“The moonbeams steep'd in silentness,

The steady weather-cock." The revolving, impatient wheel, the boundless versatility of Wilson's genius, quieted and at rest, as we see it in his poetry, could not be better represented than in these lines. În Coleridge, indeed, as in some true poets, we find all characters and varieties of intellect represented unconsciously and by anticipation, even as frost, fire, and rock-workeach contains all architecture and all art, silently anticipated in its varied forms and prophetic imitations.

In his periodical writings alone do we find anything like an adequate display of his varied powers. You saw only the half-man in the professor's chair, and only the quarter-man in his poetry; but in the “Noctes," and the satirico-serious papers he scattered over “Blackwood,'

," you saw the whole Wilson—the Cyclops now at play, and now manufacturing thunderbolts for Jove; now cachinnating in his cave, now throwing rocks and mountains at his enemies, and now pouring out awful complaints, and asking strange, yet reverent queries in the ear of the gods.

Wilson's relation to his age has been, like Byron's, somewhat uncertain and vacillating. He has been, on the whole, a "lost leader.” He has, properly speaking, belonged neither to the old nor new, neither to the conservative nor to the movement, neither to the infidel nor the evangelical sides. Indeed, our grand quarrel with him is, that he was not sufficiently in earnest; that he did not with his might what his hand found to do; that he hid his ten talents in a napkin; that he trifled with his inestimable powers, and had not a sufficiently strong sense of stewardship on his conscience. This has been often said, and we thought it generally agreed on, till our attention was turned to a pamphlet, entitled “Professor Wilson—a Memorial and Estimate,” which, amid tolerably good points and thoughts here and there, is written in a style which, for looseness, inaccuracy, verbosity, and affected obscurity, baffles description, besides abounding in flagrant and, we fear, wilful mis-statements, and in efforts at fine writing, which make

you

blush for Scottish literature. The

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poor creature who indites this farrago of pretentious nonsense, asserts that the “Life of Wilson seems to have been as truly fruitful as that of any author within the range of English literature," and proves the statement by the following portentous query :="That wild air of the unexpressed poet, the inglorious Milton, the Shakspere that might have been, what was it but a rich spice of the fantastic humour of the man, a part of that extraordinary character which so delighted in its sport, that, whether he jested on himself, or from behind a mask might be making some play of you, you knew not, nor were sure if it meant mirth, confidence, or a solemn earnest such as he only could appreciate ?” What this may mean we cannot tell; but the writer becomes a little more intelligible when he speaks, in some later portion of his production, of the great popularity which Wilson's redacted and collected works are to obtain, not appearing to know the fact, that the “Recreations of Christopher North,” published some twelve years ago, have never reached a second edition, and that old William Blackwood, one of the acutest bibliopoles that ever lived, refused to re-publish Wilson's principal articles in "Maga;"nor did the "Recreations” appear till after Blackwood's death. Splendid passages and inestimable thoughts, of course, abound in all that Wilson wrote, but the want of pervasive purpose, of genuine artistic instinct, of condensation, and of finish, has denied true unity, and perhaps permanent power, to his writings. He will probably be best remembered for his "Lights and Shadows"-a book which, although not a full discovery of his powers, lies in portable compass, and embalms that fine nationality which so peculiarly distinguished his genius. Probably a wise selection from his "Noctes," too, might become a popular book.

Wilson had every inducement to have done more than he did. He was a strong healthy nature; he had much leisure; he had great, perhaps too great facility of expression. He was the pet of the public for many years. But he did not, alas ! live habitually in his “great Taskmaster's eye.”' We quarrel not with his unhappy uncertainties of mind; they are but too incident to all imagi

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native and thoughtful spirits. We quarrel not with his “ waiting and wondering.” on the brink of the unseen, but his uncertainty should not have paralysed and emasculated a man of his gigantic proportions. If beset by doubts and demons, he ought to have tried at least to fight his way through them, as many a resolute spirit has done before him. What had he to endure, compared to Cowper, who for many years imagined that a being, mightier than the fallen angels-Ahrimanes himself-held him as his property, and yet who, under the pressure of this fearful delusion, wrote and did his best, and has left some works which, while satisfying the severest critics, are manuals and household words everywhere? Wilson, on the other hand, seldom wrote anything except from the compulsion of necessity. Although not a writer for bread, much of his writing arose to the tune of the knock of the printer's “devil ;” and his efforts for the advancement of the race, although we believe really sincere, were to the last degree fluctuating, irregular, and uncertain.

It is a proof, we think, of Wilson's weakness, as well as of his power, that he has been claimed as a possible prize on so many and such diverse sides. He might have been, says one, the greatest preacher of the age. He might have been, says another, the greatest actor of the day. He might have been, says a third, the greatest dramatist, next to Shakspere, that ever lived. He might have been, says a fourth, a powerful parliamentary orator. He might have been, says a fifth, a traveller superior to Bruce or Park. Now, while this proves the estimation in which men hold his vast versatility, it proves also, that there was something wrong and shattered in the structure of a mind which, while presenting so many angles to so many objects, never fully embraced any of them, and while displaying powers so universal, has left results so comparatively slender.

Nevertheless, after all these deductions, where shall we look for his like again? A more generous, a more wideminded, a more courteous, and a more gifted man, probably never lived. By nature he was Scotland's brightest son, not, perhaps, even excepting Burns; and he, Scott, and Burns, must rank everlastingly together as the

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first Three of her men of genius. A cheerless feeling of desolation creeps across us, as we remember—that majestic form shall press this earth no more; those eyes of fire shall sound human hearts no ‘more; that voice, mellow as that of the summer ocean breaking on a silver strand, shall swell and sink no more; and that large heart shall no more mirror nature and humanity on its stormy, yet sunlit surface. Yet long shall Scotland, ay, and the world, continue to cherish his image, and to bless his memory;

and whether or not he obtain a splendid mausoleum, he will not require it, for he can (we heard him once quote the words in reference to Scott, as he only could quote them)

A mightier monument command
The mountains of his native land.”

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No. X.-HENRY ROGERS. MR ROGERS has only risen of late into universal reputation, although he had long ago deserved it. It has fared with him as with some others who had for many years enjoyed a dubious and struggling, although real and rising fame, till some signal hit, some Song of the Shirt," or “ Eclipse of Faith,” introduced their names to millions who never heard of them before, and turned suddenly on their half-shadowed faces the broadest glare of fame. Thus, thousands upon

thousands who had never heard of Hood's “Progress of Cant,” or his “Comic Annuals," so soon as they read the “Song of the Shirt,” inquired eagerly for him, and began to read his earlier works. And so, although literary men were aware of Mr Rogers' existence, and that he was an able contributor to the “ Edinburgh Review, the general public knew not even his name till the “Eclipse of Faith" appeared, and till its great popularity excited a desire to become acquainted with his previous lucubrations. We met with the "Eclipse of Faith” at its first appearance, but have only newly risen from reading his collected

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articles, and propose to record our impressions while they are yet fresh and warm.

Henry Rogers, as a reviewer and writer, seems to think that he belongs to the school of Jeffrey and Macaulay, although possessed of more learning and imagination than either, of a higher moral sense and manlier power than the first, and of a freer diction and an easier vein of wit than the second; and the style of deference and idolatry he uses to them and to MacIntosh, might almost to his detractors appear either shameful from its hypocrisy, ludicrous from its affectation, or silly from the ignorance it discovers of his own claims and comparative merits. We defy any unprejudiced man to read the two volumes he has reprinted from the “Edinburgh Review," and not to feel that he has encountered, on the whole, the most accomplished, manliest, healthiest, and most Christian writer who ever adorned that celebrated periodical. If he has contributed to its pages no one article equal in brilliance to Jeffrey's papers on Alison and Swift, or to Macaulay's papers on Milton and Warren Hastings, his papers, taken en masse, are more natural, less laboured, full of a richer and more recondite learning, and written in a more conversational, more vigorous, and more thoroughly English style. His thought, too, is of a profounder, and, at the same time, clearer cast. Jeffrey had the subtlety of the lawyer, rather than the depth of the philosopher. Macaulay thinks generally like an eloquent special pleader. Henry Rogers is a candid, powerful, and all-sided thinker, and one who has fed his thought by a culture as diversified as it is deep. He is a scholar, a mathematician, a philosopher, a philologist, a man of taste and virtu, a divine, and a wit, and if not absolutely a poet, yet he verges often on poetical conception, and his free and fervid eloquence often kindles into the fire of poetry.

Every one who has read the “ Eclipse of Faith”—and who has not?_must remember how that remarkable work has collected all these varied powers and acquisitions into one burning focus, and must be ready to grant that, since Pascal, no knight has entered into the arena of religious controversy better equipped for fight, in strength of argu