laity came to be generally educated, and began to reflect intelligently upon the principles and laws involved in the every-day operations of the temporal life, could a science of wealth become possible.

Certain peculiarities about the East Indian trade of the seventeenth century, which consisted chiefly in the exchange of silks and other Indian manufactures for bullion, gave occasion to a number of pamphlets,. in which the true principles of commerce were gradually developed. But what was called the "mercantile system" was long the favorite doctrine both with statesmen and economists, and, indeed, is even yet not quite exploded. By this was meant a system of cunning devices, having for their object, by repressing trade in one direction, and encouraging it in another, to leave the community at the end of each year more plentifully supplied with the precious metals (in which alone wealth was then supposed to consist) than at the end of the preceding. The tradition of over-government, which had come down from the Roman empire, joined to the narrow corporate spirit which had arisen among the great trading cities of the middle ages, led naturally to such views of national economy. Every one knows what efforts it has cost in our own days to establish the simple principle of commercial freedom, -the right to "buy in the cheapest, and sell in the dearest market." That this principle has at last prevailed, and that money, in so far as it is not itself a mere commodity, is now regarded not as wealth, but as the variable representative of wealth, is mainly due to the great work of Adam Smith.

Burke published in 1756 his celebrated philosophical "Essay" on the origin of our ideas of the "Sublime and Beautiful." He was then a young man, and had studied philosophy in the sensuous school of Locke.

At a later period of his life, he would probably have imported into his essay some of the transcendental ideas which had been brought to light in the interval, and for which his mind presented a towardly and congenial soil. The analysis of those impressions on the mind, which raise the emotion of the sublime or that of the beautiful, is carefully and ingeniously made; the logic is generally sound; and, if the theory does not seem to be incontrovertibly established as a whole, the illustrative reasoning employed in support of it is, for the most part, striking, picturesque, and true. The reader may find it difficult to understand how these two judgments can be mutually consistent; yet it is perfectly intelligible. The theory, for instance, which makes the emotion of the sublime inseparably associated with the sense of the terrible (terror, "the common stock of every thing that is sublime,” part ii. sect. 5), is not quite proved; for he gives magnificence - such as that of the starry heavens- as a source of the sublime, without showing (indeed, it would be difficult to show) that whatever was magnificent was necessarily also terrible. But at the same time he proves, with great ingenuity and completeness, that in a great many cases, when the emotion of the sublime is present, the element of terror is, if not a necessary condition, at any rate, a concomitant and influential circumstance. His theory of the beautiful is equally ingenious, but perhaps still more disputable. By beauty, he means (part iii. sect. 1) "that quality or those qualities in bodies by which they cause love or some passion similar to it." He labors at length to prove that beauty does not depend upon proportion, nor upon fitness for the end designed; but that it does chiefly depend on the five following properties: 1, smallness; 2, smoothness; 3, gradual variation; 4,

delicacy; 5, mild tone in color. That the emotion of beauty is unconnected with the perception of harmony or proportion, is certainly a bold assertion. However, even if the analysis were ever so accurate and perfect, it might still be maintained that the treatise contains little that is really valuable towards the formation of a sound system of criticism, either in æsthetics or literature. The reason is briefly this, that the quality which men chiefly look for in works of art and literature, is that which is variously named genius, greatness, nobleness, distinction, the ideal, &c.; where this quality is absent, all Burke's formal criteria for testing the presence of the sublime or the beautiful may be complied with, and yet the work will remain intrinsically insignificant. As applied to nature, the analysis may perhaps be of more value, because the mystery of infinity forms the background to each natural scene: the divine calm of the universe is behind the mountain-peak or the rolling surf, and furnishes punctually, and in all cases, that element of nobleness which, in the works of man, is present only in the higher souls. Hence, there being no fear that we shall ever find Nature, if we understand her, mean, or trivial, or superficial, as we often find the human artist, we may properly concentrate our attention on the sources of the particular emotions which her scenes excite; and, among these particular emotions, those of the sublime and beautiful are second to none in power.

Sir Joshua Reynolds's excellent "Discourses on Painting," or rather the first part of them, appeared in 1779. Horace Walpole's "Anecdotes of Painting," compiled from the unwieldly collections of Virtue on the lives and works of British artists, were published between the years 1761 and 1771.

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CHAPTER VI.

MODERN TIMES.

1800-1850.

Ruling Ideas: Theory of the Spontaneous in Poetry.

As no summary which our limits would permit us to give of the political events between 1800 and 1850 could add materially to the student's knowledge respecting a period so recent, we shall omit here the historical sketch which we prefixed to each of the two preceding chapters.

At once, from the opening of the nineteenth century, we meet with originality and with energetic convictions. The deepest problems are sounded with the utmost freedom decorum gives place to earnestness; and principles are mutually confronted, instead of forms. We speak of England only: the change to which we refer set in at an earlier period in France and Germany. In the main, the chief pervading movement of society may be described as one of re-action against the ideas of the eighteenth century. Those ideas were, in brief, rationalism and formalism, both in literature and in politics. Pope, for instance, was a rationalist, and also a formalist, in both respects. In his views of society, he took the excellence of no institution for granted; he would not admit that antiquity in itself constituted a claim to reverence: on the contrary, his turn of mind disposed

him to try all things, old and new, by the test of their rationality, and to ridicule the multiplicity of forms and usages—some marking ideas originally irrational, others whose meaning, once clear and true, had been lost or obscured through the change of circumstances — which encumbered the public life of his time. Yet he was, at the same time, a political formalist in this sense, that he desired no sweeping changes, and was quite content that the social system should work on as it was. It suited him; and that was enough for his somewhat selfish philosophy. Again: in literature he was a rationalist, and also a formalist; - but here in a good sense. For in literary, as in all other art, the form is of prime importance; and his destructive logic, while it crushed bad forms, bound him to develop his powers in strict conformity to good ones. Now, the reaction against these ideas was twofold. The conservative re-action while it pleaded the claims of prescription, denounced the aberrations of reason, and endeavored to vindicate or resuscitate the ideas lying at the base of existing political society, which the rationalism of the eighteenth century had sapped-rebelled at the same time against the arbitrary rules with which not Pope himself, but his followers, had fettered literature. The liberal, or revolutionary re-action, while, accepting the destructive rationalism of the eighteenth century, scouted its political formalism as weak and inconsistent, joined the conservative school in rebelling against the reign of the arbitrary and the formal in literature. This, then, is the point of contact between Scott and the conservative school on the one hand, and Coleridge, Godwin, Byron, Shelley, and the rest of the revolutionary school, on the other. They were all agreed that literature, and especially poetry, was becoming a cold, lifeless affair, conforming to all the rules and proprieties, but divorced