one pre-emmen des of ary kit, ever though it should be a narrow one. Indeed, sus les mosty gamer by unity of purpSEL

E greathes cat in stuur un qualities, in vil he found te ronsist in courage and 11 meme a mind and sou. These qualities may

them. The causation of i mar of over mič s never ended.

Them With memes or sou. I mar ses some wry me al other souls that

WHO L. The capaery of a man, at least for understandme, wry

to be presently made, it will be seen that England was always the same earnest, stalwart, persevering, but melancholy country it is now. The very epithet of Merrie,' which its patriotic eulogists have bestowed on it, is a proof of its sadness. The merry talk not of their merriment. France, the gay and lively France, never called herself la joyeuse-it was always la belle. Italy never called herself la bella; Spain never called herself la soberbia. England, had she been really joyous otherwise than in fits and starts, would never have called herself the merry. But hear our author:

'Our nation, the northern part of it especially, is given to believe in the sovereign efficacy of dulness. To be sure, dulness and solid vice are apt to go hand in hand. But, then, according to our notions, dulness is in itself so good a thing-almost a religion.

Now, if ever a people required to be amused, it is we sad-hearted Anglo-Saxons. Heavy eaters, hard thinkers, often given up to a peculiar melancholy of our own, with a climate that for months together would frown away mirth if it could-many of us with very gloomy thoughts about our hereafter-if ever there were a people who should avoid increasing their dulness by all work and no play, we are that people. 'They took their pleasure sadly,' says Froissart, after their fashion.' We need not ask of what nation Froissart was speaking.'-p. 56.

one pre-eminent idea of any kind, even though it should be a narrow one. Indeed, success in life is mostly gained by unity of purpose; whereas greatness often fails by reason of its having manifold purposes, but it does not cease to be greatness on that account.

• If greatness can be shut up in qualities, it will be found to consist in courage and in openness of mind and soul. These qualities may not seem at first to be so potent. But see what growth there is in them. The education of a man of open mind is never ended. Then, with openness of soul, a man sees some way into all other souls that come near him, feels with them, has their experience, is in himself a people. Sympathy is the universal solvent. Nothing is understood without it. The capacity of a man, at least for understanding, may almost be said to vary according to his powers of sympathy. Again, what is there that can counteract selfishness like sympathy? Selfishness may be hedged in by minute watchfulness and self-denial, but it is counteracted by the nature being encouraged to grow out and fix its tendrils upon foreign objects.

• The immense defect that want of sympathy is, may be strikingly seen in the failure of the many attempts that have been made in all ages to construct the Christian character, omitting sympathy. It has produced numbers of people walking up and down one narrow plank of self-restraint, pondering over their own merits and demerits, keeping out, not the world exactly, but their fellow-creatures, from their hearts, and caring only to drive their neighbours before them on this plank of theirs, or to push them headlong. Thus, with many virtues, and much hard work at the formation of character, we have had splendid bigots or censorious small people.

• But sympathy is warmth and light too. It is, as it were, the moral atmosphere connecting all animated natures. Putting aside, for a moment, the large differences that opinions, language, and education make between men, look at the innate diversity of character. Natural philosophers were amazed when they thought they had found a newlycreated species. But what is each man but a creature such as the world has not before seen? Then think how they pour forth in multitudinous masses, from princes delicately nurtured to little boys on scrubby commons or in dark cellars. How are these people to be understood, to be taught to understand each other, but by those who have the deepest sympathies with all? There cannot be a great man without large sympathy. There may be men who play loud-sounding

. parts in life without it, as on the stage, where kings and great people sometimes enter, who are only characters of secondary import-deputy great men. But the interest and the instruction lie with those who have to feel and suffer most. . Add

courage to this openness we have been considering: and you have a man who can own himself in the wrong, can forgive, can trust, can adventure, can, in short, use all the means that insight and sympathy endow him with.'-pp. 73-76. Next we have the hacknied subject of • Fiction,' whereon the

NO. XI.

author has said nothing new, and little worth saying; it is an ill-considered, unsatisfactory performance, trite and shallow for the most part; and the discourse which follows, so far from making up for its deficiencies, rambles into questions of representative government. In a second edition, this chapter should either be wholly removed, or considerably altered ; we should advise the former. On no previous occasion have we found this author without some real insight of his own; either he sees what other men have overlooked, or he sees it in a new aspect; and even his commonplaces have had, so to speak, the merit of originality. But in this essay on · Fiction' we detect no trace whatever of his own footsteps.

The essay. On the Art of Living with Others' must be given entire.

• The Iliad for war; the Odyssey for wandering: but where is the great domestic epic? Yet it is but commonplace to say, that passions may rage round a tea-table, which would not have misbecome men dashing at one another in war-chariots; and evolutions of patience and temper are performed at the fireside, worthy to be compared with the Retreat of the Ten Thousand. Men have worshipped some fantastic being for living alone in a wilderness; but social martyrdoms place no saints upon the calendar.

• We may blind ourselves to it if we like, but the hatreds and disgusts that there are behind friendship, relationship, service, and, indeed, proximity of all kinds, is one of the darkest spots upon earth. The various relations of life, which bring people together, cannot, as we know, be perfectly fulfilled except in a state where there will, perhaps, be no occasion for any of them. It is no harm, however, to endeavour to see whether there are any methods which may make these relations in the least degree more harmonious now.

'In the first place, if people are to live happily together, they must not fancy, because they are thrown together now, that all their lives have been exactly similar up to the present time, that they started exactly alike, and that they are to be for the future of the same mind. A thorough conviction of the difference of men is the great thing to be assured of in social knowledge: it is to life what Newton's law is to astronomy. Sometimes men have a knowledge of it with regard to the world in general: they do not expect the outer world to agree with them in all points, but are vexed at not being able to drive their own tastes and opinions into those they live with. Diversities distress them. They will not see that there are many forms of virtue and wisdom. Yet we might as well say, Why all these stars; why this difference; why not all one star?'

Many of the rules for people living together in peace follow from the above. For instance, not to interfere unreasonably with others, not to ridicule their tastes, not to question and re-question their resolves, not to indulge in perpetual comment on their proceedings, and

6

6

6

to delight in their having other pursuits than ours, are all based upon a thorough perception of the simple fact, that they are not we.

* Another rule for living happily with others, is to avoid having stock subjects of disputation. It mostly happens, when people live much together, that they come to have certain set topics, around which, from frequent dispute, there is such a growth of angry words, mortified vanity, and the like, that the original subject of difference becomes a standing subject for quarrel; and there is a tendency in all minor disputes to drift down to it.

' Again, if people wish to live well together, they must not hold too much to logic, and suppose that everything is to be settled by sufficient reason. Dr. Johnson saw this clearly with regard to married people when he said, wretched would be the pair above all names of wretchedness, who should be doomed to adjust by reason, every morning, all the minute detail of a domestic day.' But the application should be much more general than be made it. There is no time for such reasonings, and nothing that is worth them. And when we recollect how two lawyers, or two politicians, can go on contending, and that there is no end of one-sided reasoning on any subject, we shall not be sure that such contention is the best mode for arriving at truth. But certainly it is not the way to arrive at good temper.

'If you would be loved as a companion, avoid unnecessary criticism upon those with whom you live. The number of people who have taken out judges' patents for themselves is very large in any society. Now it would be hard for a man to live with another who was always criticising his actions, even if it were kindly and just criticism. It would be like living between the glasses of a microscope. But these self-elected judges, like their prototypes, are very apt to have the persons they judge brought before them in the guise of culprits.

*One of the most provoking forms of the criticism above alluded to, is that which may be called criticism over the shoulder. · Had I been consulted,' •Had you listened to me,' But you always will,' and such short scraps of sentences, may remind many of us of dissertations which we have suffered and inflicted, and of which we cannot call to mind any soothing effect.

* Another rule is, not to let familiarity swallow up all courtesy. Many of us have a habit of saying to those with whom we live such things as we say about strangers behind their backs. There is no place, however, where real politeness is of more value than where we mostly think it would be superfluous. You may say more truth, or rather speak out more plainly, to your associates, but not less courteously, than you do to strangers.

Again, we must not expect more from the society of our friends and companions than it can give; and especially must not expect contrary things. It is somewhat arrogant to talk of travelling over other minds (mind being, for what we know, infinite): but still we become familiar with the upper views, tastes, and tempers of our associates. And it is hardly in man to estimate justly what is familiar to him. In travelling along at night, as Hazlitt says, we catch a glimpse into

а