marked by the severe practice of the higher virtues, fear, in his desponding moments, that he was destined to hopeless punishment. The latter was Cowper's case. But to show more clearly the influence of such views upon one of his organisation, let us listen to himself.

"My dear Friend,-

To the Rev. Mr. Newton.

"My device was intended to represent, not my own heart, but the heart of a Christian, mourning and yet rejoicing, pierced with thorns yet wreathed about with roses. I have the thorn without the rose. My briar is a wintry one, the flowers are withered, but the thorn remains."

Again, some months later:

"I have been lately more dejected than usual; more harassed by dreams in the night, and more deeply poisoned by them on the following day. I know not what is portended by an alteration for the worse, after eleven years of misery.”

The eleven years here, makes the time during which he believed himself hopelessly doomed to future punishment; and thus he continues, several years after :

"Adam's approach to the tree of life, after he had sinned, was not more effectually prohibited by the flaming sword, that turned every way, than mine to its great antitype has been now almost thirteen years, a short interval of two or three days, which passed about this time twelvemonth, alone excepted. For what reason it is that I am thus long excluded, if I am ever again to be admitted, is known to God only. I can say but this, that if he is still my father, this paternal severity has toward me been such as that I have reason to account it unexampled. * * * If the ladder of Christian experience reaches, as I suppose it does, to the very presence of God, it has nevertheless its foot in the abyss. And if Paul stood, as no doubt he did, on the topmost round of it, I have been standing, and still stand, on the lowest, in this thirteenth year that has passed since I'descended. In such a situation of mind, encompassed by the midnight of absolute despair, and a thousand times filled with unspeakable horror, I first commenced author."

In this same letter, he alludes to a fear expressed by some of his religious friends that he might be injured by the gaiety of some of the intelligent acquaintances who surrounded him!

"At present, however, I have no connections at which either you, I trust, or any who love me and wish me well, have occasion to VOL. 11.-27

*

conceive alarm. * * I do not know that there is among them a single person from whom I am likely to catch contamination."

A month later, he writes in the same strain of hopelessness

"The dealings of God with me are to myself utterly unintelligible. More than a twelvemonth has passed since I began to hope that, having walked the whole breadth of the bottom of this Red Sea, I was beginning to climb the opposite shore, and I prepared to sing the song of Moses. But I have been disappointed; those hopes have been blasted; those comforts have been wrested from me. I could not be so duped, even by the arch enemy himself, as to be made to question the Divine nature of them; but I have been made to believe that God gave them to me in derision, and took them away in vengeance."

A long letter follows, of exculpation from certain charges of living too gay a life, in which he anxiously assures his friend that riding out with Mrs. Unwin in the carriage and company of Lady Hesketh, has not led him into the dissipation his friends had feared. There can be but one feeling experienced by every sane mind towards those who would thus have deprived the unhappy poet of the little pleasure within his reach, and that is unutterable disgust.

Our space admits of no more extracts from that painful correspondence, nor do we suppose more to be necessary to convince the reader that whatever happiness others may have found in the tenets he cherished, to Cowper they brought nothing but gloom and misery.

Phrenologists perpetually urge divines, who possess peculiar opportunities for applying its benefits, to study the only true science of mind. Suppose the Rev. Mr. Newton, the poet's friend and spiritual counsellor, could have been thus enlightened, and consequently been able to detect the peculiarities of Cowper's organisation, its excesses and defects, would he have responded as he did to those gloomy, morbid, hopeless letters? When the poet's fears at length extended even unto the horrid apprehension of eternal punishment-when his overwrought Conscientiousness magnified his venial offences into crimes too deep for the infinite mercy of heaven-could any divine acquainted, as every divine ought to be, with the difference between healthy and diseased manifestations, have balanced-according to all the cold niceties of that merciless creed, which is the offspring of an exterminating spirit, savouring much more of man's destructiveness than of the even-handed justice of God-all the probabilities and improbabilities of such a destiny for his friend, and that friend one who had never injured a human being-no, not a particle of organised matter-one who would not have doomed a Nero or a Caligula to the

fate which, with so much self-abasement, he dreaded for himself? Would he have played and tampered with those insane horrors, instead of appealing to that intellect which, even in detailing them, evinced its strength, and to that sense of justice, never blind nor without charity, but when beholding his own frailties-instead of demonstrating, by a force of reason which his unhappy friend could not have resisted, the total impossibility of his ever suffering the frightful punishment he so much feared, but which, in the whole course of his sinless life, he could not have incurred? But the Rev. Mr. Newton was without light; the language which the Author of man has impressed upon the dome of thought had not then been interpreted aright, and the inner mysteries of the sanctuary were yet unsolved.

The melancholy poet, but too prone to observe the darker shades of life, required society the opposite to that which Olney or his religious associations furnished. And the attentive reader of his history cannot fail to discover, in the salutary effects which ever followed his occasional intercourse with strong and healthy minds, the absurdity of that philosophy which, by a species of homœopathic treatment, would cure with what created the disease-would substitute the base for the antidote-and attempt to dissipate the mists by extinguishing the sun.

During the five or more years when he was engaged upon the translation of Homer, his health was unusually sound, and his mind proportionately vigorous; but after that work was completed, and all proper excitement withdrawn from his faculties, he unwisely returned again to theological mysticism. His intellect began to wander, and once more became thoroughly overcast; but now, unfortunately, with clouds and thick darkness no more to be completely dispelled, and whence he at last emerged, the dim phantom of himself, with his physical energies utterly sapped, his mind emasculate and shatteredthe unhappy victim of religious mania.

ARTICLE VI.

The Philosophy of Human Life: being an investigation of the great Elements of Life-the Power that Acts-the Will that directs the Action-and the Accountability or Sanctions that influence the formation of Volitions; together with Reflections adapted to the physical, political, popular, moral, and religious natures of man. By AMOS DEAN, Professor of Medical Jurisprudence in the Albany Medical College. Published by Marsh, Capen, Lyon, & Co. Boston: 12 mo. pp. 300.

It is highly gratifying to observe that the number of works published on phrenology is rapidly increasing. This fact shows that not only the advocates of the science are zealously engaged in multiplying their efforts in its behalf, but also that a strong conviction exists in the community generally of the truth and importance of the principles it involves. It is stated, on good authority, that a greater number of works on phrenology have been published and sold in Great Britain for several years past, than on any other one subject, with the exception of religion. And we can see no satisfactory reason why this may not yet be the case in the United States. As an evidence of this, there have been published within the past year, five or six new books by our own countrymen, besides new editions called for of several foreign works on the science.

Among the former, may be mentioned the one heading this article. Its extended title will convey to the reader some idea of the nature and character of the work. Its author was one of the first in the United States to espouse publicly the new science. Nearly ten years since, Mr. Dean delivered a course of lectures on phrenology before an association of young men in the city of Albany. These lectures were afterwards published in a small volume, under the title of "Elements of Phrenology," which met with quite a favourable reception. Mr. Dean has also contributed several interesting articles to the Edinburgh, as well as to the American Phrenological Journal. And we congratulate the friends of the science in the reception of this, his last and most valuable contribution on the "Philosophy of Human Life." Our only regret is, that we cannot possibly do the work justice within the small space in which the limits of a periodical like this necessarily confine us.

The topics discussed in the present work, are among the most difficult and abstruse that have ever come before the human mind. Perhaps it may be safe to say, that no other subjects whatever have

excited as much controversy, or enlisted more talent, than those of Will, Free Agency, and Human Responsibility. And the principles involved in them are still very far from being settled, or even a small share of the difficulties that beset inquirers on these subjects, from being removed. The functions of the brain must be correctly and thoroughly understood by all leading writers on mental science, before these points can be generally settled; and even then, large numbers in the community will be entirely incapable of understanding the philosophy of Free Agency and Human Responsibility. But the past history, and the present state of mental science, however, indicate that the time is not far distant when all views of mind, which can have any permanent influence, or command any tolerable share of attention and respect, must be based on a knowledge of the structure and functions of the brain. The number of eminent men who are compelled to admit this fact, is rapidly increasing, and it is the part of wisdom and self-interest for all engaged in the study of the philosophy of the mind, to examine the facts and principles adduced on this subject, as they may be found collected and recorded in various phrenological works.

The work before us on the "Philosophy of Human Life," is based strictly on phrenological principles, though the technical language of the science is not generally used. The author commences by defining the number and nature of the primitive faculties of the mind, and then describes, in a very clear and satisfactory manner, what is understood by the term "power"—a term which has elicited no small share of controversy, and been greatly mystified by the metaphysicians. It is utterly impossible, in our present state of existence, to have any clear and definite conceptions of the nature of mental power, if we consider the mind only abstractly, and perfectly independent of the body.

Mr. Dean here devotes forty pages to a consideration of the Will. His views on this point are decidedly ingenious and philosophical, being well arranged and clearly presented. He alludes to the erroneous views which some have entertained on the subject in the following manner :

"The will appears to have been considered, by many, not as originating from the mind, or as forming a part of it, but as introduced into it. They seem to have viewed it as a separate, independent agent, finding an appropriate employment in the coining of decisions or determinations which the mind and material organisation are best occupied in carrying into effect. This may be inferred from their speaking of the self-determining power of the will, a power which certainly can be exercised in no other way than by an act of the will. This act, like every other, must have a cause; and if the will be self-determining, can be caused