the affection which inevitably attends it, arise those strong yearnings which are felt by some minds towards the condition of those who are most lost and abject, among our species, and the passionate desire to do something, if possible, for their restoration. They sympathize with that nature which they feel, however low it may be fallen, to be their own, and in that sympathy they feel the claim of brotherhood upon them, to help the fallen from their degradation. In that sympathy, which assures them in the fallen and lost of a nature like their own, they feel the only ground of confidence that their endeavours may not be in vain, that the zeal of love will not fall inefficaciously upon hearts which, whatever change they may have endured, were moulded at least like their own. Our most comprehensive sympathy, therefore, with mankind, and that which most widely and deeply unites us in one fellowship, as members of one great society, is that which is founded simply and directly on a known community of nature. The sympathy arising from this community of nature is so determinate and strong, that it is not limited to our spiritual part; but that we are made the same, as living men, is of itself a strong bond of mysterious sympathy that our life flows in the same blood-that we walk in the same stature that we act with the same organs. Hence is the force of that appeal, which the great delineator of our nature, Shakspeare, puts into the mouth of one of a persecuted race. He challenges his community of nature with those by whom he is scorned and oppressed. He claims fellowship with them, indeed, by his affections, but the energy of his pleading is drawn from this joint participation in one physical nature." Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands,-organs,-dimensions, senses,-affections,-passions?-fed with the same food-hurt with the same weapons-subject to the same diseases-healed by the same means-warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die?" So far he speaks in the language of general human nature. What he adds is from his own passion-" and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?" If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that too. The sum of his argument is this-" Your exclusion of us from your sympathy is unnatural, while we are not excluded from participation in the same common nature." And the argument is perfectly just, for this is the ground of a necessary sympathy in nature, till it is overpowered, as in this case, by some strong interfering feelings of division and enmity. In thus considering the bonds of fellowship which thus subsist, binding together the human race, how can we refrain from speaking of that sympathy of which we are conscious, not as participators merely of the same nature, but as inheritors of the same lot! Let us look on this merely in a natural light, and consider that all men are tillers of the same earth, subject to the bounty or the rigours of the same skies. Does not even this unite us? And are we not concerned and interested to know of the wildest tribe that ever trode the earth, in what way they kill their game, or clothe their bodies, or frame their dwellings? But if we are inheritors of a common lot of far other severity, if there lies upon us in the depth of our nature a common burden of sorrow through sin-do we not feel that in this community of our condition there is a far deeper bond of sympathy? Have not those felt it who, bearing in their own hands the only means of recovery from this common calamity, could not rest till they went forth to the uttermost ends of the earth, to impart to those who sat in darkness and in the shadow of death, the light which had delivered their own spirits from captivity. Why have Wordsworth, and Southey, and Coleridge, had all along so unkindly a feeling towards Adam Smith? Perhaps because they never read him-perhaps because-but poo, poo-men like them are privileged to have their prejudices; and we could forgive Wordsworth any injustice to Scotland or Scotsmen-(in his heart we know he loves and honours us and our country) for the sake-had he written no other-of the strain now rising obedient to what law of association we know not-in our memory-pure and pathetic as the saving light of the planet that inspired it. TO THE MOON. Wanderer! that stoop'st so low, and com'st so near Who lov'st with Night and Silence to partake, An idolizing dreamer as of yore!— I slight them all; and, on the sea-beat shore That bid me hail thee as the SAILOR'S FRIEND! So call thee for heaven's grace through thee made known, When not a twinkling star or beacon's light And for less obvious benefits, that find Their way, with thy pure help, to heart and mind; And wounds and weakness oft his sole remains. The aspiring mountains and the winding streams, One who has watched you, at some quiet hour, Or crossed by vapoury streaks and clouds that move, Nor sometimes felt a fitness in thy sway To call up thoughts that shun the glare of day, Yes, lovely Moon! if thou so mildly bright Feels through her lowest depths thy sovereignty; Gentle awakenings, visitations meek A kindly influence whereof few will speak, And when thy beauty in the shadowy cave Is hidden, buried in its monthly grave! Swept by a favouring wind, that leaves thoughts free, 'Tis a noble destiny, no doubt, to be a great Poet, or a great Philosopher, or a great Writer of any kind and folks have said that to think is nobler than to act that those men whose greatness was in their thoughtful genius must be of a higher order of mind than those who won their renown by achievements in the strife of the world, ruling or warring-yet the voice of mankind has not thus witnessed, nor perhaps our own feel ings. Indeed, our imagination seems almost to fall from an eagle-flight, when it passes from the renown of those who have been mightiest in action, to those who have been mighty only in the speculative or éreative mind. Their glory seems of a different order. Akenside says, in consonance, as we think, with the common sentiments of men "Nor far beneath the warrior's feet, We think that this common feeling may be explained and justified. The philosopher, whatever and how high soever his knowledge, may not be a great man. He may know the heights of the human mind, yet he may not be high himself. His intellect may be mighty, and yet his soul may be low. It is the same with all those whose genius is their title to glory. We seem in all of them to see certain faculties of the mind exalted into great power. But the human being himself, may or may not be exalted along with these faculties. These are but powers belonging to him; these are not himself. If we ask, then, what it is that to the ordinary apprehension, constitutes the man himself it is his will. If the will is high, the man is high; if the will is degraded, the man is degraded. But by the will is not here meant affection, passion, and desire-not at least as simple feelings however strong; but it means the will in action-proved and tried with contention and difficulty, with the burdens and the terrors which bow down or appal. He who has genius, in this view, is nothing; but he whose genius is untroubled and clear on the thundering deck, is exalted in his whole being, by that perfect power of his will of which his genius gives the evidence. So affection and desire do not in themselves exalt the man by any vehemence with which they may be felt, or any nobleness they may include; but the moment they are put to severe proof and tried, and they are found to endure the proof-as soon as generous loyalty has thrown its breast in the way of death-as soon as wealth is sacrificed to honour, so soon the passion ennobles the man; because it is found to be more than emotion and desire, it is found to have the strength of will. It is in the will, exalted indeed by affection and desire, exalted by thought and genius, that we find the elevation of the human being. In fewer and simpler words, it is the personal character that we regard first, in the estimate of personal greatness; and the intellectual character is only a secondary consideration. This is the account of the causes which, in men's judgment of the characters of others, determine the comparison they make between those who have been great in great action and those who have stood at the height of mental achievement. If we place ourselves within the minds of those whom we judge, and consider what in each case their self-esteem might be, we shall find in this respect a corresponding difference. He who feels himself to be great, and he who only feels his genius to be great, are two men as widely distinguished from each other, in the influence of their self-esteem over their moral being or their passions, as they are different in the eyes of the world. And thus we may see how the passion of glory in the mind of the orator, or the poet, or the philosopher, appears to us as something very inferior to the same passion in the breast of the young patriot warrior. We conceive it to have been an inferior passion even as they felt it; because they carried into the passion nothing but the conscious elevation of their genius, and he carries into his passion the conscious nobleness of his whole being, ready to devote itself to the cause of liberty or his country. Lay down that book, sirrah, and listen to Us. No-take it up again-'tis Paley, we perceive-read aloud the sentence nearest the thumb of your left hand-whatever it be, we undertake to say something on the same subject, as good or better, off hand. "The Law of Honour is a system of rules constructed by people of fashion, and calculated to facilitate their intercourse with one another; and for no other purpose. Consequently, nothing is adverted to by the Law of Honour, but what tends to incommode this intercourse. Hence the law only prescribes and regulates the duties betwixt equals; omitting such as relate to the Supreme Being, as well as those which we owe to our inferiors. For which reason, profaneness, neglect of public worship, cruelty to servants, rigorous treatment of tenants or other dependants, want of charity to the poor, injuries done to tradesmen by insolvency or delay of payment, with numberless examples of the same kind, are no breaches of honour; because a man is not a less agreeable companion for these vices, nor the worse to deal with, in those concerns which are usually transacted between one gentleman and another." Shut your mouth, now, ingenuous youth-we have had enough of it. Paley treats-does he not?-in suc cession of the Law of Honour, the Law of the Land, the Scriptures, the Moral Sense, Human HappinessVirtue? He does. Hear, then, Christopher North. as subsisting independently, in the spirit itself; but it has two great accessaries-the esteem of others, and the exterior demonstration of their esteem. It is not degraded, or altered in its nature by the support it derives from these two accessaries; not even though, to a certain extent, it relies on them for support. As long as it is itself the superior principle, and these are accessaries only, the purposes of nature are fulfilled. If these feelings, which were given merely as subsidiary and subordinate, should become of more moment to the mind, as they sometimes do, than its own self-regard, then the purpose of nature is subverted, and the principle of honour itself is degraded. It may be said to be the highest principle of our mind which is neither religious nor properly moral. The highest law of our spirit and acts, is that which immediately and consciously regards Him to whom we owe all; the next is that which is prescribed to us by conscience, by which each man knows himself subject to obligation, which must not be broken; next to these is that principle entirely distinct from them, by which the human being feels himself constrained to act, that he may not be self-dishonoured. When these two first and greatest laws are removed, or have comparatively little force in the mind, this other principle-which may be considered as the highest of those which are merely human, including no higher regard than of the human being to himself-this other principle, according to Christopher North, then becomes, in an imperfect degree, as a director merely of human actions-a substitute for them. In this light we may understand why this sentiment has been esteemed so highly among men, since it becomes to them, under certain circumstances, the chief law of their lives, and though not virtue, yet to a certain extent a substitute for it. We may also understand on what ground it has been reprobated by religious and moral writers. They have regarded it as a law set up among men, in independence of religious and moral obligation. It has been so set up. But it might have been considered Honour, then, must be considered that this was the error and misfortune of the men themselves, and not the fault of the principle to which they resorted, in their destitution, to whatever cause that might be owing, of a higher guidance. Now, it does not, we think, require much argument to show that there is nothing in this sentiment, justly considered, which is at variance with those higher laws to which we are subjected. The man who fulfils his duty to God is thereby necessarily obedient to his conscience: but surely there is nothing that forbids the same mind which acknowledges, and has submitted itself to this highest obedience, to be sensible to its own esteem of its own desert, to be sensible to shame, when it has forfeited its self esteem. The same mind may be religious, moral, and yet retain its sensibility to honour. It is altogether a different question to ask, whether the laws of honour which prevail in any particular nation of men are throughout consistent with morality and religion. It is probable they are not; for they are framed by human beings in their pride, and in their forgetfulness of their highest subjection. But such laws are merely to be ranked among the manners and customs of that particular nation. They are not to be cited as proofs of the necessary dictates of this feeling of our nature. They show that men, in their weakness and blindness, have erred in the application of a just and noble principle. The customs and the rules of opinion which men, instigated by this feeling, have instituted for themselves, may be in some respects greatly amiss; yet not the natural feeling, but their error, is chargeable with those transgressions. Among many nations, the feeling of honour has led to frequent suicide-it has given reputation to that crime; yet we do not think of laying that crime to the charge of this principle of our nature, for we see plainly that this is a perversion of the feeling, since there are honourable nations among whom it does not suggest that action, but preserves from it. In the same way, among ourselves, in judging our own laws of honour, we are to make the like discrimination: and to take care that we do not attribute to the essential feeling accidental customs or canons of judgment, without which the natural sentiment might subsist in its full force, and hold its just dominion over the human spirit and over human life. It is our duty to take care to keep this sentiment, which, by its alliance with pride-which, by the respect it pays to the human self, is in danger to estrange us from higher laws,-to keep it, we say, in due subjection to them. It is a feeling which, like all our natural feelings, may be carried to excess; and therefore it calls upon us for vigilance to guard and to restrain it within its due bounds; to suspect it even; but on no account to disparage it in our estimation, or to endeavour wholly to suppress it in our hearts. As far as its laws have been defined by the manners of these nations, it is the guardian of courage and faith in the character of men. The world require these in action; the sense of honour watches over them in the heart. These, then, are important virtues to society, which are in safe keeping under the vigilance of honour. But it is not to be imagined that its influence ends here. It may be first aroused in the mind with respect to these two virtues. On these it may stand. But the principle once existing in the mind, has a far more extensive operation. For, as soon as the mind is awakened to watch over itself to feel that it has an inward nobility, known to itself, and which, attainted in its own consciousness, though no other human being should know it, is forfeited and lost-there is a principle raised up into strength, which will be jealous over the whole mind, and will preserve it, according to the extent of its understanding, from every self-degrading act. The honourable mind does not in any degree measure its own worth by the opinion of others; it measures by its own estimate; and the quick and vivid sensibility which it cherishes to its own approbation, and yet more to its own blame, is a spirit that will watch over all its virtues, and animate its aversion to every vice. It may justly be described, therefore, as a principle so friendly to virtue, that, as long as it subsists, it requires and enforces some virtues in the mind otherwise most corrupted and perverted; which, maintaining as it does some virtues in the midst of vice, is then only happily placed, in the full exercise of its power and enjoyment of its nature, when it is |