dainty and pleasant sensations. His self-content is so great, that it flows out in content with all the world. He fondles everything and everybody. Shakespeare, Spenser, Shelley, Coleridge, he dandles on his knee, as if they were babies, paws them, and would fill their dear little mouths with sugared epithets of eulogy. This he seems to think is genial criticism. Even divine things cannot escape his all-tolerating kindliness; for, whatever sects and churches may say, he knows that the world was made after the image of Leigh Hunt. The Deity with him is not so much Infinite Goodness as infinite good-nature, and we believe he has lately published a devotional book to inculcate that doctrine. He talks very cosily about Dante, and appeals to the readers whom he conducts through the "Inferno," if they really can believe that such fine fellows as they there behold in torments ought to be treated in that way. Throughout his writings, indeed, he seems to think that the wax taper, which he holds so jauntily, can light up all the gloom and darkness of the moral universe. This foppery is of a different kind from Walpole's, and is much more delightful, but it is still foppery, though the foppery of philanthropy.

We have, doubtless, said more than enough respecting words as media for the transpiration of character, and it would be a waste of illustration to trace the working of the principle through other forms of personality, such as the sentimental, the satanic, the eccentric, the religious, and the heroic. In all of these, however, language is moulded into the organic body of thought, and the organisms stand out in literature with the distinctness and the diversity of organic forms in nature. The words are veined, and full of the lifeblood of the creative individualities projected into them with unsparing energy. In criticizing such works we soon discover that what we at first call faults of style are in reality faults of character. But such individualities are more or less narrow and peculiar; and it is only when we arrive at those rare natures, with sensibility, reason, fancy, wit, humor, imagination, all included in the operations of one mighty, spiritual force, which we feel to be greater than one or all of the faculties and passions, that we compass the full meaning of intellectual char

acter in apprehending its highest form. Such men - Shakespeare, for example-appear to be impersonal simply because their personality is so broad. They are impersonal relatively, not positively. Capable of discerning, interpreting, representing, all actual and possible peculiarities of human character, they seem to have few peculiarities of their own. They have no leading idea, because they have so many ideas; no master passion, because they have so many passions; no hobby, great or little, sublime or mean, because they possess a vital conception of relations, as well as a vital conception of things and persons. But they never really pass, as creative minds, beyond the limits of their characters; for it is always men that create, not some vagrant faculty of men.

It is sometimes doubted if the style of such writers can be taken as the measure of their power and variety of power. Now there is in the smallest individual intelligence an abstract possibility which is never realized in any mode of expression while he is in the body, and this limitation is especially felt when we read the works of the greatest individualized intelligences. So far, and only so far, are we inclined to concede that the great masters and creators of language find in words but a partial expression of their natures. What is directly conveyed in words and images, according to their literal interpretation, is, of course, inadequate to fix and embody a mind like Shakespeare's; but then the marvel of Shakespeare's diction is its immense suggestiveness,—his power of radiating through new verbal combinations or through single expressions a life and meaning which they do not retain in their removal to dictionaries. When the thought is so subtile, or the emotion so evanescent, or the imagination so remote, that it cannot be flashed upon the "inward eye," it is hinted to the inward ear by some exquisite variation of tone. These irradiations and melodies of thought and feeling are seen and heard only by those who think into the words, but they are nevertheless there, whether perceived or not. An American essayist on Shakespeare, Mr. Emerson, in speaking of the impossibility of acting or reciting his plays, refers to this magical suggestiveness in a sentence almost as remarkable as the thing it describes. "The recitation," he says, "begins: one

golden word leaps out immortal from all this painted pedantry, and sweetly torments us with invitations to its own inaccessible homes"! He who has not felt this witchery in Shakespeare's style has never read him. He may have looked at the words, but has never looked into them.

We have been able, in these hasty observations on the use and misuse of words, to touch upon only a few topics connected with our theme. There are many others that would repay investigation, which we have hardly named, such as the intimate connection between clearness and freshness of expression, the sources of the pleasure we take in style apart from the importance of the matter it conveys, the difference between an author's expressing an idea to himself and expressing it to others, the power of words, as wielded by a man of genius, to create or evoke in another mind the thought or emotion they embody, - the peculiar vitality and the amazing mystical significance of language when used as the organ for expressing the phenomena of rapture and ecstasy, and the interior laws which regulate the construction and movement of style, according as the object is to narrate, describe, reason, or invent. But we have not space at present to consider these topics with the attention they deserve. In the somewhat extended remarks into which we have been provoked by the publication of Dr. Roget's "Thesaurus," we have confined ourselves to a few obvious principles, and have labored to show the hopelessness of all attempts to make language really express any thing finer, deeper, higher, or more forcible, than what lives in the mind and character of the writer who uses it. Especially in all that relates to strength of diction, we think it will be found that the utmost affluence in energetic terms will, of itself, fail to impress on style any vital energy of soul; for this energy, whether it work like lightning or like light, whether it smite and blast, or illumine and invigorate, ever comes from the presence of the man in the words.

ART. VIII.-1. Voyage en Chine et dans les Mers et Archipels de cet Empire pendant les Années 1847, 1848, 1849, 1850. Par M. JURIEN DE LA GRAVIÈRE, Capitaine commandant la corvette La Bayonnaise, expédiée par le Gouvernement français dans ces parages. Avec une belle carte gravée sur acier. Paris: Charpentier, Libraire-éditeur. 1853. 2 vols. 8vo.

2. History of the Insurrection in China; with Notices of the Christianity, Creed, and Proclamations of the Insurgents. By MM. CALLERY and YVAN. Translated from the French, with a Supplementary Chapter, narrating the most recent Events, by JOHN OXENFORD. With a Fac-simile of a Chinese Map of the Course of the Insurrection, and a Portrait of Tièn-tè, its Chief. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1853. 24mo. pp. 301.

Ar a period of profound and universal peace, when the gates of Janus, over all the face of the world, were for the moment closed, the rude bruit of clashing arms has reached our ears from two mighty continents; and in either case we find, singularly enough, that it is from the two great Tartar empires — in extent, in population, and as to their respective standards of civilization, paralleled only by each other— that these sounds proceed. The more immediate interests involved in the Russian troubles have not diverted our attention from the anomalous and mysterious struggle going on in China. To give a passing glance at the physical and moral condition of the Chinese people, to point out the footprints of the messengers of the Gospel among them, and to exhibit, so far as is permitted us by the meagre reports that from time to time have reached this country, the origin, progress, and present aspect of the insurrection, will be the object of this paper.

For two centuries the Ta-tsing dynasty has continued to rule over a territory as large as that of all Christian Europe, with a population nearly eighteen times more numerous than that of the United States. The Mant-chou race, from which was sprung Tae-tsung-wan-hang-te, the first of that line who

sat upon the imperial throne, is said by Gutzlaff to have been a Tongoosian tribe, whose origin is traced by their local fabulists to a divine source in the northern parts of Korea. In that region, say they, there once dwelt three heavenly maidens. Whilst bathing one day in the transparent waters of the Lake of Balkhori, a magpie let fall a red fruit upon the garments of the fairest of the three. Woman-like, she was tempted, and she ate. The result was the birth of a son, whose appearance was signalized by preternatural prodigies. The mother soon after died. The miraculous child, embarking in a small boat, intrusted himself to the guidance of the current of the stream, which in due season bore him to the camps of a warlike people, by whom he was chosen ruler, assuming on this occasion the title of Mant-chou. The conception by a virgin, - the infant voyager upon the river, — may suggest to the reader some analogy with similar events in Biblical history; but such coincidences are of frequent occurrence in pagan tradition.

During many years, this tribe continued to increase in power and resources, till at last it became a formidable opponent to the government of China, then swayed by the failing hands of the dynasty of Ming. After repeated and bloody battles with this nation, the Mant-chous had carried their victorious arms far into their enemy's country, when, in 1636, so powerful did their leader deem them, that he caused himself to be proclaimed Emperor of China, adopting for his dynastic name Ta-tsing, or Great Purity. In Chinese history, he is known under the title of Tae-tsung. Before proceeding with our sketch of the course of this usurpation, a brief notice of that rival line, which now, after an abeyance of two centuries, is so successfully maintaining its claims to the disputed throne, may not be out of place.

To enumerate the barbarous titles of the various sovereigns who, according to Chinese historians, have ruled that empire since the birth of time, would be a useless task. Nor is it within the province of this paper even to give an historical notice of the different dynasties which, as it may be admitted, have succeeded to each other in rapid order within the last four thousand years. It will suffice to point out how