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494

Speculations on Literary Pleasures.

Hutton, La Place, or Professor Cuvier, we examine the system of the world, and the coherence and adaptation of its various parts to the whole, or the support of animal life;-whether, with the adventurous Humboldt we climb the highest summits of the Andes, and with intense curiosity pursue the narrative of his botanical and atmospherical researches in regions before untrodden by the foot of man since the creation; or whether, finally, we raise our eyes from the surface of this globe upon which we vegetate, and with Newton and Kepler, and Herschel, mark the revolving bodies of our planetary system, and the host of mysterious luminaries which tremble so magnificently in the arch of heaven;-the same feeling of admiration, for the most part, attends us. We gaze in silence, or we ruminate with a full sense of the matchless economy and provision of nature. While, with St. Pierre, we trace the harmonies of nature in a thousand of her works, diversified in an amplitude of forms, a pious sense of devout acknowledgment often strikes upon the soul, and whispers that the vestiges of admirable contrivance, and of all-consummate skill, which are so much the more visible the farther we trace them,-bespeak with the most irresistible evidence an all-beneficent, and, spite of the logical cavils of the school of Hume, an all-powerful Deity. But many circumstances tend to admonish us that it is high time to bring these rambling "Speculations" to a close. And we hope that they have, sometimes, proved not altogether powerless in the object chiefly contemplated by their author-that of adding a page of illustration concerning the high and permanent pleasures which await the human mind in the intellectual exercise and cultivation of its powers.

Such a commentary, perhaps, it may be said, was not wanting; although we are fain to believe that we have not altogether, in our attempts, come under the character of our learned friend of pleasant and facetious memory, Democritus Junior-by generating a “labyrinth of INTRICABLE questions, and unprofitable contentions;" much less have fallen into another error which he notices in some, of " making books dear, themselves ridiculous, and doing nobody any good." But it is, nevertheless, perfectly accordant with

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the rules of literary legitimacy, notwithstanding the so-long-complainedof evils of Bibliomancy, to "throw a mite into the treasury" of ideas connected with this subject.*

When we glance round at the present state of knowledge connected with physiological researches, as displayed in Encyclopedean and other philosophical works, the gratuitous and discursory exercise of an occasional practitioner may, in the eyes of the long initiated, (having reference to this part of the present "Lucubrations,") appear vain redundancies.

"The further we advance in knowledge and experience (says Adam Smith, in his illustrations of the Principles which lead and direct Philosophical Enquiry,') the greater number of divisions and subdivisions of these genera and species (speaking of the classifications of natural history) we are both inclined and obliged to make.” “We observe," he proceeds, "a greater variety of particularities amongst those things which have a gross resemblance, and having made new divisions of them according to those newly-observed particularities, we are then no longer disposed to be satisfied with being able to refer an object to a remote genus, or very general class of things." So, in like manner, it may be said that within the wider precincts of natural and experimental philosophy, so many able professors have treated of mechanics, bydrostatics, pneumatics, optics, electricity, chemistry in all its ramified departments, geology in all its branches and relations, and astronomy, with all their sister sciences, that the notice of their elementary characters, or of any of their details, in the fugitive periods of an occasional contemplator, is barely admissible. The detection, however, of truth (whether it "lie in a well," or nearer the surface of things), and a capacity of judging, is not always confined to him whose life is consumed at his desk, or in his laboratory.

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It may also be said, upon a general view of them, that to hazard opinions upon such a variety of subjects, nected with men and things, as are here brought under notice, argues in a practitioner not regularly initiated, thing like presuming impertinence. A celebrated French critic, we re

some

* Burton's "Anatomy of Melancholy," introductory chapter.

1829.]

Monument to Lord Chancellor Ellesmere.

collect, said of the distinguished Abbé de Bos, all artists read with advantage his Reflections upon Poetry, Painting, and Music.' Nevertheless, he did not understand music, could never write poetry, and was not possessed of a single picture. But he had read, seen, heard, and reflected a great deal." The author, Mr. Urban, of the Illustrations which have of late occupied your pages, cannot boast of his literary reading, or of his knowledge of the world; but he has endeavoured, in his hours of leisure, to THINK-with what success, or if with any success, he of course must leave others to form a judgment. Man," says the reflective Blaise Pascal, " is evidently made for thinking;-this is the whole of his duty, and the whole of his merit." And if in the course of some intervals of leisure spent in the discriminative review of authors whose names are not least on the scroll of fame, our opinions should sometimes militate against those of certain of our contemporaries, we are still prepared to vindicate the grounds upon which we have advanced them.

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The corps diplomatique of the periodical press, and others who deemed that they have, par excellence, an exclusive and chartered right to frame hypotheses, and arbitrate upon literary character, may have their opinions; but those opinions, in order to pass, must be well substantiated.

For the rest, as "the desire of happiness in general," to use the language of Dr. Franklin," is so natural to us, that all the world have this one end in view, all are in constant pursuit of it, though they take such different methods to attain it, and are so much divided in their notions of it;" we may, at closing our Speculations" on the subject, take up the same ground we occupied at their commencement,that of the pre-eminency and permanency of those pleasures which are sought out from topics of literary contemplation.

Content, for the present, with having raised a feeble testimony in favour of the position he advocates, the author now bids adieu to his readers.

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495

Mr. URBAN, Dodleston, Oct. 25. IT may not be generally known, that

the remains of the illustrious progenitor of the Bridgewater family, Thomas Egerton, Viscount Brackley, (better probably remembered by his inferior, but earlier title of Baron Ellesmere,) who for upward of twenty years, 1596-1617, held the Great Seal of England with distinguished ability and integrity, have hitherto lain under a nameless stone at Doddleston, in Cheshire. The present Rector of Dodleston, therefore, the Venerable Archdeacon Wrangham, under the impression that "the splendour of ancestry is intended to be not only a glory, but also a light and guide to posterity," has, by application to one of his afAluent descendants (the late Rev. the Earl of Bridgewater), procured for "buried merit its tardy bust."

A marble monument, handsomely executed by Mr. Kelly of Chester, now distinguishes the spot where those longneglected relics rest. It bears the following inscription from the pen of the Archdeacon:

MAIORVM. GLORIA. POSTERIS. QVASI.
LVMEN. EST

SVBTVS. IACET

QVIDOVID. MORTALE. FVIT

THOME

BARONIS. DE. ELLESMERE

ET. VICE- COMITIS. DE. BRACKLEY
VIRI. ANTIQVA. VIRTVTE. AC. FIDE
PER. VIGINTI. PLVS. ANNOS
REGNI. ANGLIÆ

CANCELLARII
SCIENTIA. SCRIPTIS. FACVNDIA
SPECTATISSIMI

HOMINIBVS. EXEMPTVS. EST
IV. ID. APRIL.
ANNO. SACRO. M.DC.XVII.
ET. CIRCITER. LXXVII

ORIMVR. MORIMVR
SEQUENTVR. QVI. NON. PRÆCESSERINT.

The fund (1001.) for defraying the expences of the erection, was wholly supplied by the late eccentric but munificently disposed Earl, in a remittance from Paris. * E. F. P.

A point of law has been recently agitated in the Court Royal of Paris, arising out of the will of the Earl. The question submitted to the Court was, whether legatees under a will, who were proceeding for the sale of immoveable property, could require the sale to be made through the agency of a notary, or by a public auction. The Court ordered the legatees of the Earl of Bridgewater to sell his immoveable pro

496

Mr. URBAN,

Peterchurch, Herefordshire.

Mornington-crescent,

Nov. 16.

PETERCHURCH is the name of a parish pleasantly situated in the Golden Vale, or Vale of the Dore, in the south-western part of the county of Hereford. The Church possesses considerable interest, from the singularity of its plan.

The present edifice consists of four apartments, A, B, C, D, the westernmost, A, being the original nave, and the others, B, C, D, the chancel. The present nave is formed of two of these apartments, A, B, which communicate under a semicircular arch, the imposts adorned with the starry moulding.

It is entered from the outside by two doorways placed north and south, the former of them in the early Pointed style, and protected by a porch, the latter a semi-circular arch springing from attached shafts, and enriched with convex and concave zig-zag, billet, and lozenge mouldings; the head of the arch filled with a transom stone. This portion of the building receives light from ten windows, four of them loopholes, the same number of two lights with trefoil heads, a single light, and one in the roof of two lights; the two last are comparatively modern. A circular newel stair-case in the north wall formerly led to the rood-loft; it now conducts to a gallery: under this gallery is preserved some oak carving of an elegant scroll pattern, which probably formed part of the ornamental work in the screen or the rood-loft. In the south wall is a small trefoil-headed piscina.

The present chancel is entered under a lofty semicircular arch, and, like the nave, comprises two apartments, C, D. The first, C, is in plan a parallelogram, the second or easternmost, D, terminates in a half-circle. These are lighted by five long narrow apertures, which were doubtless originally mere loop-holes, although only three of them remain as such. It would appear, then, that this church, when first completed, obtained light only from those small openings; for all the windows of a greater size are evidently of much later date than the walls. The semicircular apsis, or niche, is particularly remarkable for containing the an

perty, an hotel, situated in Rue St. Honoré, through the agency of the notary, at the Hall of the Notaries, at Paris.

a

C

B

A

E

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cient altar, a, in a perfect state: it is made of square-set masonry, coated with plaster, and covered by a freestone table or slab marked with five

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