mercy, to be multiplying our intellectual self amid the numerous nations, to be stamping the type of the European soul and its ennobling issues throughout the world, to seek by inventions to commune with our kind, to be ready to minister pure science and holy spiritualities, to be the winged messengers of the words of Almighty wisdom, of divine philanthropy, and Christian peace,such is his office who rightly uses the power of these holy gifts. If the diffusion of the Word by the twelve Apostles startled the nations when they found them every where, shall a less ubiquity prevail when these magnificent appliances to the propagation of truth are before the world? No: every scientific principle is designed to have united with it a glorious moral; and here science ennobles herself, for one moral principle is of more lasting importance to the destinies of man than all the scientific principles united. They do not necessarily and essentially ameliorate the heart, though they may raise the intellect; but the former is united to the man for ever, and lives with him when the very world with which the latter were connected becomes a nothing. But when science is thus clad in the robes of heaven, she is beautiful as the bride of the Canticles, glittering in the glory of a greater than herself; and if the ancient world made smooth the path for the kings and potentates of old, surely we may look on that process whereby "every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill laid low; by which the crooked is made straight, and the rough places plain," as conducive to the high anticipated issues of the plan of Heaven. Under existing influences we shall live twice the apparent life of our progenitors, for life will be measured by what it has been filled with; and so far from these vast undertakings disturbing thought, they will accelerate it, since they diminish the physical suffering of man, and therefore afford him longer time for the metaphysical and spiritual. The conclusions of temporal and spiritual wisdom come to the same broad issue, and we hail, in all perfections to which the wit of man conducts us, the cheering influences of better and more glorious light not wholly lost, but bursting out, even after intervals of centuries, from its smouldering ashes into ethereal power and excellency. To all these mighty works of England, to all this world-clasping system which she wields, commercially and intellectually, we wish literally good speed; and if the day shall ever dawn, as some think, that is to see her decline, we are satisfied that, like Phoenicia of old-that mighty country which has left traces of her ancient traffic every where, she may say, "Si monumentum quæris circumspice." But we do not believe in the minishing, but in the magnifying influences of England; nor do we trace any thing that can diminish her manufacturing superiority among the nations: her capital may waste for ages, and yet leave her mightiest of the mighty, and her use of it preserve her amid the kindly feelings of the earth, not as a corse embalmed and imperishable as the mummied forms of Egypt, but as the brightest of living intelligences, the largest hearted, and the noblest minded of the nations, cherished as their standard of excellency, their chiefest source of general good. ART. X.-The Odes of Horace. Illustrated by Parallel Passages from the Greek, Roman, and British Poets; and Notes, Critical and Explanatory. By the Rev. Alexander James Howell, B.A. Oxford: D. A. Talboys. London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1838. 2. Illustrations of the Tragedies of Eschylus and Sophocles. Oxford: 1844. "I HAVE journeyed," says a traveller of the last century, “into many countries; but amongst them all, I have discovered but two varieties of human beings,-men and women." Time and distance are the counterparts of each other; and the historic voyager, after all his migrations into distant countries, arrives at the same conclusion,-that there are but two sorts of people, men and women. There is a catholicity in the construction of the human mind. There are strong points of resemblance, analogies not to be mistaken in the man of the Tropics and the man of the Pole,between the Tartar of the East and the Indian of the far West. Man was man whilst the world was young, and man is still man now that the earth is growing grey. Amidst all the flux and changes of his dwelling-place, man's mind remains; and the materials of Adam's intellect are found to be the components of that of his posterity. Not that we assert that outward circumstances do not produce their due effect upon the mental qualities of mankind. The circumstances of time, with its accumulation of experiences; of position, with its varying advantages for acquiring knowledge; of climate, with its relaxing or invigorating powers; of rank, parentage, and especially education. A concurrence of all these favouring circumstances, and their entire absence, would give an extraordinary contrast in two individual intellects; so much so, that a superficial observer might be sceptical as to their homo geneity. Yet it is the same sort of difference as exists between the frigid ice, cold, motionless, and unproductive, and the liquid brook murmuring and sparkling in the sunlight, giving pleasure and refreshment to all the kingdoms of vital creation. And without supposing innate ideas, the analogies or resemblances we notice arise out of unity of design in the construction of the mind. The mind is a structure formed to assimilate such measures of food as are administered to it for its growth and health, in the same way that the stomach digests its aliment, and prepares it for the service of the various parts of the body. Both reduce the multifarious mass they receive into a different and particular form; every thing by this process becomes humanized, that is, it leaves its former specific form and effects, and its reappearance is in the one case an increment to the bodily frame, and in the other the augmentation and heightening of the mental faculties. Each class of living beings is quite distinguished, so that though man eat nuts, the squirrel's food, for any length of time, he will never acquire the squirrel's tail; nor has he by devouring sheep for centuries been betrayed into bleating. On the contrary, if we examine the different classes of animals, we find each with its own defined amount of sagacity, of instinct, or animal intelligence; and when we turn to man, take him in what age and clime we will, we shall find in him the same order of sensations, desires, hopes and fears, passions and pleasures,some, indeed, highly developed, whilst others are only rudimentary. It is this which creates those similarities and analogies among minds separated from each other by time and distance, some of which we are about to consider. But before doing so, we shall just notice some of the causes of that dissimilarity which has sprung up between man and man. The food and nourishment of the mind are ideas. They are received from the first moment of their earthly career from every object that surrounds us. They are at first simple, like the milk which the new-born child imbibes. Increasing in number and complexity, they reach certain limits, varying according to the education bestowed on the individual, and the number and force of the circumstances which surround him. Sights and sounds in the material world become pictures and images in his mind, and the already abstracted ideas of others are transplanted into his own intellect, which indeed they help to constitute. These images, these pictures, are not generally transitory, they retain their niches in the gallery of the mind; they can be regulated, but seldom voluntarily obliterated. If, unhappily, the senses furnish alone these pictures and images to the mind in its infancy; if little or no pains be taken in its culture, so that it might be placed above the exclusive present, and learn to see and feel its own mechanism, its own workings, its doom may be almost said to be fixed. Either intellectual or sensual ideas will rise paramount in the mind; it will, like the populace, give supreme power somewhere: the investment of that power constitutes the difference between the sage and the savage. It is the part of education to lead the intellectual faculties, gently and early, to take the lead, to assume that throne which, if neglected at the outset, will be regained with so much difficulty. How important, then, is the mother's part, to whom the precious gift of a mind is first confided, to model and stamp upon it, as far as human agency goes, its future character,-to pour out for it the cup of happiness or woe. From her are destined to come those first, and therefore most durable impressions. It is hers to turn with her foot the spring which afterwards increases to a mighty river; and though it is not absolutely impossible for a change in the mind to be effected,-a change from evil to good, from the trammels of sense to the light of reason and intelligence, yet hard is the struggle when man in after-life is thus to be revolutionized, when old feelings and confirmed habits place themselves between the heart and its instructor. It is like the good Augustus, wading to his throne through a sea of blood. It is not our intention to broach the question of personal freedom; yet the force and primary importance of education must be acknowledged, and it seems pretty plain, too, that man cannot be his own deliverer. A nation, barbarous and uncivilized, would in all probability so continue for ever, unless an impetus and new direction were given to it by a people of higher intellectual attainments than its own; but between the barbarian and the man of refinement traces of that analogy and similarity of substance and structure will still be apparent which are in the constitution of human nature, and the sunbeams of freedom, kindness, and education, let fall on the poor African, will prove his mind and heart to be made of the same stuff as his who pleads with illustrious eloquence the negro's cause in the enlightened senate of Britain. Thus much for general analogies. We now proceed to those particular similarities and coincidences which are discoverable between certain classes or individuals. Whilst arguing for the universal resemblance, we allow a large scope for dissimilarities in mind. As no two countenances or handwritings, so, perhaps, are no two minds exactly coincident in every respect; but some bear much greater resemblance than others. The very circumstance of two persons living much in each other's company induces a similarity, not only in tastes, pursuits, ideas, every manner, but in the step, the tone of the voice, and, I have been assured, even in the expression of the face; nay, it is said that if two watches, not going at the same rate, be placed together, they will after a time become synchronic in their motion. Again, there are resemblances found among men removed very far apart by time or distance, arguing particular analogies in their constitution. The same idea or association shall be produced in two minds by an accident, which might escape all others. We have heard of two children, each of whom on being taken to church for the first time, made precisely the same remark upon the organ; each asked, "Where is the monkey?" The powers of association in both recognised the instrument to be of the same nature as that which they had before seen always in connexion with an animal of that description. The resemblances may be either permanent or transitory: they may be very general or very partial; confined to solitary ideas, or embracing the whole tenor of the person's thought and conduct. Such are those startling parallels we sometimes meet with in history, as Mary Queen of Scots and Johanna of Sicily. On the other hand, we see an utter want of similarity in minds, some of whose pursuits are the same. Thus, among poets, the dispositions of some incline them to look on the same object in an entirely different light. For instance, how altered are the ideas of existence in the bard's writings who sings, "We may roam through this world like a child at a feast," and the melancholy man of Olney, groaning in the gloom of his heart, "O for a lodge in some vast wilderness! How unlike is Cowper, even from himself at times: can it be the same man who afterwards gives to the world the history of John Gilpin? And Cowper is a valuable example, because what he wrote indicated his temperament at the time, and was not, as many poems are, an exercise and theme, unfelt and uninspired. But analogy of thought and feeling is certainly not exhibited by every similarity in expression or action. We are so prone to copy, that half of what we at first take to be true resemblance, may prove only the result of imitation; or it may show a little more, namely, such a congeniality as might lead one man to copy another's style, sentiments, or deeds, in preference to any other's. And the rage for imitation is so contagious, that a whole nation will assume a custom or observance, even when the best that can be said of it is, that it is ridiculous. The book at the head of our article is intended, in some mea |