to me that he ought never to have abandoned the contemplative position which is peculiarly -perhaps I might say exclusively fitted for him. His proper title is Spectator ab

extra.

July 23. 1832.

FRENCH REVOLUTION.

No man was more enthusiastic than I was for France and the Revolution: it had all my wishes, none of my expectations. Before 1793, I clearly saw and often enough stated in public, the horrid delusion, the vile mockery, of the whole affair.* When some one said

* "Forgive me, Freedom! O forgive those dreams! I hear thy voice, I hear thy loud lament, From bleak Helvetia's icy cavern sent

I hear thy groans upon her blood-stain'd streams!
Heroes, that for your peaceful country perish'd,
And ye that, fleeing, spot your mountain-snows
With bleeding wounds; forgive me, that I cherish'd
One thought that ever bless'd your cruel foes!
To scatter rage and traitorous guilt,

Where Peace her jealous home had built;

in my brother James's presence*, that I was a Jacobin, he very well observed, "No!

A patriot race to disinherit

Of all that made their stormy wilds so dear;
And with inexpiable spirit

To taint the bloodless freedom of the mountaineer
O France, that mockest Heaven, adult'rous, blind,
And patriot only in pernicious toils,

Are these thy boasts, champion of human-kind ?
To mix with kings in the low lust of sway,
Yell in the hunt, and share the murderous prey —
To insult the shrine of Liberty with spoils

The Sensual and the Dark rebel in vain,
Slaves by their own compulsion! In mad game
They burst their manacles, and wear the name
Of freedom, graven on a heavier chain!
O Liberty! with profitless endeavour
Have I pursued thee, many a weary hour;

But thou nor swell'st the victor's train, nor ever
Didst breathe thy soul in forms of human power.
Alike

* A soldier of the old cavalier stamp, to whom the King was the symbol of the majesty, as the Church was of the life, of the nation, and who would most assuredly have taken arms for one or the other against all the houses of commons or committees of public safety in the world. — ED.

Samuel is no Jacobin; he is a hot-headed

Moravian!

opposite pole.

Indeed, I was in the extreme

July 24. 1832.

INFANT SCHOOLS.

I HAVE no faith in act of parliament reform. All the great the permanently greatthings that have been achieved in the world have been so achieved by individuals, working from the instinct of genius or of goodness. The rage now-a-days is all the other way: the individual is supposed capable of nothing; there must be organization,

Alike from all, howe'er they praise thee,
(Nor prayer, nor boastful name delays thee,)
Alike from priestcraft's harpy minions,
And factious blasphemy's obscener slaves,

Thou speedest on thy subtle pinions,

The guide of homeless winds, and playmate of the waves!"

France, an Ode. Poetical Works, vol. i. p. 130.-Ed.

classification, machinery, &c. as if the capital of national morality could be increased by making a joint stock of it. Hence you see these infant schools so patronized by the bishops and others, who think them a grand invention. Is it found that an infant-school child, who has been bawling all day a column of the multiplication table, or a verse from the Bible, grows up a more dutiful son or daughter to its parents? Are domestic charities on the increase amongst families under this system? In a great town, in our present state of society, perhaps such schools may be a justifiable expedient- a choice of the lesser evil; but as for driving these establishments into the country villages, and breaking up the cottage home education, I think it one of the most miserable mistakes which the well-intentioned people of the day have yet made; and they have made, and are making, a good many, God knows.

THE pith of my system is to make the senses out of the mind not the mind out of the senses, as Locke did.

Could you ever discover any thing sublime, in our sense of the term, in the classic Greek literature? I never could. Sublimity is Hebrew by birth.

I should conjecture that the Proverbs and Ecclesiastes were written, or, perhaps, rather collected, about the time of Nehemiah. The language is Hebrew with Chaldaic endings. It is totally unlike the language of Moses on the one hand, and of Isaiah on the other.