for them no enthusiasm ; a true disciple of the school of Socrates, he looks on the works of nature or of art as unworthy of his serious attention. A knowledge of man is his chief pursuit; the science of living the dearest study of his mind. To increase his own comfort, to add to the happiness of those around him, is the limit of his ambition; to this he incessantly directs all his faculties.

His

Not so the German: his tastes are of quite a different nature. He seems to care nothing for the world in which he lives: he walks with men almost without noticing their existence: he is a mere stranger on earth; its interests and affections are to him indifferent. thoughts are in the wide region of metaphysics; his communings with spirits of other worlds. He never occupies his reason but with things which are beyond the comprehension of man; his credulity is never exercised but on matters which set at defiance all credibility; he delights in doubt; no view can give him pleasure, unless the haze of uncertainty hang over the perspective. Wrapt in idealism, the portico is his favourite haunt ; he bestows not a thought on any object unless clothed in the garb of mysticism. He has abandoned the practice of the Rosicrucians, without giving up their principles.

English taste takes yet another direction. No longer tormented with the love of liberty, the Englishman has lost his exclusive regard for politics; the love of the picturesque is now his ruling passion; this absorbs all his ideas; to this his nationality has yielded; it has overcome his hatred of strangers.

Every year presents to astonished Europe the singular spectacle of myriads of British subjects, who leave the comforts of their home to wander in foreign lands, with no other object than to admire the beauties of nature, to climb the rugged precipices of the Alps, or the Pyrenees;

to tremble on the airy pinnacles of the Apennines; or to measure and dispute on the dimensions of some mouldering tower, some remnant of a people whose very existence is forgotten.

Nor is this passion confined to travellers. It is not only displayed amidst the sublimer mountain-scenery of Italy or Switzerland; it shows itself with not less activity on the minuter landscape of Great Britain. Those who cannot exercise their taste abroad are content to celtivate it at home; less ambitious, but not less indefatigable, tourists visit every part of our island, and ransack every village in search of their beloved picturesque. Not a parish pound escapes their observation; not a pigeon-house but is consigned to their portfolio. The sequestered dales of Derbyshire and Devonshire have þeen rendered trite as the ring in Hyde-Park. Each vagrant sonnetteer has sung the vale of Clwyd. The modest beauties of Loch Catrine have been laid bare to the vulgar gaze of cockney curiosity; and the affrighted Fauns and Dryads have trembled in their most sacred haunts, scared at their profanation by the portentous passage of a stage-coach.

It would not be an unamusing inquiry, nor one wanting in interest, to trace the causes which have given this different direction to the taste of the principal nations of Europe. I do not believe much in permanent national characters. Men are the children of circumstances. Nations remain whilst their characters change. The Paladins, who upheld the throne, and extended the empire of Charlemagne, bore as little resemblance to the companions in arms of the virtuous Bayard, as these did to the frivolous courtiers of Marie Antoinette: yet all belonged to the same nation and to the same class— all were equally French gentlemen.

Nor will the influence of climate afford a more satisfactory explanation of the difference. The sun shines with not less brilliancy on the proud dome of St. Peter's, than it did on the stately columns of the temple of Jove; the waves of the lake of Como reflect a sky of as deep an indigo as ever tinged the waters of the Larian. Yet the conquerors of the world have yielded to the dominion of priests; the haughtiest of men have given place to the most abject of slaves. Superstition reigns where the love of glory warmed every breast.

The olive tree still flourishes on the calcareous hills of Attica; the territory of Athens is yet barren of corn. The productions of Greece have suffered no alteration: her harvests are not less abundant or less regular in their periods. The climate is still the same; the soil has undergone no variation. Man alone is changed. The cradle of philosophy now only nurses the grossest ignorance. Little foreign blood has been mixed with the descendants of the ancient Greeks; yet the walks, that were once trod by Pericles and Plato, now groan under the weight of thieves and marauders. The most ingenious of men have given birth to a race who look with stupid indifference on the sublimest efforts of human genius. It is only by their love of theft the Mainotes can prove their Spartan origin.

The arts and sciences have been continually shifting their abode with the changeable relations of society. The sun of science has ceased to glitter in the 'waters of Helicon; but its influence, which is no longer felt on the forked top of Parnassus, has pierced the deepest recesses of the Druidical forests, and chasing away the religious gloom of the hyperborean regions, has shone with meridian splendour in the sacred isles. And who shall set bounds to its revolutions? Perhaps a few

years may see it traverse the wide ocean; and, following the course of empire, light up the vast wilderness of America. Already the descendants of Aristotle fill the schools of the barbarous Noricum; and yet a little while, and perhaps the countrymen of Bacon may be content to seek instruction on the banks of the Susquehanna. The new world may repay its debt of gratitude to the old, and the learning of Europe may again be tutored by the wisdom of the Atlantides.

But enticing as is the subject, I dare not pursue it: it would lead me too far. A theme which might fill volumes cannot be discussed in a few pages. Leaving the nobler and more extensive inquiry to those happier spirits, whose eagle-eye can, at a single glance, penetrate the whole system of the universe, and lay bare the most hidden mysteries of nature, I mean to dedicate the short space which is allotted me to a consideration of the causes which have of late years generated among my countrymen the love of the picturesque.

I speak of it as a new taste; for it appears to have been wholly unknown to our ancestors. They who were constantly surrounded with woods and rivers and fields, whose whole lives wore away amongst the beauties of nature, seem to have contemplated them with little enthusiasm. The wilder charms of mountain-scenery excited in their minds few pleasing emotions. Though they could not entirely help seeing them, their preference was always given to the milder and more artificial graces of cultivated nature. The stately and majestic flow of the Thames, the vagrant meanderings of the lazy Trent, have been more frequently sung by our earlier poets, than the lawless and impetuous course of the Tees or the Wharfe, with all their romantic accompaniments of precipices and waterfalls, of moss-grown rocks and over

hanging trees. The loaded bark gently gliding along the smooth surface of the waters, was to them a more grateful sight than the tumbling and foaming of the cataract, bearing in its bosom huge masses of rock. Like the Frenchman, who travelled unmoved through all the beauties of Derbyshire, who scarcely heeded the picturesque scenery of Matlock, and reserved all his admiration for the fat meadows of Cheshire-their idea of beauty was a good deal regulated by their idea of usefulness. Their houses were placed at the end of towns; long rows of trees divided the flatness of their parks into regular parallelograms; and the lofty wall, which kept in the deer, shut out all view of the country. Their artificial beauties were fashioned on the same principle; their extensive grass-plots fed their cattle; the ponds supplied the larder with carp and tench. The garden for fruit and vegetables, which modern decorum conceals among embowering trees, was spread out at the foot of the terrace, to keep them constantly in mind how much of its plenty their table owed to its produce.

The writings of Lord Bacon display at every page a deep and intense feeling for the works of nature. He loved to woo her in her most secret bower. His mind waited on her biddings. He was always watchful to surprise her secrets; yet his plan of a garden was formal and artificial. He had no other idea of beauty than straight walks and square plantations: his scheme was wholly architectural.

Honest Isaac Walton shows by his descriptions, that whilst hanging over the mountain-stream, intent to surprise the caution of the wily trout, he was not so exclusively occupied by his pursuit as to be wholly lost to the charm of the scenery around him. Yet his impressions were rather those of an Italian than of a modern Englishman.