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all ages more worthy to act their part in the general plan, it seems wonderful how those whose professed pursuit was wisdom should have looked on religion, not alone with that indifference which was the only feeling evinced by the heathen philosophers to wards the gross mythology of their time, but with hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness. One would rather have expected, that after such a review, men professing the real spirit which searches after truth and wisdom, if unhappily they were still unable to persuade themselves that a religion so worthy of the Deity (if such an expression may be used) had emanated directly from revelation, might have had the modesty to lay their finger on their lip, and distrust their own judgment, instead of disturbing the faith of others; or, if confirmed in their incredulity, might have taken the leisure to compute at least what was to be gained by rooting up a tree which bore such goodly fruits, without having the means of replacing it by aught which could produce the same advantage to the commonwealth.

THE LOVE OF MANKIND NECESSARY TO INDIVIDUAL

HAPPINESS.

Our ideas of happiness are chiefly caught by reflection from the minds of others, and hence it may be observed that those enjoy the most uniform train of good spirits who are thinking much of others and little of themselves. The contemplation of our minds, however salutary for the purposes of self-examination and humiliation, must always be a solemn task, since

*

the best will find enough for remorse, the wisest for regret, the most fortunate for sorrow. And to this influence more than to any natural disposition to melancholy, to the pain which necessarily follows this anatomizing of his own thoughts and feelings which is so decidedly and peculiarly the characteristic of the Pilgrimage, we are disposed in a great measure to ascribe that sombre tint which pervades the poem. The poetry which treats of the actions and sentiments of others may be grave or gay according to the light in which the author chooses to view his subject, but he who shall mine long and deeply for materials in his own bosom will encounter abysses at the depth of which he must necessarily tremble. This moral truth appears to us to afford in a great measure a key to the peculiar tone of Lord Byron. How then, will the reader ask, is our proposition to be reconciled to that which preceded it? If the necessary result of an inquiry into our own thoughts be the conviction that all is vanity and vexation of spirit, why should we object to a style of writing, whatever its consequences may be, which involves in it truths as certain as they are melancholy? the study of our own enjoyments leads us to doubt the reality of all except the indisputable pleasures of sense, and inclines us, therefore, towards the Epicurean system, it is nature, it may be said, and not the poet, which urges us upon the fatal conclusion. But this is Nature, when she created man a social being, gave him the capacity of drawing that happiness from his relations with the rest of his race, which he is

not so.

*Lord Byron's "Childe Harold.”

If

These re

doomed to seek in vain in his own bosom. lations cannot be the source of happiness to us if we despise or hate the kind with whom it is their office to unite us more closely. If the earth be a den of fools and knaves, from whom the man of genius differs by the more mercurial and exalted character of his intellect, it is natural that he should look down with pitiless scorn on creatures so inferior. But if, as we believe, each man, in his own degree, possesses a portion of the ethereal flame, however smothered by unfavourable circumstances, it is or should be enough to secure the most mean from the scorn of genius, as well as from the oppression of power; and such being the case, the relations which we hold with society, through all their gradations, are channels through which the better affections of the loftiest may, without degradation, extend themselves to the lowest.

Farther, it is not only our social connexions which are assigned us, in order to qualify that contempt of mankind, which, too deeply indulged, tends only to intense selfishness; we have other and higher motives for enduring the lot of humanity-sorrow, and pain, and trouble-with patience of our own griefs, and commiseration for those of others. The wisest and the best of all ages have agreed, that our present life is a state of trial, not of enjoyment, and that we now suffer sorrow that we may hereafter be partakers of happiIf this be true, and it has seldom been long, or at least ultimately doubted by those who have turned their attention to so serious an investigation, other and worthier motives of action and endurance must necessarily occur to the mind than philosophy can teach or human pride supply. It is not our intention to do

ness.

more than merely indicate so ample a topic for consideration. But we cannot forbear to add, that the vanishing of Lord Byron's Pilgrim strongly reminded us of the close of another work, the delight of our childhood. Childe Harold, a prominent character in the first volume of the Pilgrimage, fades gradually from the scene, like the spectre associate who performed the first stages of his journey with a knight-errant, bearing all the appearance of a living man, but who lessened to the sight by degrees, and became at length totally invisible when they approached the cavern where his mortal remains were deposited.

"But where is he, the Pilgrim of my song,
The being who upheld it through the past?
Methinks he cometh late and tarries long.
He is no more-these breathings are his last
His wanderings done, his visions ebbing fast,
And he himself as nothing. If he was
Aught but a phantasy, and could be class'd
With forms which live and suffer-let that pass-
His shadow fades away into destruction's mass."

In the corresponding passage of the "Tales of the Genii," Ridley, the amiable author or compiler of the collection, expresses himself to the following purport, -for we have not the book at hand to do justice to his precise words,—" Reader, the Genii are no more, and Horam, but the phantom of my mind, fiction himself and fiction all that he seemed to write, speaks not again. But lament not their loss, since if desirous to see virtue guarded by miracles, Religion can display before you scenes tremendous, wonderful, and great, more worthy of your sight than aught that human fancy can conceive-the moral veil rent in twain and

the Sun of Righteousness arising from the thick clouds of heathen darkness."

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The earlier champions of the Reformation were frequently doomed to expiate their heretical opinions. Among the hardiest of these was Bonnivard, whom Lord Byron has selected as the hero of his poem.* He was imprisoned in Chillon for nearly six years, namely, from 1530 to 1536, and underwent all the rigour of the closest captivity. But it has not been the purpose of Lord Byron to paint the peculiar character of Bonnivard, nor do we find anything to remind us of the steady firmness and patient endurance of one suffering for consciencesake. The object of the poem, like that of Sterne's celebrated sketch of the prisoner, is to consider captivity in the abstract, and to mark its effects in gradually chilling the mental powers as it benumbs and freezes the animal frame, until the unfortunate victim becomes, as it were, a part of his dungeon, and identified with his chains. This transmutation we believe to be founded on fact; at least, in the Low Countries, where capital punishments are never inflicted, and where solitary confinement for life is substituted in the case of enormous crimes, something like it may be witnessed. On particular days in the course of the year, these victims of a jurisprudence which calls itself humane, are presented to the

*The "Prisoner of Chillon."

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