1 breathes, and without which the sense of power sinks back on itself, like a sigh heaved up from the tightened chest of a sick man. A AUGUST 14, 1833. Quakers.-Philanthropists.-Jews.—Epistle to the Romans.* QUAKER is made up of ice and flame. He has no composition, no mean temperature. Hence he is rarely interested about any public measure but he becomes a fanatic, and oversteps, in his irrespective zeal, every decency and every right opposed to his course. I have never known a trader in philanthropy who was not wrong in heart somewhere or other. Individuals so distinguished are usually unhappy in their family relations, -men not benevolent or beneficent to individuals, but almost hostile to them, yet lavishing money and labour and time on the race, the abstract notion. The cosmopolitism which does not spring out of, and blossom upon, the deeprooted stem of nationality or patriotism, is a spurious and rotten growth. When I read the ninth, tenth, and eleventh chapters of the Epistle to the Romans to that fine old man Mr. at Ramsgate, he shed tears. Any Jew of sensibility must be deeply impressed by them. The two images farthest removed from each other which can be comprehended under one term, are, I think, Isaiah,1 1 I remember Mr. Coleridge used to call Isaiah his ideal of the Hebrew prophet. He studied that part of the Scripture with unremitting attention and most reverential admiration. Although Mr. C. was remarkably deficient in the technical memory of words, he could say a great deal of Isaiah by heart, and he delighted in pointing out the hexametrical rhythm of numerous passages in the English ver "Hear, O heavens, and give ear, | O earth: for the Lord hath spoken. I have nourished and brought up children, and they have The ox knoweth his owner, | and the ass his master's crib: -H. N. C. -"Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth!"—and Levi of Holywell Street-" Old clothes!"--both of them Jews, you'll observe. Immane quantum discrepant ! I AUGUST 15, 1833. Sallust.—Thucydides.—Herodotus.—Gibbon.—Key to the Decline of the Roman Empire. CONSIDER the two works of Sallust which have come down to us entire, as romances founded on facts; no adequate causes are stated, and there is no real continuity of action. In Thucydides, you are aware from the beginning that you are reading the reflections of a man of great genius and experience upon the character and operation of the two great political principles in conflict in the civilised world in his time; his narrative of events is of minor importance, and it is evident that he selects for the purpose of illustration. It is Thucydides himself whom you read throughout under the names of Pericles, Nicias, &c. But in Herodotus it is just the reverse. He has as little subjectivity as Homer; and, delighting in the great fancied epic of events, he narrates them without impressing any thing as of his own mind upon the narrative. It is the charm of Herodotus that he gives you the spirit of his age -that of Thucydides, that he reveals to you his own, which was above the spirit of his age. The difference between the composition of a history in modern and ancient times is very great; still there are certain principles upon which the history of a modern period may be written, neither sacrificing all truth and reality, like Gibbon, nor descending into mere biography and anecdote. Gibbon's style is detestable, but his style is not the worst thing about him. His history has proved an effectual bar to all real familiarity with the temper and habits of imperial Rome. Few persons read the original authorities, even those which are classical; and certainly no distinct knowledge of the actual state of the empire can be obtained from Gibbon's rhetorical sketches. He takes notice of nothing but what may produce an effect; he skips on from eminence to eminence, without ever taking you through the : valleys between in fact, his work is little else but a disguised collection of all the splendid anecdotes which he could find in any book concerning any persons or nations from the Antonines to the capture of Constantinople. When I read a chapter in Gibbon I seem to be looking through a luminous haze or fog :-figures come and go, I know not how or why, all larger than life, or distorted or discoloured; nothing is real, vivid, true; all is scenical, and as it were, exhibited by candlelight. And then to call it a History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire! Was there ever a greater misnomer? I protest I do not remember a single philosophical attempt made throughout the work to fathom the ultimate causes of the decline or fall of that empire. How miserably deficient is the narrative of the important reign of Justinian! And that poor scepticism, which Gibbon mistook for Socratic philosophy, has led him to misstate and mistake the character and influence of Christianity in a way which even an avowed infidel or atheist would not and could not have done. Gibbon was a man of immense reading; but he had no philosophy; and he never fully understood the principle upon which the best of the old historians wrote. He attempted to imitate their artificial construction of the whole worktheir dramatic ordonnance of the parts-without seeing that their histories were intended more as documents illustrative of the truths of political philosophy than as mere chronicles of events. The true key to the declension of the Roman empire— which is not to be found in all Gibbon's immense workmay be stated in two words :-the imperial character overlaying, and finally destroying, the national character. Rome under Trajan was an empire without a nation. AUGUST 16, 1833. Dr. Johnson's Political Pamphlets.-Johnson and Nature.*-Taxation. -Direct Representation.—Universal Suffrage.—Right of Women to vote.-Horne Tooke.—Etymology of the final IVE. I LIKE Dr. Johnson's political pamphlets better than any other parts of his works :-particularly his "Taxa tion no Tyranny" is very clever and spirited, though he only sees half of his subject, and that not in a very philosophical manner. Plunder-Tribute Taxation are the three gradations of action by the sovereign on the property of the subject. The first is mere violence, bounded by no law or custom, and is properly an act only between conqueror and conquered, and that, too, in the moment of victory. The second supposes law; but law proceeding only from, and dictated by, one party-the conqueror; law, by which he consents to forego his right of plunder upon condition of the conquered giving up to him, of their own accord, a fixed commutation. The third implies compact, and negatives any right to plunder,-taxation being professedly for the direct benefit of the party taxed, that, by paying a part, he may through the labours and superintendence of the sovereign be able to enjoy the rest in peace. As to the right to tax being only commensurate with direct representation, it is a fable, falsely and treacherously brought forward by those who know its hollowness well enough. You may show its weakness in a moment, by observing that not even the universal suffrage of the Benthamites avoids the difficulty;-for although it may be allowed to be contrary to decorum that women should legislate; yet there can be no reason why women should not choose their representatives to legislate; and if it be said that they are merged in their husbands, let it be allowed where the wife has no separate property; but where she has a distinct taxable estate, in which her husband has no interest, what right can her husband have to choose for her the person whose vote may affect her separate interest? -Besides, at all events, an unmarried woman of age, possessing one thousand pounds a year, has surely as good a moral right to vote, if taxation without representation is tyranny, as any ten-pounder in the kingdom. The truth, of course, is, that direct representation is a chimera, impracticable in fact, and useless or noxious if practicable. Johnson had neither eye nor ear; for nature, therefore, he cared, as he knew, nothing. His knowledge of town life was minute; but even that was imperfect, as not being contrasted with the better life of the country. Horne Tooke was once holding forth on language, when, turning to me, he asked me if I knew what the meaning of the final ive was in English words. I said I thought I could tell what he, Horne Tooke, himself thought. "Why, what?" said he. "Vis," I replied; and he acknowledged I had guessed right. I told him, however, that I could not agree with him; but believed that the final ive came from ick--vicus, oikos; the root denoting collectivity and community, and that it was opposed to the final ing, which signifies separation, particularity, and individual property, from ingle, a hearth, or one man's place or seat: oikos, vicus, denoted an aggregation of ingles. The alternation of the c and k of the root into the v was evidently the work of the digammate power, and hence we find the icus and ivus indifferently as finals in Latin. The precise difference of the etymologies is apparent in these phrases :-The lamb is sportive; that is, has a nature or habit of sporting: the lamb is sporting; that is, the animal is now performing a sport. Horne Tooke, upon this, said nothing to my etymology; but I believe he found that he could not make a fool of me, as he did of Godwin and some other of his butts. AUGUST 17, 1833. "The Lord” in the English Version of the Psalms, etc.—Scotch Kirk and Irving. IT T is very extraordinary that, in our translation of the Psalms, which professes to be from the Hebrew, the name, Jehovah-ON-The Being, or God-should be omitted, and, instead of it, the Kupios, or Lord, of the Septuagint be adopted. The Alexandrian Jews had a superstitious dread of writing the name of God, and put Kupios, not as a translation, but as a mere mark or signevery one readily understanding for what it really stood. We, who have no such superstition, ought surely to restore the Jehovah, and thereby bring out in the true force the |