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The more solid literature of a country is a thing which commonly accumulates in an age of no great general knowledge or refinement. Men so situated, finding no competent appreciation of their labours, sit down patiently to write for posterity. Every thing which comes from them is formidably heavy, though extremely valuable. But at a period like the present, when all men are readers, and a spirit of active intelligence and literary interest is abroad through the country, there is an eagerness to satisfy the general thirst, and an anxiety to bring forward what will be at once enjoyed and estimated. Hence the preponderance of weighty and scientific works formerly, and the unequalled proportion of talent which has been dedicated to periodical and fictitious writing in our own times.

There is no great danger that this should lead to any evil result. Amidst the vast increase of writers of genius, there will always be a sufficient number who will turn their attention to and keep up the solid fabric of literature, of which the foundations have long since been securely laid.

The productions of those more shadowy writers, who have become so numerous, tending, as we have seen, to keep up the spirit and the associations of Chivalry, must naturally produce a general- elegance and refinement of mind. In a government like ours there is nothing to be feared, but, on the contrary, much to be expected, in a political point of view, from these humanizing and polishing effects; and whoever considers the moral constitution of our nature, cannot fail to see, that it also leads to the encouragement of the virtues.

The principle upon which these writings come to be esteemed moral is this:-Every state of mind has a natural bent or affinity to some other. The reading of the higher species of works of fiction produces in the individual a certain exalted or tender and complacent tone of feeling, which is utterly opposed to and at variance with guilt. He has a natural disinclination to and feels totally out of humour for it. He lays down a volume of the last new novel, and, without knowing why, feels himself a better and a happier man. It is the want of understanding this principle of our constitution that has given occasion to so many indiscriminating philippics upon the encouragement of works of fiction.

The novels of that anonymous author, whose walk we have already particularized as so peculiarly his own, produce the same moral effect, by their gushing and inimitable tenderness, as is done by the Waverley novels, from their presenting us with the portrait of what is elegant and exalted. He gives us true pictures of common life, but not the least of what can be called vulgar. The writings of several novelists of the last age erred grievously, both against refined taste and morality, in as much as they presented us with the very filth of prisons, and familiarized us with the coarsest manners. The writer of the "Sketch Book" (a most delightful and original author) never injures or wearies us, except when he gets into the stale uninteresting track of describing low runaways and unsuccessful half-famished authors.

It is needless, however, farther to develop the moral means by which fiction operates. The gigantic talent and the great success which have been ex

hibited in this department of literature, have utterly confounded and put to silence those who used to be most forward in finding fault. And the present generation have lived to experience all that charm which fiction takes from and reflects back upon the affairs of life, enjoyed by every one, without the alloy of one conscientious pang, or the penalty of one admonitory reflection.

OBSERVATIONS ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY.

It is attempted, in the following observations, to state the chief grounds of the interest acknowledged to belong to the study of history, in the hopes of throwing some light on the cause of the defective ardour with which that study is, notwithstanding, prosecuted amongst us.

One obvious reason of such an interest is found in the various and striking representation which history affords us of human nature. Within the limited range of our personal observation, the character of the human mind, in the many original forms into which it is cast, is one source of interest to our intercourse with our fellow-beings; not in the arrogance of critical and philosophic observers of our species, but from simple human feeling, because we bear in our own bosoms the seeds and principles of that nature which is discovered to us in them; and which, whether it shews itself in strength or in weakness, in its greater and more beautiful qualities, or in its wildest disorder, still draws us by a strong instinctive love towards the manifestations of that living spirit of humanity to which we feel at every moment our own to be related. But the knowledge we can personally acquire, the intimacy into which we can thus enter with our species, is insufficient and unsatisfactory,

because it is restrained within the narrow circle in which we ourselves move and observe. History alone subjects MAN to our knowledge in all conditions and circumstances. States of existence, the most widely separated in nature, are here brought together under our inspection. Circumstances the most dissimilar to those comprehended by our own experience are delineated; and the human spirit in the midst of them, unfolded or perverted as it has been by their agency, or impenetrable as in its stronger character it has shewn itself, on one side to their benign, on the other to their noxious influence, is given to our contemplation. This, then, is one claim of history on our interest, that it makes known to us our nature in its fullest extent and capacity,—an interest which addresses itself, in the first place, to the feelings merely; but which gives to history, as furnishing authentic matter of the knowledge of human character, an especial title to the regard of the more intellectual mind, either exercising its sagacity in practical acquaintance with men, or enlightening its philosophy by the more extended and profounder speculative study of their For either investigation, the delineations which history furnishes of its subject, appear to be absolutely indispensable.

nature.

A second kind of interest, from a source altogether different, is that which is found in the greater actions of history, from their grandeur as objects to our imagination; and from that strong emotion which always takes possession of us while we witness the progress of events, momentous in their consequences to those who have part in them. While these great births of the times that are gone by are called up again before

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