waterfall in the neighborhood, of which he had often heard; and on his return he exclaimed, "I now understand the thing, and have got some ideas on the subject with which I should not like to part." It seems to us that in this simple incident we have a key to the character of his mind, and an explanation of his whole literary and public life. He could not hear what others said without interest; he could not know that there was any thing which he had not seen, which he could see, and which was worth seeing, but he would run to look at it: when he got near, he did not merely glance at it, but he inspected it, he comprehended it, and from it he gathered ideas, the value and satisfaction of which he himself entirely appreciated. He would understand even a waterfall; and from the spray and the foam it made in the stream, from the mystic melody of its constant murmur, from the sunbeams that quivered on its surface, as on the surface of a moving mirror, or from the surrounding scenery which it adorned, he would get ideas. More than vague impressions were made upon his soul by all these things. They were so many forms of intelligence; they had the significance of books and the dearness of friends to him; and he could not leave them till he compre hended them. And so it was with every thing which came before his eye. His writings, therefore, are rather like descriptions of life and records of experience, than mere theories of social systems, or balances of opposing creeds. He saw; he thought on what he saw; and he has given to the world the results of his observations, in the consistency, definiteness, and fulness of the reflections they suggested. He was a meditator. We have spoken of his imagination. In truth, however, he made but a subordinate use of this faculty. It served him in his interpret ation of what he beheld, but he beheld so much, and with such reverential interest, that he had neither the opportunity nor the necessity of attempting new creations. To him the universe was infinite in its compass, and was crowded with objects. It had no limits and no vacancies. To know what it was and what it contained, was to know all things. His imagination was but the servant of his curiosity-his curiosity was but the agent of his knowledge-his knowledge was but the minister of his awe. If to form ideal systems, and to elaborate original theories of science and of life, constitute the philosopher, he certainly could not lay claim to that character. If to invest nature with a obe she never wears, and to attribute to her meanings she does not convey, constitute the poet, certainly he was no poet. He was neither philosopher nor poet. He was too practical for the latter, and too spiritual for the former. He read phenomena, but he plainly read them, neither reducing them to the requirements of a system he had himself invented, nor expanding them to proportions they would not naturally support. He was too much of a poet to be a philosopher, and too much of a philosopher ever to be a poet. The philosopher interprets nature and life by the faculty of the understanding; the poet by the faculty of the imagination. Foster saw nature as it was, and he would speak of it only as he found it. As far as he comprehended it, he was clear; and when it became mysterious, he confessed the mystery in words of adoration. Therefore, he supplemented nature with no suppositions, either of fancy or of mechanical inference. He consolidated his raptures by intelligence, and illuminated his intelligence by fine reflection. The arrogance of the understanding and of the imagination, he equally checked; he sought to know, and when he knew, he felt accordingly. He knew much; and he felt deeply. The philosopher has no individuality of his own. He sees nature apart from himself. It is all objective. With the poet, it is just the contrary. He has a life vast, ramified, glorious as the life he sees all around him. He knows nothing but himself; and in himself all he knows is included. Experience is his inspiration, even though the universe be his theme. Here all is subjective. Foster felt the burden of immense subjectivity. He was conscious of profound individuality. But he did not absorb the universe, so to speak; he conversed with it, and treasured up in his heart what it told him. It was to him as a friend with whom he had communion. It honored him with many confidences, "for the secret of the Lord is with them that fer him." He realized a true love and sympathy from its mighty soul. His emotions were very deep as he held his high spiritual fellowship; but it was a fellowship, not a solitude. There was a being, a power, a stupendous system, outside himself, and on this he gazed; with this he conversed; in silence he spake unto it; in silence he heard its sombre and its grand responses. It was not a mere self-worship, that strange, pensive, absorbed life of his; but a true worship of the Infinite of which he was but a portion; but of which he was a portion; a worship, however, so true that it brought actual power, and peace, and won dering, trembling, aspiring enjoyment to his heart. Mr. Foster's observations of human nature were as constant and as keen as his observations of "inanimate" nature, (to use a very stupid and incorrect phrase.) He saw into the hearts of men. He read the history of his race, with a fearful application of its lessons. The deceit and ferocity and selfishness of this world-oh, it was no foreign, remote, indifferent thing to him! And he saw it all around him. He found it within himself. The picture was very dark! Groans and sighs, and oaths of fierce malevolence, and shouts of horrid blasphemy-tears where there was no remorse, shame where no pity, distress where no sympathy, prayers where no faith, persecutions where no zeal, anathemas where no intelligence-butcheries with out provocation, tyrannies without majesty, revolutions without patriotism-friendships without esteem, marriages without love, commerce without honesty-flattery spoken to delude, and yet received with gratification candor but the mask of fouler dissimulation -hypocrisy in worship, ingratitude in prosperity, slavish superstition when death approached-such was life! And on this life he looked, not as we look on tragedies at a theatre, with an excitement indulged as pas: time, but as the veritable being, doing, and suffering of this human race of which he was a member. Well might a shadow of melancholy steal over his spirit! And what was there to relieve him of this sadness? Christianity? The Church? Alas! his estimate of the evil is not less exaggerated than his estimate of the cure. Hear what he says in a letter to his friend, Dr. Harris, on the subject of missions to the heathen: I hope, indeed may assume, that you are of a cheerful temperament; but are you not sometimes invaded by the darkest visions and reflections while casting your view over the scene of human existence, from the beginning to this hour? To me it appears a most mysteriously awful economy, overspread by a lurid and dreadful shade. I pray for the piety to maintain a humble submission of thought and feeling to the wise and righteous Disposer of all existence. But to see a nature created in purity, qualified for perfect and endless felicity, but ruined at the very origin, by a disaster devolving fatally on all the race-to see it, in an early age of the world, estranged from truth, from the love and fear of its Creator, from that, therefore, without which existence is to be deplored-abandoned to all evil till swept away by a deluge the renovated race revolting into idolatry and iniquity, and spreading downward through ages in darkness, wickedness, and misery-no Divine dispensation to enlighten and reclaim it, [Nov., except for one small section, and that section itself a no less flagrant proof of the desperate corruption of the nature-the ultimate grand remedial visitation, Christianity, laboring in a very perverted from its purpose into darkness and difficult progress and limited extension, and soon superstition, for a period of a thousand yearsat the present period known and even nominally acknowledged by very greatly the minority of the race, the mighty mass remaining prostrate under the infernal dominion of which countless generations of their ancestors have been the slaves and in the Christian nations strangers to the vital the victims-a deplorable majority of the people power of Christianity, and a large proportion directly hostile to it; and even the institutions pretended to be for its support and promotion being baneful to its virtue-its progress in the work of conversion, in even the most favored part of the world, distanced by the progressive increase fearful extent if we take the world at large) the of the population, so that even there (but to a disproportion of the faithful to the religious is continually increasing the sum of all these melancholy facts being, that thousands of millions have passed, and thousands every day are passing out of the world, in no state of fitness for a pure and happy state elsewhere-oh, it is a most confounding and appalling contemplation ! Indeed, it is. There may be another pic- It blasphemes God, whilst it maligns man- kind. Its pleasure is to give others pain. Instead of administering a salutary reproof to the wayward, it taunts him into persistency, and then mocks his folly. Its weapon is satire, its habit scandal. It leers, and grins, and croaks. It is heartless, remorseless, hopeless. A spirit so utterly repulsive and fiendish never tainted the breast or tortured the experience of the illustrious essayist. He was sad, but it was with compassion. He had fears, but they warmed his generosity and stimulated his zeal. The shade of despair sometimes covered his soul; but he sat down in his unaffected woe, and committed himself, his fellows, and the world, with all the solemnity of love, to the Maker and Governor of all things. Mercy was his bane, if any thing divine can be the bane of man. He was too sensitive and tender. So far from doing injustice to his race, it was his dread that justice must be done to it. Hence his revulsion from the doctrine of eternal punishments. Never was a soul more scrupulously honest or more thoughtfully generous than this man's. He would pay more for any little article that he purchased than was asked for it, if he thought the competition of the market or the expedients of poverty had reduced its price below its value. He never saw want without making a sacrifice to relieve it; he never witnessed agony without himself enduring a pang. It was misery that made him miserable; and the deep abiding gloom which hung about his spirit was but the response of a fine piety to a mysterious and inexplicable Providence. He was as good as he was great; and his goodness was told not in tears alone, for he toiled, and suffered, and prayed for men. | away neither hours, words, nor feelings; but he so occupied attention as to delight and entertain his auditors, whilst every syllable he spoke was adapted to purify and sweeten their coming days. True, he could rebuke with severity the wicked, and satirize with keenness the foolish; and young ladies dreaded his insinuations against their vanity. and their waste of time; but the intelligent ever found him instructive, whilst the holy never thought him dull. The reflectiveness and sobriety of his nature are wonderfully developed in his writings. Those essays will be read for ages, and whenever read will be admired for the serenity, discrimination, reverentialness, and sanctity of the spirit that breathes through them. How he seems to gaze on mind and watch its workings! And yet how delightfully informal and unofficial are his reports! With what earnestness, and yet with what repose he pursues his theme! His range of inquiry is as comprehensive as his subject will allow; and his analysis is as complete and as clear as the reader can desire. He He Indeed, great injustice has been done to the character of our hero. If he exaggerated the evils of the world, his depression has been greatly exaggerated. He has been thought morose and morbidly sentimental. To the peculiarity of their substance their On the contrary, he was eminently genial in great popularity may, without doubt, be his fellowships and practical in his reflections. chiefly attributed. But their more essential His standard of human virtue was high, but characteristics are adequately sustained by he aspired himself to reach it, and the very their artistic and literary excellence. We least that can be said of him is, that he never have his own testimony that his compowantonly desecrated its dignity. Those se- sitions are the fruits of patient labor and a lect circles in which he felt "at home" can most scrupulous taste. That he had consitestify with what exuberant delight he min- derable ambition, and definite desires, as a istered to their cheerfulness; and though he writer, we may gather from an exclamation never sanctioned frivolity, he made his pre-made by him in his early life. Speaking of sence any thing but a bore, even to the gayest of his companions. His humor was not very prolific, but his intelligence was always refreshing, and his musings were radiant with benevolence and rich in wisdom. He threw certain forms of expression common in those days, he said, that if possible he would expunge them from every book by act of parliament, and concluded his protest by the words, "We want to put a new face upon soul. There is all the serenity and all the strength; all the profundity and all the transparency; all the caution and all the confidence of his nature in his compositions. Their chasteness is never soiled, their dignity never degraded, their music never broken. They want in irregularity, if in any thing. A little Saxon roughness, and occasional impetuosity, might make them more memorable; for in style it is as nowhere else, imperfection is a charm and an advantage. things." As a writer on religion, he is remarkably free from the common theological technicalities of his time, and from all cant phrases. Speaking more generally, he is original without affectation, elaborate without redundancy, strong without vulgarity, correct without tameness, smooth without monotony, and, above all, remarkably clear. He has no eccentricities which invite imitation or occasion disgust. He is classical and yet not pedantic. He seems to have formed his own style, in respectful independence of the There are many other features of this usual models. And we suspect that he will good man's mind and life on which we had never be a model for young writers. He is intended to dwell; but our space is occutoo correct for their patience, and too natural pied; and we must conclude by commendfor their vanity. And yet he may be studied ing to all our readers his works and his biowith immense advantage by the literary as-graphy; for they are mines of spiritual and pirant, for few writers are at once so free literary wealth; and he who digs treasures from magniloquence, and so true in majesty; thence will find that which will not corrupt so superior to passion, and yet so mighty in nor perish in the using. From Sharpe's Magazine. A BIRD'S-EYE VIEW OF THE CROATS. BY MISS A. M. BIRKBECK. As the struggle for the preservation of the Crescent advances, the countries lying within its portentous course gradually assume an importance which, notwithstanding their remoteness, and slight relation with the civilized world, renders them, for the moment, objects of research and unceasing speculation. Those races particularly command our attention who live nearest to the spreading conflagration, and who, from their unsettled political condition and ardent desire for independence, are the most likely to ignite, and change, over-night, from mere spectators to the most active participators in the drama. A fleeting glance at the map will show that none are more exposed to this contact than the nationalities along the southern boundaries of Austria, or, more properly, of Hungary, most of them having for opposite neighbors a portion of their own respective tribes, who dwell in the northern provinces of the Ottoman empire, from the Adriatic Sea as far as Bukovina. Thus we find, in the moun tains running parallel to the Adriatic coast, and on the banks of the Save, Drave, and the Lower Danube, opposite to Turkish Croatia, Bosnia, and Servia, various Sclavonian tribes, the bulk consisting of Croats and Servians, the reluctant and discontented supports of Austrian despotism. Farther on, in an easterly direction, come the Wallachians, the degraded descendants of the great Romans. They inhabit the steep and rugged declivities and valleys of the southern Carpathians, and, in spite of their very abject and demoralized state, would fain establish a DracoRoman empire, in conjunction with their brethren living on Turkish territory. Their nearest neighbors are the Saxons, a peaceful and industrious people, yet, since the year 1849, greatly incensed against the Hapsburgs, owing to the summary abolishment of their ancient immunities. The last link in this motley chain of races is formed by the Szeklers, who are of Magyar origin, and the oldest settlers in Transylvania, renowned for their love of liberty and martial spirit, as well as their hatred to the Austrian rule. They i tions, belong to the Roman Catholic faith; occupy several ridges of the Carpathians, opposite to Moldavia, We will here call the attention of the reader to the most numerous of the border races-the Croats. When the Hungarian horsemen first watered their steeds, a thousand years since, in the floods of the Drave, they found the ancestors of the Croats already established there, forming part of a Sclavonian confederation, which, under the protectorate of the Greek emperors, extended likewise over Bosnia and Servia. But the aggression of their protectors soon compelled the Croats to curry favor with the Hungarians, who not alone freed them from the yoke of the Greeks, but admitted them as well to all the municipal and political immunities which they themselves enjoyed. As long as Hungary possessed her own innate sovereigns, Croatia, under the ægis of a common independence, was one of her most thriving provinces, having been sufficiently shielded, by a strong and liberal government, against the attacks of all external enemies. A long series of calamities for both countries commenced on the accession of the Hapsburgs to the Hungarian throne. Under the misrule of that race, Croatia was exposed to incessant inroads from the Turks, and in several districts entirely depopulated. In order to repeople the land, Leopold I., towards the end of the seventeenth century, invited all the outlawswho had formed themselves into organized bands along the borders, alternately ravaging both the Turkish and Hungarian territories to settle there for the protection of the latter. This invitation was accepted by a great number of these desperadoes, to whom the king assigned a large tract of waste border-land, severing it, politically, for ever from the mother-country, at the same time subjecting those savage tribes to strict military regulations. Thus the foundation was laid for a system which, though salutary in its first results, at a later period proved highly detrimental to civil freedom. This system was arbitrarily extended over the entire southern and eastern frontier of Hungary; and when there were no longer any infidels to contend with, the arms of the Grenzers were turned against all the popular barriers that obstructed the progress of absolutism. Croatia, including the provinces called Sclavonia and Syrnium, has a territorial extent of 3,250 square miles, with nearly 2,000,000 inhabitants, who, with few excep the Protestants being, by a special statute, prohibited from settling within the precincts of those provinces. The land is divided, politically, into two parts, the larger comprising the military borders, and the smaller the provincial territories. These are again subdivided, the former into eleven regimental districts, under the command of two military boards, and the latter into six counties, each of which, at least prior to 1849, was governed by freely-elected civil authorities. The entire land is intersected by many mountain ranges, which, to the south, rise to a considerable height, ever and anon broken by wild, barren glens, yet, towards the rivers Drave, Save, and the Lower Danube, sloping down into softer forms, clad with vines and luxuriant foliage; the beech and oak forests affording abundant provision for countless herds of swine. Here and there the ground is perfectly level, and the land extremely fertile. Hence, while the mountaineers have to contend with many disadvantages of a rough climate and sterile soil, the lowlanders enjoy the almost spontaneous blessings of nature. Amongst their various fruits, the late plums, both for quantity and delicacy, deserve mention. Every house and farm possesses large plots of plum trees, and even the roads for miles are skirted by them. From their abundant produce, a fine kind of brandy, slivovicza, is distilled. The red wines of Syrniam are likewise celebrated for sweetness and flavor, the Roman emperor Probus having, in the third century, first introduced the growth of vines there, near the town of Mitrovitz. The Sclavonian tribes of Croatia are as different in appearance, character, and manners, as the country they inhabit, and the occupations they pursue. The mountaineers have lofty stature, dark complexions, fiery eyes, long plaited hair, and black bushy beards. They are still a set of uncultivated savages, sullen, passionate, and revengeful; redoubted in time of war less for true valor than for ferocity and love of plunder. Baron Trenck, the leader of the famous corps of Croatian volunteers called Pandurs, recruited part of his terrible bands from these mountains, and led them, during the Austrian wars of succession under Maria Theresa, against the empire. Clad in Turkish fashion, with the fez and loose red mantle, and carrying the horse-tail and crescent, instead of colors, they went forth, leaving a cursed memory wherever they set foot, from the dire crimes they committed on defenceless people. |