of his subject from Addison, although these are followed up with the enthusiasm of the poet rather than the nicer discrimination of the essayist.

Addison considers imagination singly in its action with reference to the external world, borrowing its images from the objects of sight, and deriving all its pleasure from that source; it is not the higher kind of imagination, creating analogies from worlds which sight has never reached, out of the depths of the unconscious (to use a phrase of Carlyle's), and in the sovereignty of its own prerogative. Addison never thinks it necessary to define imagination, and furnishes no account of the way in which it acts and imparts such pleasure to its subject. Imagination all the while is rather the mind itself, and it is the action of the mind on things great, or novel, or beautiful, which constitutes that power. The susceptibility of receiving impressions from great, novel, or beautiful objects is imagination. Greatness, novelty, and beauty, are constituents of the faculty which is said to receive pleasure from these sources. Imagination also rather creates beauty, and it seems to be a misplacing of things to say that it derives pleasure from that which it creates. Is this not like saying that it creates its own pleasure? There seems some confusion, also, or mixing of things, to make nature and art reciprocally the magazine from which each draws its power over the imagination, while it is the imagina tion, in great measure, which puts its power into either. Imagination does not derive any pleasure from nature or art which it does not first put into it, by investing it with what power it possesses. Had Addison's theme been the influence of nature and art over the mind through imagination it would have been more intelligible, and more consistent; and his observations would then have had all the merit which we recognize in them, abating the particular confusion which we have taken exception to. The observations, not

withstanding any exceptions, are often very ingenious, and very subtle, and expressed in language appropriate and felicitous. Nothing could exceed the harmony and beauty and simple grace often of the sentences. We linger over them and say, 'How exquisite! how beautiful!' We could wish to make quotations, but we would hardly know where to stop, and we might be tempted to multiply selections beyond the limits of an article, or the space at command.

6

Addison's criticism of Milton's 'Paradise Lost,' has been justly admired. It was the first pronounced criticism on Milton. It was so heartily done at such length-with such elaborateness. It was so learneddrawing its own principles from Aristotle's Poetics,' showing such a familiarity with Homer and Virgil-these princes of song-and putting you almost upon the same terms of intimacy with the Iliad, the Odyssey, and the Eneid, as with the 'Paradise Lost' itself. Very suggestive hints also are taken from the De Arte Poetica,' of Horace, Quintilian, and Longinus-so that one way and another you feel on the most learned terms with the great Epic poet, while every opinion of the critic is guarded and fortified by a reference to one or other of these classic authorities. There is enough, however, of Addison's own, in the way of subtle observation, and refined criticism, to stamp the papers with much originality and value. To apply the principles, to detect their application, was almost as much as to lay down the principles originally himself. One has the happiness, as he reads, of see ing his own selected or favourite passages pointed out by the critic, their peculiar excellencies dwelt upon, and not seldom the same blemishes fastened upon for animadversion which had drawn forth his own unfavourable judgment. Altogether Addison's papers on Milton occupy twenty-one numbers of the Spectator, published on the Saturdays to afford Sunday reading to the great literary public to

which the Spectator appealed. The great London public and gentry of England in their country seats, many a Sir Roger De Coverley, and others, no doubt, with more competent minds, might be worse occupied than in reading these papers. Shelley once said that but for Milton's Paradise Lost,' Christianity would have had a fair chance of being forgotten at some future, and, I suppose, no very distant day. Well, at all events, if there was much to repel from the Bible there was much to attract in these criticisms, while they served to break down the great poem for more incapable readers. The high spiced matter of the poem itself was somewhat diluted for the ordinary palate; and it was one thing to accept the views as expressed by the poet, and quite another to see them in the criticism of so amiable an authority, and so moderate à judge of theological questions, as Addison. The beauties of Milton are finely pointed out, and are almost enhanced by the setting which Addison gives them. They are like chosen pictures culled from a portfolio, and you can contemplate them at your leisure, and scan them without fatigue; for the strain is considerable to read Milton, and few indeed have the courage to undertake the task, and may even break down in the effort.

Both the papers on Imagination' and the criticism of Milton give an intrinsic value to the Spectator above the more fugitive pieces; and yet these very fugitive pieces, perhaps, exercised a more salutary influence socially at the time. We have no doubt they contributed much to that amenity of manners which succeeded the period of the Charleses and the Revolution. Addison even moulded the English language to its present simpler and more idiomatic form. His style became a model for future ages, and the same felicity and delicacy of expression have been handed down to our own day. Gray and Goldsmith were formed upon Addison, and there

is nothing we are more familiar with in the writings of our time than the sentences of Addison. Many of our present essayists have the command of a style equally pure, sententious and happy. That does not detract from the merit of Addison, and we recur to the fountain head, not exactly the pure well of English undefiled, but the simple idiomatic Eng lish which Addison introduced, with the same pleasure as ever, and as if he had not a successor.

The papers of the Tatler and Guar dian, and, we may add, the Freeholder, bear the stamp and character of the essays of the Spectator. They bear unmistakably the signature of Addison's genius. There is the same inimitable humour, the same graceful innuendo, the same amiable play of wit, the same power of ridicule, though that is never wielded to wound, but to correct and improve. The Freeholder, as its name would indicate, has more of a political aim or object. It was written mainly in opposition to the designs of those who sought the restoration of the Stuart dynasty, in the interest, therefore, of the Protestant succession, and against a Popish ascendancy. There is accordingly, perhaps, greater nerve in the style of its papers, more point and pungency; and the sentences have more of the rounded and periodic character than the easy and simple grace that so eminently distinguished the Spectator. The Pclitical Creed of a Tory Malcontent,' and The Character and Conversation of a Tory Fox-hunter' could not be surpassed in effective sarcasm and delicate irony.

Addison's poetry does not take the same rank with his prose; he is the essayist rather than the poet. There is elegance and harmony in his heroic couplets-fine thoughts finely expressed-especially in his 'Letter from Italy to Charles, Lord Halifax,' and his Lines addressed to Sir Godfrey Kneller. His Campaign' also has fine stanzas. But there is little

imagination in the highest sense of the term. We fail to see those ingenious analogies which Macaulay detected. There is fine sentiment, but nothing of that fine play of emotion in which true poetry consists. It is different, however, with his sacred poems. There Addison possessed the very emotion essential to the composition; his hymns are finely devout, and there are in every verse those graceful turns of thought which constitute such an element of excellence in his essays. Nothing could well be finer than the hymn commencing:

How are Thy servants blessed, O Lord!'

Or, again, that hymn which is committed to memory in every pious household:

When all Thy mercies, O my God,' &c.
The little ode,

'The spacious firmament on high,' &c.,

is about perfect in its structure and thought as a hymn of praise to the Creator. How is it associated with the finest reminiscences of one's early days!

There is a fine lyrical flow in 'Rosamond; there is more fancy than in his other compositions, but the piece contains some false rhymes. It is loose in its structure, and altogether it is more like the composition of a youth in his first attempts at poetry than a serious effort of the essayist of the Spectator. It shows, however, the versatility of the author's mind.

The comedy of the Drummer' has a poor plot; the wit is good, and the situations are amusing, but there is more indelicacy of allusion than we would expect from Addison. It may be on that account that some critics have doubted whether it was really Addison's production. But Macaulay thinks it bears internal evidence of having been Addison's. He thinks it contains passages which no other author known to him could have produced.

The Cato' is declamation rather than poetry. It is too stilted; it wants the freedom and the action of the true drama. The utterances of Cato and Portius are like the studied periods of the Stoic philosopher declaiming to his disciples, rather than the natural language of ordinary dialogue. How different from the lightning flashes of Shakespeare, occurring just in the ordinary speech of the dramatis personæ,' yet laying open the deep crevasses of providence, and letting in unexpected light on its darkest mysteries! Compare the soliloquy of Cato with that of Hamlet! Lucia and Marcia discourse love in a most decorous spirit, and the former finds in the death of Marcus only an opportune occasion forgiving free vent to her love for Portius, which she had resolved to stifle as long as Marcus lived. Roman ladies, however, are not to be judged by ordinary rules'; and we could admire the self-denial of Lucia if we could believe it consistent with the strong passion she expresses for Portius. The drama, however, had most signal success when brought out on the stage, the declamations about liberty suiting the temper of the times, and the Tories and Whigs respectively determined not to be outdone, the one by the other, in the applause with which they greeted the sentiments of the drama.

It would extend our article to an undue length to dwell upon Addison's character, which was the purest. Never perhaps was there a purer mind; his amiableness, which was evidenced by the long friendship with Steele; with but slight interruption from political causes; his religious sentiments which he never concealed, and which had expression in some of the most classic compositions in our hymnology; his political career which was unstained by servility, and never stooped to venality; the particulars of his life; his tour on the continent; his shrewd and often ingenious observations on the different countries through which

THE early settlement of the British

American colonies was effected by the most liberal assistance from the Home Government. The first settle. ment of Halifax consisted of emigrants to the number of 2,576 souls, embarked in thirteen transports under charge of the Honourable Edward Cornwallis, who succeeded Mascarene as Governor of Nova Scotia, and arrived at Chebucto (as the present site of Halifax was then called) on the 22nd June, 1749. To these, and all who desired to emigrate to Nova Scotia, the British Government of that day offered the following exceedingly liberal inducements:-A free passage, and subsistence during the voyage, as well as for twelve months after their arrival; also arms and ammunition for defence, with proper implements for husbandry, fishing and the erection of houses. The lands were to be granted in fee simple, free from the payment of any quit rent or taxes for ten years, at the expiration of which no person was to pay more than one shilling sterling for every fifty acres so granted. To military men especial privileges seem to have been granted, for every private soldier or seaman was to receive fifty acres of land, with an additional allowance of ten acres for every member of his family. Every officer, under the rank of an ensign in the land service, and that of a lieutenant in the sea service, was to receive eighty acres, with fifteen added for every person belonging to his family. Ensigns were allowed two hundred acres, lieutenants three hundred, captains four hundred, and

officers of higher rank six hundred acres, with thirty acres to each member of their families. Such liberal terms, if offered now-a-days for the settlement of the great North-West, would soon add immensely to its population. And if, as Lord Derby advises, in a speech he has recently made on the present depression in Britain, the subject of emigration is taken up by the British Government on any large scale, it is to be hoped. that the Government of the Dominion will strive to turn as much as they can of it to the fertile fields of our north-western territory.

On the arrival of Cornwallis, the present site of the city, which ho called after the Earl of Halifax, at that time President of the Board of Trade and Plantations, and at whose instigation the city was founded, was without a solitary habitation, and covered with trees to the water's edge. The capital of Nova Scotia was then at Annapolis, where Colonel Mascarene, the Governor, had his headquarters; and it seems odd, to those knowing the country now, to read of the manner in which communication was had with Annapolis by Goveruor Cornwallis, as he writes, by 'sending a Frenchman who knows the country overland by Minas, a distance of 25 leagues, where there is a path that the French have made by driving their cattle.' Disease and the Indians played sad havoc with the early settlers, but the town continued to grow, and the destruction of Louisburg, with Wolfe's victory at Quebec, for which expeditions Halifax was