and gradation of light (and that possibly in a great degree from the weakness, and consequently the irritability of these organs) peaks always of twilight with peculiar pleasure. He has even reversed what Socrates did by philosophy; he has called up twilight from earth and placed it in heaven. From that high mount of God whence light and shade What is also singular, he has in this passage made shade arf essence equally with light, not merely a privation of it; a compliment never. I believe, paid to shadow before, but which might be expected from his aversion to glare, so frequently and so strongly expressed: Hide me from day's garish eye. When the sun begins to fling His jlaring beams. The peculiarity of the effect of twilight is to soften and mellow. At that delightful time, even artificial water, however naked, edgy, and tame its banks, will often receive a momentary charm; for then all that is scattered and cutting, all that disgusts a painter's eye, is blended together in one broad and soothing harmony of light and shadow. I have more than once, at such a moment, happened to arrive at a place entirely new to me, and have been struck in the highest degree with the appearance of wood, water and buildings, that seemed to accompany and set off each other in the happiest manner; and I felt quite impatient to examine all these beauties by daylight. At length the morn, and cold indifference came. The charm which held them together, and made them act so powerfully as a whole, had vanished. It may, perhaps, be said that the imagination, from a few imperfect hints, often forms beauties which have no existence, and that indifference may naturally arise from those phantoms not being realised. I am far from denying the power of partial concealment and obscurity on the imagination; but in these cases, the set of objects when seen by twilight is beautiful as a picture, and would appear highly so if exactly represented on the canvas; but in full daylight, the sun, as it were, decompounds what had been so happily mixed together, and separates a striking whole into detached unimpressive parts. REV. A. ALISON-F. GROSE-R. GOUGH. The REV. ARCHIBALD ALISON (1757-1839) published in 1790 Essays on the Nature and Principles of Taste,' designed to prove that material objects appear beautiful or sublime in consequence of their association with our moral feelings and affections. The objects presented to the eye generate trains of thought and pleasing emotion, and these constitute our sense of beauty. This theory, referring all our ideas of beauty to the law of association, has been disputed and condemned as untenable, but part of Mr. Alison's reasoning is just, and his illustrations and language are particularly apposite and beautiful. For example, he thus traces the pleasures of the antiquary : Memorials of the Past. Even the peasant, whose knowledge of former times extends but to a few generations, has yet in his village some monuments of the deeds or virtues of his forefathers, and cherishes with a fond veneration the memoria. of those good old times to which his imagination returns with delight, and of which he loves to recount the simple tales that tradition has brought him. And what is it that constitutes the emotion of sublime delight. which every man of common se.sibility feels upon his first prospect of Rome? It is not the scene of destruction which is before him. It is not the Tiber, diminished in his imagination to a paltry stream, flowing amidst the ruins of that magnificence which it once adorned. It is not the triumph of superstition over the wreck of human greatness, and its monuments erected upon the very spot where the first honours of humanity have been gained. It is the ancient Rome which fills his imagination. It is the country of Cæsar. of Cicero, of Virgil, which is before him. It is the mistress of the world which he sees and who seems to him to rise again from her tomb to give laws to the universe. All that the labours of his youth, or the studies of his maturer age, have acquired with regard to the history of this great people, open at once upon his imagination, and present him with a field of high and solemn imagery which can never be exhausted. Take from him these assccations-conceal from him that it is Rome that he sees, and how differcut would be his emotion! The Effect of Sounds as modified by Association. The howl of the wolf is little distinguished from the howl of the dog, either in its tone or in its strength; but there is no comparison between their sublimity. There are few, if any, of these sounds so loud as the most common of all sonnds, the lowing of a cow. Yet this is the very reverse of sublimity. Imagine this sound, on the contrary, expressive of fierceness or strength, and there can be no doubt that it would become sublime. The hooting of the owl at midnight, or amid ruins, is strikingly sublime; the same sound at noon, or during the day, is very far from being so. The scream of the eagle is simply disagreeable when the bird is either ta:ne or confined; it is sublime only when it is heard amid rocks and deserts, and when it is expressive to us of liberty and independence, and savage majesty. The neighing of a war-horse in the field of battle, or of a young untamed horse when at large among mountains, is powerfully sublime. The same sound in a cart-horse or a horse fn the stable is simply indifferent if not disagreeable. No sound is more absolutely mean than the grunting of swine. The same sound in the wild boar-an animal remarkable both for fierceness and strength-is sublime. The low and feeble sounds of animals which are generally considered the reverse of sublime, are rendered so by association. The hissing of a goose and the rattle of a child's plaything are both contemptible sounds; but when the hissing comes from the mouth of a dangerous serpent, and the noise of the rattle is that of the rattlesnake, although they do not differ from the others in intensity, they are both of them highly sublinie. There is certainly no resemblance, as sounds, between the noise of thunder and the hissing of a serpent-between the growling of a tiger and the explosion of gunpowder-between the scream of the eagle and the shouting of a multitude: yet all of these are sublime. In the same manner, there is as little resemblance between the tinkling of the sheep-fold bell and the murmuring of the breeze-between the hum of the beetle and the song of the lark-between the twitter of the swallow and the sound of the curfew; yet all these are beautiful. Mr. Alison published also two volumes of Sermons, remarkable for elegance of composition. He was a prebendary of Salisbury, and senior minister of St Paul's Chapel, Edinburgh-a man of amiable character and varied accomplishments. FRANCIS GROSE (1731-1791) was a superficial antiquary, but voluminous writer. He published the Antiquities of England and Wales,' in eight volumes, the first of which appeared in 1773; and the ‘Antiquities of cotland,' in two volumes, published in 1790. To this work Burns contributed his Tam o'Shanter.' which, Grose characterised as a pretty poem!' He wrote also treatises on Ancient Armour and Weapons, Military Antiquities, &c. RICHARD GOUGH (1735-1809) was a celebrated topographer and antiquary. His British Topography. Sepulchral Monuments of Great Britain,' his enlarged edition of Camden's Britannia,' and va rious other works, evince great research and untiring industry. His valuable collection of books and manuscripts he bequeathed to the Bodleian Library, Oxford. LORD ERSKINE. The published Speeches of THOMAS, LORD ERSKINE (1750-1823), are among the finest specimens we have of English forensic oratory. Erskine was the youngest son of the Earl of Buchan. He served both in the navy and army, but threw up his commission in order to study law, and was called to the bar in his twenty-eighth year. His first speech, delivered in November 1778, in defence of Captain Baillie, lieutenant-governor of Greenwich Hospital (who was charged with libel), was so brilliant and successful as at once to place him above all his brethren of the bar. In 1783 he entered parliament as member for Portsmouth. The floor of the House of Commons, it has been said, is strewed with the wreck of lawyers' reputations, and Erskine's appearances there were, comparatively, failures. In 1806 he was made Lord Chancellor and created Baron Erskine. He enjoyed the Great Seal but for a short time, having retired in 1807 on the diss lution of the Whig ministry. After this he withdrew in great measure from public life, though mingling in society, where his liveliness and wit, his vanity and eccentricities, rendered him a favourite. In 1817 he published a political fragment, entitled 'Armata,' in which are some good observations on constitutional law and history. We subjoin extracts from Erskine's speech in defence of John Stockdale, December 9, 1789. Stockdale had published a defence of Warren Hastings, written by the Rev. John Logan, which, it was said, contained libellous observations upon the House of Commons. On the Law of Libel. Gentlemen, the question you have therefore to try upon all this matter is extremely simple. It is neither more nor less than this: At a time when the charges against Mr. Hastings were, by the implied consent of the Commons, in every hand and on every table-when, by their managers, the lightning of eloquence was incessantly consuming him, and flashing in the eyes of the public-when every man was with perfect impunity saying, and writing, and publishing just what he pleased of the supposed plunderer and devastator of nations-would it have been criminal in Mr. Hastings himself to remind the public that he was a native of this free land, entitled to the common protection of her justice, and that he had a defence in his turn to offer to them, the outlines of which he implored them in the meantime to receive, as an antidote to the unlimited and unpunished poison in circulation against him? This is, without colour or exaggeration, the true question you are to decide. Because I assert, without the hazard of contradiction that if Mr Hastings himself could have stood justified or excused in your eyes for publishing this volume in his own defence, the anthor, if he wrote it bona fide to defend him, must stand equa ly excused and justified; and if the author be justified. the publisher caunot be criminal. unless you had evidence that it was published by him with a different spirit and intention from those in which it was written. The question, therefore, is Correctly what I just now stated it to be-Could Mr. Hastings have been condemned to infamy for writing this book? Gentlemen. I tremble with indignation to be driven to put such a question in Eugland Shall it be endured that a subiet of this country may be impeached by the Commons for the transactious of twenty years-that the accusation shall spread as wide as the region of letters-that the accused shall stand, day after day and year after year, as a spectacle before the public, which shall be kept in a perpetual - tate of inflammation against him; yet that he shall not, without the severest penalties, be permitted to submit anything to the judgment of mankind in his defence? this be law (which it is for you to-day to decide), such a man has no trial. great hall, built by our fathers for English justice, is no longer a court, but an altar; and an Englishman, instead of being judged in it by God and his country, is a victim and a sacrifice. On the Government of India. If That The unhappy people of India, feeble and effeminate as they are from the softness of their climate, and subdued and broken as they have been by the knavery and strength of civilisation, still occasionally start up in all the vigour and intelligence of insulfed nature. To be governed at all, they must be governed by a rod of iron; and our empire in the E: st would long since have been lost to Great Britain, if skill and military prowess had not united their efforts to support an authority, which Heaven never gave, by means which it never can sanction. Gentlemen, I think I can observe that you are touched with this way of considering the subject; and I can account for it. I have not been considering it through the cold medium of books, but have been speaking of man and his nature, and of human dominion, from what I have seen of them myself amongst reluctant nations submitting to our authority. I know what they feel, and how such feelings can alone be suppressed. I have heard them in my youth. from a naked savage in the indignant character of a prince surrounded by his subjects, addressing the governor of a Brit sh colony, holding a bundle of sticks in his hand, as the notes of his unlettered eloquence. Who is it?' said the jealous ruler over the desert, encroached upon by the restless foot of English adventure- who is it that causes this river to rise in the high mountains and empty itself into the ocean? Who is it that causes to blow the loud winds of winter, and that calms them ag: in in the summer? Who is it that rears up the shade of those lofty forests, and blasts them with the quick lighting at his pleasure? The same Being who gave to you a country on the other side of the waters, and gave ours to us; and by this title we will defend it,' said the warrior, throwing down his tomahawk upon the ground, and raising the war-sound of his nation. These are the feelings of subjugated man all round the globe; and, depend upon it, nothing but fear will control where it is vain to look for affection. It is the nature of everything that is great and useful, both in the animate and inanimate world, to be wild end irregular, and we must be contented to take them with the alloys which belong to them, or live without them. Genius breaks from the fetters of criticism, but its wanderings are sanctioned by its majesty and wisdom when it advances in its path: subject it to the critic, and you tame it into dullness. Nightly rivers break down their banks in the winter, sweeping away to death the flocks which are fattened on the soil that they fertilise in the summer; the few may be saved by embankments from drowning, but the flock must perish from hunger. Tempests occasionally shake our dwellings and dissipate our commerce; but they Scourge before them the lazy elements, which without them would stagnate into pestilence. In like manner. Liberty herself, the last and best gift of God to his creatures, must be taken just as she is: you might pare her down into bashful regularity, and shape her into a perfect model of severe scrupulous law, but she would then be Liberty no longer; and you must be content to die under the lash of this inexorable justice which you had exchanged for the banners of Freedom. Justice and Mercy. Every human tribunal ought to take care to administer justice, as we look, hereafter, to have justice administered to ourselves. Upon the principle on which the Attorney-general prays sentence upon my client-God have mercy upon us! Instead of standing before him in judgment with the hopes and consolations of Christians, we must call upon the mountains to cover us: for which of us can present for omniscient examination, a pure, unspotted and faultless course? But I humbly expect that the benevolent Author of our being will judge us as I have been pointing out for your example. Holding up the great volume of our lives in his hands, and regarding the general scope of them, if he discovers benevolence, charity, and good will to man beating in the heart, where he alone can look-if he finds that our conduct, though often forced out of the path by our infirmities, has been in general wel! directed-his all-searching eye will assuredly never pursue us into those little corners of our lives, much less will his justice select them for punishment, without the general context of our existence. by which faults may be soinetimes found to have grown out of virtues, and very many of our heaviest offences to have been grafted by humau imperfection upon the best and kindest of our affections. No, gentlemen; believe me, this is not the course of divine justice, or there is no truth in the Gospels of Heaven. If the general tenor of a man's conduct be such as I have represented it, he may walk through the shadow of death, with all his faults about him, with as much cheerfulness as in the common paths of life; because he knows that instead of A stern accuser to expose before the Author of his nature those frail passages which, like the scored matter in the book before you, chequers the volume of the brightest and best-spent life, his mercy will obscure them from the eye of his purity, and our repentance blot them out for ever. LORD THURLOW. . One short speech by the rough, vigorous lawyer and Lord Chancellor, EDWARD THURLOW (1782-1806), has been pronounced superlatively great' in effect. The Duke of Grafton, in the course of a debate in the House of Lords, took occasion to reproach Thurlow with his plebeian extraction and his recent admission to the peerage. The Chancellor rose from the woolsack, and, as related by an eye-witness, advanced slowly to the place from which the Chancellor generally addresses the House; then fixing on the duke the look of Jove when he grasped the thunder, "I am amazed," he said, in a loud tone of voice, at the attack the noble duke has made on me. Yes, my Lords," considerably raising his voice, "I am amazed at his Grace's speech. The noble duke cannot look before him, behind him, or on either side of him, without seeing some noble peer who owes his seat in this House to successful exertions in the profession to which I belong. Does he not feel that it is as honourable to owe it to these, as to being the accident of an accident? To all these noble Lords the language of the noble duke is as applicable and as insulting as it is to myself. But I don't fear to meet it single and alone. venerates the peerage more than I do; but, my Lords, I must say, that the peerage solicited me, not I the peerage. Nay, more, I can say, and will say, that as a peer of parliament, as Speaker of this right honourable House, as Keeper of the Great Seal, as Guardian of his Majesty's Conscience, as Lord High Chancellor of England; nay, even in that character alone in which the noble duke would think it an affront to be considered-as a man-I am at this moment as respectable-I beg leave to add. I am at this moment as much respected-as the proudest peer I now look down upon. MR. CHARLES BUTLER, an English barrister of some distinction (1750-1832), in his Reminiscences' says: The effect of this speech, both within the walls of parliament and out of them, was prodigions. It gave Lord Thurlow an ascendancy in the House which no Chancellor had ever possessed; it invested him in public opinion with a character of independence and honour; and this, though he was ever on the unpopular side in politics, made him al No one |