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and his utility is exhibited in employing the materials, presented by a few, for the durable advantage of all. Our vanity is repressed by the consideration, that time has destroyed the names of the architects and founders of these mighty piles. Perhaps their titles and dignities were engraven on the corner stones; perhaps their of fices were perpetuated to succeeding generations ; and perhaps they welcomed and received the awful honours of adoration ; but no historian has related their deeds, no

poet has sung their praises, and irremediable oblivion covers their names, their virtues, and their crimes. Philosophy has determined that utility is the proper foundation of morals. If part of the time, the wealth, and the labour, which were expended on the architectural glories of Luxore, had been applied to the diffusion of knowledge and virtue, to the practical purposes of religion, and to the great objects of political economy, the happiness of the people would have ennobled the grandeur of the princes. We should then indeed have seriously regretted, that time has covered with a garment of darkness all their personal and moral attributes ; and though massy walls and broken gateways would not now be the evidence of their magnificence; though they might not now be extolled as the benevolent guardians of the Theban pebple, yet philosophy would not be compelled to consider them as the ostentatious founders of perishable monuments, where robbers lurk for prey, and outlaws find protection. The nature of the subject easily allures a philosophick mind into various similar reflections, but the prescribed limits of this article will not authorise any further extension of remarks on the ancient

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Now this city of the gods has dwindled to a few mouldering ruins, but the Iliad flourishes in unfading purity, and with increasing honours. Nor should the advocate of Homer's greatness refrain from recording the obligations, which opulence and power owe to enterprise and learning; for if the priests and monarchs of Thebes were se cretly compelled by reflection to acknowledge, that the corrosion of time and the ravages of war might in future ages destroy their temples and palaces, they would have reJoiced in triumphs and feasts, had their imagination suggested the hope, that some of their columns, vestibules, and halls, would have been illustrated and perpetuated in the learned travels of Norden and Pococke.

Nov. 24, 1806.

Q.

For the Anthology,

We feel a sincere pleasure in an opportunity of inviting our readers to the works of an original writer. They form a rare curiosity in the modern Lyceum, which invention has stocked with monsters, and where plagiarism has exhausted her powers in deforming, what she could not disguise. The essays of MR. FOSTER exhibit in all the novelties of genius the vestiges of Nature, which, among the paste-board scenery and painted passions of our mechanick scribblers, is as delightful,as a rude rock and wild oak,among the chinese gardens and smooth-shaven lawns. Mr. Foster has certainly thought much, which is a peculiarity in our times, when books have supplied the place of reflection, and the writings of others have supplanted our own conceptions and judgment. His researches have not been directed by a wish to gain the authority of great names, but to make his own name an authority for his own sentiments. He has not laboured to give form and system to the suggestions of others, but to develope and impress his own sentiments, His energy supports him through an enterprize, in which he demands submission to his doctrines, and enforces his demand by his own resour ces. Mr. Foster writes as he thinks. He has expressed bold thoughts in the words, in which they were conceived. His arguments are supported by the language, in which they controled his own judgment. opinions, in the moment of their conception sturdy as Hercules in the cradle, he has not cramped into form and symmetry with the swaddling bands of rhetorick. His style exhibits the manly majesty of a giant in the games, who challenges superiority more from the vigour of his muscles, than excellence in the art. He has all the ease of courage without the grace of taste, The letter we have selected, as a specimen of his style and sentiments, forms a part of his essay "On decision of character." After considering the evils of an unsettled and irresolute mind, and the advantages of a firm and settled pur purpose, he proceeds to examine the elements, which compose a decided eharacter. The third letter contains part of this examination.

ON DECISION OF

THIS indispensable basis, confidence of opinion, is however not enough to constitute the character in question. For there have been many persons of clear independent understanding, who have been sensible and proud of a much harder grasp of thought than ordinary men, and have held the most decided opinions on important things to be done,who have yet exhibited,in the listlessness or inconstancy of their actions, a contrast and a disgrace to the operations of their understandings. For want of some cogent feeling impelling them toward the practical assertion of every internal decision, they have been still left where they were; and a dignified judgment has been seen in the hapless plight of hay

CHARACTER.

His

ing no effective forces to execute its decrees.

It is evident then, and I perceive I have partly anticipated this article in the first letter, that another essential principle of the character is, a total incapability of surrendering to indifference, or delay the serious determinations of the mind. A strenuous will must attend on the conclusions of thought, and constantly, as they are matured, go forth to the accomplishment of them with a nervous agency which nothing can divert or control. The intellect of such a man is invested, if I may so describe it, with a glowing atmosphere of passion, under the influence of which the cold dictates of reason. take fire,& spring into active powers,

Revert once more in your thoughts to the persons most remarkably distinguished by this decision. You will perceive that instead of quiescently regarding the conclusions, which reason has undergone some labour to form, as an apology for labouring no further, they consider them simply as the preparation for experimental enterprise, and as of no more worth, till so employed, than the entombed lamps of the Rosicrucians. They cannot be content long in a region of such tenuity, as that of mere intellectual arrange ments they go thither, as an ambitious adventurer anciently went to Delphi, to consult, but not to reside. You will therefore find them almost uniformly in determined pursuit of some object, on which they fix a keen and steady look, and which they never lose sight of,while they follow it through the innumerable multitude and confusion of other things, of which the world is full. They pursue it, as a sportsman does a fox, at all hazards, over hill and dale and brook, through wood and brake and every where; and they will grasp it at length unless it go into the earth.

This display of systematick energy seems to indicate a constitution of mind, in which the passions are exactly commensurate with the intellectual part, and, at the same time, hold an inseparable correspondence with it, like the faithful sympathy of the tides with the phases of the moon. There is such an equality and connexion, that subjects of the decisions of judgment become proportionally and of course the objects of passion. When the judgment decides with a very strong preference, that same strength of preference takes place also on the passions, and becomes intense devotion. If this strong preference of judgment continues, the passions will therefore be fixed at a pitch of constant energy, and this will produce the style of conduct which I have described. When, therefore, a firm self-confiding judgment fails to make a decisive character, it is evident, that either there is in that mind a deficient measure of passion, which makes an indolent or irresolute man; or that the passions perversely sometimes coincide with judgment and sometimes desert it, which makes an inconsistent or versatile man.

The manner of a person actu- There is no man so irresolute ated by such a spirit, seems to as not to act with determination in say,...Do you think that I would many single cases, where the monot disdain to adopt a purpose tive is powerful and simple, and which I would not devote my ut- where there is no need of plan most force to effect, or that, hav- and perseverance; but this gives ing thus devoted my exertions, I no claim to the term Character, will intermit or withdraw them, which expresses the habitual tenthrough indolence, debility, or ca- our of a man's active being. The price, or that I will surrender my character may be displayed in the object to any interference except successive unconnected undertakthe uncontrollable dispensations of ings which are each of limited ex Providence? No, I am linked to tent, and end with the attainment my determination with iron bands; of their objects. But it is seen to my purpose is become my fate, the greatest advantage in those and I must accomplish it, unless grand schemes of action, which arrested by the sterner force of ca- have no necessary period of con, lamity or death. clusion, which continue onward

through successive years, and extend even to that frontier of darkness, where the acting spirit itself becomes invisible.

I have repeatedly remarked to you, in conversation, the effect of what has been called a Ruling Passion. When its object is noble, and an enlightened understanding directs its movements, it appears to me a great felicity; but whether its object be noble or not, it infallibly creates, where it exists in great force, that active ardent constancy which I describe as a capital feature of the decisive character. The subject of such a commanding passion wonders, if indeed he were at leisure to wonder, at the persons who pretend to attach importance to an object which they make none but the most languid efforts to secure. The utmost powers of the man are constrained into the service of the favourite cause by this mighty passion, which sweeps away as it advances all the trivial objections and little opposing motives, and seems almost to open a way through impossibilities. This spirit comes on him in the morning, as if it darted directly from the clouds, and commands and impels him through the day with a power from which he could not emancipate himself if he would. When the force of habit is added, the determination becomes altogether invincible, and seems to assume rank with the great laws of nature, making it as certain that such a man will persist in his course, as that in the morning the sun will rise.

A persisting untameable efficacy of soul gives a seductive and pernicious dignity, even to a character and a course, which every moral principle forbids us to approve. Often in the narrations of history and fiction, an agent of the most

dreadful designs compels a senti ment of deep respect for the unconquerable mind displayed in their execution. While we shudder at his activity, we say with regret, mingled with an admiration which borders on partiality,... What a noble being this would have been, if goodness had been his destiny. The partiality is evinced in the very selection of terms by which we refer his atrocity, rather to his destiny, than to his choice. I wonder whether an emotion, like this, has not been experienced by each reader of Paradise Lost, relative to the leader of infernal spirits ; a proof, if such were the fact, that a very serious errour has been committed in the tremendous creations of the supreme poet. In some of the high examples of ambition, we almost revere the mighty spring of character which impelled them forward through the longest series of action, superiour to doubt and fluctuation, and disdainful of ease, of pleasures, of opposition, and of hazard. We bow to the ambitious spirit which reached the true sublime, in the memorable reply of Pompey to his friends, who dissuaded him from venturing without delay, on a tempestuous sea, in order to be at Rome on an important occasion: "It is necessary for me to go, it is not necessary for me to live."

The spirit of revenge has produced wonderful examples of this unremitting constancy to a purpose. Zanga is a well-supported illustration. And you may have read a real instance of, I think, a Spaniard, who being injured by another inhabitant of the same town, resolved to destroy him : the other was apprized of this determination, and removed, with the utmost secrecy as he thought,

to another town, at a considerable distance, where, however, he had not been more than a day or two, before he found that his enemy was arrived there. He removed in the same manner to several parts of the kingdom remote from each other; but, in every place, quickly perceived that his deadly pursuer was near him. At last, he went to South America, where he had enjoyed his fancied security but a very short time, before his unrelenting enemy came up with him, and effected his tragical purpose.

*****. But not less of this invincible pertinacity has been displayed by the disciples of virtue and the benefactors of mankind. In this distinction, no man ever exceeded or ever will exceed our great philanthropist, the late illustrious Howard. The energy of his determination was so great, that if, instead of being habitual, it could have appeared in an intermitted form, operating only for a short time, on particular occasions, it would have seemed a vehement impetuosity; but by being continuous, it had an equability of manner, which scarcely appeared to exceed the tone of a calm constancy. It was the calmness of an intensity, kept uniform by the nature of the human mind forbidding it to be more, and the character of the individual forbidding it to be less. The habitual passion of his mind was a measure of feeling, almost equal to the temporary extremes and paroxysms of common minds as a great river, in its customary state, is equal to a small or moderate one, when swollen to a torrent.

The moment of finishing his plans in deliberation, and commencing them in action, was the same. I wonder what must have Vol. III. No. 11. 4B

been the amount of that bribe, in emolument or pleasure, that would have detained him a week inactive, after their final adjustment. The law which carries water down a declivity was not more unconquerable and invariable, than the determination of his feelings toward the main object. This ob ject he pursued with a devotion, which seemed to annihilate to his perceptions all others; it was a stern pathos of soul, on which the beauties of nature and of art had no power. He had no leisure feeling, which he could spare, to be diverted among the innumerable varieties of the extensive scene, which he traversed; all his subordinate feelings lost their separate existence and operation, by falling into the grand one. There have not been wanting trivial minds to mark this as a fault in his character.

But the mere man of taste ought to be silent respecting such a man as Howard; he is above their sphere of judgment. The invisible spirits, who fulfil their commission of philanthropy among mortals, do not care about pictures, statues, and sumptuous buildings; ...no more did he. Or at least, regarding every moment as under the claims of imperious duty, his curiosity waited in vain for the hour to come, when his conscience should present the gratification of it as the most sacred duty of that hour. If he was still at every hour, where it came, fated to feel the attractions of the fine arts but the second claim, they might be sure of their revenge, for no other man will ever visit Rome under such a despotick consciousness of duty, as to refuse himself time for surveying the magnificence of its ruins. Such a sin against taste is very far beyond the reach of common saintship to commit. It im

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