what could King William or the Dutch do, if they ever thereafter meant to call themselves independent, but resist and resent this outrage to the uttermost? It was a crisis in which every consideration of state became inferior to the strong sense and duty of national honour. When, indeed, the French appear in the field, King William retires. "I now see," he may say, "that the powers of Europe are determined to abet the Belgians. The justice of such a proceeding I leave to their conscience and the decision of history. It is now no longer a question whether I am tamely to submit to rebels and an usurper; it is no longer a quarrel between Holland and Belgium: it is an alliance of all Europe against Holland,-in which case I yield. I have no desire to sacrifice my people." When Leopold said that he was called to " reign over four millions of noble Belgians," I thought the phrase would have been more germane to the matter if he had said that he was called to "rein in four million restive asses." O. AUGUST 20, 1831. Greatest Happiness Principle.-Hobbism.-Conscience.* P. Q. in the "Morning Chronicle" is a clever fellow. He is for the greatest possible happiness for the greatest possible number, and for the longest possible time! So am I; so are you, and every one of us, I will venture to say, round the tea-table. First, however, what does O. P. Q. mean by the word happiness? and, secondly, how does he propose to make other persons agree in his definition of the term? Don't you see the ridiculous absurdity of setting up that as a principle or motive of action, which is, in fact, a necessary and essential instinct of our very nature—an inborn and inextinguishable desire? How can creatures susceptible of pleasure and pain do otherwise than desire happiness? But, what happiness? That is the question. The American savage, in scalping his fallen enemy, pursues his happiness naturally and adequately. A Chickasaw, or Pawnee Bentham, or O. P. Q., would necessarily hope for the most frequent opportunities pos sible of scalping the greatest possible number of savages, for the longest possible time. There is no escaping this absurdity, unless you come back to a standard of reason and duty, imperative upon our merely pleasurable sensations. Oh! but, says O. P. Q., I am for the happiness of others! Of others! Are you, indeed? Well, I happen to be one of those others, and, so far as I can judge from what you show me of your habits and views, I would rather be excused from your banquet of happiness. Your mode of happiness would make me miserable. To go about doing as much good as possible to as many men as possible, is, indeed, an excellent object for a man to propose to himself; but then, in order that you may not sacrifice the real good and happiness of others to your particular views, which may be quite different from your neighbour's, you must do that good to others which the reason, common to all, pronounces to be good for all. In this sense your fine maxim is so very true as to be a mere truism. So you object, with old Hobbes, that I do good actions for the pleasure of a good conscience; and so, after all, I am only a refined sensualist! Heaven bless you, and mend your logic! Don't you see that if conscience, which is in its nature a consequence, were thus anticipated and made an antecedent—a party instead of a judge-it would dishonour your draft upon it-it would not pay on demand? Don't you see that, in truth, the very fact of acting with this motive properly and logically destroys all claim upon conscience to give you any pleasure at all? THE AUGUST 22, 1831. The Two Modes of Political Action. HERE are many able and patriotic members in the House of Commons-Sir Robert Inglis, Sir Robert Peel, and some others. But I grieve that they never have the courage or the wisdom-I know not in which the failure is to take their stand upon duty, and to appeal to all men as men,-to the Good and the True, which exist for all, and of which all have an apprehension. They always set to work-especially, his great eminence considered, Sir Robert Peel-by addressing themselves to individual interests; the measure will be injurious to the linen-drapers, or to the bricklayers; or this clause will bear hard on bobbin-net or poplins, and so forth. Whereas their adversaries the demagogues-always work on the opposite principle they always appeal to men as men; and, as you know, the most terrible convulsions in society have been wrought by such phrases as Rights of Man, Sovereignty of the People, &c., which no one understands, which apply to no one in particular, but to all in general. The devil works precisely in the same way. He is a very clever fellow; I have no acquaintance with him, but I respect his evident talents. Consistent truth and goodness will assuredly in the end overcome everything; but inconsistent good can never be a match for consistent evil. Alas! I look in vain for some wise and vigorous man to sound the word Duty in the ears of this generation. THE AUGUST 24, 1831. Truths and Maxims.-Are Four and Five Nine? * 'HE English public is not yet ripe to comprehend the essential difference between the reason and the understanding between a principle and a maxim-an eternal "It is with nations as with individuals. In tranquil moods and peaceable times we are quite practical; facts only, and cool common sense, are then in fashion. But let the winds of passion swell, and straightway men begin to generalize, to connect by remotest analogies, to express the most universal positions of reason in the most glowing figures of fancy; in short, to feel particular truths and mere facts as poor, cold, narrow, and incommensurate with their feelings."-Statesman's Manual, p. 18. "It seems a paradox only to the unthinking, and it is a fact that none but the unread in history will deny, that, in periods of popular tumult and innovation, the more abstract a notion is, the more readily has it been found to combine, the closer has appeared its affinity, with the feelings of a people, and with all their immediate impulses to action. At the commencement of the French Revolution, in the remotest villages every tongue was employed in echoing and enforcing the almost geometrical abstractions of the physiocratic politicians and economists. The public roads were crowded with armed enthusiasts, disputing on the truth and a mere conclusion generalized from a great number of facts. A man, having seen a million moss roses all red, concludes from his own experience and that of others that all moss roses are red. That is a maxim with himthe greatest amount of his knowledge upon the subject. But it is only true until some gardener has produced a white moss rose,-after which the maxim is good for nothing. Again, suppose Adam watching the sun sinking under the western horizon for the first time; he is seized with gloom and terror, relieved by scarce a ray of hope that he shall ever see the glorious light again. The next evening, when it declines, his hopes are stronger, but still mixed with fear; and even at the end of a thousand years, all that a man can feel is a hope and an expectation so strong as to preclude anxiety. Now compare this in its highest degree with the assurance which you have that the two sides of any triangle are together greater than the third. This, demonstrated of one triangle, is seen to be eternally true of all imaginable triangles. This is a truth perceived at once by the intuitive reason, independently of experience. It is and ever must be so, multiply and vary the shapes and sizes of triangles as you may. It used to be said that four and five make nine. Locke says, that four and five are nine. Now I say, that four and five are not nine, but that they will make nine. When I see four objects which will form a square, and five which will form a pentagon, I see that they are two different things; when combined, they will form a third different figure, which we call nine. When separate they are not it, but will make it. DR SEPTEMBER 11, 1831. Drayton and Daniel. RAYTON is a sweet poet, and Selden's notes to the early part of the "Polyolbion" are well worth your inalienable sovereignty of the people, the imprescriptible laws of the pure reason, and the universal constitution, which, as rising out of the nature and rights of man as man, all nations alike were under the obligation of adopting."-Statesman's Manual.-H. N. C. perusal. Daniel is a superior man; his diction is pre-eminently pure of that quality which I believe has always existed somewhere in society. It is just such English,' without any alteration, as Wordsworth or Sir George Beaumont might have spoken or written in the present day. Yet there are instances of sublimity in Drayton. When deploring the cutting down of some of our old forests, he says, in language which reminds the reader of "Lear," written subsequently, and also of several of Mr. Wordsworth's poems :— our trees so hack'd above the ground, That where their lofty tops the neighbouring countries crown'd, Mr. Coleridge's System of Philosophy.-Dread of Death.*—Illness and MY Mental Activity.* Y system, if I may venture to give it so fine a name, is the only attempt I know, ever made to reduce all knowledges into harmony. It opposes no other system, but shows what was true in each; and how that which was true in the particular, in each of them became error, because it was only half the truth. I have endeavoured to unite the 1 Compare the similar remarks of March 15, 1834, and the extract from the "Biographia Literaria" in H. N. Coleridge's note. Polyol." VII. "He (Drayton) was a poet by nature, and carefully improved his talent; one who sedulously laboured to deserve the approbation of such as were capable of appreciating and cared nothing for the censures which others might pass upon him. 'Like me that list,' he says, 'my honest rhymes Nor care for critics, nor regard the times.' And though he is not a poet virum volitare per ora, nor one of those whose better fortune it is to live in the hearts of their devoted admirers, -yet what he deemed his greatest work will be preserved by its subject; some of his minor poems have merit enough in their execution to ensure their preservation; and no one who studies poetry as an art will think his time misspent in perusing the whole, if he have any real love for the art he is pursuing. The youth who enters upon that pursuit without a feeling of respect and gratitude for those elder poets, who by |