thousand slight and harmonising touches, the merit and the effect of which are equally imperceptible to vulgar eyes; and a thousand indications of the continual presence of that poetical spirit-which can only be recognised by those who are, in some measure, under its influence, and have prepared themselves. to receive it, by worshipping meekly at the shrine which it inhabits.

In the exposition of these, there is room enough for originality, and more room than Mr. Hazlitt has yet filled. In many points, however, he has acquitted himself excellently; particularly in the development of the principal characters with which Shakspeare has peopled the fancies of all English readers; but principally, we think, in the delicate sensibility with which he has traced, and the natural eloquence with which he has pointed out, that familiarity with beautiful forms and images that eternal recurrence to what is sweet or majestic, in the simple aspect of nature-that indestructible love of flowers and odours, and dews and clear waters, and soft airs and sounds, and bright skies, and woodland solitudes, and moonlight bowers, which are the material elements of poetry; and that fine sense of their undefinable relation to mental emotion, which is its essence and vivifying soul, and which, in the midst of Shakspeare's most busy and atrocious scenes, falls like gleams of sunshine on rocks and ruins; contrasting with all that is rugged and repulsive, and reminding us of the existence of purer and brighter elements, which he alone has poured out from the richness of his own mind, without effort or restraint; and contrived to intermingle with the play of all the passions, and the vulgar course of this world's affairs, without deserting, for an instant, the proper business of the scene, or appearing to pause or digress from love of ornament or need of repose; he alone, who, when the subject requires it, is always keen, and worldly, and practical; and who yet, without changing his hand, or stopping his course, scatters around him, as he goes, all sounds and shapes of sweetness, and conjures up landscapes of immortal fragrance and freshness, and peoples them with spirits of glorious aspect and attractive grace; and is a thousand times more full of imagery and splendour than those who, for the sake of such qualities, have shrunk back from the delineation of character or passion, and declined the discussion of human duties and cares. More full of wisdom, and ridicule, and sagacity, than all the moralists and satirists in existence, he is more wild, airy, and inventive, and more pathetic and fantastic, than all

the poets of all regions and ages of the world; and has all those elements so happily mixed up in him, and bears his high faculties so temperately, that the most severe reader cannot complain of him for want of strength or of reason, nor the most sensitive for defect of ornament or ingenuity. Every thing in him is in unmeasured abundance and unequalled perfection; but every thing so balanced and kept in subordination, as not to jostle, or disturb, or take the place of another. The most exquisite poetical conceptions, images, and descriptions, are given with such brevity, and introduced with such skill, as merely to adorn, not to load, the sense they aocompany. Although his sails are purple and perfumed, and his prow of beaten gold, they waft him on his voyage more rapidly and directly, than if they had been composed of baser materials. All his excellences, like those of Nature herself, are thrown out together; and, instead of interfering with, support and recommend each other. His flowers are not tied up in garlands, nor his fruits crushed into baskets, but they spring living from the soil, in all the dew and freshness of youth; while the graceful foliage in which they lurk, and the ample branches, the rough and vigorous stems, and the wide-spreading roots on which they depend, are present along with them, and share, in their places, the equal care of their creator.

XII.-ON WAR.-Dr. Channing.

PUBLIC war is not an evil which stands alone, or has nothing in common with other evils. It belongs to a great family. It may be said that society, through its whole extent, is deformed by war. Even in families, we see jarring interests and passions, invasions of right, resistance of authority, violence, force; and, in common life, how continually do we see men struggling with one another for property or distinction-injuring one another in word or deed-exasperated against one another by jealousies, neglects, and mutual reproach! All this is essentially war; but war restrained, hemmed in, disarmed, by the opinions and institutions of society. To limit its ravages, to guard reputation, property, and life, society has instituted governments, erected the tribunal of justice, clothed the legislature with the power of enacting equal laws, put the sword into the hands of the magistrate, and pledged its whole force to its support. Human wisdom has been manifested in nothing more conspicuously than in civil institutions for repressing war, retaliation, and

passionate resort to force, among the citizens of the same state. But here it has stopped. Government, which is ever at work to restrain the citizen at home, often lets him loose, and arms him with fire and sword, against other communities, sends out hosts for desolation and slaughter, and concentrates the whole energies of a people in the work of spreading misery and death. Government, the peace officer at home, breathes war abroad, organises it into a science, reduces it to a system, makes it a trade, and applauds it, as if it were the most honourable work of nations. Strange, that the wisdom which has so successfully put down the wars of individuals, has never been inspired and emboldened, to engage in the task of bringing to an end the more gigantic crimes and miseries of public war! What gives these miseries pre-eminence among human woes-what should compel us to look on them with peculiar terror-is, not their awful amount, but their origin, their source. They are miseries inflicted by man on man. They spring from depravity of will. They bear the impress of cruelty, of hardness of heart. The distorted features, writhing frames, and shrieks of the wounded and dying-these are not the chief horrors of war; they sink into unimportance, compared with the infernal passions which work this woe. Death is a light evil, when not joined with crime. Had the countless millions destroyed by war been swallowed up by floods or yawning earthquakes, we should look back awestruck but submissive, on the mysterious Providence which had thus fulfilled the mortal sentence, originally passed on the human race. But that man, born of woman, bound by ties of brotherhood to man, and commanded-by an inward law and the voice of God-to love and do good, should, through selfishness, pride, or revenge, inflict these agonies, and shed these torrents of human blood;—here is an evil which combines, with exquisite suffering, fiendish guilt. All other evils

fade before it.

But to whom

The idea of honour is associated with war. does the honour belong? If to any, certainly not to the mass of the people, but to those who are particularly engaged in it. The mass of a people who stay at home, and hire others to fight-who sleep in their warm beds, and hire others to sleep on the cold and damp earth-who sit at their well-spread boards, and hire others to take the chance of starving-who nurse the slightest hurt in their own bodies, and hire others to expose themselves to mortal wounds, and to linger in comfortless hospitals-certainly this mass reaps little honour from

war. The honour belongs to those who are immediately engaged in it. Let me ask, then, What is the chief business of war? It is to destroy human life, to mangle the limbs, to gash and hew the body, to plunge the sword into the heart of a fellow-creature, to strew the earth with bleeding frames, and to trample them under foot with horses' hoofs. It is to batter down and burn cities, to turn fruitful fields into deserts, to level the cottage of the peasant, and the magnificent abode of the opulent; to scourge nations with famine, to multiply widows and orphans. Are these honourable deeds? Were you called to name exploits worthy of demons, would you not naturally select such as these? Grant that a necessity for them may exist: it is a dreadful necessity, such as a good man must recoil from, with instinctive horror; and though it may exempt them from guilt, it cannot turn them into glory. We have thought that it was honourable to heal, to save, to mitigate pain, to snatch the sick and sinking from the jaws of death. We have placed among the reverend benefactors of the human race, the discoverers of arts which alleviate human sufferings, which prolong, comfort, adorn, and cheer human life; and if these arts are honourable, where is the glory of multiplying and aggravating tortures and death?

XIII. TO HIS GRACE THE DUKE OF GRAFTON.—Junius.

My lord, if Nature had given you an understanding to keep pace with the wishes and principles of your heart, she would have made you, perhaps, the most formidable minister that ever was employed under a limited monarch, to accomplish the ruin of a free people. When neither the feelings of shame, the reproaches of conscience, nor the dread of punishment, form any bar to the designs of a minister, the people would have too much reason to lament their condition, if they did not find some resource in the weakness of his understanding. We owe it to the bounty of Providence, that the completest depravity of the heart is sometimes strangely united with a confusion of the mind; which counteracts the most favourite principles, and makes the same man treacherous without art, and a hypocrite without deceiving. The measures, for instance, in which your Grace's activity has been chiefly exerted, as they were adopted without skill, should have been conducted with more than common dexterity. But truly, my lord, the execution has been as gross as the design. By one decisive step, you have confounded the intrigues of opposition, and silenced the clamours of faction. You have now brought

the merits of your administration to an issue, on which every man, of the narrowest capacity, may determine for himself. With such a cause as yours, it is not sufficient that you have the Court at your devotion, unless you can find means to corrupt or intimidate the Jury. The collective body of the people form that jury, and from their decision there is but one appeal.

Whether you have talents to support you, at a crisis of such difficulty and danger, should long since have been considered. Judging truly of your disposition, you have, perhaps, mistaken the extent of your capacity. Good faith and folly have so long been received as synonymous terms, that the reverse of the proposition has grown into credit, and every villain fancies himself a man of abilities. It is the apprehension of your friends, my lord, that you have drawn some hasty conclusion of this sort; and that a partial reliance upon your moral character has betrayed you beyond the depth of your understanding. We have seen a system of government which may well be called a reign of experiments. Parties of all denominations have been employed and dismissed. But there were certain services to be performed, which your predecessors in office had the wisdom, or the virtue, not to undertake. The moment this refractory spirit was discovered, their disgrace was determined. A submissive administration was at length gradually collected from the deserters of all parties, interests, and connexions: and nothing remained but to find a leader for these gallant, well-disciplined troops. Stand forth, my lord, for thou art the man!

What is the merit of all the sacrifices you have made to your own unfortunate ambition? Was it for this you abandoned your earliest friendships, the warmest connexions of your youth, and all those honourable engagements by which you once solicited, and might have acquired, the esteem of your country? Have you secured no recompense for such a waste of honour? Unhappy man! what party will receive the common deserter of all parties? Without a client to flatter, without a friend to console you, you must now retire into a dreadful solitude. At the most active period of life, you must quit the busy scene, and conceal yourself from the world, if you would hope to save the wretched remains of a ruined reputation. The vices operate like age-bring on disease before its time, and, in the prime of youth, leave the character broken and exhausted.

If I were personally your enemy, I might pity and forgive