror than ever did the tempest of foreign warfare. Therefore, though the first quatrain is no longer applicable, yet the moral truth and the sublime exhortation of the following sonnet can never be superannuated. With it I conclude this number, thanking Heaven that I have communed with, honoured, and loved its wise and high-minded author. To know that such men are among us, is of itself an antidote against despondence.

Another year!-another deadly blow!
Another mighty empire overthrown!
And we are left, or shall be left, alone;
The last that dares to struggle with the foe.
'Tis well! from this day forward we shall know
That in ourselves our safety must be sought;
That by our own right hands it must be wrought;
That we must stand unpropt or be laid low.
O dastard! whom such foretaste doth not cheer!
We shall exult, if they, who rule the land,
Be men who hold its many blessings dear,
Wise, upright, valiant; not a venal band,
Who are to judge of danger which they fear,
And honour which they do not understand.

WORDSWORTEL

THE

LANDING-PLACE;

OR,

ESSAYS INTERPOSED FOR AMUSEMENT, RETROSPECT

AND PREPARATION.

MISCELLANY THE FIRST.

Etiam a Musis si quando animum paulisper abducamus, apud Musas nihilominus feriamy

at reclines quidem, at otiosas, at de his et illis inter se liberè colloquentes.

THE

ESSAY I.

O blessed letters! that combine in one
All ages past, and make one live with all:
By you we do confer with who are gone,
And the dead-living unto council call!
By you the unborn shall have communion
Of what we feel and what doth us befall.

Since writings are the veins, the arteries,
And undecaying life-strings of those hearts,
That still shall pant and still shall exercise
Their mightiest powers when nature none imparts:
And the strong constitution of their praise
Wear out the infection of distemper'd days.

DANIEL'S MUSOPHILUS.

HE intelligence, which produces or controls human actions and occurrences, is often represented by the Mystics under the name and notion of the supreme harmonist. I do not myself approve of these metaphors: they seem to imply a restlessness to understand that which is not among the appointed objects of our comprehension or discursive faculty. But certainly there is one excellence in good music, to which, without mysticism, we may find or make an analogy in the records of history. I allude to that sense of recognition, which accompanies our sense of novelty in the most original passages of a great composer. If we listen to a symphony of Cimarosa, the present strain still seems not only to recall, but almost to renew, some past movement, another and yet the same! Each present movement bringing back, as it were, and embodying the spirit of some melody that had gone before, anticipates and seems trying to overtake something that is to come: and the musician has reached the summit of his art, when, having thus modified the present by the past, he at the same time weds the past in the present to some prepared and corresponsive future. The auditor's thoughts and feelings move under the same influence: retrospection blends with anticipation, and hope and memory (a female Janus) become one power with a double aspect. A similar effect the reader may produce for himself in the pages of history, if he will be content to substitute an intellectual complacency for pleasurable sensation. The events and characters of one age, like the strains in music, recall those of another, and the variety by which each is individualized, not only gives a charm and poignancy to the resemblance, but likewise renders the whole more intelligible. Meantime ample room is afforded for the exercise both of the judgment and the fancy, in distinguishing cases of real resemblance from those of intentional imitation, the analogies of nature, revolving upon herself, from the masquerade figures of cunning and vanity.

It is not from identity of opinións, or from similarity of events and