tions more dependent on our inward nature than on external things. The mind is its own place, and of itself Can make a heaven of earth, a hell of heaven. The pleasures which all mechanical contrivances can communicate are speedily exhausted. We soon get accustomed to physical advantages their charm dies with their novelty. We then : cease to regard them as an addition to our stock. We might feel indeed their loss (for a time) but we little value their possession. Those high arts, on the other hand, which are addressed to our moral and intellectual nature, which kindle the imagination and touch the heart, which elevate and refine the soul, which teach us how to think and feel, are immediately conversant with all the elements of pure and permanent enjoyment. In the intellectual banquet there is no surfeit the appetite grows with what it feeds on. The longer we dwell on sublime truths and glorious images and noble sentiments-the longer we gaze on the face of nature and commune with its mysterious beauty-the longer we watch, in a loving spirit, the indications of a higher nature in the finest specimens of humanity-the longer we contemplate the works of God-the more capable do we become of that spiritual delight which lifts us into the atmosphere of religion, and renders us comparatively independent of all grosser cares. How frequently it happens that things which to the mere utilitarian seem most trivial and transitory, are peculiarly valuable and permanent ! He speaks with contempt of the beauty of style in composition, and calls words air-"a trim reckoning!" He thinks stone walls alone are built for eternity. But as Byron said, after Mirabeau, true words are things: and as Hazlitt said, they are the only things that last for ever. Printed words, emblems of true thoughts, can never die. It is not pretended that all words are equally lasting. God forbid that they should be so. The sayings of dunces and idiots must die. Foolish and unmeaning words are fortunately as ephemeral as the dustlike insects that glitter in the sunshine. Those words only N are immortal that have the rare bloom of genius on them, and that embody truth. With the utmost respect for Macaulay's brilliant abilities, I shall continue to think that Socrates and Plato were more useful members of the great family of man than the best shoe-makers in the world. I shall even dare to think that they have contributed more to the moral elevation of their fellow creatures than all the Mills and Benthams of the ninteenth century. L.-I can hardly believe that Macaulay means what he says— he cannot be serious. Nor can you be serious, I think, in speaking so slightingly of science. H.-No! You must not go away with the idea that I deny in sober earnestness the utility of the mathematical or any other sciences. I am not quite so narrow-minded. Perhaps, if we thoroughly understood each other, we should find that we differ less than we appear to do. Men in argument, and in the heat of opposition, are apt to overstate their case, to run into extremes, and to try to get as far as possible from each other. I merely set myself against the contemptuous treatment of poetry and literature and the fine arts, in which men of science are too apt to indulge themselves. They provoke me to retorts, perhaps too often characterized by that very extravagance and flippancy which I attribute to them. If I have ever said too much in favor of poetry, it is because they have said too much against it. No. XI. HAZLITT-THOMSON-WORDSWORTH-TURNER- L.-I have always forgotten, until now, to ask you how and when you became acquainted with Hazlitt. R.-I set up a literary periodical in 1827, entitled the London Weekly Reveiw, and I applied to Hazlitt, then a stranger, to contribute to its columns, and as he immediately consented to do so, we soon became personally acquainted with each other. I recollect at my first interview with him, his laughing very heartily at Buckingham, who wished to engage him on the Oriental Herald; but, anxious to drive a good bargain, endeavoured to persuade him that one guinea from that periodical, was equal to two guineas from any other. All Buckingham's ingenious reasoning upon the subject was thrown away. Hazlitt adhered obstinately to his own arithmetic. L.-There is something so plausible in Buckingham, when he has an object to gain, that I often found myself quite unable to contend with him. He wove a silken spell around me. It was only when I got on the outer side of his door, that I recovered the full use of my faculties. He is certainly a very clever and a very pleasant fellow. R. He was an excellent editor for India, and was rapidly making a large fortune by the Calcutta Journal, when the Government so cruelly and despotically compelled him to break up his establishment and leave this country. He has not succeeded so well in England. Though on the whole, a lucid and agreeable writer, he is a little too verbose, and has damnable iteration" in him. When arguing on subjects of great public interest and importance, he is singularly fair and generally right, but he often spoils a good cause by doing too much for it. He dwells with such minuteness and pertinacity on small matters, and is so anxious not to lose a single advantage, however trifling, that he sacrifices the general effect by a want of prominence in his more important and telling points. He is a pleasing speaker, too, but does not seem to have succeeded in the Senate; though as a lecturer he generally exercises a winning influence over a small assembly. L.-Hazlitt, I believe, was neither a good orator nor a good talker. R. He was a most interesting talker when he felt quite at home. Otherwise he was a dummy. But though his conversation was ardent and brilliant, it was impeded by sudden breaks and difficulties. He often seemed to labour with his meaningto have a painful consciousness of his inability to express it fully. This often made him repeat the same thing in different ways, and sometimes he would stop in the middle of what promised to be a weighty and noble sentence, and baulk his hearers with a lame and impotent conclusion. But the better ments even of such broken discourse always indicated great force and originality of thinking. L.-I regret that I never knew him. What was his personal appearance? R. He was below the middle size, and, from extreme shyness and a morbid sensibility, he had always an awkward and timid air in mixed company. He had a magnificent forehead, and a fine eye; and is said to have been extremely handsome in early life, but care and thought ploughed up his features in manhood. His gait was slouching and his dress slovenly. His hat was generally too large for his head, or put on without the least regard to its shape, the side sometimes usurping the honors of the front. Though anything but a lady's man, he was extremely courteous and polite to those ladies who had the art to make him feel himself at his ease with them. At an earlier period of his life, I believe, he was no enemy to the botttle; but when I knew him he suffered severely from indigestion, and never drank anything stronger than tea, in which he indulged as freely as Doctor Johnson himself. The tea-pot was on his table half the day. He made his tea so strong that few other people could drink it; and I have no doubt that it affected his nerves and aggravated his stomach disorders. The first day he dined with me, I was vexed to discover that there was not on the table the only sort of meat he could venture upon—a mutton chop; but having discovered this, by mere accident, in good time, I contrived to gratify his fancy before the cloth was removed. L.-Was he much in London ? R. He visited the great city I believe pretty frequently, but he generally resided at an old Inn, called the Hut, at Winterslowon or near Salisbury Plain. Here he wrote most of his best essays. When in London, he used to lie in bed very late in the morning, and then sit for hours over his tea. He ridiculed the early-to-rise men, who had nothing to do when they got out of bed, and used to quote Thomson's reply to one who enquired why he did not get up earlier-"Young man," said the poet ("more fat than bard beseems") "I have no motive," And yet in his Seasons Thomson complains of sluggards— Falsely luxurious will not man awake? L.-It is recorded of Thomson that he would sometimes leisurely eat peaches off a tree in his garden, resting both hands in his waistcoat pockets. But it is wonderful what some indolent men of genius have accomplished-what legacies they have left to mankind. Neither Thomson nor Hazlitt lived in vain. R.-Hazlitt was the best critic on the Fine Arts that England has produced. He thoroughly understood them, practically and theoretically. He was a painter himself in early life, but he had more judgment than skill, and was so little satisfied with his own performances, that he gave up the art in despair, though I have seen some of his paintings which struck me as indicating decided genius. If my memory is not deceiving me, I once saw in a house in London, his portrait of an old woman, a performance of which he speaks so fondly in one of his essays. I have a more distinct remembrance of a small rough water-color sketch |