never studied in the codes of rhetoricians. Among your rustic hearers, as well as among the most refined of our species, pathos will exact its tears; affection and earnestness, sympathy. With them, as with their betters, vivacious imagery and force of diction will light up the eye, and awaken intelligence, attention, and emotion. The fact is, that great injustice is often done to plebeian hearers. The praise which is lavished on the critical Athenians, as though they were miracles of taste, because they hung with rapture on the lips of Demosthenes, is nearly as applicable to many other crowds. Look at the history of our great political speakers. Take the most famous names of the House of Commons. Was it there only they were listened to with rapture? Were not Fox and Burke as welcome at the hustings as ever they were at St. Stephens? Did not promiscuous crowds listen as applaudingly as their more select audience of fellow representatives? Is it not so always? Take again the greatest preachers. Have not men of all orders of intelligence, and of the widest degrees of culture, formed their congregations?

Speaking of the difference between provincial dialects and the national idiom, - the latter of which is understood by those who speak the former, though the former may be unintelligible to those who speak the latter, Dr. Kenrick curiously observes; "The case of languages, or rather speech, is quite contrary to that of science; in the former, the ignorant understand the learned, better than the learned do the ignorant; in the latter it is otherwise." Something like it may be said of true eloquence: a common artisan may appreciate the point, force, vivacity, of a discourse, nay, instinctively feel the elegance and music of it, and not be able to speak a single sentence grammatically. You will not, of course, suppose that I wish you to attempt a style, whether of thought or expression, ambitiously above your rude flock; that would be anything but true eloquence in my esteem: all I mean is, that there is to them, as to every one, as great a difference between a common-place treatment of the very same Christian truth, and one really adapted to awaken attention and kindle emotion, as there is between the style of the dullest retailer of

soporific truisms and the style of Demosthenes; and that to attain such a genuine eloquence, if you have, as I believe you have, a sacred ambition to do good, is well worth your utmost diligence and is not to be attained without it.

Forgive this little exercitation on "Rhetoric,"
And believe me

Yours truly,

R. E. H. G.

P.S. I intend, next summer, to visit your part of the country; "if so, I shall ensconce myself some Sunday morning in a remote pew in your old-fashioned church, and see how far you have thought my remarks worth attention.

LETTER XXXV.

To C. Mason, Esq.

Sutton, Oct. 1845.

My dear Mason,

I know you used to take a lively interest in that old metaphysical dispute,—which, I suppose, like most other metaphysical disputes, will be always revived and never decided,-as to whether our habitual actions are automatic, or whether, however rapid they are, and however little trace they may leave on our consciousness, the will in each case interposes with a special act. You used, I remember, to take the former view, while I rather inclined to the latter. Last night, a most absurd thing happened to me, which almost inclines me to take your side. And yet, as you will see, I am not sure that the pleasant ingenuity with which mind is always too subtle for itself when it asks its wise self about its own phenomena, cannot find plenty of arguments against it. But first to my fact. Except to you who know me, it might perhaps seem incredible.

You are aware of my fidgetiness about fire; reason good, since I was once within an ace of being burnt down through a

neighbour's negligence. Nevertheless, by the way, I am so wakeful that I almost always, in summer, read in bed, undisturbed by any fear lest somnolence should surprise me before I have extinguished the light. In winter, I find it hard to leave the fireside and go shivering to those hyperborean regions above stairs; and sometimes have sat up (I am ashamed to say) half the night, musing and reading, from shear reluctance to confront the miseries of those arctic regions. Well, at last, still in a reverie (I should think this absurdity has happened to me some scores of times), I have lighted a chamber candle, gone to bed, and then, when the light has been extinguished and I am just beginning to get cosy, I have been perversely unable to recollect whether I have put out the candles below, or not! After having in vain tried (as usual in such cases) to coax reason and conscience into the belief that all is right, - and sometimes I in vain have debated the matter a good half hour, — I have found that there was no help for it but turning out, groping my way down stairs, and seeing, I was going to say, if all was perspicuously dark! Strange to say, I never did yet find that the habitual act, of which I should have been so glad, on many a cold night, to catch the faintest reminiscence, had failed me. I always found that the light had been extinguished, though the remembrance of the act had been simultaneously extinguished too. This, in the course of my solitary life of the last twenty years, has occurred to me, as I have said, considerably more than a score of times. "What a fool you must be!" I imagine I hear you say, sotto voce; but it is nothing to my folly of last night-if, indeed, I ought not rather to take it as a proof of a profound capacity of abstraction! For, will you believe it? after making this unwilling journey, I found, on regaining my chamber, that in the very act of descending, my mind had been arrested by the subject which had been previously occupying my thoughts, and I had actually come back, unconscious - totally unconscious as to whether the candles had been extinguished or not! Luckily, I had not got into bed, or else, the night being cold, I almost think I should have preferred the risk of being burned down to going down stairs again. As it

was, down I went, and, by due and diligent effort to keep my mind from wandering, peered into the darkness, and clearly saw that there was nothing to be seen. This is literal fact.

Now such a thing is almost enough to convince me of what, at other times, opposite arguments have convinced me is false namely, that our habitual actions may be perfectly automatic, and that Mistress Mind, having given general orders to the footmen and housemaids of her organism, to do such and such things, said menials proceed to execute them, while Mind retires to her "pineal gland," or wherever else she pleases to go, and troubles herself no more about the matter. It is a very pretty little theory; but, like most other metaphysical theories, is capable of being con. fronted and confuted by equally conclusive arguments; while (what is the most provoking thing of all) that very Mind, about whose condition the whole dispute is, takes alternately both sides, or stands staring at herself like a dolt, and cannot tell whether she has anything to do with the said acts or not.

Yet, with due submission, I must think, after all, that, on the whole, the arguments in favour of Mind's having something to do with even the most automatic of our actions preponderate. The principal arguments against it are the inconceivable rapidity of the acts, and the subsequent unconsciousness of the mind's having had any part in them. As to the last argument, begging Mind's pardon, I do not think it worth a button, considering how deplorably ignorant Mind is of herself and her doings, which, from time immemorial, she has been perpetually disputing about. Her opinion, either way, founded on her knowing nothing about the matter, cannot be of much importance. It is too plain that she is every day, and still more every night, occupied, in her flighty way, with a thousand thoughts of which she retains no traces in the memory!

As to the former argument, the mere rapidity of the acts; for example, of a rope-dancer's ever-shifting postures, a conjurer's tricks, a skilled musician's complicated, and all but simultaneous movements, a public speaker's voluble utterance, -- as to these, and the like stock examples of those who take your

side of the question, they do not, I confess, much move me: and that for a reason which I do not recollect having seen insisted on by any metaphysical writer, but which appears to me absolutely conclusive on the subject; for, ought the mere velocity of material movement, which we see in all these cases is attained, to be any argument against the possibility of equal velocity of thought and volition? Ought we not, à fortiori, to judge that if eyes and fingers-mere material organs. can and do perform such inexpressibly nimble feats, Mind can more than keep up with them? And, if so, that very velocity will serve to explain the former difficulty, to which I have already given an answer not quite so complimentary to Mind,- that no trace is left in the consciousness. That, probably, is due to the very rapidity with which the acts are performed.

And yet how strange it seems, now I think of it, that Mind, which is urging all this in its own behalf, and using its too notorious obliviousness as an argument in favour of its activity, should not be able to decide the matter, and is probably only saying what will appear to you the most improbable conjecture!

Yet I may further say, in defence of the hypothesis I rather prefer, that some of the strongest instances sometimes urged against it are really in its favour. The supposed automatic movements on which its opponents lay so much stress, are often, as appears to me, by no means automatic, but necessarily imply, in many cases, however rapid, an equally rapid succession of distinct and conscious mental acts. An accomplished master of the piano, for example, will play at sight the most intricate music put into his hands, as well, or nearly as well, as he will play it the fiftieth time. Now the combinations are, and must be, new to him. The same may be said in the case of the accomplished extemporaneous speaker. The series of rapid changes are all novel, and yet must be accompanied with distinct intellectual efforts and volitions. I do not wonder, however, at your obstinate defence of your theory; for as I look at a musician before some grand organ, -see how rapid and complicated are his movements,-how his fingers fly over the keys,-how they strike the most complex harmonies,