whispering, was alarmed by the dash of the oars. His challenge was instantly heard. "A boat-a boat!-bring to, or I shoot!" And, as they continued to ply their oars, he called aloud, "Treason! treason!" rung the bell of the castle, and discharged his harquebuss at the boat. The ladies crowded on each other like startled wildfowl, at the flash and report of the piece, while the men urged the rowers to the utmost speed. They heard more than one ball whiz along the surface of the lake, at no great distance from their little bark; and from the lights, which glanced like meteors from window to window, it was evident the whole castle was alarmed, and their escape discovered.

"Pull!" again exclaimed Seyton; "stretch to your oars, or I will spur you to the task with my dagger-they will launch a boat immediately."

"That is cared for," said Roland; "I locked gate and wicket on them when I went back, and no boat will stir from the island this night, if doors of good oak and bolts of iron can keep men within stone-walls. And now I resign my office of porter of Lochleven, and give the keys to the Kelpie's keeping."

As the heavy keys plunged in the lake, the Abbot, who till then had been repeating his prayers, exclaimed, "Now, bless thee, my son! for thy ready prudence puts shame on us all.”

"I knew," said Mary, drawing her breath more freely, as they were now out of reach of the musketry-" I knew my squire's truth, promptitude, and sagacity.-I must have him dear friends with my no less true knights, Douglas and Seaton--but where, then, is Douglas?"

"Here, madam," answered the deep and melancholy voice of the boatman who sate next her, and who acted as steersman.

"Alas! was it you who stretched your body before me," said the Queen, "when the balls were raining around us?"

"Believe you," said he, in a low tone, "that Douglas would have resigned to any one the chance of protecting his Queen's life with his own?"

The dialogue was here interrupted by a shot or two, from one of those small pieces of artillery, called falconets, then used in defending castles. The shot was too vague to have any effect, but the broader flash, the deeper sound, the louder return, which was made by the midnight echoes of Bennarty, terrified and imposed silence on the liberated prisoners. The boat was alongside of a rude quay or landing-place, running out from a garden of considerable extent, ere any of them again attempted to speak. They landed, and while the Abbot returned thanks aloud to Heaven, which had thus far favoured their enterprize, Douglas enjoyed the best reward of his desperate undertaking, in conducting the Queen to the house of the gardener.' Pp. 262-270.

There are a hundred improbabilities in the tale, but these we do not stop to notice. The Author winds up the narrative, and gets rid of the supernumerary personages, rather better than usual. Father Ambrosius is made to warn the ill-fated Queen,

on her embarkation, that her doom is sealed when she quits the Scottish Strand, but it is too late to hesitate. The Sheriff of Cumberland is her escort; a gentleman,' we are told, of the 'House of Lowther,' which precious little bit of information will, we dare say, not be lost upon the noble family whose antiquity is thus so politely insinuated. After two years' residence with her royal mistress, Catherine, says the story, was dismissed, and became soon after her return, the Lady of Roland Avenel.

Upon the whole, "The Abbot" is not unworthy of its Author. With all its faults, it is such a tale as perhaps no contemporary writer could have framed; and it is saying much for the genius of a man, that it is only with his own productions that we think of comparing his least successful efforts. Even "The Monastery" is as superior to the common run of novels, as it is inferior to "Guy Mannering," or "The Heart of Midlothian." Compared, indeed, with the works of Fielding and Smollett, they are slight and sketchy productions; nor will they endure a frequent perusal. But, in being free from the grossness and libertinism which pollute the works of those writers, as well as from the mawkish sentimentality of our modern novelists, they entitle their Author to an honourable distinction, and lead us to wish that he had aimed at something higher than the mercantile profits arising out of an ephemeral popularity.

Art. V. 1. Sketches of the Philosphy of Life. By Sir T. C. Morgan, M.D. &c. &c. 8vo. London. 1819.

2. Sound Mind; or Contributions to the Natural History and Physiology of the Human Intellect. By John Haslam, M.D. &c. &c. Svo. London. 1820.

IT T cannot be necessary to apprize our readers of our decided hostility to those modern systems of physiology which, assuming to have anatomy as their base, refuse to recognise any powers or principles in either physical or moral man, that do not result from organization. Against this organic doctrine of life, we believe, however, that the accusation of materialism has been somewhat vaguely and indiscriminately preferred: nay, many writers who have stood forward as declared foes to the principles in question, have, in the very terms of their opposition, proved themselves, to say the least, quite as much materialists, as those against whom they have argued. When, for example, Mr. Abernethy opposes to the inferences of Mr. Lawrence, the materia vitæ diffusee of John Hunter, what does be more than give another support to the elephant, which itself must have something to rest upon? Indeed, whoever may have attempted, from Plato downwards, or whoever shall hereafter attempt, to

connect the world of spirit and matter by any cognizable bond of union, ever has stumbled, and ever will stumble in limine. The essence of all these speculations consists in a sort of subtilization of matter beyond the reach of our perceptive powers; they are.. therefore in reality and effect, systems of materialism.

The organists, indeed, for so the new sect has been termed, formally proclaim their dissent from the creed of the materialist. In the table of contents to one of the treatises which have issued from this school, we meet with the following announcement: "Reasons for rejecting both a spiritual and material principle of life.' And on turning to the page we are referred to, we find the following statements. That some subtile agent, analagous

in its properties to light, heat, and electricity, may enter as a < link into the chain of vital causation, is a proposition strictly 'possible, and is not perhaps altogether improbable. But till the reality of such an agent be proved, its admission upon hypothetical_grounds is prohibited by that general canon of reasoning, Frustra fit per plura quod fieri potest per pauciora.' Call then this philosophic scepticism, if you please; but do not defeat your own purpose, when you are aiming at razing it from its foundation, by setting about the work with materials which are themselves manufactured from a petitio principii, and therefore necessarily ineffectual to the accomplishment of their design.

We may, for the sake of rendering our sentiments on these disputes more clear and defined, range under two heads, those attempts to explain the inexplicable subject of vital causation to which we have alluded. One class of these attempts, is, as has been just intimated, grounded on the notion of etherealizing substance so to say, into the impalpable tenuity of spirit. The other class applies its machinery to the development of percipient causation, and thus falls into the futility of symbolic analogy, and talks with Plato of the oxnua, or with Darwin, supposes ideas to be configurations of the sensual organs; thus, most obviously converting the instrument into the agent, and conceiving that we announce a cause by the introduction of a symbol. Now, it must be admitted in behalf of the philosophy of organization, that so far from having any thing in common with the above vain and visionary schemes, it denounces their legitimacy, and ridicules their absurdity.

We pause,' says Sir Charles Morgan, in our researches at the properties of contractility and sensibility; not however that it is necessary to consider these boundaries as strictly impassable. But in attempting to extend the limits of inquiry, the map must be traced after the discoveries of a Columbus; not covered with an imaginary Terra Australis, or fancied Atlantis; even though such territories should be vouched on the imposing authority of another Plato.'

To what, then, it will be asked, do we object, in these principles which have called forth the present inquiry? It is this, that they assume the establishment of a positive, when they have merely made out a negative. Our philosophers, when they confess their ignorance of the quo modo of vital causation, are right. But when they infer that intellect is the result of organization, because they have no conception of the manner in which it is appended to the organic fabric, their conclusions are quite as gratuitous, and therefore as unphilosophical as any of the unstable systems by which they have been preceded. Their inferences, moreover, are as much at variance with moral, as they are with philosophical rectitude; for once admit the postulate that all motive and mental impulse originate from, and are totally subordinate to organic construction, and you open the floodgates to an overwhelming rush of immorality and vice.

But to be more explicit, our objections to the modern philosophy of life may be summed up under the following general heads. First, by referring every thing to organic necessity, it denies the freedom of choice. Secondly, it daringly presumes to arraign before the bar of man's defective and fallible judgement the designs of Omnipotence, or the wisdom of final causes. Thirdly, it contends for a sameness, except in degree, between the rationality of the brute and the intellect of Man. And lastly, it infers the improbability of an imperishable principle in man, because there is nothing in physiology that teaches the doctrine.

That man, in the first place, is not impelled morally by mere organic impulse, may be considered as sufficiently substantiated by the very influence which the scepticism of the principles in question operates upon his feelings and volitions. Let us suppose the case of an individual after his conversion to those tenets which inculcate by specious innuendos our unaccountability to any thing beyond the clod of clay out of which we are formed. Is not, we would ask, such an individual a different character, both in act and resolve, from what he was prior to such a change in his opinions? Here, our organists will tell us, that we are merely contending on the ground of consequences, and are therefore using a species of argumentation the legitimacy of which philosophy refuses to recognise. But we repeat, that the very consequences themselves in the present case palpably disprove the rectitude of the principles from which they proceed; since, if a different course be pursued from the restricted one hitherto adopted from the persuasion that "to-morrow we die"-" let "us therefore eat and drink," is it not evident, that such course is determined not by the necessity of organization, but from the motives originating in the newly adapted creed? We would then repeat, that such speculations as deride exterior influence, and would laugh us to scorn when we talk of something from without

and independent on organization, not only have a mischievous tendency, (for that might possibly be consistent with their abstract truth,) but carry the materials of self refutation into the very ingredients of their first and fundamental positions.

Our Second reason for objecting to the philosophical principia now under review, is, the-we were about to call it awful freedom with which they refer to final causes and providential design. Far is it from our wish to encourage that Deus intersit feeling which cannot treat of physical science, without mixing with its speculations matter that has more correct reference to moral science. But we are bold to say that it is not only highly indecorous, but absolutely unphilosophical to indicate defects in creation in the manner that we find done in one of the works which head this article. Here again, as in the case of organization, judgement is formed from ex parte evidence: a positive is assumed, when the just inference from the premises is merely a negative, and the speculatist proceeds upon the false supposition that our feeble and finite powers are equal to the scanning of infinite intelligence. Man is unquestionably gifted with perception equal to the discernment of vast designs on the part of the Great Ruler of the Universe; but when he imagines himself gifted with the faculty of detecting insufficiency in such designs, he calculates not only impiously, but absurdly, since the very apparent defect may have an object far beyond his ken and conception.

Did Sir C. Morgan recollect, while he was penning some of his shallow remarks on living organs and functions, the fable of the insect's criticism upon the work of Sir Christopher Wren?

The denial of an essential superiority in man over the inferior animals, is a third error of the tenets under notice. We may be told that discussions on this head are mere logomachies. But the dispute between kind and degree, ceases to be a war simply of words, when, on its determination is made to hinge the final destiny of man. If it must be so, let the word reason be employed to characterise those actions of the brute which imply contrivance, and denote recollection; but, why, as it has been oftentimes inquired, does not this reason lift the animal from its first level in the scale of creation, and cause a progressive improvement in the race to which he belongs?

Mr. Haslam well puts the difference between the human and the brute natures, in reference to this point, in the following

terms.

The gift of instinct even to animals does not exclude them from acquiring knowledge by experience; for their minds are capable of improvement according to the extent of their capacities, and the intellectual organs with which they are furnished. The instinct which is allotted to them is a mental possession which they could not have acquired from the limited nature of their