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in the same vineyard), for their exertions in endeavouring to remove the anomalies that are everywhere apparent in our civil as well as criminal code of jurisprudence.

"It is not possible, indeed, to estimate how valuable an offer he makes to society who gives it a single good law. There are but few words, perhaps, that compose it; but in those few words may be involved an amount of good, increasing progressively with each generation, which, if it could have been known in all its amplitude to the legislator at the time when he contrived his project, would have dazzled and overwhelmed his very power of thought. What is true of a new law, that relates to some positive institution, is, as may be supposed, equally true of those laws which merely repeal and remedy the past; since a single error in policy may, in long continuance, produce as much evil, as a single wise enactment may in its long continuance produce good."-BROWN's Philosophy of the Human Mind, vol. iv. p. 354.

P. 48, 1. 16.

Had been a Faustus centuries ago.

The disposition of the people in former daya to attribute any new discovery to magic, is apparent in the following anecdote of Otto Gurike (who lived about the year 1640), a wealthy magistrate of Magdeburgh, the discoverer of the air-pump.

"Gurike took great pleasure in a huge water barometer erected in his house. It consisted of a tube above thirty feet high, rising along the wall and terminated by a tall and rather wide tube, hermetically sealed, containing a toy of the shape of a man. The whole being filled with water and set in a balance on the ground, the column of liquor settled to the proper altitude, and left the toy floating on its surface; but all the lower part of the tube being concealed under the wainscoting, the little image or weather mannikin, as he was called, made his appearance only when raised up to view in fine weather. This whimsical contrivance, which received the name of amenoscope, or semper vivum, excited among the populace vast admiration: and the worthy magistrate was in consequence shrewdly suspected of being too familiar with the powers of darkness.”—Supplement to Encyclopædia Britannica, art. Barometer.

P. 49, 1. 11.

The sun of science, in its noonday blaze

Glorious, would strike our Bacon with amaze.

The progress which may be made in the sublime science of astronomy is thus splendidly described by La Place :—

"We will ascertain whether the motions of rotation and revolution of the earth are sensibly changed by the changes which it experiences at its surface, and by the impact of meteoric stones, which according to all probability come from the depths of the heavenly regions. The new comets which will appear, those which moving in hyperbolic orbits wander from one system to another, the returns of those which move in elliptic orbits, and the changes in the form and intensity of light which they undergo at each appearance, will be observed; and also the perturbations which all those stars produce in the planetary motions, those which they experience themselves, and which at approach to a large planet may entirely derange their motions; finally, the changes which the motions and orbits of the planets and satellites experience from the action of the stars, and perhaps likewise from the resistance of the etherial media; such are the principal objects which the solar system offers to the investigation of future astronomers and mathematicians."-LA PLACE's System of the World, HARTE'S translation, vol. ii. p. 241.

P. 50, 1. 5.

Shakspeare, whate'er I may presume to call.

"He unites in his existence the utmost elevation and the utmost depth; and the most foreign and even apparently irreconcilable properties subsist in him peaceably together. The world of spirits and nature have laid all their treasures at his feet. In strength a demigod, in profundity of view a prophet, in all-seeing wisdom a protecting spirit of a higher order, he lowers himself to mortals, as if unconscious of his superiority, and is as open and unassuming as a child."-SCHLEGEL'S Lectures on Dramatic Literature, vol. ii.

P. 50, 1. 12.

As Hamlet's melancholy mood we quit

For Hal's light badinage and Falstaff's wit.

How beautifully Goëthe, in his Wilhelm Meister, delineates the character of Hamlet! It is too long to give in a note, but I have ventured to introduce the concluding part of this admirable exposition.

"To me it is clear that Shakspeare meant in the present case to represent the effects of a great action laid upon a soul unfit for the performance of it. In this view, the whole piece seems to me to be composed. An oak-tree is planted in a costly jar which should have borne only pleasant flowers in its bosom: the roots expand; the jar is shivered. A lovely, pure, noble, and most moral nature, without the strength of nerve which forms a hero, shrinks beneath a burden it cannot bear and must not cast away. All duties are holy for him; the present is too hard. Impossibilities have been required of him; not in themselves impossibilities, but such for him. He winds and turns and torments himself; he advances and recoils; is ever put in mind, ever puts himself in mind; at last, does all but lose his purpose from his thoughts, yet still without recovering his peace of mind."

P. 51, 1. 3.

One like a meteor-Nations gazed, admired.

Byron.

P. 53, 1. 4.

Each gentle verse that Pope and Harley wrote.

How beautiful and unaffected are the following lines in the Epistle addressed by Pope to the Earl of Oxford :—

"And sure if aught below the seats divine
Can touch Immortals, 'tis a soul like thine.
A soul supreme in each hard instance tried,
Above all pain, all passion, and all pride,

The rage of power, the blast of public breath,
The lust of lucre, and the dread of death."

And yet there are writers who have asserted that Pope was no Poet, that he was a mere versifier, and deficient in natural feeling!

P. 53, 1. 21.

That" old man eloquent," whose mind was stored.

Burke.

NOTES

ΤΟ

FIFTH EPISTLE, ON PERFECTIBILITY.

P. 57, 1. 15.

There may be planets in which beings dwell.
"All that till now their rapt researches knew,
Not called in slow succession to review,
But as a landscape meets the eye of day,

At once presented to their glad survey.'

ROGERS' Pleasures of Memory.

P. 57, 1. 20.

The rainbow-circled glory-throne.

"And there was a rainbow round about the throne in sight like to an emerald."-REV. iv. 3.

P. 57, 1. 22.

As flame when touching flame its strength combines.

“All that I shall now say of it is, that a good man is united to God as a flame touches a flame and combines into splendour and glory; so is the spirit of a man united into Christ by the Spirit of God."-JEREMY TAYLOR.

P. 59, 1. 19.

Historians fancy that a king is born

To trouble men, like great Astolfo's horn.

"Dico che 'l corno è di si orribil suono

Ch' ovunque s'ode fa fuggir la gente;

Non può trovarsi al mondo un cuor si buono

Che possa non fuggir come lo sente."

ARIOSTO, Canto xv. stanza 15.

P. 59, 1. 21.

Princes will have their toys.

Anastasius exclaims, in anticipation of his future grandeur :—“Chill of age nor of climate shall stop me; I shall grasp at all—become another Potemkin, rule an empire, have a court; alternate between arranging fêtes and planning campaigns; pay my card-money in diamonds; make mosaic-work of provinces; plant orange-trees and citron-groves on hanging terraces of icicles; and, when tired of illuminations and the Neva, set fire on the Bosphorus, and transport the seat of empire from the vicinity of the White Sea to the shores of the Black Sea."Memoirs of Anastasius, vol. iii. p. 16.

Forbes, in his " Oriental Memoirs," (vol. iii. p. 284,) that teem with description of Oriental magnificence, speaking of Asufud Dowlah, son of the famous Nabob of Oude, says: "I saw him, in the midst of this precious treasure, handling his jewels, that amounted to eight millions sterling, as a child does his toys."

P. 61, 1. 9.

Vain hope! still Shakspeare towers unmatch'd.

When Campbell, in his noble poem, "The Pleasures of Hope," with all the sanguine enthusiasm of youth, anticipates the improvement of mankind, he yet admits that Shakspeare will never be equalled:

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"Yes, there are hearts, prophetic hope may trust,

That slumber yet in uncreated dust,

Ordain'd to wake the adoring sons of earth
With every charm of wisdom and of worth;
Ordain'd to light with intellectual day
The mazy wheels of Nature as they play;

Or, warm with Fancy's energy, to glow,
And rival all but Shakspeare's name below."

P. 62, 1. 7.

Many through gay saloons who laughing pass,
If window'd were their bosoms as with glass,
Would, as in Eblis' hall each glittering form,
Disclose to view the ever-burning worm.

They went wandering from chamber to chamber, hall to hall, and gallery to gallery—all without bounds or limit; all distinguishable by

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