Beautiful visions! never can ye die, Where where the heart that hath not some bright dream 'Tis the sweet spirit of poetry, that gives To this our world its majesty and might: Round each lone hill, a deep enchantment weaves, All-all around me is instinct with her : The silence on the lonely mountain sleeping, The gush of waters, light leaves as they stir Through the still air, her spells are gently creeping, Breathing a blessing on the softened heart Sweet hopes and dreams, that may not all depart. Yes! 'mid the weariness of life's dull round, Oft shall remembrance turn to this calm vale ; II. A DREAM. "A dream, a golden dream What fancies wait upon our sleep.”—Shirley. Sleep hath its own creations-forms Come, reader, hear a blessed vision, A lovely girl, enwreathed with flowers, Just of that age, when womanish thoughts And new-born fears begin to start : And maiden dignity controls The gladness of the heart. How vain were all my skill to paint Those soft dark eyes, where feeling plays, And each emotion of the soul Speaks through their dewy rays. That figure of such faultless mould Come let me from sweet nature's store The beauteous bud, that nature's self The gentle stream, whose waves have strayed Beautiful girl, ah, who would care, III. EVENING. Oh not unhallowed is the softening hour Thro' the still air unearthly voices speak, And mistwreathed shapes and shadowy figures glide Slowly along the pathless mountain-side. Yet glitter in the west a thousand dyes, Yet lingers on the hill the sun's last ray: The dews are falling round-the gentle dews! From far the music of one gushing rill If thou be one, whose worn and wearied heart Mourns that the freshness of its youth is gone : Come, and while beauty feeds thy raptured eye, A blessing breathe upon thy careworn cheek, J. T. B. DR. WALL'S REPLY TO THE EDINBURGH REVIEW. To the Editor of the Dublin University Magazine. SIR, I shall feel much obliged by your inserting the subjoined letter, and accompanying observations, in the next Number of your publication; or, if my application be too late for that purpose, I request a place for them in the one immediately after the next, and am your very obedient servant, Trin. Col. Dub. Nov. 22, 1836. CHARLES W. WALL. To Messrs. Adam and Charles Black, Booksellers, Edinburgh. GENTLEMEN, I have just read, I confess with some degree of surprise, an article in your last Number, commenting with great, and, as I conceive, unmerited severity, on my "Essay on the Egyptian Hieroglyphs." The person you have employed to write this article has not only charged me with ignorance, incompetence, and dishonesty, but he has also defied me to meet the charges thus made against me; and, consequently, has challenged me to refute them, if I can. If you Gentlemen, I accept the challenge, and I demand from you, as a matter of right, space, in the pages of your next Number, for my vindication. think proper to comply with this demand, I wish to know what time I shall be allowed for preparing an answer, and what number of pages can be allotted to it. I shall feel obliged by your returning an early answer to this letter, and Trin. Col. Dub. Nov. 1, 1836. CHARLES W. WALL. On the 9th inst. I received from the conductors of the " Edinburgh Review," a refusal of the demand contained in the above letter. I am sorry for this, as their complying with my application would have enabled me to put a better construction on their conduct than I now can do. However, I shall not dwell upon the circumstance of their declining to act up to the spirit of a challenge which originated with themselves; but will proceed at once to show the extreme unfairness of the attack which they have made on my work, premising only one ob servation. Why these reviewers should have felt such animosity against me, I really am at a loss to conceive. (Thank God, I am not actuated by a correspondent feeling, notwithstanding the wanton provocation I bave received.) Their political principles and mine may differ; but they can scarcely be acquainted with the views, upon public questions, of an individual who leads so retired a life as I do; and even if they were, surely party feelings ought not to be allowed to influence the judgment, in the discussion of a sub ject which is purely of a literary nature. In a former article of theirs, which—very unlike the one now under consideration was written with some degree of ability and fairness, there occurs a ridiculous mistake, which, as connected with my subject, I had to expose; but I did so playfully, without the slightest intention of inflicting injury, or giving offence. Surely they ought not to feel so sore from an exposure which was made in such a mitigated form, and in so very lenient a manner; and even if it wounded their pride ever so much, this would not justify their resorting to misrepresentation and abuse as the weapons of retaliation. The critic commissioned by those gentlemen to assail me, commences with an attack upon my choice of words; and here I freely admit that I am very vulnerable. No one can be more sensible than I am myself of my deficiencies in this respect; but I should hope that the fair and candid reader will pardon the occasional use of an old-fashioned, or even of a provincial expression, if I convey to him information of any value or interest; "Having, in the course of writing this preliminary treatise, lit upon what I believe to be the true key to the deciphering of the Rosetta hieroglyphs, I have been induced to hope that the publication of so much of my work might excite some interest." That my censor should resort here to a mere verbal criticism, and avoid all discussion on the subject of the announcement, does not appear to me to reflect credit on either his taste or his abilities. But to confine myself to the point which he considers of most importance, I have to inform him that the expression he has found such fault with, may be seen in the writings of men who were neither vulgar nor inaccurate. Locke, I think, often made use of it; but for the present purpose, one instance is sufficient, which I give from his "Essay on the Human Understanding:" "Whoever first lit on a parcel of that substance we call gold, could not rationally take the bulk and figure to depend on its real essence." However, I by no means wish to shelter myself under this authority from the imputation of having used a phrase that has, in some degree, gone out of modern use; and I should have been obliged to the reviewer for pointing out this fault to me, if he had done so in the spirit of equity and candour. But when he goes on to say, "whatever he 'lits upon' he disputes;" I beg to assure him that, if he intended this as a sample of my style, he has not given a fair representation of it, and that the bad grammar of the sentence is not mine, but his own. The more serious point, however, to be considered in connexion with the above sentence is, the disputatious character which the critic attempts to fasten on me, a character which, I trust, never will be mine; and to which, at all events, no one can feel a greater aversion than I do. My work, indeed, abounds in discussion; or, if my accuser so pleases to call it, in disputation; but this has arisen from the necessity of the case, and the nature' of the subjects in the investigation of which I have engaged. I have been drawn into a lengthened train of argu-* ment, not from a wrangling, contentious disposition, but from a love of truth, and an earnest desire to remove errors interfering with the progress of human knowledge. Surely when I introduce new views upon interesting topics, I cannot expect that others will concur in those views without being: told the steps that have led to them, or the reasoning by which they are sustained. I now put out of conside ration my inquiry into the origin of alphabetic writing, on which the reviewer has said but little, (though even in that little he has contrived to show great ignorance of the subject ;) and, turning to the Egyptian hieroglyphs, on which alone he has dilated, I may observe that there are many questions connected with them, which, though not of essential importance, are yet matter of interesting curiosity to the metaphysician, the philologist, and the anallude to one of these questions. I shall here very briefly tiquarian. What is the nature of the hiero glyphic writing in the general text of the Egyptian legends, outside the cartouches, and of that inside such of them as contain the names of the more ancient sovereigns of Egypt? M. Champollion pretended he had made out that it is, in the main, alphabetic ; that not merely the part to which Dr. Young's discovery applies, in deciphering the contents of the later cartouches, but the whole of it is chiefly of this description. I maintain, on the contrary, that the general text of this writing, at least as far down as the date of the Rosetta monument, and the inscriptions in all the cartouches older than that of Psammetichus, are ideagraphic; that, with whatever plausibility the French author has put forward his interpretations of the more ancient hieroglyphic legends, they are utterly valueless;* (as indeed must likewise be all those which have since * M. Klaproth is entitled to the credit of having been the first who exposed the failure of some of the attempts to decipher the Egyptian hieroglyphs, according to the phonetic theory now in vogue. But he never imagined that the theory itself was erroneous: he still held that the characters in question were generally employed with phonetic powers, but that in several instances those powers were not yet discovered. been grounded upon the same erroneous principle;) and that the only chance we have of making any progress in the solution of this problem, depends upon our retracing our steps, and resuming the investigation at the stage at which Young left it. But it seems I was wrong in appealing on the subject to the understanding of the learned, and in supporting my appeal by a great variety of facts and arguments. I was quite wrong in trying to draw them off from what appears to be a fruitless line of pursuit, and in combating error with that intention. The reviewer disapproves of such conduct, and, in consequence, pronounces that I am a disputer, and a sceptic: "Whatever he 'lits upon' he disputes; and he seems to think that the only certain way of discovering something is to begin by questioning every thing." In the very same paragraph I am accused of dogmatism : "He dogmatises with a confidence which bears an immense disproportion to his knowledge of the subject which he undertakes to treat of." I confess I do not see how the two charges can hang well together; but I am not at all surprised at a mistake of this kind in the effusions of my present assailant. Even persons of clear intellect are liable to fall into inconsistencies, when they lose their temper. The most amusing circumstance, however, connected with the latter charge is, that the reviewer appears to be totally unconscious of the applicability of this very charge to himself. The observation occurs in the "Spectator," that "critics write in a positive, dogmatic way, without either language, genius, or imagination." And I rather think the candid reader will agree with me, that a more dogmatic article than the one now under consideration could not easily be penned. This article contains a number of very bitter accusations against me, most of which are advanced with the confidence of certainty, but without even the shadow of a proof, assent to them being required upon the sole authority of the ipse dixit of the critic. The following specimen, taken from near the commencement of the critique, may serve as a voucher for the correctness of what is here stated. mercy; accuses Dr. Young, and the author of the article on Hieroglyphics which appeared in this Journal, of forgery;' defends Athanasius Kircher against the charge of indulging in fanciful and imaginary interpretation; and denounces the late M. Champollion as a writer who ' endeavoured to sap the foundation of religious belief, by attacking the historic truth of the Bible.' Dr. Wall, indeed, had been discussing the theory of imperseems to write in as great a heat as if he sonal verbs, and had gotten the worst in the argument;-the language which he habitually employs is more nearly akin to the emphatic malediction of the exasperated grammarian than the sober phraseology of the philosopher. He appears to view everything through the distorting medium of passionate excitement; nor can he discuss a difference of opinion on subjects, where there is still but too much room for conjecture, without casting the most unwarrantable imputations. has no talent for commendation, however much it may be deserved. His forte consists in seeking, or in making, occasions of censure. He dogmatizes with à confidence which bears an immense disproportion to his knowledge of the subject which he undertakes to treat of; and in accusing others of ignorance, he is oftentimes preeminently successful in exposing his own. He On the dogmatic assumption of superior knowledge, which this extract dwell; but perhaps I may have oppordisplays, it is unnecessary for me to other features, also, of the author's tunities of showing, as I proceed, that picted in the literary character which own portrait, are very strikingly dehe has here drawn for me. Of the whole passage, considered as an indictment, I shall for the present merely observe generally that, when an accuser brings forward severe charges, without establishing any one of them by any dit which results from the proceeding sort of evidence, or proof, the discreis exclusively his own, and the blow which he has levelled against another recoils upon himself. of having assailed Warburton without I shall not stop to refute the charge mercy, as no instance, or proof of any kind, is given of this unmerciful treatment of the Bishop. Of my having defamed Young, proof indeed is attempted :-but what is the nature of this proof? Is it grounded on the quotation of some passage from my " Essay," in which I have spoken ill of him? By no means. It actually |