to avail himself of the assistance of those who did not concur with him in every particular.

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MORAL AND PHYSICAL SUBLIMITY COMPARED.

THERE are certain passages in the works of poets and orators, which produce in the mind a feeling of elevation, and a sort of swelling and energetic transport, very distinct in its nature from the pleasure which tender, elegant, or beautiful passages impart.

If we examine the media in nature or art, which give rise to these feelings, they will appear to fall under two heads; the moral, and the physical, sublime. Taking the moral sentiments of mankind as we find them, without dispute about their foundation, it is safe to say, that we do in fact admire all remarkable instances of magnanimity and disinterestedness, and by sympathy assume the character, and consequently the feelings, of those who display them. These feelings are what we call elevated, and therefore sublime.

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Again, power is what we all at; and sympathy, with the exertion of superior power, of which knowledge is a mode, gives us a sense of self-gratulation and energy. The moral sublime, then, consists in the display of energies exert ed by intelligent beings; and our sense of the sublime in sympathy with these energies. A striking instance of the unmixed moral sub lime is in the famous lines of Lu

Similar sentiments of grandeur and elevation are excited by the physical sublime; that is, by the great objects of nature; mountains, cataracts, tempests, the ocean, the celestial luminaries, the expanse of boundless space; and by the description of these in poetry. Under the physical sublime, too, may be ranked such works of human art and labour, as emulate the scale of nature; as the wall of China, or the pyramids of Egypt. Mr. Burke and some other writers have almost

confined their induction to this species of the sublime. Yet the peculiar feelings of sublimity are by no means so strongly excited by any inaniwith the moral energies of mind. mate objects, as by direct sympathy

The spirit of the cape, in Camoens, who, encircled with storms, rears his menacing front against the bold adventurer, whose prow was

turned towards those untravelled seas, passes for sublime with those, at least, who are not aware for how small a bounty a dæmon may be had, ready armed and accoutred, by any recruiting subaltern of the muses; but far more truly sublime was that intrepid energy of soul, which led Vasco di Gama beyond the bounds of former discovery, to assert the dominion of man over the winds and the waves.

The majesty of nature sinks to nothing in comparison with the exercise of heroism and virtue. When did the magnificent scenery of the Alps, with its rocks piled on rocks, its resounding cataracts, its gulfs and precipices, present such elevating images to the mind, as when Aloys Reding, on the plain of Morgarton, with firm, but despairing valour, led a few militia of Schwitz against the disciplined battalions of

the French, and, by an unexpected victory, renewed, after the lapse of five centuries, the trophies, which had been gained on that very spot, in defence of the liberties of Switzerland?

The finest passages in poetry are those, wherein the moral and physical sublime are united. Grand natural objects seem, if we may so say, the best vehicle of energetic moral sympathies. The Hebrew scriptures are confessedly the great repositories of the poetical sublime; and they commonly produce their effect, by investing divine power with the most magnificent images. Their obscurity, likewise, is a very efficient cause of the sublime, by expanding to the utmost our conception of power. To this may be ascribed the sublimity of prophetic poetry; as in the whole book of Nahum, or the speeches of Cassandra, in the Agamemnon. After the Hebrew poets come Homer, Aschylus, Shakespeare, and Milton.There is hardly any more striking instance of the united moral and physical sublime, than the concluding lines of the Prometheus. The highest sort of eloquence rejects poetical imagery, and aims almost exclusively at the moral sublime. The public orations of Demosthenes are full of this: and those in whom the higher class of moral feelings, fortitude, perseverance, public spirit, and disinterestedness, are extinct or lukewarm, may read Demosthenes for ever, without discovering why he has been admired. For the subordinate merits of his orations, a felicitous and appropriate choice of words, and a management of sounds, almost as artificial as that of music, are lost upon us at present.

In the mere physical sublime, the notion of mental energies is not so directly suggested. Yet it will be found to be the foundation of our sentiments of sublimity, in this, as much as in the other branch. "Besides those things," says Mr. Burke, "which directly suggest the idea of danger, and those which produce a similar effect from a mechanical

cause, I know of nothing sublime, which is not some modification of power." But power without mind is not only unphilosophical, but inconceivable.

The sublime of natural objects, after the first effect of unexpectedness is over, leaves a kind of disappointment, a vacuity and want of satisfaction on the mind. It is not till our imaginations have infused life, and therefore power, into the still mass of nature, that we feel real emotions of sublimity. This we do, sometimes by impersonating the inanimate objects themselves; sometimes by associating real or fancied beings with the scenes which we behold. This is that, which distinguishes the delight of a rich and refined imagination, amidst the grandest scenery of Wales or Scotland, from the rude stare of a London cockney. The one sees mere rocks and wildernesses, and sighs in secret for Whitechapel: the other acknowledges in every mountain a tutelary genius of the land, and peoples every glen with the heroes of former times; defends the passage of Killicranky with Dundee; or rushes with Caractacus from the heights of Snowdon.

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FRENCH TRAVELLERS.

SO great is the solicitude of the French to obtain that species of information which tends to promote their success in war, that it manifests itself on every occasion. They instruct their agents and commissioners to make surveys of those countries into which they are admitted; that, whenever they assume a hostile attitude, they may know the most vulnerable part of the coun try which they meditate to invade. Their topography is directed to military plans and operations, and is not confined to the discriminating aspect and features of a district. "War is indeed their business,”

and every thing seems to be made subservient to this destructive pursuit. While the picturesque and idle traveller is absorbed in the admiration of the beauties and sublimities of nature, the Frenchman contemplates them with the eye of an engineer; and he regards torrents and lakes, mountains, rocks, and gorges, only as the materials of fortification. Men who travel for the sake of taking or admiring landscapes, of indulging patriotic speculations on the seats of the mountain-nymph, Liberty, of surveying pastoral manners and employments, have always considered Switzerland and Tyrol as their favourite haunts. What will such travellers, and readers like such travellers, say to the following picture of the last mentioned province given by a famous French traveller?

"By its situation and its natural obstacles this province might be considered as the salient bastion of the Austrian monarchy, of which the Italian Adige and the Inn of the plain are the curtains; the Inn of the mountains, the fosse; the Voralberg, the glacis; and Lindau, the advanced work."

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C.

CONNOISSEURSHIP, AND ITS

PLEASURES.

IT is certain that the same impression is made by a picture on the retina of an ignorant person and of a connoisseur; and yet, from an acquired habit of attending separately to the objects of perception, the latter will observe, and, in a popular sense, may be said to see, what wholly escapes the notice of the other. Imitation is one of the most universal sources of pleasure, derived from association; and the plea sures which the ignorant derive from mere imitation are more keen than those which the learned receive from the noblest productions of art.

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These feelings of nature, however, are of short duration: for when the novelty of the first impression is over, and the interest of curiosity and surprise has subsided, mere imitation of common objects becomes trifling and insipid; and men look for, in imitative art, something of character and expression, which may awaken sympathy, excite new ideas, or expand and elevate those already formed. To produce this, requires a knowledge of mind, as well as of body; and of the interior, as well as exterior construction of the human frame, or of whatever else be the object of imitation; whence art become engrafted upon science and as all the exertions of human skill and ingenuity are indefinitely progressive, and never stop at that point which they originally aimed at, this art of science, or science of art, has been extended, particularly in painting and music, to the production of excellences, which are neither of imitation nor expression, but which peculiarly belong to technical skill, and can only be relished or perceived by those who have acquired a certain degree of knowledge in those arts. Such are, in general, the compositions of bravura, as they are called, in music; and such, in painting, the works of the great Venetian painters, whose style of imitation is extremely inaccurate; whose expression is never either dignified or forcible; and whose colouring is too much below that of nature to please the mere organs of sense; but whose productions have nevertheless always held the highest rank in the art; and, as far as the mere art and science of painting are concerned, are unquestionably among its most perfect productions. The taste for them, however, is, as sir J. Reynolds has observed, entirely acquired, and acquired by the association of ideas: for, as great skill and power, and a masterly facility of execution, in any liberal art, raise our admiration, and consequently excite pleasing and exalted ideas, we, by a natural and imperceptible process of the mind, associate these

ideas with those excited by the productions of these arts, and thus transfer the merit of the workman to the work.

One distinction might be made with respect to our admiration of technical skill. Our sympathy with natural or acquired command of the bodily powers is very different from. that which we feel with intellectual `ability, and indeed can hardly be reckoned within the province of taste. Hence mere powers of voice in bravura singing, and mere feats of strength and activity in stagedancing, neither afford such pleasure, nor excite such admiration in men of taste, as the display of mental energies, regulating as well as co-operating with those of the body. If to surmount that difficulty of execution, which is simply physical, be a title to the admiration of the lover of art, let us remember that no dancing is so difficult as that which is performed upon a rope, and the ventriloquist and the conjurer may expect to sit down on the same bench with Haydn and Titian.

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VOLCANIC FISH.

THE volcanoes in the kingdom of Quito, says Humboldt, present, from time to time, a different spectacle, less alarming, indeed, though not less curious to the naturalist. The grand explosions are periodi. cal, but not very frequent. The Cotopaxi, the Tunguragua, and the Sangay do not experience one of these eruptions in the course of twenty or thirty years; but, in the intervals, they discharge enormous quantities of argillaceous mud, and, which is more surprising, immense quantities of fish. These volcanic inundations did not take place in the year which I passed on the Andes of Quito: but ejection of fish is so common, and so generally known to the inhabitants of the country, that there remains not the least

doubt of the fact; and as these regions contain many well-informed persons, I have been able to obtain exact drawings of these fish. M. de Larrea, who is versed in the study of chemistry, and who has formed a cabinet of the minerals of his country, has been very useful to me in these researches. In the archives of several little towns in the vicinity of Cotopaxi, I have found some notes respecting the fish thrown out by the volcanoes. On the estates of the marquis de Selvaligree, the Cotopaxi emitted so great a quantity of them, that their putrefaction diffused a fœtid odour all around. The almost extinct volcano of Imbaburu, in the year 1691, vomited some millions of them on the fields which surround the city of Ibarra; and the putrid fevers, which commenced at this period, were attributed to the miasmata, which exhaled from these fish, lying in heaps on the surface of the ground, and exposed to the action of the sun. In more recent times, the Imbaburu has ejected fish ; and when, on June 19, 1698, the volcano of Cargneirazo subsided, thousands of these animals, entangled in argillaceous mud, issued from the top, which was shaken down.

The Cotopaxi and Tunguragua sometimes throw out fish at the crater which is at the top of these mountains, and sometimes at the lateral openings, but constantly at a height of 5200 yards (nearly three miles) above the level of the sea. Some Indians have assured me that the fish which issued from the volcanoes were sometimes alive when they came down the sides of the mountain but this fact is not sufficiently confirmed: it is however certain that, among the thousands of dead fish which in the course of a few hours are seen descending from Cotopaxi with large quantities of cold and soft water, very few of them are so much disfigured as to induce the belief that they have been exposed to the action of a strong heat. This fact becomes more striking when we consider the soft flesh

of these animals, and the thick smoke which this volcano emits at the same time. I took great pains to ascertain the species of these animals. All the inhabitants agree that they are the same with those that are found in the streams which run at the foot of these volcanoes, and which they call prennadillas; which is also the only kind of fish to be found at a height of 8,400 feet in the waters of the kingdom of Quito.

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REMARKS ON THE DISTINCTIONS BETWEEN OPERA AND TRAGEDY.

THE Greek tragedy was a religious act, directed and regulated by the priests. It was a representation of the most striking parts of their mythology, and exhibited to view awful and marvellous instances of the vengeance of heaven against heinous crimes. It described the errors into which men were led by the passions when unsubdued. In exciting terror or tenderness, the poet was solely desirous to inspire the people with a love of virtue, and a horror of vice. Therefore, in order to give us just notions of the Greek tragedy, we must compare the ancient dramas not with those of Otway and Racine, but rather with the religious representations intitled the Plays of the Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ.

The principal object of the Greek tragedy was religious instruction. The poets and priests of Greece deemed it not sufficient to present an exhibition in which vice was punished, and virtue rewarded; they saw it was farther necessary, for the sake of the multitude, to intermix with the course of events maxims and moral sentences; without which the crowd, opening its eyes and ears, but not its understanding, would not have derived from them the advantages proposed.

I have seen, in a catholic country, a representation of the passion of our Saviour exhibited in a church at the great altar; at the conclusion of each mystery, a person delivered discourses suitable to the subject which had been displayed; and sometimes he would interrupt the representation in order to introduce remarks applicable to what was taking place. Such was very nearly the province of the chorus in the ancient tragedy; which was to tragedy what the air is to the Italian operas; it was the substance of that which had been exhibited, accompanied with such reflections as they wished to be made by the audience.

The chorus considerably obstructed the illusion: but this illusion, though desirable, is an inferior consideration when the principal view is instruction. Consider the fables of Esop; what is so improbable as the speeches of beasts? So much the better for the fable; it shines and strikes the more.

In order to assist the chorus, which was the most important object of the Greek tragedy, it was accompanied by more intense and animated music, and in consequence made use of the lyric metre. The iambic verse, which proceeded very nearly like prose, perfectly suited the recitative: but for this reason its effect was inconsiderable; whereas the short and lively measure of the lyric verse, and its division into strophes and antistrophes gave it more action and warmth, and rendered it more easily retained.

It follows from these observations on the chorus of the Greeks, that the genuine airs of the Italian operas, or rather the airs of Metastasio, are the true chorus, with this difference, that, in the modern drama, the actor himself, who at the end of the scene makes the epilogue, determines the sentiment fit for his situation, and explains the morality which it teaches; whereas in the ancient pieces the same part is filled by a separate personage.