"Stand still, you ever moving spheres of heav'n, Whose influence hath allotted death and hell! [Faustus-Act 5, Scene last. Or those exquisite lines of Shakspeare, in his address to Sleep. "Oh Sleep-oh gentle Sleep Nature's soft nurse-how have I frighted thee? Why rather, sleep, liest thou in smoky cribs Upon uneasy pallets stretching thee, And hush'd with buzzing night-flies to thy slumber, &c." But for some redeeming passages in Jonson's masques, and occasionally in his plays, we should say that his lines, though they measure to the finger, are, at the same time, so impracticable, from their defective accentuation, that they can scarcely be esteemed as any thing better than an abrupt and stilted prose. Another reason may be found in the selection of his subjects. He was fond of painting humourous affectations, not so much man, as his fantastic external form; when this form had changed, the merit of the delineation was lost; when he had swept away, by the mere force of his satire, the swarms of ephemeral insects, his fame as a delineator, expired in the moment of his triumph! It were almost as idle to attempt to interest posterity by the description of these exploded affectations, as by sketching the ever varying forms and fantastic outlines of a summer cloud. Had Jonson laboured in another mine, he never had experienced the neglect of mankind. Had he developed the passions instead of the humours, he had touched a chord which would have found a response in every human bosom, and spoken a language that would have been understood throughout all time; but he seemed to disdain all other appeal than to the understanding and love and pity, the fruitful sources of dramatic interest, have scarce a resting-place in his scenes. His forte was comedy: yet his comic muse was but little akin to gaiety. He had nothing of that light and easy raillery which we admire in Molière; nor did he possess the art of that master spirit, to develope, by a few slight and occasional strokes, while the action rolled along, the characters of his dramatic persons. Jonson, on the contrary, was too apt to suffer the action to languish, while he laboriously and tediously indulged his favourite talent for characterization. His comedy is stained with seriousness; it has a secret affinity to tragedy: his brow seldom relaxes, even when he smiles; and we are constantly expecting to see him fling aside the visor of the comedian, and brandish the scourge of the satirist. ART. V.-Physiologie des Passions, ou nouvelle doctrine des Sentimens Moraux. Par J. L. ALIBERT, Chevalier de Plusieurs ordres, Premier Medecin Ordinaire du Roi, &c. &c. A Paris. Seconde edition. 2 vols. 8vo. 1827. MAN should be considered as a reasonable being, placed upon the earth in subjection to the inexorable law of time, and continually at the mercy of the prejudices and illusions of life. It is only by long and painful meditation upon the great enigma of existence, that we can be able to assign to the body and to the spirit the various functions that belong to each, only after long and habitual observation that we can fathom the laws of conscience, which are yet as natural, as inherent in the "sensible system" (systeme sensible) as the impressions of sight, hearing, taste, or smell. "When we write the history of the eagle," says a philosophical author, "we dwell upon the height to which he soars-the wonderful compass of his sight-his extraordinary celerity of motion in pursuit of those desires which God has given him. When we speak of man, we should dwell most upon the powers of his understanding-his means of self-preservation and happiness-his natural inclination to love his kind, to extend the circle of his relations-his power of expressing his inclinations and his will." But above all, it is in the midst of civilized communities, where these various influences chiefly prevail, that the philosopher should study the laws of moral physiology. In physical researches what could we derive from the investigation of organs which have never been exercised? The eye, that no ray of light has ever reached-the ear which has never thrilled to the vibrations of sound, could they reveal facts satisfactory to the observer? Properly to estimate the flux and reflux of the passions, we must consider man in all states and conditions, in all ranks, in the midst of all the interests which agitate him, surrounded by all the conflicting influences of which he is unceasingly the subject. We should observe him in all his struggles with his equals or with himself. We should mark when he is, by turns, the conqueror and the slave of his sensualities; at one time drawn by sympathy, at another repelled by hatred, at one time purified by his virtues, at another brutalized by his enjoyments. In a state of war, in a state of peace, we should analyse with circumspection all that troubles, all that cheers, all that afflicts, all that consoles him. M. Alibert has no faith in the perfectibility of our nature. Throughout all countries and ages, man will be seen to incline alternately towards civilization and barbarism; human nature has its periods of splendour and eclipse; what is said of the primitive condition of man, he thinks, savours of reverie and hypothesis "could we examine human nature up to the very sources of its existence, we should find that if it had not always the same acquirements, it has nevertheless had the same inclinations and capabilities." "La méthode est le rameau d'or qui nous conduit dans les profondeurs incommensurables de la pensée; on peut la comparer à ces talismans que les poètes donnent aux héros pour les retirer des embarras les plus périlleux. La vie d'ailleurs est si courte pour l'étude de la philosophie, qu'il faut mettre un grand prix à tout ce qui nous abrége les procédés de notre raison.-Prel. Con. p. 10. It is not the study of his material organs which will lead us to the knowledge of man. In the deep recesses of the soul alone must we seek for the sublime principles of the philosophy of human nature. There rest the elements of his moral being, the immutable principles of his duties. Man is the only creature who is capable of self-examination, who assists and improves by reflection and self-discipline the operations of his understanding, who can contemplate the current of his own thoughts, present and past, as they flow over the tablet of his memory (to use an image of our author) like the waves of the sea. He is the only living creature capable of self-approbation or blame, who profits by the accumulated wisdom of his kind in ages past, and who looks forward to the consequences of his actions in ages to come, who sees in the system of nature the hand of an all-wonderful but mysterious designer, who be holds in the heavens above him, worlds without number, and without limit to their glory, in the earth, on which he treads, systems upon systems "wheel within wheel involved" of order, and beauty and power, surpassing, in regularity and wonderful arrangement, the utmost reach of his imagination. All these things are open to man alone to the rest of animated nature they are as a sealed book, as they had never been. Who then would deny to man the existence of a soul-of that within him which depends not on the organization of the body? If the great first cause of all things be mind, wholly independent of, and overruling, throughout all the varieties of their forms, the elements of matter; if the creator of matter, be mind and mind alone; then is mind in its highest form selfexistent, and therefore eternal. For what contains within itself the independent and underived principle of its own existence can never perish-that principle itself being a part of its nature. If then, mind not only can but does actually exist wholly independent of any of the forms of matter, and wholly unconnected with it, but as its creator, why deny this attribute to the human mind? All we know of the sethings is but through that mind-knowledge is of the mind alone. This is the only possible power by which we could arrive at the very existence of him To deny the possible existence of mind, independent of matter, would be to deny the existence of a God. But if mind can exist independent of the body, then have we every reason to be lieve that such is the nature of the mind of man. All that we know of any mind is by analogy with his. We cannot conceive of any mind that is not of like nature with what we so call. We cannot conceive of will or design, that is not analogous to our own will or design, and it is only by this analogy that we recognize their existence. "Nec enim tu es quem forma ista declarat, sed mens cuiusque is est quisque;" non ea figura, quæ digito demonstrari potest. Deum te igitur scito esse: siquidem Deus est qui uiget, qui sentit, qui meminit, qui prouidet, qui tam regit et moderatur et mouet id corpus, cui præpositus est, quam hunc mundum ille princeps Deus: et ut mundum ex quadam parte mortalem ipse Deus aeternus, sic fragile corpus animus sempiternus mouet."-Cic de Rep. lib. vi. P. 140. But it is not with the immortality of the soul, but with its moral elements, that we find ourselves employed. And this is also a subject on which the sublime heathen above quoted would shame the reasoning of many a Christian philosopher. It is with the doctrine of our duties-the "knowledge of good and evil"-the "physiology of the passions"-with our sympathies and antipathies-our joys and our sorrows. What subject can be more interesting to man or of more difficult analysis? "Man [says our author] is manifestly affected by two orders of intellectual phenomena. The first operate through the medium of our sensations, the others are derived from the inmost recesses of the soul, the true source of our purest enjoyments; the sphere of the one kind is the exterior world, of the other what we would call our interior life. There are two kinds of ideas in our nature, ideas acquired and ideas inspired. Those which appertain to our corporeal preservation, and those which lead us to the general order established by the creation.-Prel. Con. vol. i. p. 17. Of the exterior life, (as our author calls it) of the sensible system, the attributes are three-Curiosity, Attention and Perception. Curiosity, he considers the first intellectual attribute of the sensible system, and resulting altogether from an involuntary impulse. But not so with Attention; this we direct at will in taking cognizance of any object that interests us; it is through this faculty alone that we appreciate the difference or agreement of things. With regard to Perception, he remarks, it is that act of the mind which enables us (as it were) to appropriate the objects subjected to the action of our senses, in the sphere of the exterior world. It is more or less active in proportion to the intensity of attention. Nothing exists for us in nature but so far as we perceive it. Man often re To desire to seek-to fix in our attention-to perceive, these are the intellectual attributes of the "sensible system,' considered in relation to the world without us. But the most important phenomena pass altogether within us. tires within himself, within the secret chambers of the soul, to contemplate its movements, tranquil or agitated. The better to commune with it, he divests himself of his physical impressions-he analyses his perceptions, and recognizes their relations to each other. He retains within his memory what he has thus acquired. It is when he is alone with his reason, that he tastes the true pleasures of contemplative philosophy, and identifies himself with all places, times and people. He delights to take refuge within himself. He loves to find himself face to face with the undying principle which animates him, when all the external world is but as a dream that is past. It requires but little study (our author thinks) to see that man has capabilities and inclinations altogether natural and inde |