GUESSES AT TRUTH.

"Indeed, my dear, you must take it. You certainlyhavecaught cold: you sneezed three times together."

"Yes, ma'am, because I would take a pinch of Uncle Roland's snuff, just to say that Ihadtaken a pinch out of his box—the honour of the thing, you know."

"Ah, my dear! what was that very clever remark you made at the same time which so pleased your father—something about Jews and the college?"

"Jews and—oh! 'pulverem Olympicum collegisse juvat,' my dear mother—which means, that it is a pleasureto take a pinch out of a brave man's snuff-box. I say, mother, put down the posset. Yes, I'll take it; I will, indeed. Now, then, sit here—that's right—and tell me all you know about this famous old Captain. Imprimis, he is older than my father?"

"To be sure!" exclaimed my mother indignantly; "he looks twenty years older; but there is only five years' real difference. Your father must always look young."

"And why does Uncle Roland put that absurd Frenchdebefore his name—and why were my father and he not good friends—and is he married—and has he any children?"

Scene of this conference—my own little room, new papered on purpose for my returnfor good—trellis-work paper, flowers and birds—all so fresh, and so new, and so clean, and so gay—with my books ranged in neat shelves, and a writing-table by the window; and, without the window, shines the still summer moon. The window is a little open; you scent the flowers and new-mown hay. Past eleven; and the boy and his dear mother are all alone.

"My dear, my dear! you ask so many questions at once."

"Don't answer them then. Begin at the beginning, as Nurse Primmins does with her fairy tales—'Once on a time.'"

"Once on a time, then," said my mother—kissing me between the eyes—"once on a time, my love, there was a certain clergyman in Cumberland, who had two sons; he had but a small living, and the boys were to make their own way in the world. But close to the parsonage, on the brow of a hill, rose an old ruin, with one tower left, and this, with half the county round it, had once belonged to the clergyman's family; but all had been sold—all gone piece by piece, you see, my dear, except the presentation to the living, (what they call the advowson was sold too,) which had been secured to the last of the family. The elder of these sons was your Uncle Roland, the younger was your father. Now I believe the first quarrel arose from the absurdest thing possible, as your father says; but Roland was exceedingly touchy on all things connected with his ancestors. He was always poring over the old pedigree, or wandering amongst the ruins, or reading books of knight-errantry. Well, where this pedigree began I know not, but it seems that King Henry II. gave some lands in Cumberland to one Sir Adam de Caxton; and from that time, you see, the pedigree went regularly from father to son till Henry V.; then, apparently from the disorders, produced, as your father says, by the wars of the Roses, there was a sad blank left—only one or two names, without dates or marriages, till the time of Henry VII., except that in the reign of Edward IV. there was one insertion of a William Caxton (named in a deed.) Now in the village church there was a beautiful brass monument to one Sir William de Caxton, who had been killed at the battle of Bosworth, fighting for that wicked King Richard III. And about the same time there lived, as you know, the great printer, William Caxton. Well, your father, happening to be in town on a visit to his aunt, took great trouble in hunting up all the old papers he could find at the Heralds' College; and sure enough he was overjoyed to satisfy himself that he was descended, not from that poor Sir William, who had been killed in so bad a cause, but from the great printer, who was from a younger branch of the same family, and to whose descendants the estate came, in the reign of Henry VIII. It was upon this that your Uncle Roland quarrelled with him; and, indeed, I tremble to think that they may touch on that matter again."

"Then, my dear mother, I must say my uncle is wrong there, so far as common-sense is concerned; but still, somehow or other, I can understand it—surely this was not the only cause of estrangement!"

My mother looked down, and moved one hand gently over the other, which was her way when embarrassed. "What was it, my own mother?" said I, coaxingly.

"I believe—that is, I—I think that they were both attached to the same young lady."

"How! you don't mean to say that my father was ever in love with any one but you?"

"Yes, Sisty—yes, and deeply! and," added my mother after a slight pause, and with a very low sigh, "he never was in love with me; and what is more, he had the frankness to tell me so!"

"And yet you—"

"Married him—yes!" said my mother, raising the softest and purest eyes that ever lover could have wished to read his fate in;—

"Yes, for the old love was hopeless. I knew that I could make him happy. I knew that he would love me at last, and he does so! My son, your father loves me!"

As she spoke, there came a blush as innocent as virgin ever knew, to my mother's smooth cheek; and she looked so fair, so good, and still so young, all the while, that you would have said that either Dusius, the Teuton fiend, or Nock, the Scandinavian sea-imp, from whom the learned assure us we derive our modern Daimones, "The Deuce" and Old Nick, had indeed possessed my father, if he had not learned to love such a creature.

I pressed her hand to my lips, but my heart was too full to speak for a moment or so; and then I partially changed the subject.

"Well, and this rivalry estranged them more? And who was the lady?"

"Your father never told me, and I never asked," said my mother simply. "But she was very different from me, I know. Very accomplished, very beautiful, very high-born."

"For all that, my father was a lucky man to escape her. Pass on. What did the Captain do?"

"Why, about that time your grandfather died, and shortly after an aunt, on the mother's side, who was rich and saving, and unexpectedly left them each sixteen thousand pounds. Your uncle, with his share, bought back, at an enormous price, the old castle and some land round it, which they say does not bring him in three hundred a-year. With the little that remained, he purchased a commission in the army; and the brothers met no more, till last week, when Roland suddenly arrived."

"He did not marry this accomplished young lady?"

"No! but he married another, and is a widower."

"Why, he was as inconstant as my father; and I am sure without so good an excuse. How was that?"

"I don't know. He says nothing about it."

"Has he any children?"

"Two; a son—by the bye, you must never speak abouthim. Your uncle briefly said, when I asked him what was his family, 'a girl, ma'am. I had a son, but,—'

'He is dead,' cried your father, in his kind pitying voice.

'Dead to me, brother,—and you will never mention his name!' You should have seen how stern your uncle looked. I was terrified."

"But the girl,—why did not he bring her here?"

"She is still in France, but he talks of going over for her; and we have half promised to visit them both in Cumberland.—But, bless me! is that twelve? and the posset quite cold!"

"One word more, dearest mother—one word. My father's book—is he still going on with it?"

"Oh yes, indeed!" cried my mother, clasping her hands; "and he must read it to you, as he does to me—youwill understand it so well. I have always been so anxious that the world should know him, and be proud of him as we are,—so—so anxious!—for perhaps, Sisty, if he had married that great lady, he would have roused himself, been more ambitious—and I could only make him happy, I could not make him great!"

"So he has listened to you at last?"

"To me!" said my mother, shaking her head and smiling gently: "No, rather to your Uncle Jack,—who, I am happy to say, has at length got a proper hold over him."

"A proper hold, my dear mother! Pray beware of Uncle Jack, or we shall be all swept into a coal-mine, or explode with a grand national company for making gunpowder out of tea-leaves!"

"Wicked child!" said my mother laughing; and then, as she took up her candle and lingered a moment while I wound my watch, she said musingly,—"Yet Jack is very, veryclever,—and if for your sake wecouldmake a fortune, Sisty!"

"You frighten me out of my wits, mother! You are not in earnest?"

"And ifmybrother could be the means of raisinghimin the world"—

"Your brother would be enough to sink all the ships in the Channel, ma'am," said I, quite irreverently. I was shocked, before the words were well out of my mouth; and throwing my arms round my mother's neck, I kissed away the pain I had inflicted.

When I was left alone and in my own little crib, in which my slumber had ever been so soft and easy,—I might as well have been lying upon cut straw. I tossed to and fro—I could not sleep. I rose, threw on my dressing-gown, lighted my candle, and sat down by the table near the window. First, I thought of the unfinished outline of my father's youth, so suddenly sketched before me. I filled up the missing colours, and fancied the picture explained all that had often perplexed my conjectures. I comprehended, I suppose by some secret sympathy in my own nature, (for experience in mankind could have taught me little enough,) how an ardent, serious, inquiring mind—struggling into passion under the load of knowledge, had, with that stimulus sadly and abruptly withdrawn, sunk into the quiet of passive, aimless study. I comprehended how, in the indolence of a happy but unimpassioned marriage, with a companion so gentle, so provident and watchful, yet so little formed to rouse, and task, and fire an intellect naturally calm and meditative,—years upon years had crept away in the learned idleness of a solitary scholar. I comprehended, too, how gradually and slowly, as my father entered that stage of middle life, when all men are most prone to ambition—the long silenced whispers were heard again; and the mind at last escaping from the listless weight which a baffled and disappointed heart had laid upon it, saw once more, fair as in youth, the only true mistress of Genius—Fame!

Oh! how I sympathised, too, in my mother's gentle triumph. How now, looking over the past, I could see, year after year, how she had stolen more and more into my father's heart of hearts,—how what had been kindness had grown into love,—how custom and habit, and the countless links in the sweet charities of home, had supplied that sympathy with the genial man, which had been missed at first by the lonely scholar.

Next I thought of the gray, eagle-eyed old soldier, with his ruined tower and barren acres,—and saw before me his proud, prejudiced, chivalrous boyhood, gliding through the ruins or poring over his mouldy pedigree. And this son, so disowned,—for what dark offence?—an awe crept over me. And this girl,—his ewe-lamb—his all,—was she fair? had she blue eyes like my mother, or a high Roman nose and beetle-brows like Captain Roland? I mused, and mused, and mused,—and the candle went out—and the moonlight grew broader and stiller; till at last I was sailing in a balloon with Uncle Jack, and had just tumbled into the Red Sea—when the well-known voice of nurse Primmins restored me to life, with a "God bless my heart! the boy has not been in bed all this 'varsal night!"

As soon as I was dressed, I hastened down stairs, for I longed to revisit my old haunts—the little plot of garden I had sown with anemones and cresses; the walk by the peach wall; the pond wherein I had angled for roach and perch.

Entering the hall, I discovered my Uncle Roland in a great state of embarrassment. The maid-servant was scrubbing the stones at the hall door; she was naturally plump, and it is astonishing how much more plump a female becomes when she is on all fours!—the maid servant then was scrubbing the stones, her face turned from the Captain, and the Captain evidently meditating a sortie, stood ruefully gazing at the obstacle before him, and hemming loud. Alas, themaid servant was deaf! I stopped, curious to see how Uncle Roland would extricate himself from the dilemma.

Finding that his hems were in vain, my uncle made himself as small as he could, and glided close to the left of the wall: at that instant, the maid turned abruptly round towards the right, and completely obstructed, by this manœuvre, the slight crevice through which hope had dawned on her captive. My uncle stood stock-still,—and to say the truth, he could not have stirred an inch without coming into personal contact with the rounded charms which blockaded his movements. My uncle took off his hat and scratched his forehead in great perplexity. Presently, by a slight turn of the flanks, the opposing party, while leaving him the opportunity of return, entirely precluded all chance of egress in that quarter. My uncle retreated in haste, and now presented himself to the right wing of the enemy. He had scarcely done so, when, without looking behind her, the blockading party shoved aside the pail that crippled the range of her operations, and so placed it that it formed a formidable barricade, which my uncle's cork leg had no chance of surmounting. Therewith Captain Roland lifted his eyes appealingly to heaven, and I heard him distinctly ejaculate—

"Would to God she was a creature in breeches!"

But happily at this moment the maid-servant turned her head sharply round, and seeing the Captain, rose in an instant, moved away the pail, and dropped a frightened curtsey.

My Uncle Roland touched his hat. "I beg you a thousand pardons, my good girl," said he; and, with a half bow, he slid into the open air.

"You have a soldier's politeness, uncle," said I, tucking my arm into Captain Roland's.

"Tush, my boy," said he, smiling seriously, and colouring up to the temples; "tush, say a gentleman's! To us, sir, every woman is a lady, in right of her sex."

Now, I had often occasion later to recall that aphorism of my uncle's; and it served to explain to me, how a man, so prejudiced on the score of family pride, never seemed to consider it an offence in my father to have married a woman whose pedigree was as brief as my dear mother's. Had she been a Montmorenci, my uncle could not have been more respectful and gallant than he was to that meek descendant of the Tibbettses. He held, indeed, a doctrine which I never knew any other man, vain of family, approve or support,—a doctrine deduced from the following syllogisms: 1st, That birth was not valuable in itself, but as a transmission of certain qualities which descent from a race of warriors should perpetuate, viz., truth, courage, honour; 2dly, That, whereas from the woman's side we derive our more intellectual faculties, from a man we derive our moral; a clever and witty man generally has a clever and witty mother; a brave and honourable man, a brave and honourable father. Therefore, all the qualities which attention to race should perpetuate are the manly qualities traceable only from thefather'sside. Again, he held, that while the aristocracy have higher and more chivalrous notions, the people generally have shrewder and livelier ideas. Therefore, to prevent gentlemen from degenerating into complete dunderheads, an admixture with the people, provided always it was on the female side, was not only excusable but expedient; and, finally, my uncle held, that, whereas a man is a rude, coarse, sensual animal, and requires all manner of associations to dignify and refine him, woman is so naturally susceptible of every thing beautiful in sentiment, and generous in purpose, that she has only to be a true woman to be a fit peer for a king. Odd and preposterous notions, no doubt, and capable of much controversy, so far as the doctrine of race (if that be any way tenable) is concerned; but, then, the plain fact is, that my Uncle Roland was as eccentric and contradictory a gentleman—as—as—why, as you and I are, if we once venture to think for ourselves.

"Well, sir, and what profession are you meant for?" asked my uncle. "Not the army, I fear?"

"I have never thought of the subject, uncle."

"Thank heaven," said Captain Roland, "we have never yet had alawyer in the family! nor a stockbroker; nor a tradesm—ahem!"

I saw that my great ancestor the printer suddenly rose up in that hem!

"Why, uncle, there are honourable men in all callings."

"Certainly, sir. But in all callings honour is not the first principle of action."

"But it may be, sir, if a man of honour pursue it! There are some soldiers who have been great rascals!"

My uncle looked posed, and his black brows met thoughtfully.

"You are right, boy, I dare say," he answered somewhat mildly. "But do you think that it ought to give me as much pleasure to look on my old ruined tower, if I knew it had been bought by some herring-dealer, like the first ancestor of the Poles, as I do now, when I know it was given to a knight and gentleman, (who traced his descent from an Anglo-Dane in the time of King Alfred,) for services done in Aquitaine and Gascony, by Henry the Plantagenet? And do you mean to tell me, that I should have been the same man, if I had not from a boy associated that old tower with all ideas of what its owners were, and should be, as knights and gentlemen? Sir, you would have made a different being of me, if at the head of my pedigree you had clapped a herring-dealer; though, I dare say, the herring-dealer might have been as good a man as ever the Anglo-Dane was! God rest him!"

"And for the same reason, I suppose, sir, that you think my father never would have been quite the same being he is, if he had not made that notable discovery touching our descent from the great William Caxton, the printer!"

My uncle bounded as if he had been shot; bounded so uncautiously, considering the materials of which one leg was composed, that he would have fallen into a strawberry-bed if I had not caught him by the arm.

"Why, you—you—you young jackanapes," cried the Captain, shaking me off as soon as he had regained his equilibrium. "You do not mean to inherit that infamous crotchet my brother has got into his head? You do not mean to exchange Sir William de Caxton, who fought and fell at Bosworth, for the mechanic who sold blackletter pamphlets in the sanctuary at Westminster?"

"That depends on the evidence, uncle!"

"No, sir, like all noble truths, it depends uponfaith. Men, now-a-days," continued my uncle, with a look of ineffable disgust, "actually require that truths should be proved."

"It is a sad conceit on their part, no doubt, my dear uncle. But till a truth is proved, how can we know that it is a truth?"

I thought that in that very sagacious question I had effectually caught my uncle. Not I. He slipped through it like an eel.

"Sir," said he, "whatever, in Truth, makes a man's heart warmer, and his soul purer, is a belief, not a knowledge. Proof, sir, is a handcuff—belief is a wing! Want proof as to an ancestor in the reign of King Richard! Sir, you cannot even prove to the satisfaction of a logician that you are the son of your own father. Sir, a religious man does not want to reason about his religion—religion is not mathematics. Religion is to be felt, not proved. There are a great many things in the religion of a good man which are not in the catechism. Proof!" continued my uncle, growing violent—"Proof, sir, is a low, vulgar, levelling, rascally Jacobin—Belief is a loyal, generous, chivalrous gentleman! No, no—prove what you please, you shall never rob me of one belief, that has made me—"

"The finest hearted creature that ever talked nonsense," said my father, who came up like Horace's deity just at the right moment. "What is it you must believe in, brother, no matter what the proof against you?"

My uncle was silent; and with great energy dug the point of his cane into the gravel.

"He will not believe in our great ancestor the printer," said I, maliciously.

My father's calm brow was overcast in a moment.

"Brother," said the Captain loftily, "you have a right to your own ideas, but you should take care how they contaminate your child."

"Contaminate!" said my father; and for the first time I saw an angry sparkle flash from his eyes, but he checked himself on the instant; "change the word, my dear brother."

"No, sir, I will not change it! to bely the records of the family!"

"Records! A brass plate in a village church against all the books of the College of Arms!"

"To renounce, as your ancestor, a knight who died in the field!"

"For the worst cause that man ever fought for!"

"On behalf of his king!"

"Who had murdered his nephews!"

"A knight! with our crest on his helmet!"

"And no brains underneath it, or he would never have had them knocked out for so bloody a villain!"

"A rascally, drudging, money-making printer!"

"The wise and glorious introducer of the art that has enlightened a world. Prefer, for an ancestor, to one whom scholar and sage never name but in homage, a worthless, obscure, jolter-headed booby in mail, whose only record to men is a brass plate in a church in a village!"

My uncle turned round perfectly livid. "Enough, sir! enough! I am insulted sufficiently. I ought to have expected it. I wish you and your son a very good day."

My father stood aghast. The Captain was hobbling off to the iron gate; in another moment he would have been out of our precincts. I ran up and hung upon him. "Uncle, it is all my fault. Between you and me, I am quite of your side; pray, forgive us both. What could I have been thinking of, to vex you so! And my father, whom your visit has made so happy!"

My uncle paused, feeling for the latch of the gate. My father had now come up, and caught his hand. "What are all the printers that ever lived, and all the books they ever printed, to one wrong to thy fine heart, brother Roland? Shame on me! A bookman's weak point, you know! It is very true, I should never have taught the boy one thing to give you pain, brother Roland;—though I don't remember," continued my father, with a perplexed look, "that I ever did teach it him either! Pisistratus, as you value my blessing, respect, as your ancestor, Sir William de Caxton, the hero of Bosworth. Come, come, brother!"

"I am an old fool," said Uncle Roland, "whichever way we look at it. Ah, you young dog! you are laughing at us both!"

"I have ordered breakfast on the lawn," said my mother, coming out from the porch, with her cheerful smile on her lips; "and I think the devil will be done to your liking to-day, brother Roland."

"We have had enough of the devil already, my love," said my father, wiping his forehead.

So, while the birds sang overhead, or hopped familiarly across the sward for the crumbs thrown forth to them, while the sun was still cool in the east, and the leaves yet rustled with the sweet air of morning, we all sate down to our table, with hearts as reconciled to each other, and as peaceably disposed to thank God for the fair world around us, as if the river had never run red through the field of Bosworth, and that excellent Mr Caxton had never set all mankind by the ears with an irritating invention, a thousand times more provocative of our combative tendencies than the blast of the trumpet and the gleam of the banner!

"Brother," said Mr Caxton, "I will walk with you to the Roman encampment."

The Captain felt that this proposal was meant as the greatest peace-offering my father could think of; for, 1st, it was a very long walk, and my father detested long walks; 2dly, it was the sacrifice of a whole day's labour at the great work. And yet, with that quick sensibility, which only the generous possess, Uncle Roland accepted at once the proposal. If he had not done so, my father would have had a heavier heart for a month to come. And how could the greatwork have got on while the author was every now and then disturbed by a twinge of remorse?

Half-an-hour after breakfast, the brothers set off arm in arm; and I followed, a little apart, admiring how steadily the old soldier got over the ground, in spite of the cork leg. It was pleasant enough to listen to their conversation, and notice the contrasts between these two eccentric stamps from Dame Nature's ever-variable mould,—Nature who casts nothing in stereotype, for I do believe that not even two fleas can be found identically the same.

My father was not a quick or minute observer of rural beauties. He had so little of the organ of locality, that I suspect he could have lost his way in his own garden. But the Captain was exquisitely alive to external impressions—not a feature in the landscape escaped him. At every fantastic gnarled pollard he halted to gaze; his eye followed the lark soaring up from his feet; when a fresher air came from the hill-top, his nostrils dilated, as if voluptuously to inhale its delight. My father, with all his learning, and though his study had been in the stores of all language, was very rarely eloquent. The Captain had a glow and a passion in his words which, what with his deep, tremulous voice, and animated gestures, gave something poetic to half of what he uttered. In every sentence of Roland's, in every tone of his voice, and every play of his face, there was some outbreak of pride; but, unless you set him on his hobby of that great ancestor the printer, my father had not as much pride as a homœopathist could have put into a globule. He was not proud even of not being proud. Chafe all his feathers, and still you could rouse but the dove. My father was slow and mild, my uncle quick and fiery; my father reasoned, my uncle imagined; my father was very seldom wrong, my uncle never quite in the right; but, as my father once said of him, "Roland beats about the bush till he sends out the very bird that we went to search for. He is never in the wrong without suggesting to us what is the right." All in my uncle was stern, rough, and angular; all in my father was, sweet, polished, and rounded into a natural grace. My uncle's character cast out a multiplicity of shadows like a Gothic pile in a northern sky. My father stood serene in the light like a Greek temple at mid-day in a southern clime. Their persons corresponded with their natures. My uncle's high aquiline features, bronzed hue, rapid fire of eye, and upper lip that always quivered, were a notable contrast to my father's delicate profile, quiet, abstracted gaze, and the steady sweetness that rested on his musing smile. Roland's forehead was singularly high, and rose to a peak in the summit where phrenologists place the organ of veneration, but it was narrow, and deeply furrowed. Augustine's might be as high, but then soft, silky hair waved carelessly over it—concealing its height, but not its vast breadth—on which not a wrinkle was visible. And yet, withal, there was a great family likeness between the two brothers. When some softer sentiment subdued him, Roland caught the very look of Augustine; when some high emotion animated my father, you might have taken him for Roland. I have often thought since, in the greater experience of mankind which life has afforded me, that if, in early years, their destinies had been exchanged—if Roland had taken to literature, and my father had been forced into action—that, strange as it may seem, each would have had greater worldly success. For Roland's passion and energy would have given immediate and forcible effect to study; he might have been a historian or a poet. It is not study alone that produces a writer; it isintensity. In the mind, as in yonder chimney, to make the fire burn hot and quick, you must narrow the draught. Whereas, had my father been forced into the practical world, his calm depth of comprehension, his clearness of reason, his general accuracy in such notions as he once entertained and pondered over, joined to a temper that crosses and losses could never ruffle, an utter freedom from vanity and self-love, from prejudice and passion, might have made him a very wise and enlightened counsellor in the greataffairs of life—a lawyer, a diplomatist, a statesman, for what I know, even a great general—if his tender humanity had not stood in the way of his military mathematics.

But, as it was—with his slow pulse never stimulated by action, and too little stirred by even scholarly ambition—my father's mind went on widening and widening, till the circle was lost in the great ocean of contemplation; and Roland's passionate energy, fretted into fever by every let and hindrance, in the struggle with his kind—and narrowed more and more as it was curbed in the channels of active discipline and duty—missed its due career altogether; and, what might have been the poet, contracted into the humourist.

Yet, who that had ever known ye, could have wished you other than ye were—ye guileless, affectionate, honest, simple creatures? simple both, in spite of all the learning of the one, all the prejudices, whims, irritabilities, and crotchets of the other? There you are both seated on the height of the old Roman camp, with a volume of the Stratagems of Polyœnus, (or is it Frontinus?) open on my father's lap; the sheep grazing in the furrows of the circumvallations; the curious steer gazing at you where it halts in the space whence the Roman cohorts glittered forth. And your boy biographer standing behind you with folded arms; and, as the scholar read or the soldier pointed his cane to each fancied post in the war, filling up the pastoral landscape with the eagles of Agrippa and the scythed cars of Boadicea!

"It is never the same two hours together in this country," said my Uncle Roland, as, after dinner, or rather after dessert, we joined my mother in the drawing-room.

Indeed, a cold drizzling rain had come on within the last two hours; and, though it was July, it was as chilly as if it had been October. My mother whispered to me, and I went out: in ten minutes more, the logs (for we lived in a wooded country) blazed merrily in the grate. Why could not my mother have rung the bell, and ordered the servant to light a fire? My dear reader, Captain Roland was poor, and he made a capital virtue of economy!

The two brothers drew their chairs near to the hearth: my father at the left, my uncle at the right; and I and my mother sat down to "Fox and geese."

Coffee came in—one cup for the Captain—for the rest of the party avoided that exciting beverage. And on that cup was a picture of—His Grace the Duke of Wellington!

During our visit to the Roman camp, my mother had borrowed Mr Squills's chaise, and driven over to our market town, for the express purpose of greeting the Captain's eyes with the face of his old chief.

My uncle changed colour, rose, lifted my mother's hand to his lips, and sate himself down again in silence.

"I have heard," said the Captain, after a pause, "that the Marquis of Hastings, who is every inch a soldier and a gentleman—and that is saying not a little, for he measures seventy-five inches from the crown to the sole—when he received Louis XVIII. (then an exile) at Donnington, fitted up his apartments exactly like those his majesty had occupied at the Tuilleries—it was a kingly attention, (my Lord Hastings, you know, is sprung from the Plantagenets)—a kingly attention to a king. It cost some money and made some noise. A woman can show the same royal delicacy of heart in this bit of porcelain, and so quietly, that we men all think it a matter of course, brother Austin."

"You are such a worshipper of women, Roland, that it is melancholy to see you single. You must marry again!"

My uncle first smiled, then frowned, and lastly sighed somewhat heavily.

"Your time will pass slowly in your old tower, poor brother," continued my father, "with only your little girl for a companion."

"And the past!" said my uncle; "the past, that mighty world—"

"Do you still read your old books of chivalry, Froissart and the Chronicles, Palmerin of England and Amadis of Gaul?"

"Why," said my uncle, reddening, "I have tried to improve myself with studies a little more substantial. And" (he added with a sly smile) "there will be your great book for many a long winter to come."

"Um!" said my father, bashfully.

"Do you know," quoth my uncle, "that Dame Primmins is a very intelligent woman; full of fancy, and a capital story-teller?"

"Is not she, uncle!" cried I, leaving my fox in a corner. "Oh, if you could have heard her tell me the tale of King Arthur and the enchanted lake, or the grim white women!"

"I have already heard her tell both," said my uncle.

"The deuce you have, brother! My dear, we must look to this. These captains are dangerous gentlemen in an orderly household. Pray, where could you have had the opportunity of such private communications with Mrs Primmins?"

"Once," said my uncle, readily, "when I went into her room, while she mended my stock; and once—" he stopped short, and looked down.

"Once when? out with it."

"When she was warming my bed," said my uncle, in a half whisper.

"Dear!" said my mother, innocently, "that's how the sheets came by that bad hole in the middle. I thought it was the warming-pan."

"I am quite shocked!" faltered my uncle.

"You well may be," said my father. "A woman who has been heretofore above all suspicion! But come," he said, seeing that my uncle looked sad, and was no doubt casting up the probable price of twice six yards of Holland; "but come, you were always a famous rhapsodist or tale-teller yourself. Come, Roland, let us have some story of your own; something your experience has left strong in your impressions."

"Let us first have the candles," said my mother.

The candles were brought, the curtain let down—we all drew our chairs to the hearth. But, in the interval, my uncle had sunk into a gloomy reverie; and, when we called upon him to begin, he seemed to shake off with effort some recollections of pain.

"You ask me," he said, "to tell you some tale which my own experience has left deeply marked in my impressions—I will tell you one apart from my own life, but which has often haunted me. It is sad and strange, ma'am."

"Ma'am,brother?" said my mother reproachfully, letting her small hand drop upon that which, large and sunburnt, the Captain waved towards her as he spoke.

"Austin, you have married an angel!" said my uncle; and he was, I believe, the only brother-in-law who ever made so hazardous an assertion.

MY UNCLE ROLAND'S TALE.

"It was in Spain, no matter where or how, that it was my fortune to take prisoner a French officer of the same rank that I then held—a lieutenant; and there was so much similarity in our sentiments, that we became intimate friends—the most intimate friend I ever had, sister, out of this dear circle. He was a rough soldier, whom the world had not well treated; but he never railed at the world, and maintained that he had had his deserts. Honour was his idol, and the sense of honour paid him for the loss of all else.

"There was something similar, too, in our domestic relationships. He had a son—a child, an infant—who was all in life to him, next to his country and his duty. I, too, had then such a son of the same years." (The Captain paused an instant: we exchanged glances, and a stifling sensation of pain and suspense was felt by all his listeners.) "We were accustomed, brother, to talk of these children—to picture their future, to compare our hopes and dreams. We hoped and dreamed alike. A short time sufficedto establish this confidence. My prisoner was sent to headquarters, and soon afterwards exchanged.

"We met no more till last year. Being then at Paris, I inquired for my old friend, and learned that he was living at R——, a few miles from the capital. I went to visit him. I found his house empty and deserted. That very day he had been led to prison, charged with a terrible crime. I saw him in that prison, and from his own lips learned his story. His son had been brought up, as he fondly believed, in the habits and principles of honourable men; and, having finished his education, came to reside with him at R——. The young man was accustomed to go frequently to Paris. A young Frenchman loves pleasure, sister, and pleasure is found at Paris. The father thought it natural, and stripped his age of some comforts to supply luxuries to the son's youth.

"Shortly after the young man's arrival, my friend perceived that he was robbed. Moneys kept in his bureau were abstracted he knew not how, nor could guess by whom. It must be done in the night. He concealed himself, and watched. He saw a stealthy figure glide in, he saw a false key applied to the lock—he started forward, seized the felon, and recognised his son. What should the father have done? I do not askyou, sister! I ask these men; son and father, I ask you."

"Expelled him the house," cried I.

"Done his duty, and reformed the unhappy wretch," said my father. "Nemo repentè turpissimus semper fuit—No man is wholly bad all at once."

"The father did as you would have, advised, brother. He kept the youth; he remonstrated with him; he did more—he gave him the key of the bureau. 'Take what I have to give,' said he: 'I would rather be a beggar than know my son a thief.'"

"Right: and the youth repented, and became a good man?" exclaimed my father.

Captain Roland shook his head. "The youth promised amendment, and seemed penitent. He spoke of the temptations of Paris, the gaining-table, and what not. He gave up his daily visit to the capital. He seemed to apply to study." Shortly after this, the neighbourhood was alarmed by reports of night robberies on the road. Men, masked and armed, plundered travellers, and even broke into houses.

The police were on the alert. One night an old brother officer knocked at my friend's door. It was late: the veteran (he was a cripple, by the way, like myself—strange coincidence!) was in bed. He came down in haste, when his servant woke, and told him that his old friend, wounded and bleeding, sought an asylum under his roof. The wound, however, was slight. The guest had been attacked and robbed on the road. The next morning the proper authority of the town was sent for. The plundered man described his loss—some billets of five hundred francs in a pocket-book, on which was embroidered his name and coronet (he was a vicomte.) The guest stayed to dinner. Late in the forenoon the son looked in. The guest started to see him: my friend noticed his paleness. Shortly after, on pretence of faintness, the guest retired to his room, and sent for his host. 'My friend,' said he, 'can you do me a favour? go to the magistrate, and recall the evidence I have given.'

"'Impossible,' said the host. 'What crotchet is this?'

"The guest shuddered. 'Peste!' said he: 'I do not wish in my old age to be hard on others. Who knows how the robber may have been tempted, and who knows what relations he may have—honest men, whom his crime would degrade for ever! Good heavens! if detected, it is the galleys, the galleys!'

"'And what then?—the robber knew what he braved.'

"'But did his father know it?' cried the guest.

"A light broke upon my unhappy comrade in arms: he caught his friend by the hand—'You turned pale at my son's sight—where did you ever see him before? Speak!'

"'Last night, on the road to Paris. The mask slipped aside. Call back my evidence!'

"'You are mistaken,' said my friend calmly. 'I saw my son in his bed, and blessed him, before I went to my own.'

"'I will believe you,' said theguest; 'and never shall my hasty suspicion pass my lips—but call back the evidence.'

"The guest returned to Paris before dusk. The father conversed with his son on the subject of his studies; he followed him to his room, waited till he was in bed, and was then about to retire, when the youth said, 'Father, you have forgotten your blessing.'

"The father went back, laid his hand on the boy's head, and prayed. He was credulous—fathers are so! He was persuaded his friend had been deceived. He retired to rest, and fell asleep. He woke suddenly in the middle of the night, and felt (I here quote his words)—'I felt,' said he 'as if a voice had awakened me—a voice that said 'Rise and search.' I rose at once, struck a light, and went to my son's room. The door was locked. I knocked once, twice, thrice—no answer. I dared not call aloud, lest I should rouse the servants. I went down the stairs—I opened the back-door—I passed to the stables. My own horse was there,notmy son's. My horse neighed: it was old, like myself—my old charger at Mount St Jean! I stole back, I crept into the shadow of the wall by my son's door, and extinguished my light. I felt as if I were a thief myself.'"

"Brother," interrupted my mother under her breath; "speak in your own words, not in this wretched father's. I know not why, but it would shock me less."

The Captain nodded.

"Before daybreak, my friend heard the back-door open gently; a foot ascended the stair—a key grated in the door of the room close at hand—the father glided through the dark into that chamber, behind his unseen son.

"He heard the clink of the tinder box; a light was struck; it spread over the room, but he had time to place himself behind the window curtain which was close at hand. The figure before him stood a moment or so motionless, and seemed to listen, for it turned to the right, to the left, its visage covered with the black hideous mask which is worn in carnivals. Slowly the mask was removed; could that be his son's face? the son of a brave man?—it was pale and ghastly with scoundrel fears; the base drops stood on the brow; the eye was haggard and bloodshot. He looked as a coward looks when death stands before him.

"The youth walked, or rather sculked to the secretaire, unlocked it, opened a secret drawer; placed within it the contents of his pockets and his frightful mask; the father approached softly, looked over his shoulder, and saw in the drawer the pocket-book embroidered with his friend's name. Meanwhile, the son took out his pistols, uncocked them cautiously, and was about also to secrete them, when his father arrested his arm. 'Robber, the use of these is yet to come.'

"The son's knees knocked together, an exclamation for mercy burst from his lips; but when, recovering the mere shock of his dastard nerves, he perceived it was not the gripe of some hireling of the law, but a father's hand that had clutched his arm, the vile audacity which knows fear only from a bodily cause, none from the awe of shame, returned to him.

"'Tush, sir,' he said, 'waste not time in reproaches, for, I fear, the gens-d'armes are on my track. It is well that you are here; you can swear that I have spent the night at home. Unhand me, old man—I have these witnesses still to secrete,' and he pointed to the garments wet and dabbled with the mud of the roads. He had scarcely spoken when the walls shook, there was the heavy clatter of hoofs on the ringing pavement without.

"'They come!' cried the son. 'Off dotard! save your son from the galleys.'

"'The galleys, the galleys!' said the father, staggering back; 'it is true—he said 'the galleys.''

"There was a loud knocking at the gate. The gens-d'armes surrounded the house. 'Open in the name of the law.' No answer came, no door was opened. Some of the gens-d'armes rode to the rear of the house, in which was placed the stable-yard. From the window of the son's room, the father saw the sudden blaze of torches, the shadowy forms of the men-hunters. He heard the clatter of arms as they swung themselves from their horses. Heheard a voice cry 'Yes, this is the robber's gray horse—see, it still reeks with sweat!' And behind and in front, at either door, again came the knocking, and again the shout, 'Open in the name of the law.'

"Then lights began to gleam from the casements of the neighbouring houses; then the space filled rapidly with curious wonderers startled from their sleep; the world was astir, and the crowd came round to know what crime or what shame had entered the old soldier's home.

"Suddenly, within, there was heard the report of a firearm; and a minute or so afterwards the front door was opened, and the soldier appeared.

"'Enter,' he said, to the gens-d'armes: 'what would you?'

"'We seek a robber who is within your walls.'

"'I know it, mount and find him: I will lead the way.'

"He ascended the stairs, he threw open his son's room; the officers of justice poured in, and on the floor lay the robber's corpse.

"They looked at each other in amazement. 'Take what is left you,' said the father. 'Take the dead man rescued from the galleys, take the living man on whose hands rests the dead man's blood!'

"I was present at my friend's trial. The facts had become known beforehand. He stood there with his gray hair, and his mutilated limbs, and the deep scar on his visage, and the cross of the legion of honour on his breast; and when he had told his tale, he ended with these words—'I have saved the son whom I reared for France, from a doom that spared the life to brand it with disgrace. Is this a crime? I give you my life in exchange for my son's disgrace. Does, my country need a victim? I have lived for my country's glory, and I can die contented to satisfy its laws; sure that if you blame me, you will not despise; sure that the hands that give me to the headsman will scatter flowers over my grave. Thus I confess all. I, a soldier, look round amongst a nation of soldiers; and in the name of the star which glitters on my breast, I dare the fathers of France to condemn me!'

"They acquitted the soldier, at least they gave a verdict answering to what in our courts is called 'justifiable homicide.' A shout rose in the court, which no ceremonial voice could still; the crowd would have borne him in triumph to his house, but his look repelled such vanities. To his house he returned indeed, and the day afterwards they found him dead, beside the cradle in which his first prayer had been breathed over his sinless child. Now, father and son, I ask you, do you condemn that man?"

My father took three strides up and down the room, and then, halting on his hearth, and facing his brother, he thus spoke—"I condemn his deed, Roland! At best he was but a haughty egotist. I understand why Brutus should slay his sons. By that sacrifice he saved his country! What did this poor dupe of an exaggeration save? nothing but his own name. He could not lift the crime from his son's soul, nor the dishonour from his son's memory. He could but gratify his own vain pride, and, insensibly to himself, his act was whispered to him by the fiend that ever whispers to the heart of man, 'Dread men's opinions more than God's law!' Oh, my dear brother, what minds like yours should guard against the most is not the meanness of evil—it is the evil that takes false nobility, by garbing itself in the royal magnificence of good." My uncle walked to the window, opened it, looked out a moment, as if to draw in fresh air, closed it gently, and came back again to his seat; but during the short time the window had been left open, a moth flew in.

"Tales like these," renewed my father, pityingly—"whether told by some great tragedian or in thy simple style, my brother,—tales like these have their uses: they penetrate the heart to make it wiser; but all wisdom is meek, my Roland. They invite us to put the question to ourselves thatthou hast asked—'Can we condemn this man?' and reason answers, as I have answered—'We pity the man, we condemn the deed.' We—take care, my love! that moth will be in the candle. We—whish!— whish!"— and my father stopped to drive away the moth. My uncle turned, and taking his handkerchief from the lower part of his face, on which he had wished to conceal the workings, he flapped away the moth from the flame. My mother moved the candles from the moth. I tried to catch the moth in my father's straw-hat. The deuce was in the moth, it baffled us all; now circling against the ceiling, now swooping down at the fatal lights. As if by a simultaneous impulse, my father approached one candle, my uncle approached the other; and just as the moth was wheeling round and round, irresolute which to choose for its funeral pyre, both were put out. The fire had burned down low in the grate, and in the sudden dimness my father's soft sweet voice came forth as if from an invisible being:—"We leave ourselves in the dark to save a moth from the flame, brother! shall we do less for our fellow-men? Extinguish, oh! humanely extinguish the light of our reason, when the darkness more favours our mercy." Before the lights were relit, my uncle had left the room. His brother followed him; my mother and I drew near to each other and talked in whispers.

[12]

We remember perusing this book soon after its first appearance. The shortness of the several sections into which it is divided, and the frequent change of topics, keeping the mind in a constant state of expectation, prevented us, we suppose, from feeling at that time a sense of weariness. In the perpetual anticipation of finding something new in the next paragraph or section, we forgot the disappointment which the last had so often occasioned. It is only thus we can explain the difference of feeling with which we have re-perused this third and late edition of the same work. The brevity of chapters, and interchange of topics, could not practise their kindly deception on us twice. Like those intertwisted walks in a confined shrubbery, which are designed to cheat the pedestrian into the idea of vast extent of space, the imposition succeeds but once. At the second perambulation we discover within what narrow boundaries we have been led up and down, and made our profitless circuit. We are compelled to say that an exceeding weariness came over us on the second perusal of theseGuesses at Truth. Notwithstanding the modesty of the title, there are few books which wear so perpetually the air of superiority, of profound and subtle thought, with so very little to justify the pretension. There is a constant smile of self-complacency—but it plays over a very barren landscape. The soil is sterile on which this sunshine is resting. It is not uninstructive to notice how far an assumption of superiority, coupled with a form of composition indulgent to the reader's attention, and stimulating to his curiosity, may succeed in giving popularity and very respectable reputation to a work which, when examined closely, proves to be made up of materials of the slightest possible value.

We are the more disposed to look a little into theseGuesses at Truth, because they afford a fair specimen of the manner and lucubrations of a small class, or coterie, whom we have had amongst us, and who may be best described as theColeridgeanschool of philosophers. It is a class distinguished by the thorough contempt it manifests for all whom the world has been accustomed to consider as clear and painstaking thinkers—by an overweening, quiet arrogance—by a general indolence of mind interrupted by fitful efforts of thought, and much laborioustrifling. They are not genuine conscientious thinkers after any order of philosophy; they are as little followers of Kant as they are of Locke; but they take advantage of the name and reputation of the one to speak with something approximating to disdain of the superficiality of the other. That they alone are right—would be fair enough. To one who strenuously labours to bring out and establish his principles, we readily permit a great confidence in his own opinion; if he did not think others wrong and himself alone right, why should he be labouring at our conviction? But these gentlemen donotlabour; they have earned nothing with the sweat of their brow; they hover over all things with a consummate self-complacency; they investigate nothing; they condescend to understand no one. Men of indolent ability, they would be supposed calmly to overlook the whole field of philosophic controversy, and by dint of some learning, by the perpetual proclamation of the shallowness of their contemporaries, and a mysterious intimation of profundities of thought of their own, which they are sufficiently cautious not to attempt too fully to reveal,—they certainly contrive to make a marvellous impression upon the good-natured reader.

That we are right in pronouncing Coleridge as the master who has formed this coterie of writers, many passages in the present work would testify; but Archdeacon Hare, the author of the greater portion of it, has very lately, in the plenitude of his years, proclaimed his great veneration, and a sort of allegiance, towards Coleridge the philosopher. To Coleridge the poet be all honour paid—we join in whatever applause may, within reasonable compass, be bestowed upon him; but Coleridge the sage, the metaphysician, the divine, is a very different person; and with all his undoubted genius, the very last man, we humbly conceive, to give a wise and steady direction to the thinking faculty of others. It is thus, however, that Archdeacon Hare, in his late Memoir of John Sterling, speaks of this wilful, fitful, erratic genius:—"At that time it was beginning to be acknowledged by more than a few that Coleridge is thetrue sovereign of modern English thought. TheAids to Reflectionhad recently been published, and were doing the work for which they were so admirably fitted; that book to which many, as has been said by one of Sterling's chief friends, 'owe even their own selves.' Few felt the obligation more deeply than Sterling. 'To Coleridge (he wrote to me in 1836) I oweeducation. He taught me to believe that an empirical philosophy is none; that faith is the highest reason; that all criticism, whether of literature, laws, or manners, is blind, without the power of discerning the organic unity of the object, &c., &c.'" He taught him to believe he had a meaning where he had none, to slight authors as shallow because they were lucid and intelligible, to substitute occasional efforts, and a dogmatism arising out of generous emotions, for the steady discipline of philosophy, and the calm inquiry after truth. The whole intellectual career of Sterling proves how unfortunate he was in having fallen under the dominion of this "true sovereign of modern English thought." With the finest moral temper in the world, we find him never, for two years together, with the same set of opinions, and his set of opinions at each time were such as aColeridgeanonly could hold together in harmony.

Let any one not overawed by sounding reputations, examine theAids to Reflection,—this work which gives a claim to the sovereignty of modern English thought,—the characteristic that will chiefly strike him is the predominance ofhard writing, which at first wears the appearance, and is found to be the melancholy substitute, ofhard thinking. On closer examination, he will be surprised to find how much space is wasted in verbal quibbles, which the author in vain endeavours to raise into importance; and how often the quotations from Leighton, dignified with the name of aphorisms, are such as any page of any sermon would have supplied him with. Amidst this jumble of crude metaphysics and distorted theology, there is from time to time an admirable observation admirably expressed; and there is also from time to time an absurdity so flagrant, that it requires all the author's skill of composition toredeem it from the charge of utter nonsense.

At the time when Coleridge wrote, what are known especially as German metaphysics had hardly reached our shores. He had studied them, or, like every active mind, had rather studiedonthem. They had given an impulse and direction to his own trains of thought; and if Coleridge had been capable of a continuous application, and a complete execution of any one work, he might have introduced a body of metaphysics into this country which, though due in its origin to German thinkers, would still have been justly entitled his own. But for this continuous labour he was not disposed: we have, therefore, a mere dim broken outline of a system of philosophy (intelligible only to those who have studied that system in other works) applied, in a very strange manner, to the dogmatic tenets of theology. This forms the basis of theAids to Reflection; and very much of aid or assistance it must bring! We venture to say, that no one unacquainted, from any other source, with the speculations of Kant or Schelling,—let him give what attention, or bring what brains he may to his task,—can understand the refracted and partial representation of their tenets which Coleridge occasionally gives. Take, for instance, a long note, which every reader of the book must remember, uponThesisandAntithesis, andPunctum Indifferens. With all the assistance of scholastic and geometrical terms, and that illustration abruptly enough introduced of "sulphuretted hydrogen," the reader, we are persuaded, if he comes fresh to the subject, must be utterly at a loss for a meaning. We have diagram and tabular view, and algebraic signs, and chemical illustration, and all the paraphernalia of a most desperate development of thought, and not one sentence of lucid explanation.

On the great subject of the existence of God, Coleridge appears to us to assume a most unsatisfactory and a somewhat perilous position. To oppose the school of Locke and Paley—far too simple for his taste—he gives a validity to the ambitious subtleties which made Shelley an atheist. The great argument from design, so convincing to us all, he slights,—it is too vulgar and commonplace for his purpose,—and finds his grounds of belief in thepractical reasonof Kant, (an afterthought of the philosopher of Kœnigsberg, and evidently at issue with the main tenets of his system,) or in certain ontological dogmas, which of all things are most open to dispute.

"I hold, then, it is true," he says, "that all the (so-called) demonstrations of a God either prove too little, as that from the order or apparent purpose in nature; or too much, namely, that the world is itself God; or they clandestinely involve the conclusion in the premises, passing off the mere analysis or explication of an assertion for the proof of it—a species of logical legerdemain not unlike that of the jugglers at a fair, who, putting into their mouths what seems to be a walnut, draw out a score yards of ribbon, as in the postulate of a First Cause. And, lastly, in all these demonstrations, the demonstrators presuppose the idea or conception of a God without being able to authenticate it; that is, to give an account whence they obtained it.For it is clear that the proof first mentioned, and the most natural and convincing of all (the cosmological, I mean, or that from the order of nature), presupposes the ontological; that is, the proof of a God from the necessity and necessary objectivity of the Idea.If the latter can assure us of a God as an existing reality. the former will go far to prove his power, wisdom, and benevolence. All this I hold. But I also hold, that the truth the hardest to demonstrate, is the one which, of all others, least needs to be demonstrated; that though there may be no conclusive demonstrations of a good, wise, living, and personal God, there are so many convincing reasons for it within and without—a grain of sand sufficing, and a whole universe at hand to echo the decision!—that for every mind not devoid of all reason, and desperately conscience-proof, the truth which it is the least possible to prove, it is little else than impossible not to believe,—only indeed, just so much short of impossible as to leave some room for the will, and the moral election, and thereby to keep it a truth of religion, and the possible subject of a commandment."—(P. 132.)

We are not very partial to this notion of a truth of the reason being a subject for the exercise of moral obedience, and least of all in the case of a truth, the recognition of which mustprecedeany intelligible exerciseof the religious conscience. In common with the vast majority of mankind, we hold that the cosmological argument is complete in itself. Ontology, as a branch of metaphysics placed in opposition to psychology, is, by the greater number of reflecting men, regarded as a mere shadow, the region of utter and hopeless obscurity. We know nothing in itself,—only its phenomena;beingescapes us, except as that to which the phenomena belong. If we prove, or rather if wesee, order and wisdom in the material world, we have all the demonstration of a being, intelligent and wise, that our minds are capable of receiving. We have the same proof for the being of God, as we have for the existence of matter or of mind; we cannot have more, and we have not a jot less.

By way of compensation, our philosopher, when he is once in possession of the Idea of God, evolves from it, by unassisted reason, the most profound mysteries of revealed religion. Mark here the elated step of the triumphant logician:—

"I form a certain notion in my mind, and say, 'This is what I understand by the term God.' From books and conversation, I find that the learned generally connect the same notion with the same word.I then apply the rules laid down by the masters of logic for the involution and evolution of terms[the conjurer that he is!] and prove, to as many as agree with me in my premises, that the notion God involves the notion Trinity."—(P. 126.)

The further description of this successful process of the involution and evolution of terms is postponed to a future work. It was a strange and somewhat affected position that Coleridge assumed between the philosophical and the religious world. He would belong to both, and yet would be unhappy if you did not regard him as standing apart and alone. He was thePunctum Indifferens, which might be both, or neither. The philosopher among divines, the divine among philosophers, he was delighted to appear to each class in a masquerade drawn from the wardrobe of the other. Even on the most ordinary occasions, he would sometimes eke out, or obscure, his explanations by a little of the dialect of the chapel, or the meeting-house. Near the commencement of the book is the following note:—

"Distinction between Thought and Attention.—ByThoughtis here meant the voluntary reproduction in our own minds of those states of consciousness, or (to use a phrase more familiar to the religious reader)of those inward experiences, to which, as to his best and most authentic documents, the teacher of moral and religious truth refers us. InAttention, we keep the mindpassive; inThought, we rouse it into activity. In the former, we submit to an impression,—we keep the mind steady in order to receive the stamp. In the latter, we seek to imitate the artist, while we ourselves make a copy or duplicate of his work.We may learn arithmetic or the elements of geometry by continued attention alone; but self-knowledge, or an insight into the laws and constitution of the human mind, and, the grounds of religion and true morality, in addition to the effort of attention, requires the energy of thought."

Now this reference to the wordexperience, as one which would be more familiar to the religious reader, is pure affectation; because he must have known that religious people never use that term in the wide or general sense of states of consciousness, but restrict its meaning to a very peculiar class of feelings. As to the distinction which is here laid down, we thought we agreed with Coleridge till we came to the illustration that was to make all clear. He who has to learn arithmetic, or geometry must assuredly exercise thought as well as attention. It is by that "voluntary reproduction" of the ideas presented to him, by which Coleridge defines thought, that he can alone fully understand and make the subject his own.

At other times this erratic genius rejoices in astonishing all philosophically-minded individuals by some extravagance got from the remotest regions of the religious world. What but some morbid caprice could have induced him to pen such a paragraph as this:—

"It might be the means of preventing many unhappy marriages, if the youth of both sexes had it early impressed on their minds that marriage contracted between Christians is a true and perfect Symbol or Mystery; that is, the actualising Faith being supposed to exist in the receivers, it is an outward sign co-essential with that which it signifies, or a livingpart of that, the whole of which it represents."

Coleridge never did seriously think—of that we may be sure—that the repetition of thisabracadabracould be the means "of preventing many unhappy marriages."

The author of theAids to Reflectionhad, however, this undoubted merit—that hewasa thinker—that, in his own fitful method, he gave himself from time to time to strenuous meditation. He lacked, indeed, the calm, and serene, and patient thought which characterises the successful inquirer into philosophic truth. He could plunge boldly in, and dive deeply down; but the tranquillity of mind which the diver should possess in those depths where the light is so faint—this he failed in; so that, from his perilous enterprises, he often rose with tangled weeds instead of treasure, spasmodically clasped in both his hands, and held aloft with a shout of triumph. This energy of mind makes itself felt through all the cumbrous obscurity of his exposition, and is the real secret of the influence which he exerted over many, to whom he imparted a noble but irregular impulse, and a sense of proud achievement where nothing complete had been accomplished. His disciples are therefore distinguished, as we have remarked, by undisciplined efforts of thought, and a fancied superiority to the age in which they live,—a notion that they stand upon an intellectual eminence they have neither attained nor fairly toiled for.

But we are in danger of forgetting that it is not theAids to Reflection, but theGuesses at Truth, we are at present concerned with. Guesses atTruth! You think, of course, that the modest inquirer is about to give us the conclusions to which he has arrived upon the great questions of philosophy,—to collect together the results of his investigations into first principles and the eternal problems of human life. But these results, whatever they may be, are rather assumed than expressed throughout the whole book. As you read on, you find the page still occupied with some trifling discussion about words—strictures upon the contemporary tastes—odd bits of criticism and politics—quibble and conundrum. Over all, indeed, is seen hanging the beetle-brow of the pre-eminent sage, and you are to presume that the meditative man is unbending, and merely at his sport. But he is unbent always: the bow is never strung, or nothing flies from it; the great thinker never sets himself earnestly to work. At last you conclude that there isno work in him—that he never did, and never will work; and that it is useless to wait any longer for this nodding image, with its eternal smile of self-complacency, to turn into an oracle of wisdom.

If, indeed, the writer or writers were verily sportive,—if there were wit or amusement in this unbent condition of the bow, most readers might think there was very little reason to complain: there would be mirth, if not wisdom, to be had. But there is no such compensation. With few exceptions, nothing can be more heavy or cumbrous than their efforts at pleasantry. The illustrations, intended to be humorous and sprightly, have no gaiety in them; and the satirical observations have rarely any other characteristic of satire than their evident injustice.

The manner in which these writers appear to have proceeded, in the excogitation of their detached remarks, is after this fashion,—on all occasions, trivial or important, to carp at any thing that assumes the shape of a commonplace truth, any thing that is generally said or admitted. By this means some merit of originality may surely be obtained, and a lofty character for independence secured. Open the book at the first page:—

"The heart has often been compared to the needle for its constancy: has it ever been so for its variations?"

Why should it? Why should the magnetic needle, which is a popular illustration for constancy of purpose, be chosen as an emblem also for our mutability? Are there not the winds, and the clouds, and the feather blown in the air, and a thousand other similes for this phase of our nature? But "true as the needle to the pole" had been said so long that it was time to see whether the saying could not be reversed. We may as well quote the rest of the passage.

"Yet were any man to keep minutes of his feelings from youth to age, what a table of variations would they present! how numerous! how diverse! how strange! This is just what we find in the writings of Horace. If we consider his occasional effusions—and such they almost all are—as merely expressing the piety or the passion, the seriousness or the levity of the moment, we shall have no difficulty in accounting for those discrepancies in their features which have so much puzzled professional commentators. Their very contradictions prove their truth. Or, could the face even of Ninon de l'Enclos at seventy be just what it was at seventeen? Nay, was Cleopatra before Augustus the same as Cleopatra with Antony? or Cleopatra with Antony the same as with the great Julius?"

A section half a page in length, and on so trite a subject, ought at least to have boasted a greater distinctness of thought. One would hardly have anticipated that the shifting humours of Horace and the decline of Ninon's beauty (of whom it seems to be gravely asked, whether she could be just the same at seventy as at seventeen,) would be put in the same category. The form of composition adopted by the author has not prevented a frequent confusion of ideas, though it has rendered such a fault less excusable. His mode of progression is "like a peacock's walk, a stride and a stand," yet he often fails to take his single step with firmness and decision.

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