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open compasses, which might be more axiom or causation would be falsified if or less extended; and the area of the they were absent. There are, then, in circle which they describe is not decomposable elements, from which natural. but artificial. It is so in two are derived more general laws; and ways, poth externally and internally from these, again, more special laws For, when I consider an event, I isolate and from these the facts which we ob it artificially from its natural surround. serve; just as in geometry, there are ings, and 1 compose it artificially of two or three primitive notions, from elements which do not form a natural which are deduced the properties of group. When I see a falling stone, I lines, and from these the properties of separate the fall from the anterior cir: surfaces, solids, and the numberless cumstances which are really connected forms which nature can produce or the with it; and I put together the fall, the mind imagine. We can now compre form, the structure, the color, the hend the value and meaning of that sound, and wenty other circumstances axiom of causation which governs al} which are really not connected with it. things, and which Mill has mutilated. A fact, then, is an arbitrary aggregate, There is an inner constraining force and at the same time an arbitrary which gives rise to every event, which severing ;* that is to say, a factitious unites every compound, which group, which separates things con- genders every actual fact. This signinected, and connects things that are fies, on the one hand, that there is a separate. Thụs, so long as we only re- reason for every thing ; that every fact gard nature by observation, we do not has its law; that every compound can see it as it is: we have only a pro- be reduced to simple elements that visional and illusory idea of it. Na every product implies factors; that ture is, in reality, a tapestry, of which every quality and every being must be we only see the reverse; this is why we reducible from some superior and antry to turn it. We strive to discover terior term. And it signifies, on the laws; that is, the natural groups which other hand, that the product is equivaare really distinct from their surround-lent to the factors, that both are but the ings, and composed of elements really same thing under different aspects ; connected We discover couples ; that that the cause does not differ in nature is to say, real compounds and real con from the effect; that the generating nections. We pass from the accidental powers are but elementary properties; to the necessary, from the relative to that the active force by which we reprethe absolute, from the appearance to sent Nature to our minds but the the reality; and having found these logical necessity which mutually transfirst couples, we practise upon them forms the compound and the simple, the same operation as we did upon the fact and the law. Thus we defacts, for, though in a less degree, they termine beforehand the limits of every are of the same

Though science; and we possess the potent more abstract, they are still complex. formula, which, establishing the invinThey may be decomposed and ex- cible connection and the spontaneous plained. There is some ulterior reason production of existe: "sies, places in Na for their existence. There is soine ture the moving spring of Nature, whilst cause or other which constructs and it drives home and fixes in the heart of unites them. In their case, as well as every living thing the iron fangs of ne for facts, we can search for generating cessity. elements into which they may be re

VIII. solved, and from which they may be deduced.

And this operation may be Can we arrive at a knowledge of continued until we have arrived at ele- these primary elements ? For my pary, ments wholly simple; that is to say, I think we can; and the reason is, that, such that their decomposition would being abstractions, they are not beyond involve a contradiction. Whether we the region of facts, but are comprised can find thein or not, they exist; the in them, so that we have only to ex: • An eminent student of physical science said tract them from the facts. Besides,

A fact is a superposition of laws." being the most abstract, that is, the

nature.

most general of all things, there are an accidental and local part, a vast no facts which do not comprise them, portion, which, like the rest, depends and from which we cannot extract on primitive laws, but not directly, only them. However limited our experience through an infinite circuit of consé may be, we can arrive at these primary quences, in such a way that between it notions; and it is from this observation and the primitive laws there is an inthat the modern German metaphy- finite hiatus, which can only be bridger! sicians have started in attempting their over by an infinite series of deductions vast constrrictions. They understood Such is the inexplicable part of that there are simple notions, that is to phenomena, and this is what the Ger say, indecomposable abstract facts, man metaphysicians tried to explain that the combinations of these engender They wished to deduce from their ele all others, and that the laws for their mentary theorems the form of the mutual union or contrarieties, are the planetary system, the various laws of primary laws of the universe. They physics and chemistry, the main types tried to attain to these ideas, and to of life, the progress of human civiliza. evolve by pure reason the world as ob- tions and thought. They contorted servation shows it to us. They have their universal formulæ with the view partly failed; and their gigantic edifice, of deriving from them particular cases ; factitious and fragile, hangs in ruins, they took indirect and remote consereminding one of those temporary quences as direct and proximate ones; scaffoldings which only serve to mark they omitted or suppressed the great out the plan of a future building. The work which is interposed between the reason is, that with a high notion of our first laws and the final consequences; powers, they had no exact view of their they discarded Chance from their conlimits. For we are outflanked on all struction, as a basis unworthy of sides by the infinity of time and space; science; and the void so left, badly we find ourselves thrown in the midst filled up by deceptive materials, caused of this monstrous universe like a shell the whole edifice to fall to ruins. on the beach, or an ant at the foot of a Does this amount to saying, that in steep slope. Here Mill is right. the facts with which this little corner Chance is at the end of all our knowl- of the universe furnishes us, every edge, as on the threshold of all our thing is local? By no means. postulates : we vainly try to rise, and ant were capable of making experithat by conjecture, to an initial state; ments, it might attain to the idea of a but this state depends on the preceding physical law, a living form, a repre. one, which depends on another, and so sentative sensation, an abstract thought; on; and thus we are forced to accept it for a foot of ground, on which there is as a pure postulate, and to give up the a thinking brain, includes all these. hope of deducing it, though we know Therefore, however limited be the field that it ought to be deduced. It is so in of the mind, it contains general facts; all sciences, in geology, natural history, that is, facts spread over very vast ex. physics, chemistry, psychology, history; ternal territories, into which its limitaand the primitive accidental fact ex- tion prevents it from penetrating. !! tends its effects into all parts of the the ant were capable of reasoning, it sphere in which it is comprised. If it might construct arithmetic, algebra, had been otherwise, we should have geometry, mechanics ; for a movement neither the same planets, nor the same of half an inch contains in the abstract, :hemical compounds, nor the same time, space, number, and force, all the vegetables, nor the same animals, nor materials of mathematics: therefore the same races of men, nor, perhaps, however limited the field of a mind's any of these kinds of beings. If an ant researches be, it includes universal were taken into another country, it would data; that is, facts spread over the see neither the same trees, nor insects, whole region of time and space. nor dispositions of the soil, nor changes Again, if the ant were a philosopher, it of the atmosphere, nor perhaps any of might evolve the ideas of existence, of these forms of existence. There is nothingness, and all the materiais of chen, in every fact and in every object, I metaphysics ; for any phenomenon, in

If an

terior or exterior, suffices to present | selves all the resources of he hunian these materials : therefore, however mind, the one in its practical, the limited the field of a mind be, it con- other in its speculative direction. The tains abso'ute truths; that is, such that first leads us to consider nature as an there is no object from which they assemblage of facts, the second as a could be absent. And this must system of laws: the exclusive employ. necessarily be so; for the more generalment of the first is English ; that of the a fact is, the fewer objects need we ex- second, German. If there is a place amine to meet with it. If it is universal, between these two nations, it is ours we meet with it everywhere ; if it is ab- We have extended the English ideas ir solute, we cannot escape meeting it. the eighteenth century; and Low Wo This is why, in spite of the narrowness can, in the nineteenth, add precision to of our experience, metaphysics, I mean German ideas. Our business is to rethe search for first causes, is possible, strain, to correct, to complete the two but on condition that we remain at a types of mind, one by the other, to great height, that we do not descend combine them together, to express into details, that we consider only the their ideas in a style.generally under. most simple elements of existence, and stood, and thus to produce from them the most general tendencies of nature. the universal mind. If any one were to collect the three or four great ideas in which our sciences

IX. result, and the three or four kinds of existence which make up our universe;

We went out. As it ever liappens in if he were to compare those two strange similar circumstances, each had caused quantities which we call duration and the other to reflect, and neither had extension, those principle forms or de convinced the other. But our reflecterminations of quantity which we call tions were short : in the presence of a physical laws, chemical types, and lovely August morning, all arguments living species, and that marvellous fall to the ground. The old walls, the representative power, the Mind, which, rain-worn stones, smiled in the rising without falling into quantity, repro

A fresh light rested on their emduces the other two and itself; if he brasures, on the keystones of the discovered among these three terms- cloisters, on the glossy ivy leaves. the

pure quantity, the determined Roses and honeysuckles climbed the quantity, and the suppressed quantity* walls, and their flowers quivered and -such an order that the first must re- sparkled in the light breeze. The quire the second, and the second the fountains murmured in the vast lonely third; if he thus established that the courts. The beautiful town stood out pure quantity is the necessary com- from the morning's mist, as adorned mencement of Nature, and that and tranquil as a fairy palace, and its Thought is the extreme term at which robe of soft rosy vapor was indented, Nature is wholly suspended ; if, again, as an embroidery of the Renaissance, isolating the elements of these data, he by a border of towers, cloisters, and showed that they must be combined palaces, each enclosed in verdure and just as they are combined, and not decked with flowers. The archite ture otherwise : If he proved, moreover, of all ages had mingled their ar hes, that there are no other elements, and trefoils, statues, and columns; ime hat there can be no other, he would had softened their tints; the sun imited have sketched out a system of meta- them in its light, and the old city physics without encroaching on the seemed a shrine to which every age and positive sciences, and have attained the every genius had successively added a source without being obliged to descend jewel. Beyond this, the river rolled its to trace the various streams.

· broad sheets of silver: the mowers In my opinion, these two great stood up to the knee in the high grass operations, Experience, as you have of the meadows. Myriads of buttercups described it, and Abstraction, as I have and meadow-sweets; grasses, bending tried to define it, comprise in them under the weight of their gray heads,

* Die aufgehobenc Quantität. plants sated with the dew of the night

sun.

swarmed in the rich soil. Words can spent their lives on the sublime and not express this freshness of tints, this the monotonous. Others, making a luxuriance of vegetation. The more medley of crime and heroism, had conthe long line of shade receded, the ducted, through darkness and flashes more brilliant, and full of life the of lightning, a train of contorted and flowers appeared. On seeing them, terrible figures, desperate with re. virgin and timid in their gilded veil, I morse, relieved by their grandeur. thought of the blushing cheeks and fine Men wanted to rest after so many modest eyes of a young girl who puts efforts and so much excess. On the on for the first time her necklace of going out of the imaginative, sentimen. jewels. Around, as though to guard tal and Satanic school, Tennyson ap: them, enormous trees, four centuries peared exquisite. All the forms and old, extended in regular lines ; and I ideas which had pleased them were found in them a new trace of that found in him, but purified, modulated, practical good sense which has effected set in a splendid style. He completed revolutions without committing, rav, an age; he enjoyed that which had ages; which, while reforming in all agitated others; his poetry was like directions, has destroyed nothing; the lovely evenings in summer : the w ich has preserved both its trees and outlines of the landscape are then the ite constitution, which has lopped off same as in the daytime; but the splen. the dead branches without levelling the dor of the dazzling celestial arch is trunk; which alone, in our days, among dulled ; the re-invigorated flowers lift all nations, is in the enjoyment not only themselves up, and the calm, sun on of the present, but of the past. the horixon, harmoniously cast a net.

work of crimson rays over the woods and meadows which it just before

burned by its brightness.
CHAPTER VI.

II.
Poetry.--Tennyson.

What first attracted people were

Tennyson's portraits of women. AdeI.

line, Eleanore, Lilian, the May Quzen, WHEN Tennyson published his first were keepsake characters, from, the poems, the critics found 'fault with hand of a lover and an artist. The them. He held his peace ; for ten keepsake is gilt-edged, embossed with years no one saw his name in a review, flowers and decorations, richly got up, nor even in a publisher's catalogue. But soft, full of delicate faces, always ele when he appeared again before the gant and always correct, which ye public, his books had made their way might take to be sketched at random, alone and under the surface, and he and which are yet drawn carefully, on passed at once for the greatest poet of white vellum, slightly touched by their his country and his time.

outline, all selected to rest and occupy Men were surprised, and with a pleas- the soft, white hands of a young bride ing surprise. The potent generation of or a girl. I have translated many poets who had just died out, had pass. ideas and many styles, but I shall 101 ed like a whirlwind. Like their fore- attempt to translate one of these por: runn :rs of the sixteenth century, they traits. Each word of them is like a bad (arried away and hurried every tint, curiously deepened or shaded by thing to its extreme. Some had cull. the neighboring tint, with all the bolded gigantic legends, piled up dreams, ness and results of the happiest refine. ra isacked the East, Greece, Arabia, ment. The least alteration would ob the middle ages, and overloaded the scure all. And there an art so just, so human imagination with hues and consummate, is neccessary to paint the fancies from every clime. Others had charming prettinesses, the sudden haut buried themselves in metaphysics and eurs, the half blushes, the imperceptible moral philosophy, had mused indefa- and fleeting caprices of feminine beauty rigably on the condition of man, and | He opposes, harmonizes them, makes

low."

of them, as it were, a gallery. Here is | drawing-room and in the rustic hedge. the frolicsome child, the little fluttering rows, the rare or wild flowers whose fairy, who claps her tiny hands, who, scent or beauty could charm or amuse

him. Men entered into his pleasure ; “ So innocent-arch, so cunning-simple, From beneath her gather'd wimple

smelt the grateful bouquets which he Glancing with black-beaded eyes,

knew so well how t put tựgether ; Till the lightning laughters dimple preferred those which he took from the The baby-roses in her cheeks ;

country; found that his talent was no Then away she flies." .

where more at ease. They admired Then the pensive fair, who dreams, the minute observation and refined with large open blue eyes :

sentiment which knew how to grasp • Whence that aery bloom of thine,

and interpret the fleeting aspects of Like a lily which the sun

things. In the Dying Swan they forgot Looks thro' in his sad decline,

that the subject was almost threadbare And a rose-bush leans upon, Thou that faintly smilest still,

and the interest somewhat slight, that As a Naiad in a well,

they might appreciate such verses as Looking at the set of day." +

this : Anew “the ever varying Madeline, now

“ Some blue peaks in the distance rose, smiling, then frowning, then joyful

And white against the cold-white sky,

Shone out their crowning snows. again, then angry, then uncertain be- One willow over the river wept, ween the two :

And shook the wave as the wind did sigh ;

Above in the wind was the swallow, “ Frowns perfect-sweet along the brow Chasing itself at its own wild will, Light-glooming over yes divine,

And far thro' the marish green and still Like little clouds sun-fringed." I

The tangled water-corrses slept,

Shot over with purple, and green, and yel The poet returned well pleased to all things, refined and exquisite. He caressed them so carefully, that his verses

But these melancholy pictures did not appeared at times far-fetched, affected, display him entirely ; men accompanied almost euphuistic. He gave them too him to the land of the sun, toward the much adornment and polishing; he soft voluptuousness of southern seas; Beemed like an epicurean in style as they returned, with an involuntary well as in beauty. He looked for fascination, to the verses in which he pretty rustic scenes, touching remem- depicts the companions of Ulysses, brances, curious or pure sentiments. who, slumbering in the land of the He made them into elegies, pastorals, Lotos-eaters, happy dreamers like him and idyls. He wrote in every accent, self, forgot their country, a ad renounc and delighted in entering into the feeled action : ings of all ages.

He wrote of St. A land of streams! some, like a downward Agnes, St. Simeon Stylites, Ulysses,

smoke,

Slow-dropping veils of thinnest lawn, did go ; Enone, Sir Galahad, Lady Člare, And some thro' wavering lights and shadows Fatima, the Sleeping Beauty. He broke, imitated alternately Homer and Chau

Rolling a slumbrous sheet of foam below. cer, Theocritus and Spenser, the old

They saw the gleaming river seaward flow

From the inner land : far off, three mountain English poets and the old Arabian

tops, poets. He gave life successively to the Three silent pinnacles of aged snow, little real events of English life, and

Stood sun-sei flush'd : and, dew'd with show

ery drops, great fantastic adventures of extinguish- Up-clomb the shadowy pine above the wover ed chivalry. He was like those musi

copse.... cians who use their bow in the service

There is sweet music here that softer falls of all masters. He strayed through Than petal from blown roses on the grass, ijature and history, with no foregone Or night-dews on still waters between walls conclusions, without fierce passion,

Of shadowy granite, in a gleaming pass ;

Music that gentlier on the spirit lies, bent on feeling, relishing, culling from Than tir'd eyeiids upon tir'de yes ; all parts, ir. the flower-stand of the Music that brings sweet sleep dowú from the