Painting went on in power till, in Raffael, it attained the zenith, and in him too it showed signs of a tendency downwards by another path. The painter began to think of overcoming difficulties. After this the descent was rapid, till sculptors began to work inveterate likenesses of perriwigs in marble, as see Algarotti's tomb in the cemetery at Pisa,-and painters did nothing but copy, as well as they could, the external face of nature. Now, in this age, we have a sort of reviviscence,-not, I fear, of the power, but of a taste for the power, of the early times.1

JUNE 26, 1830.
Seneca.

You may get a motto for every sect in religion, or line of thought in morals or philosophy, from Seneca; but nothing is ever thought out by him.

JULY 2, 1830.

Plato.-Aristotle.

EVERY man is born an Aristotelian, or a Platonist. I

I

do not think it possible that any one born an Aristotelian can become a Platonist; and I am sure no born Platonist can ever change into an Aristotelian. They are the two classes of men, beside which it is next to impossible to conceive a third. The one considers reason a quality, or attribute; the other considers it a power. believe that Aristotle never could get to understand what Plato meant by an idea. There is a passage, indeed, in the Eudemian Ethics which looks like an exception; but I doubt not of its being spurious, as that whole work is supposed by some to be. With Plato ideas are constitutive in themselves.2

1 Compare the notes of July 24, 1831.

2 Mr. Coleridge said the Eudemian Ethics; but I half suspect he must have meant the Metaphysics, although I do not know that all the fourteen books under that title have been considered non-genuine. The 'Hoixà Evonμɛia are not Aristotle's. To what passage in particular allusion is here made, I cannot exactly say; many might be alleged,

Aristotle was, and still is, the sovereign lord of the understanding; the faculty judging by the senses. He was a conceptualist, and never could raise himself into that higher state, which was natural to Plato, and has been so to others, in which the understanding is distinctly contemplated, and, as it were, looked down upon from the throne of actual ideas, or living, inborn, essential truths.

Yet what a mind was Aristotle's-only not the greatest that ever animated the human form !—the parent of science, properly so called, the master of criticism, and the founder or editor of logic! But he confounded science with philosophy, which is an error. Philosophy is the middle state between science, or knowledge, and sophia, or wisdom.

I

JULY 4, 1830.

Duke of Wellington. -Moneyed Interest.-Canning.

SOMETIMES fear the Duke of Wellington is too much disposed to imagine, that he can govern a great nation by word of command, in the same way in which he governed a highly disciplined army. He seems to be unaccustomed to, and to despise, the inconsistencies, the weaknesses, the bursts of heroism followed by prostration aud cowardice, which invariably characterize all popular efforts. He forgets that, after all, it is from such efforts that all the great and noble institutions of the world have come; and that, on the other hand, the discipline and organization of armies have been only like the flight of the cannon-ball, the object of which is destruction.1

but not one seems to express the true Platonic idea, as Mr. Coleridge used to understand it; and as, I believe, he ultimately considered ideas in his own philosophy. Fourteen or fifteen years previously, he seems to have been undecided upon this point. "Whether," he says, "ideas are regulative only, according to Aristotle and Kant, or likewise constitutive, and one with the power and life of nature, according to Plato and Plotinus (— ἐν λόγῳ ζωὴ ἦν, καὶ ἡ ζωὴ ἦν το φῶς τῶν ἀνθρώπων), is the highest problem of philosophy, and not part of its nomenclature." Essay (E) in the Appendix to the "Statesman's Manual," 1816.— H. N. Č.

1 "Straight forward goes

The lightning's path, and straight the fearful path

The stock-jobbing and moneyed interest is so strong in this country, that it has more than once prevailed in our foreign councils over national honour and national justice. The country gentlemen are not slow to join in this influence. Canning felt this very keenly, and said he was unable to contend against the city trained-bands.

JULY 6, 1830.

Bourrienne.-Buonaparte and Charlemagne.*

BOURRIENNE is admirable. He is the French Pepys,

-a man with right feelings, but always wishing to participate in what is going on, be it what it may. He has one remark, when comparing Buonaparte with Charlemagne, the substance of which I have attempted to express in "The Friend," but which Bourrienne has condensed into a sentence worthy of Tacitus, or Machiavel, or Bacon. It is this; that Charlemagne was above his age, whilst Buonaparte was only above his competitors, but under his age! Bourrienne has done more than any one else to show Buonaparte to the world as he really was,—always contemptible, except when acting a part, and that part not his

own.

JULY 8, 1830.
Jews.

THE 'HE other day I was what you would call floored by a Jew. He passed me several times crying out for old clothes in the most nasal and extraordinary tone I ever heard. At last I was so provoked, that I said to him,

Pray, why can't you say 'old clothes' in a plain way as I do now?" The Jew stopped, and looking very gravely at me, said in a clear and even fine accent, "Sir, I can say 'old clothes' as well as you can; but if you had to say so

Of the cannon-ball. Direct it flies and rapid,

Shattering that it may reach, and shattering what it reaches."

Wallenstein, Part I. act i. sc. 4.-H. N. C.

1 Vol. i. Essay 12, p. 133.-H. N. C.

ten times a minute, for an hour together, you would say Ogh Clo as I do now;" and so he marched off. I was so confounded with the justice of his retort, that I followed and gave him a shilling, the only one I had.

I have had a good deal to do with Jews in the course of my life, although I never borrowed any money of them. Once I sat in a coach opposite a Jew-a symbol of old clothes' bags-an Isaiah of Holywell Street. He would close the window; I opened it. He closed it again; upon which, in a very solemn tone, I said to him, "Son of Abraham! thou smellest; son of Isaac! thou art offensive; son of Jacob! thou stinkest foully. See the man in the moon! he is holding his nose at thee at that distance; dost thou think that I, sitting here, can endure it any longer?" My Jew was astounded, opened the window forthwith himself, and said, "he was sorry he did not know before I was so great a gentleman."

JULY 24, 1830.

The Papacy and the Reformation.-Leo X. DURING URING the early part of the middle ages, the papacy was nothing, in fact, but a confederation of the learned men in the west of Europe against the barbarism and ignorance of the times. The Pope was chief of this confederacy; and so long as he retained that character exclusively, his power was just and irresistible. It was the principal mean of preserving for us and for our posterity all that we now have of the illumination of past ages. But as soon as the Pope made a separation between his character as premier clerk in Christendom and as a secular prince; as soon as he began to squabble for towns and castles, then he at once broke the charm, and gave birth to a revolution. From that moment, those who remained firm to the cause of truth and knowledge became necessary enemies to the Roman See. The great British schoolmen led the way; then Wicliffe rose, Huss, Jerome, and others; in short, everywhere, but especially throughout the north of Europe, the breach of feeling and sympathy went on

widening, so that all Germany, England, Scotland, and other countries, started like giants out of their sleep at the first blast of Luther's trumpet. In France, one half of the people and that the most wealthy and enlightened-embraced the Reformation. The seeds of it were deeply and widely spread in Spain and in Italy; and as to the latter, if James I. had been an Elizabeth, I have no doubt at all that Venice would have publicly declared itself against Rome. It is a profound question to answer, why it is, that since the middle of the sixteenth century the Reformation has not advanced one step in Europe.

In the time of Leo X. atheism, or infidelity of some sort, was almost universal in Italy amongst the high dignitaries of the Romish church.

JULY 26, 1830.
Thelwall.-Swift.—Stella.

OHN THELWALL had something very good about him. We were once sitting in a beautiful recess in the Quantocks, when I said to him, "Citizen John, this is a fine place to talk treason in!"-"Nay! Citizen Samuel," replied he, “it is rather a place to make a man forget that there is any necessity for treason!"

Thelwall thought it very unfair to influence a child's mind by inculcating any opinions before it should have come to years of discretion, and be able to choose for itself. I showed him my garden, and told him it was my botanical garden. "How so?" said he, "it is covered with weeds."'Oh," I replied, "that is only because it has not yet come to its age of discretion and choice. The weeds, you see, have taken the liberty to grow, and I thought it unfair in me to prejudice the soil towards roses and strawberries."

66

I think Swift adopted the name of Stella, which is a man's name, with a feminine termination, to denote the mysterious epicene relation in which poor Miss Johnston stood to him.