that the mountains and valleys of its bed are filled with vegetation, fed on by those monstrous animals whose skeletons we so constantly find embedded, and thus preserved in soils once evidently covered by the sea, there probably exists millions of those huge creatures, no more capable of ascending to the surface of the ocean than man to the surface of the atmosphere, yet enjoying their existence, grazing in their submarine forests and prairies, ranging through an extent of pasture to which the broadest regions of the land are tame and narrow, and, undisturbed by the hostility or the molestation of man, giving, in their provision and their enjoyment, proofs, to higher than mortal eyes, of the spontaneous and boundless beneficence of their Creator.-Dr Croly. CHIPS FROM MY LOG. No. X. CANTON-WHAMPOA-SCENE IN A BUDHIST TEMPLE-SECOND VISIT TO CANTON-SHOPS-TEMPLE ON HONAN-FAH-TE GARDENS. THE day after we moored in Whampoa Reach, I accompanied the captain on a visit to Canton. We left the ship at nine in the morning in a sampan—a light boat covered, as all boats here are, with an arched roof of matting, and propelled by two or three oars forward and a scull abaft. Every attention is paid to comfort in the interior fittings of these boats, and, being kept remarkably clean, they afford a very pleasant mode of conveyance. We pulled along the north side of Whampoa island, and then kept close to the north bank of the river til we arrived at the foreign factories at twelve o'clock, the distance being about fourteen miles, and the tide against us a part of the way. The banks of the river were low, and covered with a green crop of rice, with occasional patches of plantain and other fruit-trees. We passed a few villages and small temples, and on Whampoa we saw a beautiful nine-storeyed pagoda, with two or three small hexagonal ones of three storeys. The river itself presented a very stirring scene. Innumerable boats, from the smallest canoes to the huge junks of four or five hundred tons, crowded its broad surface, forming, as we neared the city, a compact mass, through which it required considerable skill and dexterity to force a way. The great utility of sculls, and the reason of their universal adoption, became here very apparent; oars in such a crush being quite useless. We passed a great number of barges that looked more like floating houses than boats; some were arriving or departing full of passengers; others were evidently the perinanent residences of families; and rows of them, moored side by side near the city, were fitted up in a most gorgeous manner for purposes of pleasure. Then there were enormous barges for the carriage of tea and other produce along the casals and rivers; but the variety of floating craft was quite endless, and I shall specify but one more-a beau- | tiful mandarin-boat, long, finely moulded, and smoothly polished, adorned with silken streamers, propelled by about sixty oars, and the gunwale stuck round with the large circular hats, or shields, of the rowers, I don't know which. The strange and unusual forms which everything bore; the fanciful and rich, though often grotesque, styles of decoration; the appearance and occupations of the denizens of this floating city; the strange sounds, too, that met cur ears, such as the constant crashing of gongs from the junks, and the accents of an unknown tongue on every side; in short, the entire and unmitigated foreignness of everything about us, must all, as far as I am concerned, be left simply to the imagination. Having with some difficulty effected a landing, we pushed our way through some narrow and crowded lanes, first to the office of the consignees of the ship, and then to the British consul's, and the necessary business having been transacted at these places, we inspected a few native shops, made some purchases, and en:barked again in our sampan at three o'clock. On our return we came down the south side of the river, and passed in our way another of the tall elegant pagodas on Honau Island; also a Siamese | vessel on the river, square-rigged in the English style. Coming along the south side of Whampoa, we landed and had a stroll through the village-a dirty, confined place-and then examined a few of the Budhist temples, of which there were about half-a-dozen in the neighbourhood. In the first one which we entered, there was a woman with a child, apparently seeking the aid of their deity. The woman was on her knees before the principal image, and after muttering a sort of prayer she began to shake a box containing slips of bamboo till one of them fell out on the ground, the child all the while bending and knocking its forehead on the ground with great assiduity. The operation of shaking the box and making a little stick fall out was repeated three times, and every time the woman looked at the markings on the stick and called out something to an old priest who was sitting in a corner. He immediately took out of a drawer before him some pieces of thin yellow paper covered with Chinese writing, and, after peering at them through his huge spectacles, shook his head as if to indicate an unfavourable result. The poor woman seemed very anxious about it, for her eyes were filled with tears; and, going back with the little child to the altar, she tried another process. There were lying before the images two oval, slightly curved, pieces of wood, each about six inches long, with one side flat and the other rounded. The woman then, taking these in her hands with the flat sides together, threw them up into the air three times, watching intently each time how they fell. From her pleased looks they seemed to have better answered her wishes; and after burning some gilt paper as an offering to the gods, she got the yellow papers from the priest in exchange for a few tchen (small brass coins), and walked away. A Chinaman who was standing beside, and who could speak a few words of English, tried to explain to us the meaning of the ceremonies, but I could only make out that she wanted to ascertain if something was to turn out fortunate or not; perhaps she had been inquiring about the result of some sickness in her family, whether it was to terminate in recovery or death. In another temple that we examined, I counted twenty images, some of them large and well-executed, and all arranged in three recesses along one side. In front of them stood a large square cast-iron vessel, covered on the outside with Chinese characters, and filled with burning sandal-wood. On one side hung a drum and a bell, wherewith the blind worshippers might awaken the attention of their deities. Before leaving the island we called on our comprador, and were regaled by him with a cellation of excellent preserved fruits in great variety. We then proceeded down the river, and arrived at the ship after dark. Two days afterwards we went again to Canton and stayed three days. First we spent some time in rambling among the offices and warehouses, termed factories or 'bongs,' belonging to foreigners, together with the native streets, or rather lanes, in the immediate neighbourhood. The shops in these streets are fitted up somewhat in the English style, and are occupied by dealers in silks, ivory, lacquered and porcelain ware, and other articles in common demand by Europeans. Between the factories and city walls the streets are purely Chinese, the shops being quite open in front, and having gilded signs inscribed with Chinese characters on both sides, suspended edgeways to the street, so as to be read by people approaching in either direction. They did not seem much accustomed to strangers beyond the precincts of the factories, for whenever we stopped to consider our way among their narrow and crowded thoroughfares we were sure to get mobbed. In consequence of this we were obliged to get a Chinaman to act as guide before we could attempt an extended investigation. Many of the shops we passed were very fine, and the display of glass lamps and chandeliers in one street was quite magnificent. The Chinese custom of particular trades congregating together was very conspicuous. Besides the street of lamps, we passed along two or three filled with cabinetmakers and joiners; one side of another was occupied by venders of dressing cases and mirrors; the left is Chin-loong. After passing these terrific colossal guards, we entered another court somewhat similar to the first, also planted with trees, with a continuation of the granite footpath, which led (through several gateways) to one of the temples. At this time the priesthood were assembled, worshipping, chanting, striking gongs, arranged in rows, and frequently performing the Ko-tow in adoshaven crowns, and arrayed in the yellow robes of their religion, appeared to go through the mummery with devotion. They had the lowering look of bigotry, which constant habit had at last legibly written upon their countenances. As soon as the mummery had ceased, the priests all flocked out of the temple, adjourned to their respective rooms, divested themselves of their official robes, and the senseless figures were left to themselves, with the lamps burning before them." Next day I got a boat and went to the flower-gardens, about two miles up the river, on the opposite side from Canton. All the flowers and young trees are kept there in flower-pots, and some of the plants are trained into most extraordinary forms, representing dogs, deer, birds, fishes, pagodas, houses, tanka-boa's, and even barges with sails set. The various objects are first shaped with slips of bamboo, and then the plant is trained over them till it takes the desired form. I saw some tea-plants growing here; also ponds full of large lotus plants; together with many fruits, and esculent roots, and vegetables. In the creek along which these gardens are situated there were some immense rafts of timber brought down for the supply of the town. Many boats were also plying about, and I saw one propelled by three long sculls, each wrought by six or seven mien. then there were rows of hatters, umbrella-makers, cottondressers, tailors, booksellers, silk-mercers, porcelainshops, cooking-houses, shops full of ornaments cut out of jade and other valuable stones, and also groups of figures cut from roots of bamboos and other plants. In the course of our rambles we came upon one of the city gates, a low archway in a thick wall, but our guide would not hear of us entering, and as we stopped a little to consider the pro-ration of their gilded, senseless deity. The priests, with priety of making the attempt alone, he walked off to be out of harm's way, and we presently found ourselves in the midst of a group of ragged Celestials, jeering at us and gesticulating in a most unpleasant manner. Of course we retreated, and made our way back as we best could. On the afternoon of the same day we crossed over to Honan to inspect the Budhist temple and monastery there. Our progress through the village was a good deal impeded by a mob of boys and idlers, who seemed to take us for a couple of rare animals, and were only hindered from offering us more annoyance by the sight of a couple of Penanglawyers, which we took care to exhibit pretty conspicuously. We stopped at a shop full of little gilded images of gods, but on offering to buy one the crowd got quite uproarious, and many jokes and sarcasms were doubtless uttered at our expense, although being in an unknown tongue, they fell innocuously. The old shopkeeper did not know what to do; he seemed afraid to deal with us on account of the crowd, and would neither show us his wares nor tell their prices. In spite, however, of his cries of wai-lo! wailo (go away) the captain took down an image from a shelf, laid half-a-dollar on the counter for it, and walked away, to the great amusement apparently of our escort. The same scene occurred at another shop, where we succeeded after great difficulty in purchasing some of their writing materials, consisting of China-ink, with stone tablets to rub it down upon, and hair pencils to write with. On entering the precincts of the great temple, we were refused admittance into the halls containing the images, and on walking in at one of the open doors a priest shoved me out again and shut the door in my face. We then went to the chief priest of the establishment and found him considerably more civil, for as soon as he understood the object of our visit he made us sit down and take a cup or two of different kinds of tea with him, and then sent a servant to show us over the place. The following account of this fine temple is given in Davis's History of the Chinese:''One of the principal objects of curiosity at Canton is a temple and monastery of Fo, or Budha, on a very considerable scale, situated upon the southern side of the river, just opposite to the European factories. It is said that towards the close of the last Chinese dynasty, and about A.D. 1600, a priest of great sanctity raised the reputation of the temple, which had been for some time before established in that place; and a century afterwards, when the Manchows had taken possession of Peking, the son-in-law of Kâng-by, who had been sent to subdue Canton, and was therefore called 'Subjugator of the South,' took up his residence in the temple, which he at length patronised and greatly enriched. The funds soon sufficed to maintain a crowd of priests, who established themselves there with their monastic discipline, and it has been a place of consideration ever since. Mr Bennett, in his Wanderings,' describes a visit he made to the temple in the evening, as follows: We landed at a dirty causeway near some timber-yards, in which a quantity of fir-timber of various dimensions was piled with an extreme degree of regularity. The entrance to the temple or temples, and extensive grounds about them, was close to the landing-place; and, passing some miserable fruit and eating-stalls adjoining, we noticed a large clean open space planted with trees, and having in the centre a broad pavement of granite kept very clean. The quietness that reigned within formed a pleasing retreat from the noise and bustle without. This paved way brought us to the first portico; here we beheld on huge granite pedestals a colossal figure on each side, placed there as guards of the entrance to the temple of Budha; the one on the right on entering is the warrior Chin-ky, and on The third day of our visit we spent chi fly in shopping, and made considerable purchases of articles both useful and useless; a person cannot help spending money in Canton, the objects presented to him being so curious and beautiful, and the dealers generally so pertinacious. We came down the river with the tide in the evening, and our sampan- men were much alarmed lest we should meet with any of the piratical boats, or ladrones, as they are called. They kept in the middle of the stream, and pulled with all their might past the openings of the various creeks, often stopping to peer anxiously ahead through the gloom, l and then off again. We thought their fears groundless, and that they only wanted to deter us from staying so late | another time; but on making inquiries next day we were told that several boats had been attacked and plundered lately between Whampoa and Canton, and that no Europeans went up or down without being well armed-a precaution which we always took afterwards ourselves. THE MAY-FLY. THE truant school boy well knows where he may find, at the bottom of some brook, a shapeless little combination of wood and straw, which he sees moored to a pebble, or cautiously moving along with the current. He opens the mass, and finds within it, nicely housed, a small white worm, which he immediately destroys by fixing it on his hook, and there all his knowledge of the insect terminates. He would scarcely be induced to treat it in this manner had he learned that this apparently insignificant creature exhibits as much sagacity and practical knowledge in his way as the fox or the elephant. Although just emancipated from the egg, he at once spins and weaves for himself a silken vestment, with which he surrounds every part of his frame, except his head and the forepart of his body, which is furnished with six legs. This coat, however, is not sufficient to protect him from his numerous enemies; he therefore attaches to it, externally, the small shells of other animals, minute fragments of gravel, and particles of sand, or any other substance which he finds most convenient for his purpose. If he made his citadel too heavy, he would be soon fatigued by dragging it along ; therefore, having in the first place rendered it as compact as possible for his protection, he adds to it a chip of wood, or a bit of straw, in order to support his burden on the water, and this he does with as much precision as if he had been instructed in hydrostatics. If he be born in a marsh where reeds abound, he cuts off a piece of the stalk with a knot in it, and makes it his habitation; or if there be no reeds in his vicinity, he finds, probably, some loose leaves, thinking that from the nature of the material he may escape the observation of curious fish and prying schoolboys. It is his destiny to lead a very different life from that in which he first becomes acquainted with existence, and this he knows as well as we do. Before he quits the water he falls into a sort of sleep, during which his transformations take place. For this purpose he retires com. pletely within his castle. To guard himself from his foes, the obvious course would be to shut it up altogether; if he did this, however, he would no longer have air and water, which are essential to his existence; he therefore constructs, of strong silk threads of his own manufacture, a grating, which, with more than the skill of a chemist, he makes insoluble in water, and thus behind his portcullis, he has free access to the elements, and at the same time defies all intruders. When the proper season arrives, he puts on his wings, and sports over the surface of his native streams in the form of a May-fly. The May-fly is the most short-lived of insects, notwithstanding the great caution used in its preservation; it emerges from the water in its perfect state about six in the evening, and dies about eleven at night. ORIGINAL POETRY. HYMN. Omniscient, omnipresent Lord, The child of Zion's trust! Who rulest the brilliant orbs that night To thee the feather'd songster sings 'Tis thou that saves the soul from sin, The carnal eye, the wicked hand, By thee are all untaught. Oh, heavenly Father! lend thine aid, Till last thy saving, holy word rendered the burial-place, or cell of Columba. It is sup- Columba and his followers then went out into the dark places of the western Scottish Highlands, bearing the cross, and speaking peace to the chiefs and tribes of that rugged dark land, many of whom were converted, and sent their children to Iona to be educated. As a proof of the estimation in which they held the saint, the Scots chose him to officiate at the coronation of Aiden, son of Gauran, on the death of Conal in the year 573. There have been disputes respecting the precise character of the institution founded by Columba. There can be no doubt, however, that it was not monastic, that rule of church government having been introduced at a date long subsequent to the times of Columba. The discipline established at Iona was of a retired and learned order, but celibacy does not appear to have been at all enjoined upon or by the Culdees. Gradually the ambitious and dominant Reign through the realms of space! ANDREW PARK. character of the times came into collision with the gentle ΙΟΝ Α. NEXT to the Holy Land, there does not exist within the circle of the globe a spot of earth, of equal extent, so rich in pleasing reminiscences to the Christian, the antiquarian, and the scholar, as this little islet of the Hebrides. Its light has now passed away, and its splendid tombs and stately temple are crumbling into dust; but it was once amongst the most enlightened and famous schools of Europe, and its inhabitants, now poor and ignorant denizens of lowly hovels, were celebrated for their devotion and success as Christian missionaries, and their eminence in the paths of piety and learning. This interesting little island, which is only three miles in length and one in breadth, is about three miles distant from the celebrated Staffa, and one mile south from the gloomy shores of Mull. Iona, which signifies the island of the waves, is the name generally attached to this spot of sea-washed earth; sometimes, however, it is called Icolmkill, which is variously and humble spirit of the Culdees, until not a spot remained to them save that Iona which had been the centre from whence they had sent heroic missionaries into the wilds, and also accomplished professors to the most famous universities in Western Europe. For about three centuries the successors of Columba continued in undisturbed possession of their isle, protected by that moral power which had been produced by a universal conviction of their humble and peaceful character. The most ferocious tribes respected their peaceful sanctity, although with each other they waged the most cruel and sanguinary wars. In the year 807, however, the piratical Danes landed on the isle, and despoiled the church and seminary of all their treasures, at the same time driving the brethren away from their impoverished fane for ever. For many years Iona continued a silent and lifeless scene, until again taken possession of by a detachment of monks of the order of St Benedict, who migrated from the monastery of Cluny, and occupied the island, till monasticism was finally suppressed in Scotland at the Reformation. The bishopric of Sodor and Man, which comprehended the Isle of Man and the Western Isles, ceased to be a conjoint see at the separation of Man from Scotland, and afterwards Iona became the cathedral church of the bishop to the isles, until the ascendancy of Protestantism. Some enthusiasts at this period, fired with the zeal of a destructive bigotry, left the mainland, and attacked the splendid edifices which adorned this lonely rock of the ocean, leaving them the dilapidated and ruinous piles which we now behold. One of the most deplorable and suicidal manifestations of reformers, both ecclesiastical and political, in almost every instance, has been that of destructiveness. With an obliquity of vision which is pitiable, and a frenzied precipitancy disgraceful to men possessed of rational souls, they have, through the impulses of unregulated fury, rushed upon and torn down beautiful edifices, upon which the wealth, taste, talent, and labour of ages had been expended, and have trampled down a nation's capi tal in the blindness of their wrath, as they glorified themselves as the destroyers of a nation's foes. When the religious mind of Scotland changed, the churches, subservi. ent to that mind, could have been adapted to the purposes of the progressive idea, instead of standing as monuments of that elegant architectural taste which flourished long anterior to the prevalence of Goth-like destructiveness, melancholy records of which these monumental ruins now stand. friend Boswell, and he introduces his remarks upon Iona with the following paragraph:-To abstract the mind from all local emotion would be impossible if it were endeavoured, and would be foolish if it were possible. Whatever withdraws us from the power of our senseswhatever makes the past, the distant, or the future predominate over the present, advances us in the dignity of thinking beings. Far from me, and far from my friends, be such rigid philosophy, as may conduct us indifferent and unmoved over any ground which has been dignified by wisdom, bravery, or virtue. That man is little to be envied whose patriotism would not gain force upon the plains of Marathon, or whose piety would not grow warmer among the ruins of Iona.'" PRIDE A HINDRANCE TO KNOWLEDGE. For the discovery of truth, it is needed that the facts of nature around man should be questioned by his intelli gence. For this questioning, the first of all conditions is, that he should have these facts clear, defined, separated from others, ascertained in themselves; that be should so have studied them as to know their true relations, to see through seeming resemblances, to catch the scattered hints which declare, in the midst of apparent dissimilarity, real connection; to see the value of a fact, which, having been arbitrarily thrust from its true place, has seemed hitherto a perplexing superfluity; that he should thus have plain and clear before him the elements of which the insight of his highest reason is to suggest to The principal relics of the former grandeur of Iona are the ruins of the cathedral church of St Mary, of a nunnery, of five chapels, and of a building called the bishop's house. It is almost unnecessary to say that these buildings were not erected until a period long subsequent to that of Co-him the law. Now, for all this the very first mental qualilun ba. Many of the cathedral churches, founded by David I. of Scotland in the first quarter of the twelfth contury, were built of little else than wood, so that to suppose that, in the sixth century, Columba could beast of other than a large mud and wooden erection for his church. would be very preposterous. The most ancient remains are probably those of the chapel of St Oran, and may have been built previous to the Norman conquest; and the nunnery may refer to a period of history a hundred years later than that event. The most extensive and best preserved ruin is the church, however, whose compact walls still stand in roofless desolation, serving as a protest against that destructiveness which characterised the Scottish reformers. The sacred feeling which connected itself with Iona induced the powerful ones of Norway, Ireland, and Scotland to make it a place of sepulture, so that through the course of time forty-eight kings of Scotland, four of Ireland, and eight of Norway, are said to have been buried in this spot. There are three distinct inclosures, each distinguished by an effaced Latin inscription, which are said to be the tombs of the kings. These kings, especially the Scottish ones, were probably chiefs of the isles, or they were of the Dalradian Scoto-Irish dynasty, whose regal headquarters were in Argyle, until the time of Kenneth Macalpine, in the beginning of the ninth century, who removed the royal throne to Scone. Many pious pre-byters and famous bishops are buried in this insignificant isle of the sea, and over them lie piled the weathered fragments of their splendid tombs, and the broken pillars of these dilapidated temples. Iona is partly of a rocky and partly of an alluvial character. On its west const it is bold and rocky, but towards the east it is more level. At the northern extremity there are two plains, the western one being on the Bay of Martyrs, and the castern one being that on which the vil lage is built. There are several hundreds of inhabitants upon the island, who live but a miserable life comparatively, although boastful of the fertility of their ancient isle, and conscious of its former importance. The mass of the population devote themselves to fishing and agriculture-the poorest living in rude, comfortless hovels, and the farmers occupying houses little superior, built from the stones of the grand old fanes, the chapels of which they have converted into cowhouses, stables, and strawlofts. Dr Johnson visited this interesting spot in 1773, with his fication which he needs is patience-a patience which will steadily refuse to taste prematurely the pleasure of generalisation, which will sustain him through the longest, the most wearisome processes of minute investigation. And to this first condition of snecessful study, pride is the direct antagonist. The pride of ignorance is, we all know, most impatient: it gathers up the merest external resemblances, and then generalises at a grasp. And very little removed from this state is the impatient man, be his actual attainments what they may. His own thoughts, his own impressions, his own fancies, these are the facts of the self-sufficient. He cannot endure the slow laborions processes to which the student of nature must submit. Nor is this all: there must be an ardent love of truth, as truth, in him who would so persevere as to follow her guidance up the steep path which alone leads to her secret dwellingplace; and with this, too, pride interferes. He who dwells upon or looks for his own exaltation, will soon have in all his studies another and a lower aim than the discovery of truth. Not what she will reveal, but what will do him credit, will become the secret law of his motives; and to such a tempter soon become familiar short paths, and little ends, and tricky means, which lead not to her seat, and to which she will not yield her hidden store. At another point again he is weakened. He only who will be indeed a learner can be greatly taught; and to be a learner the proud man will not bow: he will not learn of others, for he looks down scornfully upon them, and scorn is no learner in any school. He wastes the rays which would have enlightened his eye, not believing in the light of other men. He will rather repudiate the richest inheritance of transmitted knowledge than acknowledge even to himself what he receives from others; and on such a mind there soon settles down the thicker darkness, which is bred by all the storms of envy, captionsness, jealousy, and hatred. And as he will not learn from others, so not even by Nature herself will be he taught. He thinks he knows so much, that his estimate of what is to be known is lowered. And this is not the spirit of a learner: he grows to deal boldly with nature, instead of reverently following her guidance. He seals his heart against her secret influences. He has a theory to maintain, a solution of which must not be disproved-a generalisation which shall not be disturbed-and once possessed of this false cipher, he read amiss all the golden letters around him.-Bishop of Oxford. GALLERY OF LITERARY DIVINES. BY GEORGE GILFILLAN. NO. IV. THE LATE JOHN STERLING.* PART I THE removal of a young man of high performance and still higher promise is in all circumstances melancholy, It is more so, if with the youth has expired either a new vein of poetry or a new view of truth; and it is scarcely less so when the youth has beer unconsciously the type of a large class of cultivated and earnest minds, and when his partial successes, baffled endeavours-his admitted struggles, and his premature fate-have been in some measure vicarious. These three short and simple sentences appear to us to include, positively and negatively, the essence of the late John Sterling, and shall form the leading heads in our after remarks on his genius and character. He was, in the judgment of all who knew or had carefully read him, a person of very distinguished abilities, and of still more singular promise. He did not, in our view of him, exhibit indications of original insight or of creative genius. But he has, from his peculiar circumstances, from his speculative and practical history, from his exquisitely-tuned and swiftly-responsive symphonies with his age and its progressive minds, acquired a double portion of interest and importance; his experience seems that of multitudes, and in that final look of disappointed yet submissive inquiry which he casts up to heaven, he is but the foremost in a long, fluctuating, and motley file. The external evidences of his powers and acquirements are numerous and irresistible. In his boyhood he discovered striking tokens of a mind keen, sensitive, and turned in the direction of those high speculations from which his eye, till death, was never entirely diverted. While barely eight, he distinctly remembered having speculated on points of philosophy, and especially on the idea of duty, which presented itself to him in this wayIf I could save my papa and mamma from being killed, I know I should at once do it. Now, why? To be killed would be very painful, and yet I should give my own consent to being killed.' The solution presented itself as 'a dim awe-stricken feeling of unknown obligation.' When about nine, he was much struck by his master's telling him that the word sincere was derived from the practice of filling up flaws in furniture with wax, whence sine cera came to mean pure, not vamped up.' This explanation, he said, gave him great pleasure, and abode in his memory, as having first shown him that there is a reason in words as well as in other things. When a boy, he read through the whole Edinburgh Review,' of which his biographer says, a diet than which hardly any could yield less wholesome food for a young mind, and which could scarcely fail to puff it up with the wind of self conceit.' We doubt the validity of this dictum. We conceive that, to a fresh elastic mind, the crossing of such varied territories of thought, the coming in contact with so many vigorous minds, the acquiring such stores of miscellaneous information, the mere reading of such a mass of masculine English, as the perusal of the entire Edinburgh Review' implies, must have been beneficial, and tended to awaken curiosity, to kindle ambition, to stifle mannerism of style, and, as the likely result of the many severe criticisms in which the book abounds, to allay instead of fanning the feeling of self-conceit. Who but commends the industry of the boy who reads all the English essayists--a course of reading certainly much more dissipating; or the youth who reads all Bayle's Dictionary'- -a course of reading much more dangerous than the Edinburgh Review?' Let the boy read at his pleasure-the youth will study, and the man think and act. At Cambridge, Sterling did not greatly distinguish Essays and Tales by John Sterling. Collected and edited, with a Memoir of his Life, by JULIUS CHARLES HARE, Rector of Herstmonceux. London: Parker. 1848 himself, nor did he bear any violent affection to his alma mater. For mathematics he had little taste; the classics he rather relished than thoroughly knew. He early commenced the study of philosophy, deeming it at once the key to a scientific theology and to a lofty literature, although latterly he all but left the cold and perilous crags of speculation for the flowery meadows of poetry and aesthetics. At the feet of Coleridge no one ever sat with a feeling of more entire and childlike submission; the house at Highgate was to him the shrine of a god, and his biographer regrets that he did not preserve an account of Coleridge's conversations, for he was capable of representing their depth, their ever-varying hues, their sparkling lights, their oceanic ebb and flow.' He began soon to empty out his teeming mind, in the forms both of verse and prose. In the course of his short life we find him connected, more or less intimately, with the following periodicals: the Athenæum,' Blackwood's Magazine,' the Quarterly,' and the London and Westminster Reviews.' The Athenæum,' when he and Maurice wrote in it, was not the stale summary of new books and gossip which it has since become; it had still some life, genius, and principle; and his ⚫ Shades of the Dead' are valuable as beautiful versions of Coleridge's spoken Hero-worship.' At a peculiarly dull period in the history of Maga' he appeared, amid a flourish of trumpets, as a new contributor,' and did succeed in shooting a little new blood into her withered veins. In the Quarterly' he wrote a paper on Tennyson, which was attributed at the time to Henry Nelson Coleridge. Differing as he did in many material points from the new school of Radicals who conducted the Westminster,' he seemed more at home in their company than in that of the knights of the Noctes; and his contributions to their journal are all characteristic. These articles have been reprinted by Dr Hare, and, along with the poems, his tragedy of Staf ford,' a few letters, and other remains, constitute all his written claims to consideration. We do not mean that He has certainly in them raised no very great or compact basis for future fame; but we are entitled to adduce, in addition, the testimony of his friends, who all speak with rapture of the possibilities of his mind-of his talent as a In debater and of his ready, vivid, and brilliant talk. him alone Thomas Carlyle met his conversational match; he alone ventured to face him in single combat, and nothing like their rencontres seems to have been witnessed since those of Johnson and Burke. Even in his Remains' we may find faint yet distinct indications of all the principal features of his intellectual character. These, we think, may be classed under the three general characteristics of sympathy, sincerity, and culture. these sum up the whole of his idiosyncrasy, but simply that they are the qualities which have struck us most forcibly in the perusal of his works. He had, besides, as a writer, a fine inventiveness, a rich and varied stock of figures, a power of arresting and fixing in permanent shapes the thinnest gossamer abstractions, and the command of a diction remarkable more for its copiousness, flexibility, and strength, than for grace, clearness, or felicitous condensation. Perhaps his principal claim to reputation rests on his criticisms, and their power and charm lie in genial and self-forgetting sympathy. It is too customary to speak of this as a subordinate quality in a critic, as a veil over his eyes, and nearly inconsistent with the exercise of analytic sagacity. Those who talk in this manner are not so much guilty of a mistake as of a stupid blunder. Sympathy we regard as closely connected with sight. It is a medium, which, like water poured into a bowl, enables you to see objects previously invisible. It and it alone opens a window into the breast and the brain of genius, and shows the marvellous processes which are going on within. It is not merely that the heart often sees farther than the intellect, but it is that sympathy cleanses and sharpens even the intellectual eye. Love, and you will understand. Besides, the possession of powerful sympathy with intellect and genius, implies a certain similitude of mind on the part of the sympathiser. The blind cannot sympathise with descriptions of scenery, and the |