You must allow me, however, to laugh at the last sentences," The Greeks will not despair, when they think how great a sacrifice has been made for them," &c. when we know from this very article that they almost murdered him, and that there is every reason to believe that he died from what his admirers may call anxiety of mind, and what the lovers of plain English have been in the habit of calling fright.

The review of Travels in the United States is shabby trash. It happens most unluckily, that this very moment the North American Review has appeared in this country, shewing up the total and wretched ignorance of a fellow of the name of Hodgson, who is here the subject of all kinds of praise, for his accurate knowledge of America. The same Review ruthlessly exposes the nonsense of Jerry Bentham's people, in their extolment of what they think is the mode of doing business in the United States. The clew to the praise is easily discoverable. Truth or falsehood was never an object of solicitude with such people. They only wished to slander their own country, and cared not a farthing how it was done.

We have next a review of -Redgauntlet! "It is the established custom of critics to commence all notices of the Scotch Novels with some wonderment, touching the prolific powers of the author." Heaven help the blockhead! The established custom of critics! Much do people care about the critiques on the Waverley Novels. They well know they are poor hacks who scribble at so much a-sheet, showing their opinions on the productions of the first writer of the age. Who cares a blackberry about them? This particular ass finds, among other things, that Nanty Ewart is not worthy of a passing notice, and that Wandering Willie's tale is a Sicilian story! God pity him.

Newspapers," is a panegyric on the gentlemen of the press, with a special praise of Mr Walter and other heroes of that stamp. John Bull is vehemently abused in it, en passant. The prin

cipal charge against John is, that he described the late Lady Wrottesley as a woman of unchaste life, because she was a sister of Mr G. Bennet. Well did this writer know that he was writing a falsehood. An effort was made to get up a dress circle for the late Queen, and John was employed in proving that the families who were busy in this effort were no better than they should be. The most stinging part of the libel, though not actually so declared, was the song. (I quote from memory.)

"Next the illustrious household of Tankerville

Came in a body their homage to payThey, who themselves are annoyed by a canker vile,

Joy to find others as faulty as they.
So, therefore, there came on
The ci-devant Grammont,

The Danciad, a silly poem, by a London dancing-master of the name of Wilson, is here attributed to Professor Wilson, as the ground-work of a dull joke. The writer is evidently actuated by some low spite against that eminent man, and goes as far to indulge it as he dares. I wonder Mr Baldwin, who owns this Review, did not recollect that he formerly had another editor in his wages, who began the same slanderous trade. If he remembered it, he would, I think, have paused a little before he made room for another of the same unfortunate gang to yelp to the same tune. But, as Hogg says, the whole effort at jesting is a havers."

With which word now, I conclude. I am, dear North, yours, &c.

Southside, August 15.

T. T.

RECOLLECTING that the Emperor of Austria observed some months since to Rosconi, the learned Professor of Anatomy at Pavia-who begged of him some patent in remuneration for a discovery that he did not like innovations even in anatomy, the present little volume as much surprised us, springing from Padua, as a sturdy little oakplant would have done, rearing itself beneath the shelter of the Upas. It is pleasing to find that philosophical research is not all extinct in the University of Galileo; whence, however, for many years, nothing learned has issued, save a dull German Journal of petty and pretended discoveries in the sciences, a new reading in philology, and accounts of some coin, or helm, or relic of antiquity dug up amidst the ruins of the city of Antenor.

It must be a man of more than ordinary genius, who can step forward from the back-ground of a country, at least two centuries of civilization in arrear, and assume his place confidently amidst the philosophers of more liberal climes. The mere attainment of books is a matter of enormous difficulty, in the ci-devant Venetian States especially; a train of argument, if not treasonable, brings down upon the reasoner the utmost vigilance of the police; and, all these difficulties surmounted, where is the audience, where the readers, even in Padua, to whom such disquisitions could be addressed, with any prospect of their being understood? But if Italy be subdivided and parcelled out between different rulers, she has a common bond in language, and the Paduan Professor, who can find no disciples in his own university, may hope to be read by the enlightened and unpersecuted literati of Florence, and by the solitary sages who meditate in secret in the princely hermitages of Rome and Naples. Such may be the hope of Professor Magalotti, or perhaps it is his desire to visit happier countries, and he employs this intellectual mode of making himself feared and banished, much in the same way that here an unfortunate vagabond picks a pocket, in order to get

himself comfortably transported. The comparison may seem injurious to the philosopher, but it expresses the truth of what has been put in practice by more than one learned Italian.

Signor Magalotti commences his es say with some general remarks on the state of philosophy at the present time, (a date which, with us, may answer to about thirty years since ;) and while he allows all the praise of subtility and acumen to the British followers of Locke, "gli antagoniste di Locke non essendo altri che i suoi seguaci," he accuses them of having lost sight of the true end of mental inquiry, of having mis-spent their powers and time in idle quarrels and differences, "which arose merely either from their neglect or inability to define what they meant either by existence or idea;" and, finally, that even when their exertions took the forward path of invention, they were still employed but " in the shell, or the mask of the spiritual object of philosophy."

"A system," says he, "which avowedly has had its origin in the wish to obviate the pernicious conclusions of another system, is one which, however it may perform its proper object of refutation, can never, at the same time, establish a just one in the place of that which it has destroyed. The view, the end of the philosopher, has necessarily been sinister from the beginning, with one eye bent on his antagonist, the other on the truth; and little is to be hoped from intentions so distracted," &c.

"But," continues he, "the worshipful (colendissimo) Doctor Reid has not even attained the solitary end of refutation; for all the conclusions of his countrymen, Berkely and Hume, as to the non-existence of matter and spirit, can be argued as well from his more ideal system as from Locke's ideal,from Reid's impressions, as from Locke's ideas. Nay, more-Reid leaves the existence of external objects resting even upon a less solid proof than that left by his sceptical antagonists. For they argued but to the possibility of its non-existence, whereas, he says

its existence is suggested to us. Where's the difference? 'Tis true, he proceeds to invest this suggestion with the dignity and force of being a primary law of nature-a supposition which any man's sense will reject, without my taking the trouble to disprove it, eminently from the system of the Scotch philosopher himself.

"The existence or non-existence of the objects that surround us, is a question which we may safely leave at issue, permitting the rejectors of common sense and the gospel to choose the sceptic side, if they please. The possibility of non-existence must remain while man retains the power of imagination; but the proof of the contrary must ever be confined to the improbability-the argument advanced by Descartes, that it is beneath the Almighty to deceive us. To this old and neglected proof must we recur at last, after the vain labours of the many renowned philosophers that have agitated the question."

After an eloquent introduction, in which Professor Magalotti asserts, that the German psychologists have taken a path more astray, though with a nobler and juster intention than the British grammarians,—for such is the expression, and if we recall old phraseology, not injurious appellation, by which he distinguishes our metaphysicians he proceeds to examine the British and Scotch school of philosophy, previous to his entering upon that of the Germans, "it being wise," says he, "to observe the surface of a country, and to cull the various fruits which it brings forth, ere we attempt to sink mines into the earth, and search for the metallic treasures which lie buried in its depths."

It would trespass by far too largely on our limits, to quote at length his examination of the " Sistema negativa," as he calls it, of Dr Reid; we can merely give a few hints, from which the reader interested in these matters may judge of the scope and arguments of the Paduan philosopher. He begins with an examination of the word idea. "Since Dr Reid has not defined this subtle little enemy, whose annihilation he meditated, I, as one of his opponents, would give him or his followers too great an advantage by stepping forward to define it; suffice it for me, if there be any ens, material or spiri

tual, whose existence will produce the same conclusions which have been drawn from ideas." That there is, he proceeds to shew.

"In actual impressions, or in passive memory, it is impossible to distinguish an idea from an impression; but in active, self-exerted memory, in what Mr Stewart calls conception, it is absurd to uphold, that the objects of our thoughts are impressions or sensations. In the dark, dreaming, what has the retina or its sensations to do with the many and glorious visions which stand so palpably before our mental vision? That there are ideas of the light at least-I can but appeal to any reflecting man-is it not absurd to deny? But let me take Dr Reid's own confession, his own words, and shew how therein is involved the existence of ideas of this sense at least. He talks in one place, of objects being painted on the retina-of the optic nerve taking up these paintings or impressions, and flashing them upon the mind. This flash is idea sufficient for my purpose; and, indeed, this leads to what I think the most philosophical definition of a sensible idea, i.e. the point of junction between matter and mind. That it partakes of both essences, is likely, but not to the purpose.”

Signor Magalotti having thus, as he imagines, proved that there do exist ideas of sight, opens his system further by dividing the senses into dependent and independent. The dependent ones, i. e. the touch, taste, and smell, are but impressions, and furnish no ideas. They may be perceived, and passively remembered, that is, when experienced the second time, they are recognized; but objects of active memory they cannot be. Ideas are the objects of active memory, and these senses afford more. "Who," says the author, “if he reflects, can believe himself capable of recalling the idea of a smell, of a taste, or of a particular kind of touch? He may recall such sensations by the help of visionary objects to which they were attached; but it is only the visual peach or violet he can recall, and then pass to the odour,-the odour alone the recollection can by no means grasp." "Here," continues he, "is the true refutation of the sceptical arguments of Berkely and Hume; their reasonings apply but to the fallacious sense of vision, of which these are ideas.

But touch has none; and it is by touch alone that we are convinced of the existence of matter."

The Professor's arguments with respect to hearing, although, perhaps, they are more ingenious and new than any others which he has broached, are still extremely meagre; so much so, that we are quite at a loss to conclude whether he is for or against the existence of ideas of this sense.

"The ear, but for its close connexion with the organ of speech, would be evidently but a dependent sense. It possesses faint reflections and echoes of sounds, especially of words, which one would be inclined to characterize as ideas, if they were not rather remembrances of articulation, independent altogether of hearing. Words, nay, whole paragraphs, flit in our me mory without being at all repeated: they are, I think, remembrances of articulation, though undoubtedly extremely difficult to distinguish from the memory of objects of hearing.”

Seeing and hearing, then, are the two independent senses: the eye supplied by the faculty of imagination, the ear supplied by the organ of speech, afford the objects of sensible memory. Of spiritual perception or thought, in other words, the conversing of the mind with what are oddly called ideas of reflection,—with this part of the phenomena of mind, British philosophers have been, and are, quite in the dark. They are worse than ignorant of this, the worthiest portion of metaphysical science, inasmuch as all their opinions on the subject are founded on analogies with sensations, into which, in spite of their affected vigilance, they all fall headlong," &c."There cannot be a more remarkable

instance of this than in the book of Professor Stewart,* which commences with such acute and philosophical distinction being established between matter and mind, between sensation and reflection. No sooner, however, has the Professor passed the limits of his first chapter, than he falls himself egregiously into the very analogical blunders that he at first so justly censures. In abstraction, a subject to which he devotes a considerable chapter, what can be more inconsonant and unphilosophical than to designate, by this one term, the very different operations by which the mind arrives at general terms in material objects, and at general terms in spiritual? In material objects, every universal or general is made up of particulars, i. e. is really abstracted; not so in spiritual objects; there every general is included in every particular. It is absurd to apply the term abstraction to ideas of reflection; and it is the grossest instance of that abuse of analogy, so denounced, and yet practised, by the Professor."

The Paduan's temper seems, for some reason or other, to rise when he speaks of Dugald Stewart,-whether it is that reverence for the dead checks any harshness towards the other objects of his remarks and animadversions, or that he has some particular pique against our distinguished countryman, with whose writings, indeed, he seems but partially acquainted. The only volume he knows, he characterizes with force, and not without some justice, as "ingeniosa assai, anche eloquente, ma molto diluta." With this tranchante opinion Signor Magalotti concludes his Essay, and we our notice of it.