Now, we are no philosopher at all, although we are about to philosophize; but we should never take up a pen, or a gun, or a jug again, did we not humbly, but firmly, believe that Christopher North-and many thousand other people flourishing in shade or sunshineknows ten, twenty, fifty times as much and more of the human mind, and all its inward concerns, than Sir James Mackintosh. The general haziness and wateriness of all his disquisitions show that he is—if not absolutely shallow-far, far indeed from being profound; but that he cannot be himself, in any sense however limited, a great writer, let one sentence prove-one sentence of portentous folly. "The admirable writer whose language has occasioned this illustration, who at an early age HAS MASTERED EVERY SPECIES OF COMPOSITION, will doubtless hold fast to simplicity, which survives all the fashions of deviation from it, and which a man of a genius so fertile has few temptations to forsake.” Of whom does Sir James here speak? Credite, posteri, THOMAS BABINGTON M'AULEY! Here is a man who has taken upon himself the task, which the entire tone of his treatise informs us that, in his own opinion, he has successfully performed, of appreciating justly and finely the powers and productions of all moral philosophers in all ages; and who has either the stupidity to think, or the effrontery to say it without thinking it, unblushing and brazen both, that a clever lad or boy, who but a year or two ago began to shave his chin, and who has not even attempted any 19

VOL. III.

kind of composition at all, but a prize poem, neither better nor worse than prize poems generally are—that is groaningly stupid and a few flashy and frothy, but neither uneloquent nor uningenious articles in the Edinburgh Review such as his critiques on Milton, Dante, and Machiavelli-has MASTERED EVERY SPECIES OF COMPOSITION! Well might such a judge of "every species of composition" disparage and undervalue the metaphysical genius and achievements of Dr. Thomas Brown! One such insane sentence vitiates all his judgment on all matters either of philosophy or of common sense; and proves him either to be utterly destitute of all true discernment, or capable of sacrificing his regard to truth, and decency, and reputation, to the whim and caprice of a childish friendship. Does it not?

Sir James, somewhere or other, touches on the connexion between Genius and Virtue-and as we have often required of ourselves a comparison between these divinities, we glowered on his page with all our faculties of soul and sense, but could see nothing. Sir James had to draw upon his own stores for any thing he might say on that subject, for none of the wise-men or wiseacres who are among the number of his familiars, have, we believe, more than touched it but the meanness and misery of his lean lucubrations, betray the scantiness and bareness of the pastures on which they have been fed. It is always so with Sir James. He has built some large haystacks, and filled some large barns with wheatsheaves, but all the provender and victual has been bought or borrowed; and on walking through his farm, we are pained to see the state both of meadow and arable-the one brown in spite of much irrigation, and the other in vain all lying in summer-fallow; nor can we hope, that in any future autumn it will ever produce a crop.

Now let us do for Sir James what Sir James would not, because he could not, do for us, and other Scotch ignoramuses, who know nothing of the human mind. Let us at least give him a few hints; nor let him refuse to hear them, though, unlike that fortunate youth, Mr. Thomas Babington M'Auley, so far from having-even in our old age—“ mastered every species of composition,"

we have not the skill even of a journeyman in any, and but in one the power of an apprentice.

Now, without attempting in this sheepfold to define either genius or virtue, allow us here to just jot down a few memoranda. Genius and virtue are felt-by us at least at this moment-to be founded in the capacity, experience, and desire of happiness.

Genius is of as many kinds as the human intellectual powers have modes of exertion and application-differing either by the internal and metaphysical constitution of its action, or by its matter external to the spirit. Let us then compare genius, for a few moments, in respect, first, of its universal, and, secondly, of its particular conditions, with virtue. If we utter nonsense, there is no harm done, for we are bothering nobody in the sheepfold-and should Gurney extend these our shorthand notes, and Ebony, in our absence, admit this part of our article into Maga, let all readers skip the pages if they please till we get into Gleno.

First, then, virtue produces pleasure. Now, we consider happiness as a sum of durable pleasures. Pleasures are the items and moments of happiness to the individual mind, by which it is exerted, consonant with, and causing, the pleasure of other minds. In like manner does not genius produce pleasure to the individual mind in which it acts, consonant with and causing the pleasure of other minds? It does. So far the comparision holds good.

How far do they resemble each other in their origin? Virtue is born of pleasure and pain. For it arises, according to our sacred belief, first out of consciousness of certain capacities of pleasures-perhaps rather out of consciousnesses of all the capacities of pleasure which were awakened by, or consisted in, so many experiences of pleasure. Soon there ensues a comparison of one kind of pleasure with another, out of which grows preference of the more durable. Also there ensues, perhaps not wholly upon this comparison, but in some mysterious way we know not, a preferring surrender of sensibility and desire to certain modes of pleasure, which appear, in the result, to have been those most agreeing with the happiness of others; e. g. to the pleasure of loving others.

Now-know all men—or no men—that to us here, sitting in this sheepfold, in a cove belonging to Glen-Etive, and commanding more than a glimpse of the Loch, a leaguelong gleam, this preferring of the preferable pleasures seems to be-VIRTUE. So much for its connexion with pleasure. Pain, again, enters into virtue very variously. There are pains which it is virtuous to avoid; e. g. the pain of self-reproach. There is pain out of which it is virtuous, by enduring it, to draw pleasure; e. g. it is virtuous to derive pleasure from the patient endurance of bodily pain-be it the tic douloureux-cancer-stoneor gout. It will, we think, be found that the direct and proper effect of pain, acting in either way upon virtue, that is, shunned by it, or taken in and made part of it, especially in the latter way, is to invigorate virtue. Pleasure produces-pain confirms and strengthens.

Now turn to genius. It too, we say, is born of pleasure and pain-of pleasure let into the mind in ways innumerable and unspeakable. Are they all intellectual? It shall hardly be said so; but still pleasures which intellect seizes, acknowledges, and appropriates. Some pleasures there are, originally intellectual. Thus the pleasure of the synthesis and analysis of numbers is such; sometimes so early evinced, as to point to an original constitutional determination, and resulting in genius, which, facile and narrow as its materials, elementarily received, appear, yet in powerful minds, is acknowledged as of a high order. The elementary pleasures, again, of colour and sound, appear to us rather to be bodily than intellectual; though it is striking and puzzling that the pleasure of harmony in sound, is the pleasure of a relation of agreement, who will tell how felt or discerned? You see then, gentle reader, that the boundaries between the properly intellectual and properly sensible elements employed by genius, are hard to draw. The question at present with us-here in this sheepfold-is, how do these pleasures act in evolving genius? What are they to it?

Now it is easily credible, as a general position, that pleasure may serve to excite the intellectual faculties into activity-but we want something more definite. Let us say, then, that when pleasure has been felt from a par

ticular exertion of the purely intellectual faculties, as from the composition and resolution of numbers, the experience of that pleasure becomes a sufficient motive to the mind to reacquire it, by repeating the action. But further, let us say that the repetition of the action, for the sake of the pleasure, may be either reflective and designed, and distinctly voluntary; or it may be in so small a degree reflective and designed, as scarcely to seem voluntary. The last is and if ever it could be wholly involuntary, that most of all would be—in our belief-the repetition proper to genius. The mind is attracted-beguiledwon-falls into the action involuntarily and in pure delight.

But farther-whence is this pure delight? Seems it should be, either adventitious or essential. Thus, the pleasure of praise, self-esteem, and so on, obtained by an intellectual exertion, is adventitious, and belongs particularly, as an incentive, to that intellectual activity and force, which is not genius. But the direct, instantaneous, and unreflective pleasure, which springs in the sudden intuition of a relation, for instance, according to the different strength of the mind, of parallel lines being prolonged for ever without approaching or diverging,—of the containing by a definition, of the subject of a definition,―of the congruity of a metaphor with the thought to be signified,—is essential. Pleasure of pride may be an adjunct to the pleasure of the intuition, but is not essential. Now the essential pleasure, we hold, pertains to genius-and is of its essence. Whence, then does it

come?

Why have some minds one essential intellectual pleasure, and some another? This distinction of pleasures must be connected with another distinction-viz. of aptitude (see Phrenology) in one mind to discern one class of relations,—in another, another. But does the aptitude induce the pleasure, or the pleasure the aptitude? Doubtless, each induces each in some measure; but sitting here in this sheepfold, we feel assured that there must be a native aptitude to begin with. Let us say, then, that any discernment of relation is a natural source of pleasure, provided it be a quick, active, facile, clear,