writing and speaking of the English language correctly!!" We give the two admiration notes and all.

In the first place, if grammar be only the writing and speaking the English language correctly, then the French, or the Dutch, or the Kickapoos are miserable, ungrammatical races of people, aud have no hopes of being anything else, unless Mr. Pue proceeds to their assistance:-but let us say nothing of this for the present. What we wish to assert is, that the usual definition of grammar as "the writing and speaking correctly," is an error which should have been long ago exploded. Grammar is the analysis of language, and this analysis will be good or bad, just as the capacity employed upon it be weak or strong--just as the grammarian be a Horne Tooke or a Hugh A. Pue. But perhaps, after all, we are treating this gentleman discourteously. His book may be merely intended as a good joke. By the by, he says in his preface, that "while he informs the student, he shall take particular care to entertain him." Now, the truth is, we have been exceedingly entertained. In such passages as the following, however, which we find upon the second page of the Introduction, we are really at a loss to determine whether it is the utile or the dulce which prevails. We give the italics of Mr. Pue; without which, indeed, the singular force and beauty of the paragraph cannot be duly appreciated.

"The proper study of English grammar, so far from being dry, is one of the most rational enjoyments known to us; one that is highly calculated to rouse the dormant energies of the student; it requiring continual mental effort; une asing exercise of mind, It is, in fact, the spreading of a thought-pro·lucing plaster of paris upon the extensive grounds of intellect! It is the parent of idea, and great causation of reflection; the mighty instigator of insurrection in the interior; and, above all, the unflinching champion of internal improvement!" We know nothing about plaster e Paris; but the analogy which subsists between ipecac and gram nar --at least between ipecac and the grammar of Mr. Pue-never, certainly, struck us in so clear a point of view, as it does now.

But, after all, whether Mr. P.'s queer little book shall or shall not meet the views of "Every American Youth," will depend pretty much upon another question of high moment-whether “Every American Youth" be or be not as great a nincompoop as Mr. Pue.

CCXVIIL

That Lord Brougham was an extraordinary man. no one in his senses will deny. An intellect of unusual capacity, goaded into diseased action by passions nearly ferocious, enabled him to astenish the world, and especially the "hero-worshippers," as the author of Sartor-Resartus has it, by the combined extent and variety of his mental triumphs. Attemping many things, it may at least be said that he egregiously failed in none. But that he pre-eminently excelled in any cannot be affirmed with truth, and might well be denied à priori. We have no faith in admirable Crichtons, and this merely because we have implicit faith in Nature and her laws. "He that is born to be a man," says Wieland, in his Peregrinus Proteus, "neither should nor can be anything nobler, greater, nor better than a man." The Broughams of the human intellect are never its Newtons or its Bayles. Yet the contemporaneous reputation to be acquired by the former is naturally greater than any which the latter may attain. The versatility of one whom we see and hear is a more dazzling and more readily appreciable merit than his profundity; which latter is best estimated in the silence of the closet, and after the quiet lapse of years. What impression Lord Brougham has stamped upon his age, cannot be accurately determined until Time has fixed and rendered definite the lines of the medal; and fifty years hence it will be difficult, perhaps to make out the deepest indentation of the exergue. Like Coleridge he should be regarded as one who might have done much, had he been satisfied with attempting but little.

CCXIX

The Art of Mr. Dickens, although elaborate and great, seems only a happy modification of Nature. In this respect he differs remarkably from the author of "Night and Morning." The latter, by excessive care and by patient reflection, aided by much thetorical knowledge, and general information, has arrived at the capability of producing books which might be mistaken by ninetynine readers out of a hundred, for the genuine inspirations of genius. The former, by the promptings of the truest genius itseif, has been brought to compose, and evidently without effort, works which have effected a long-sought consummation--which have

rendered him the idol of the people, while defying and enchanting the critics. Mr. Bulwer, through art, has almost created a genius. Mr. Dickens, through genius, has pefected a standard from which art itself will derive its essence in rules.

CCXX.

While Defoe would have been fairly entitled to immortality had he never written Robinson Crusoe, yet his many other very excellent writings have nearly faded from our attention, in the superior lustre of the Adventures of the Mariner of York. What better possible species of reputation could the author have desired for that book than the species which it has so long enjoyed? It has become a household thing in nearly every family in Christendom. Yet never was admiration of any work-universal admirationmore indiscriminate or more inappropriately bestowed. Not one person in ten--nay, not one person in five hundred, has, dur ing the perusal of Robinson Crusoe, the most remote conception that any particle of genius, or even of common talent, has been employed in its creation! Men do not look upon it in the light of a literary performance. Defoe has none of their thoughts-Ro binson all. The powers which have wrought the wonder have been thrown into obscurity by the very stupendousness of the wonder they have wrought! We read, and become perfect abstractions in the intensity of our interest -we close the book, and are quite satisfied that we could have written as well ourselves. All this is effected by the potent magic of verisimilitude. Indeed the author of Crusoe must have possessed, above all other faculties, what has been termed the faculty of identification that dominion exercised by volition over imagination which enables the mind to lose its own, in a fictitious, individuality. This includes, in a very great degree, the power of abstraction; and with these keys we may partially unlock the mystery of that spell which has so long invest ed the volume before us. But a complete analysis of our interest in it cannot be thus afforded. Defoe is largely indebted to his subject. The idea of man in a state of perfect isolation, although cften entertained, was never before so comprehensively carried out. Indeed the frequency of its occurrence to the thoughts of mankind argued the extent of its influence on their sympathies, while the fact of no attempt having been made to give an embodied form to

the conception, went to prove the difficulty of the undertaking But the true narrative of Selkirk in 1711, with the powerful impression it then made upon the public mind, sufficed to inspire Defoe with both the necessary courage for his work, and entire confidence in its success How wonderful has been the result!

CCXXI.

The increase, within a few years, of the magazine literature, 13 by no means to be regarded as indicating what some critics would suppose it to indicate-a downward tendency in American taste or in American letters. It is but a sign of the times-an indication of an era in which men are forced upon the curt, the condensed, the well-digested-in place of the voluminous—in a word, upon journalism in lieu of dissertation. We need now the light artillery rather than the Peace-makers of the intellect. I will not be sure that men at present think more profoundly than half a century ago, but beyond question they think with more rapidity, with more skill, with more tact, with more of method and less of excrescence in the thought. Besides all this, they have a vast increase in the thinking material; they have more facts, more to think about. For this reason, they are disposed to put the greatest amount of thought in the smallest compass and disperse it with the utmost attainable rapidity. Hence the journalism of the age; hence, in especial, magazines. Too many we cannot have, as a general proposition; but we demand that they have sufficient merit to render them noticeable in the beginning, and that they continue in existence sufficiently long to permit us a fair estimation of their value.

CCXXII

One half the pleasure experienced at a theatre arises from the spectator's sympathy with the rest of the audience, and, especially, from his belief in their sympathy with him. The eccentric gentleman who not long ago, at the Park, found himself the soltary occupant of box, pit, and gallery, would have derived but little enjoyment from his visit, had he been suffered to remain. It was an act of mercy to turn him out. The present absurd ragg for lecturing is founded in the feeling in question. Essays which we would not be hired to read-so trite is their subject-so feeble is their execution-so much easier is it to get better information on

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similar theines out of any encyclopædia in Christendom--we are bro ight to tolerate, and alas, even to applaud in their tenth and twentieth repetition, through the sole force of our sympathy with the throng. In the same way we listen to a story with greater zest when there are others present at its narration beside ourselves. Aware of this, authors without due reflection have repeatedly attempted, by supposing a circle of listeners, to imbue their narratives with the interest of sympathy. At a cursory glance the idea seems plausible enough. But, in the one case, there is an actual, personal, and palpable sympathy, conveyed in looks, gestures and brief comments-a sympathy of real indivi duals, all with the matters discussed to be sure, but then espe cially, each with each. In the other instance, we, alone in our closet, are required to sympathise with the sympathy of fictitious listeners, who, so far from being present in body, are often stu diously kept out of sight and out of mind for two or three hundred pages at a time. This is sympathy double-diluted—the shadow of a shade. It is unnecessary to say that the design in variably fails of its effect.

CCXXIIL

The qualities of Heber are well understood. His poetry is of a high order. He is imaginative, glowing, and vigorous, with a skul in the management of his means unsurpassed by that of any writer of his time, but without any high degree of originality. Can there be anything in the nature of a "classical life at war with novelty per se? At all events, few fine scholars, such as Heber truly was, are original.

CCXXIV.

Original characters, so called, can only be critically praised as such, either when presenting qualities known in real life, but never before depicted, combination nearly impossible) or when presenting quanties (moral, or physical, or both) which, although unknown, or even known to be hypothetical, are so skilfully adapted to the circumstances which surround them, that our sense of fitness is not offended, and we find ourselves seeking a reason why those things might not have been, which we are still satisfied are not. The latter species of originality appertains to the loftier regions of the Ideal.