said, and in present times I think I am authorized to say, the British one. As a brave man is not suddenly either elated by prosperity or depressed by adversity, so the oak displays not its verdure on the sun's first approach, nor drops it on his first departure. Add to this its majestic appearance, the rough grandeur of its bark and the wide protection of its branches.” "Indolence is a kind of centripetal force."

"I hate maritime expressions, similes, and allusions; my dislike, I suppose, proceeds from the unnaturalness of shipping, and the great share which art ever claims in that practice."

"I am thankful that my name is obnoxious to no pun.'

"It is a miserable thing to love where one hates; and yet it is not inconsistent."

"I cannot avoid comparing the ease and freedom I enjoy to the ease of an old shoe; where a certain degree of shabbiness is joined with the convenience.”

"Two words, 'no more,' have a singular pathos; reminding us at once of past pleasure and the future exclusion of it."

6

"The superior politeness of the French is in nothing more discernible than in the phrases used by them and us to express an affair being in agitation. The former says 'sur la tapis;' the latter upon the anvil.' Does it not show also the sincerity and serious face with which we enter upon business, and the negligent and jaunty air with which they perform even the most important?"

"There are many persons acquire to themselves a character of insincerity, from what is in truth mere inconstancy. And there are persons of warm but changeable passions, perhaps the sincerest of any in the very instant they make profession, but the very least to be depended on through the short duration of all extremes."

"Extreme volatile and sprightly tempers seem inconsistent with any great enjoyment. There is too much time wasted in mere transition from one object to another; no room for those deep impressions which are made alone by the duration of an idea; and are quite requisite to any strong sensation, either of pleasure or of pain. The bee to collect honey, or the spider to gather poison, must abide some time upon the weed or flower. They whose fluids are mere sal volatile, seem rather cheerful than happy men. The temper above described, is oftener the lot of wits, than of persons of great abilities."

Compare these extracts with the colloquial wit of Sydney Smith's articles, the heavy artillery of Carlyle, or the rapier-like dexterity of Macaulay. Habituated to the vigorous spirit and rich thought of later essayists and poets, we can say of such writings as these, as Selkirk said of the beasts in his lonely isle,

"Their tameness is shocking to me."

One of the most felicitous instances of Shenstone's prose is a brief sketch entitled "A Character," and said to be a portrait of himself. It was written with

a pencil, on the wall of his room at Oxford, in 1735. Perhaps we cannot better illustrate our view of this amiable, tasteful and egotistic devotee of rural and rhythmical enjoyment, than by quoting it:

"He was a youth so amply furnished with every excellence of mind, that he seemed alike capable of acquiring or disregarding the goods of fortune. He had indeed all the learning and erudition that can be derived from universities without the pedantry and ill manners which are too often their attendants. What few or none acquire by the most intense assiduity, he possessed by nature; I mean that elegance of taste, which disposed him to admire beauty under its great variety of appearances. It passed not unobserved by him either in the cut of a sleeve, or the integrity of a moral action. The proportion of a statue, the convenience of an edifice, the movement in a dance, and the complexion of a cheek or flower, afforded him sensations of beauty; that beauty which inferior geniuses are taught coldly to distinguish, or to discern rather than feel. He could trace the excellencies both of the courtier and the student; who are mutually ridiculous in the eyes of each other. He had nothing in his character which could obscure so great accomplishments, beside the want, the total want, of a desire to exhibit them. Through this it came to pass, that what would have raised another to the heights of reputation, was oftentimes in him passed over unregarded. For, in respect to ordinary observers, it is requisite to lay some stress yourself,

on what you intend should be remarked by others; and this never was his way. His knowledge of books had in some degree diminished his knowledge of the world; or rather the external forms and manners of it. His ordinary conversation was, perhaps, laden rather too frequently with sentiment, the usual fault of rigid students; and this he would in some degree have regulated better, did not the universality of his genius, together with the method of his education, so largely contribute to this amiable defect. This kind of awkwardness, (since his modesty will allow it no better name,) may be compared to the stiffness of a fine piece of brocade, whose turgescency indeed constitutes and is inseparable from its value.

"He gave delight by a happy boldness in the extirpation of common prejudices; which he could as readily penetrate, as he could humorously ridicule. And he had such entire possession of the hearts as well as the understandings of his friends, that he could soon make the most surprising paradoxes believed and well accepted. His image, like that of a sovereign, could give an additional value to the most precious one; and we no sooner believed our eyes that it was he who spake it, than we as readily believed whatever he had to say. In this he differed from Wr, that he had the talent of rendering the greatest virtues unenvied: whereas the latter shone more remarkably in making his very faults agreeable; I mean in regard to those few he had to exercise his skill."

When the creative power is deficient, minds of ideal tendency seek gratification by means of taste. What they cannot realize through inward effort, they attempt to image in outward forms. The sense of beauty and aspiration, uncombined with moral vigour or great intellectual gifts, is thus developed externally and, as it were, through a kind of compromise between ability and desire. This appears to be the philosophy of dilettantiism. The active imagination repudiates outward embellishment; the comprehensive mind disdains graceful artifice, and the large and earnest heart cannot pause to dally with inane sentimentalities. It is on this account that when taste is a prevailing trait, it implies the absence of great qualities, exactly as the epithet amiable, when exclusive, suggests the idea of a common-place character. Both are secondary qualities, desirable as adjuncts to higher capacities, as modifications of richer gifts, rather than as essential. They are only negative excellencies.

In the history of literature we find that extreme taste is the characteristic of decline. It was grossly violated by the old English dramatists, and morbidly esteemed by the writers of the Restoration. It is related chiefly to details and hence, to a certain extent, is unfavourable to broad, deep, and energetic developments. The verbal controversies of the Italian academies aptly indicated the degeneracy of the national life compared with the robust yet unrefined age of the "grim Tuscan ;" and it is in times when