passions and affections, and determine how far virtue, in other words, the dictates of our personal and social duties require, that they should be eradicated, regulated, indulged or repressed.

*

Metaphysics, mathematics, morals, sciences of unlimited extent, grow out of a reflex and profound attention to

* To prevent misconception, it will be proper to state distinctly, the meaning which the writer attaches to a word, whose acceptations are so multifarious, and even opposite. Assuredly he does not, by metaphysics, understand, an investigation of the properties of "Ens quatenus ens," nor of any part of the "omnia scibilia" of transcendental ontology. The discussion of the questions, whether "God loves a possible angel, better than an actually existing fly," or, "whether, besides the real being of the actual being, there be any other being, necessary to cause a thing to be," is, he suspects, within the limits of the "vast Serbonian bog" of scholastic dogma and jargon, where intellectual heroes and "armies whole have sunk." Warned by their fate, their successors would deserve to share it, were they voluntarily to brave the perils of that unfathomed, unrefunding, and interminable bog, anew.

By metaphysics, the writer understands, an analysis of the proper subjects and impassable boundaries of human knowledge, and of the most eligible and efficient methods of investigating these subjects: of the different sorts and degrees of evidence, and a knowledge consequently, of the hesitation or assurance, which the different sorts and degrees of evidence, ought to impress on the enlightened mind: of the comparative importance of the different departments of human knowledge, and the rank consequently, which they are respectively entitled to claim in the scale of utility and dignity, and in every system or course of liberal education: an analysis, farther, of the sources and constituents of human happiness, and of the mode of appropriating "the opulence of civilized man" liberal leisure, by which the

the subjects of consciousness, and lie within the region of the knowable.

sources of happiness are most readily accessible, and in which its constituents are most certainly realized, and skilfully combined.

Thus defined, (and the correctness of the definition, will not, he trusts, be questioned,) it would be as impertinent to expatiate on the importance of metaphysics, as to write a laboured eulogy upon the utility of sight or sunbeams: yet in an age, which may be appropriately and proudly stiled, the age of metaphysics, and in a country too, that claims its envied pre-eminence in the republic of letters, from the successful cultivation of this science; in the very metropolis of that country, in whose college, around whose pulpits, bench and bar, and even in whose symposiacs, its solar lights are beaming and burning; an accomplished philosophical critic challenges one of the living luminaries of this science, to vindicate its practical utility, to display the good it has achieved, and the trophies which its votaries have won, from the admiration and gratitude of the wise and good. "The natural philosopher," the critic urges," can display his telescope and his orrery, his prism and his microscope, his electric and Voltaic batteries, his instruments for disarming the clouds of their thunderbolts, and his means of forming an artificial thunder, more tremendous and desolating, yet tractable to human power; but what," the metaphysician is asked, somewhat scornfully," have you to show?"

It might be answered that metaphysical knowledge like solar light, although perhaps invisible and impalpable, reveals the beauty of whatever is lovely to the mind's eye, or delicious to cultivated taste: That happiness which has been well defined to consist in "a multiplicity of agreeable consciouness," can neither be rarefied by heat nor refracted through a prism, nor decomposed in a crucible, nor concentrated by a lens: That virtue itself, although gloriously visible in her immortal and incorporeal loveliness, in the inspired and inspiring visions of

The various and ever varying relations too, which human beings bear to each other, in different physical circumstances, under different political institutions and in different

"Comus and Paradise Lost," and faithfully reflected in the truth-illumed mirror of moral fiction, which Edgeworth has fashioned to instruct and delight man and woman-kind, can neither be chizzeled upon marble nor portrayed upon canvass: That the elevating consciousness of superior penetration and intelligence, the proud capacity to "admire with knowledge," compare with discernment," observe with distinction," and analyze with acuteness and accuracy, although neither, a rareeshow to the eyes, nor music to the ear, is more intrinsically precious, more truly good, than the most curious and brilliant spectacles which the experimentalist can exhibit; is more delightful to the soul of man, even than the "music of the spheres;" and supply the only standards, by which the value of these spectacles can be estimated, the only light in which their grandeur is visible to the "mind's eye," the only medium through which that divine music, is audible to the mind's car: That wisdom although valueless in the estimation and imponderable in the scales, of the idolaters of mammon, is in fact, better than gold, in the judgment of enlightened reason, and far outweighs "gold, ay fine gold," in the balance of impartial justice: That the "novum organum" is surely more valuable than the most admirably constructed orrery, and the "theory of moral sentiments" more truly beautiful, than the diamond beetle seen through the finest microscope, or even than the solar ray refracted by a prism. All this and much in the same strain might be urged: but a more appropriate reply is at hand. It is from metaphysics, that modern criticism borrows, not its fescue and its ferrule! These coarse and rude implements, with which, it guided and governed the infancy of intellect; it has laid aside with becoming scorn. It is from metaphysics, that it borrows all the ensignia of its sceptred majesty; it is from metaphysics, that it derives that Talisman of analysis, whose

stages of civilization, lie within the region of the knowable: facts of this sort, collected by observation, recorded by history, analyzed and reduced to system by philosophy, supply

lightest touch, like that of Ithuriel's spear, makes every error (however impervious its disguise to the eye, however seductive its accents, to the ear of innocence and inexperience) “ return of force to its own likeness." It is metaphysics, that arms the philosophical critic, the rightful arbiter of literary desert or delinquency, the penal minister of the moral police, with those terrific weapons, "like the sword of Michael, from the armoury of God," at the sight of which, monarchs tremble on their thrones, and tyrants turn pale, in the midst of their guards: Those terrific weapons, that are faintly typified in classical mythology, by the snaky whips and burning wheels of the furies, those non flagrantia, but, surda flagella, with which, the executioners of moral justice, scourge the blasphemers of truth, the corrupters or offenders of taste, the apostates and the foes of freedom, the profligate sophists and remorseless tools of power.

It is from metaphysics, that they borrow the wreath, not of laurel, but of amaranth; the chaplets, not from Parnassus, but from Paradise, with which they encircle the brows of the benefactors of mankind, and the moral luminaries of the world.

The modern critic is "the Leviathan of all the creatures of metaphysics, he tumbles about his unwieldy bulk, he plays and frolics in the ocean, of its more than regal bounty: huge as he is, and whilst he lies floating many a rood,' he is still its creature: his ribs, his fins, his whalebone, his blubber, the very spiracles through which he spouts a torrent of brine, against the magnus virum doctor, and covers his disciples all over with the spray, every thing of him and about him, is from metaphysics. Is it for him, to disparage the dignity, to undervalue the bounty, to dispute the pre-eminence, of this master, and of his master science?"

The author is aware, that in placing metaphysics in the front rank of the knowable, he will excite a grin on the smooth and unmeaning faces of the ephemeral coxcombs, who snuff the noi

materials for political economy, jurisprudence, and for the "summa scientia," the science of "the social order."

The philosophy of literature is another fair and fertile domain, within the sphere of the knowable, which modern ingenuity has cultivated with extraordinary success, and in

some odours, and gap at the garish hues, of the carrion flowers that germinate, in the " unweeded garden" of modern literature, who are panting in chase of the emperor of Morocco, or sympathizing in the pangs of the Virtuoso, whose desperate chase, his Moorish majesty has eluded: he is aware, that he will perhaps ruffle the grave visages of those ministers of the literary police, whose anti-Tobyish but imperial sport, it sometimes is, to "break those butterflies upon the wheel."

He fears that he may even provoke a contemptuous glance, from those awful arbiters on the tribunals of criticism, "whose smile is transport and whose frown is fate" to the candidate for literary honours.

With the most profound contempt for the coxcomb's grin, with perfect indifference (unless it should chance to be a good one) for the jest of the witling, the sneer or scowl of the worldling, and for the very best possible pun, which the pedant, the pedagogue or the barrister, can invent, on so happy an occasion for the exercise of a talent, in the exercise of which (such is the astonishing perfectibility of modern literature) every driveller, drilled by the study of Joe Miller or George Stevens, far surpasses Milton and Shakspeare: with all due deference for the authority, and apprehensions from the penal jurisdiction, of the judicial awarders of praise or censure to literary desert or delinquency, the writer must be allowed to challenge for metaphysics, a front rank in the knowable.

And if indeed, "the best study of mankind be man," and if mind be admitted to be the better and nobler part of man, that part, in which the dignity and local pre-eminence of his nature really consists, metaphysics does challenge and will maintain this rank, in the estimation of the wise and good, through all succeeding time.