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our will. If I open my eyes, I cannot prevent myself from seeing the prospect before me. The case is different with respect to our conceptions. While they occupy the mind, 'to the exclusion of every thing else, I endeavoured to shew, 'that they are always accompanied with belief; but as we can banish them from the mind, during our waking hours, at pleasure; and as the momentary belief which they produce, ' is continually checked by the surrounding objects of our perC ceptions, we learn to consider them as fictions of our own 'creation; and, excepting in some accidental cases, pay no 6 regard to them in the conduct of life. If the doctrine, how6 ever, formerly stated with respect to conception be just, and if, at the same time, it be allowed, that sleep suspends the 'influence of the will over the train of our thoughts, we should "naturally be led to expect, that the same belief which accom'panies perception while we are awake, should accompany the conceptions which occur to us in our dreams. It is scarcely necessary for me to remark, how strikingly this conclusion coincides with acknowledged facts.' p. 343.

'From these principles may be derived a simple, and, I think, a satisfactory explanation of what some writers have repre'sented as the most mysterious of all the circumstances con'nected with dreaming; the inaccurate estimates we are apt

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to form of Time, while we are thus employed ;-an inaccuracy 'which sometimes extends so far, as to give to a single instant, the appearance of hours, or perhaps of days. A sudden noise, for example, suggests a dream connected with that ' perception; and, the moment afterwards, this noise has the effect of awaking us, and yet, during that momentary interval, a long series of circumstances has passed before the imagination. The story quoted by Mr. Addison from the Turkish Tales, of the miracle wrought by a Mahometan Doctor, <to convince an infidel Sultan, is, in such cases, nearly < verified.

The facts I allude to at present are generally explained by supposing, that, in our dreams, the rapidity of thought is C greater than while we are awake:-but there is no necessity for having recourse to such a supposition. The rapidity of thought is, at all times, such, that in the twinkling of an eye, a crowd of ideas may pass before us, to which it would re<quire a long discourse to give utterance; and transactions may be conceived, which it would require days to realize. But, in sleep, the conceptions of the mind are mistaken for realities; < and therefore, our estimates of Time will be formed, not according to our experience of the rapidity of thought, but according to our experience of the time requisite for realizing ⚫ what we conceive. Something perfectly analogous to this

may be remarked in the perceptions we obtain by the sense of sight. When I look into a shew-box, where the deception is imperfect, I see only a set of paltry dawbings of a few inches diameter; but, if the representation be executed * with so much skill, as to convey to me the idea of a distant prospect, every object before me swells in its dimensions, in proportion to the extent of space which I conceive it to oc" cupy; and what seemed before to be shut up within the limits of a small wooden frame, is magnified, in my apprehension, to an immense landscape of woods, rivers, and mountains. p. 346.

This beautiful theory will, we hope, in some degree compensate to our readers for the dry discussions of the former part of this article. We are aware at the same time, how much it is injured by the abridgements which our limits have obliged us to make.

Here, for the present, we stop. The subject of abstraction is so closely connected with the subjects of Mr. Stewart's second volume, that we shall not at present notice it.

Art. III. An Essay on the Life of Michel de L'Hôpital, Chancellor of France. By Charles Butler, Esq. small 8vo. pp. 80. Price 4s. Longman and Co. 1814.

IT might be made a question which is greater, the pleasure, or the disgust, of beholding an individual of exalted faculties and virtues, maintaining, for a course of years, an unremitting contest for justice with surrounding millions of his species; with consummate policy restraining their bad passions, sometimes by setting these passions to disable one another, sometimes contriving delays to mitigate their violence; sometimes managing to make what is right so palpably identical with what is immediately advantageous, as to constrain its adoption even on the grossest principles of self-interest; keeping parties in a state so balanced as to gain time and impunity for some attempts at the formation of another interest and combination better than any of them; slowly insinuating correction into their practical institutions; and all the while most assiduously labouring, though with small success, to diminish the ignorance and the prejudices of the whole community.

It cannot, however, be a question long; since this illustrious mortal cannot be contemplated as a detached object, present, ing to view nothing but its own excellence. It stands inseparably conjoined with the degraded mass, and as necessarily forces on our perception the character of that mass as its own. And

the complacency or enthusiasm which that one object is fitted. to inspire, though reanimated again and again in the mind, will as often be overborne by the shame, or the grief, or the indignation, or all these sentiments together, which will irresistibly invade the beholder of unworthy millions, in whose very debasement is found the measure of the elevation of the one noble exception. We are too closely related to the race for either benevolence to sanction, or sympathy to leave it possible, that we should be philosophically satisfied to regard the grand bulk of that race as answering a sufficient purpose in serving as a foil to a few individuals of eminent excellence; or that we should coolly throw away the immense mass as a kind of waste and rubbish, necessarily heaped around during the operation of working out a few colossal forms of moral and intellectual perfection, well worth that in their production so much material should go to waste.

But though neither the interest which we ought to feel, nor that which, as sharing the same nature, we are constrained to feel, if it were only through the medium of our pride, will suffer us, in making our estimates of the moral world, to be content to rest the value of a vast aggregate of human creatures on one or a few sublime individuals, and let the remainder go for nothing, yet in attempting to apprehend and verify the worth of that immense crowd, as beheld in some ages and nations, we are forced on a process to divest it of its actual appearance. We are compelled either to an exercise of abstraction and refinement, to reach at some sort of philosophical notion of the essential value of rational and moral creatures independently of their modifications; or to an exercise of fancy, representing the admirable agencies and transformations that might pass upon them, and the estimable and noble state of character to which it would not be impossible for them to be raised.

In the reveries on the conceivable modes in which a stupid, perverse, bigoted tribe or nation might be benefited, the imagination will readily give form to a diversity of grand expedients, of a quality corresponding to the more benign or severe temper in which they are conceived. In a mind constitutionally severe, and in the gloomy moments and the harsh and indignant moods of a more philanthropic spirit, one of the images most prompt to present themselves, and most complacently entertained and dwelt upon, will be that of an individual endowed with almost super-human faculties; possessed with an humble and awful fear of God, but toward human beings lofty, dictatorial, fearless, and inflexible; enlightened and impelled invariably by a consummate sense of

justice; invincibly resolute to effect that justice at all hazards, yet sagacious in the choice of means; and, to crown all this, invested with the most unlimited form that can be conceived of temporal power. Such a personage presented to the imagination, in the harsher moods of benevolent musing, will be instantly set to work on some perverse section of the human race; and with delight will be followed through a career in which, indifferent to life but as a space for the fulfilment of appointed duty, infinitely scornful of that idol of almost all other fervent spirits--glory, and caring incomparably less about either the love or the hatred of human beings than about the object of mending them-he will accomplish a grand plan of correction, in which intimidation, and chastisement, and coercion, shall be very largely employed to give authoritative force to the dictates of truth, and drive and frighten men as much as persuade them, into a state of less absurdity and iniquity.

Had he

Cardinal Ximenes has often recurred to our imagination as a character meeting several parts of this description in an unprecedented degree: the fatal fault was, that instead of being the castigator and crusher of persecuting bigots, he was himself one of the greatest of bigots in religion. united the comparatively enlightened principles of Michel de l'Hôpital, relative to this great subject, with the vigorous, imperious austerity of his character, we should have been tempted to wish his external means of power ten times greater even than they were; in the exercise of which power we might at some moments of indignant feeling have been tempted to be pleased at seeing him acting out such a part, against the perversities and iniquities of a nation, as would have fixed upon him, in a less terrible and more useful sense, the famous denomination of Flagellum Dei.

It must perhaps be acknowledged, that in a milder state of feeling, the subject of the present biographical Essay would appear the preferable man to be invested with an immense arbitrary power; preferable, we mean, in point of mental temperament, setting out of view the vast difference between a popish Inquisitor and an enlightened friend of religious toleration.

Mr. Butler, we think, has rendered a real service to the public, by drawing together into a compressed arrangement, from a variety of works, which he enumerates and describes, the most important matters relating to the life and character of this eminent and admirable man. Every reader will wish that he had made a larger selection, when he had collected into one view so many materials.

The memoir is preceded by some notices of the funeral orations, and the eloges, which have been so much in fashion in France, and a succinct view of the revolutions of the jurisprudence of Europe before the time of the Chancellor de l'Hôpital.' This succinct view' compresses a great deal of information in a small space. He remarks that the formation of a perfectly distinct class of men for the practice of the law, may be regarded as an institution of modern Europe; he states the nature and extent of the legal profession in ancient Rome; notices the origination of various semi-barbarous but progressively improving codes of law from the institution of feudalism; and describes the consequences of the discovery, at Amalfi, about the year 1137, of a copy of the Pandects of Justinian, the zealous and extensive study of which work, resulted at length in a regular succession of civil lawyers.' Cujas, one of the greatest improvers of the science, if it may be so denominated, was persecuted in Italy, and found. ❝ under the patronage of l'Hôpital, an honourable reception in 'France.'

This illustrious statesman was the son of a physician, and was born in 1505, at Aigneperse, in Auvergne. After having studied the law in several universities, he held, during a short period, an office at Rome; but soon returned to France, and 'married the daughter of John Morin, the lieutenant criminal, in consequence of which he obtained, in 1537, a charge of 'counsellor in the Parliament of Paris.'

There is a rather interesting digression on the parliaments of France, as distinguished from that of England. The origin of each was the same, and in their earlier periods both had a legislative as well as judicial operation. But in their progress they diverged into very different characters, and the difference was much in favour of England.

In the course of time, the Parliament of England became divided into its two houses, the Lords and Commons, and, together with the King, constituted the Legislature of the nation but its judicial power generally fell into disuse, except in cases which are brought before the House of Lords by appeal. The reverse happened in almost every country on the continent; in them the parliament gradually lost its legislative authority, and subsided.into a High Court of Justice for the last resort, and a court of royal revenue. It generally consisted of a fixed number of ecclesiastical peers, a fixed number of lay peers, and a fixed number of counsellors. All were equally judges, and had an equal right of giving their opinions, and an equal voice in the decree. Such was the constitution of the French Parliament when l'Hôpital was received into it. But, at that time, it had somewhat degenerated from its ancient splendour.' p. 13.