weakness, indignant at honoured infamy, the words rouse one's blood like the mighty energy of a Demosthenes, or the trumpetblast, summoning to the battle-charge. Listen, for quote we must: WITHIN. He who yon lordly feast enjoyeth, He who doth rest on his couch of down, Under the feet of the trampling town: Liar betrayer-false as cruel, What is the doom for his dastard sin? His peers, they scorn?-high dames, they shun him? There yet his deeds are all trumpet-sounded, Maidens as fair as the summer morning, Watching him rise from the sparkling wine. It is surely well that, true to his high calling, the poet should employ his energies in uttering so stern a protest against some of the monster evils of our social system. If we, with our pure and soul-redeeming faith, too often content ourselves with looking at crime and misery, and then with sighings abundant, but without effort, pass by, like the Levite, on the other side, let us at least own and honour him who lifts up so loudly the voice of scorn for the ruiner, and pity for the ruined. There is that, too, in Barry Cornwall that speaks to our truest self-respect. There is the Honour all Men,' the reverence for man as man. Witness that piece of his which he names Rind and Fruit; it is a specimen only of many that remain unnoticed, a solitary sample of a goodly store; the rhythm is rather rough, but the thought is strong: 'You may boast of jewels,-coronets,- There is that within them nobler; You who prize the book's poor paper, The true, warm, strong Heart of Man.' We confess to a love for this English undefiled.' There is a point and a straight-forwardness in writing like this that makes it felt. And we verily believe that the pulpit might learn wisely from the poet in this thing. Cadences may be measured, and sentences balanced till they shall be sure to fall like melody on the listening ear, and men shall admire the soothing music of the strain. But we don't want that. We want to rouse men-to speak right home to their own heart and thought. And you must speak in earnest, and men will start up and feel your meaning instead of praising your speech. It is the gentle murmur of the smoothly-flowing stream that invites you to sleep: the river tearing over rough rocks, and rushing down torrent-like, but straight on to the sea, wakens you to mark its determined course. Let us say,' says an eloquent writer in Blackwood,* 'that a style which goes at once to the point, which is felt to get through business, and which carries with it no affectation, either real or apparent, is always a good style; and that no other style is good.' Elegance and beauty, bought at the expense of strength and power, are not worth the purchase-money. Any notice of the Poetry of the Day' would be unpardonably imperfect if it forgot to speak of the gentle, thoughtful, suffering strains of Elizabeth Barrett. True indeed it is that wild fancies and strange conceits sometimes mar her beauty and her power. Yet is there still very, very much both of power and of beauty left unspoiled. Her sketches alike of the material and of the spiritual world have all the delicacy of a woman's touch: they are most truly feminine in their nameless grace. When were ever the hidden workings of woman's self-sacrificing soul so laid bare to view as they are in that unequalled story of Bertha in the Lane,' where the dying girl surrenders unreproachingly, and struggles to yield unrepiningly, to her fairer sister her own faithless belovedfaithless through the power of that sister's surpassing charms. The martyr-spirit struggling to repress, or at least to hide, bitter regrets that will be felt in spite of effort, is portrayed with most touching truthfulness and with sad beauty, that is 'exceeding beautiful.' So real is it that we feel as if experience must surely have taught the strain. The holy influence of a Christian faith has refined and elevated the mind of the poetess, and has given a tone and a charm to her poetic breathings. Her sonnets display more of this noblest inspiration than her other pieces, though the traces of it are not wanting in any. We may not indulge in quotation as we willingly would, or we should detain our reader longer than our theme may * Blackwood, Nov. 1844. justify. One extract only we must make, and ask as we make it, who but a woman could have so crowned the first sorrowful exile's brow? Something thou hast to bear through womanhood,— Some pang paid down for each new human life, Some weariness in guarding such a life, Some coldness from the guarded; some mistrust From those thou hast too well served; from those beloved Within thy heart, and cruelty without; But go to! thy love Shall chant itself its own beatitudes, After its own life-working. A child's kiss Set on thy sighing lips shall make thee glad; A poor man, served by thee, shall make thee rich; Of service which thou renderest. Such a crown We have exhausted our space, but not our theme. There are many yet who demand a notice, and to whom we may hope to return. Robert Browning, with his quaintnesses, and yet with his energy and originality: Robert Nicoll, with his true-hearted endeavours to raise and elevate his brethren who are struggling, as he struggled, with poverty, and unkindness, and wrong; Charles Mackay, leaving the land of romance with its 'Island Legends,' to speak earnestly in his 'Voices from the Crowd;' besides many of our brethren from the other shores of the Atlantic, all ask our heed to their poetic thoughts and words. But for the present we pause. That the wrong may be righted, and the right be strengthened, is the great endeavour of the age. We look and hope for brighter and better times. Honour shall be given when we are gone, and the hour of triumph is nigh to those who have toiled to bring near that hour. And we hail with joy every deed of a patriot, and every voice of a poet, that may help, however humbly, the glorious progress of the common weal. VIII. TRANSCENDENTAL PHILOSOPHY.* THE terms Transcendentalism' and German Philosophy' are too generally accepted as equivalents; and, in consequence, both have been charged with the same mysticism and error. An outcry has been raised against the latter by sundry leaders of the religious community, as if it inevitably led to either idealism or pantheism; and, unless great care is taken by the guardians of the public mind, there is imminent peril of our going to the opposite extreme of an exclusive positive philosophy. The simple fact that there is this danger should make those of us who would avoid the more fatal follies of materialism most cautious how they invest with obloquy the term 'transcendental.' We propose, therefore, to submit some remarks upon this subject. But we beg to state that they are only prefatory to papers in which we intend to examine the relations of modern philosophy to theology. A considerable portion of Mill's Logic, Lewes's Biography of Philosophy, and Morell's Historical and Critical View of the Speculative Philosophy of Europe in the Nineteenth Century, must so extensively affect our English metaphysics, and bear so directly upon the most important religious questions, that we feel bound to enter on the investigation. And on the threshold we would fain hope so to conciliate our readers that they will at least give us their dispassionate attention. They will not superciliously declaim against metaphysics, neither will they coin new words of invective against transcendentalism. The treatise which now lies before us was written by M. Remusat, a Member of the Institute, as a preface to a report to the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences concerning prize essays upon German Philosophy. We mention it in connexion with this article, because it is, beyond all comparison, the most intelligible development of the theories of Kant, Fichte, and Schelling. It is profound, but so divested of all those repulsive peculiarities with which the works of those writers are chargeable, that it cannot fail to instruct as well as interest the inquirer. We strongly recommend it to every one who would acquaint himself with * De la Philosophie Allemande. Rapport à l'Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques, précédé d'une introduction sur les doctrines de Kant, de Fichte, de Schelling et de Hegel. Par C. De Remusat, Membre de l'Institut. Paris. 1845. speculations which, if they are to be refuted, must be refuted by other weapons than those of that ignorant bigotry which can obtain in letters as well as in religion, but which is never so unjust or so offensive as when it affects the prerogatives of both. In two pages, and with a brevity and definiteness which show his logical discrimination, M. Remusat thus gives us an outline of the four most celebrated schools : The German philosophy extends over a period which we might be warranted in comparing to the half century that elapsed in Greece after the school of Socrates. Kant is the author of this great movement. His modest life offered nothing to elevate him to the tragical heroism of the son of Sophroniscus, although the virtue of his character was as pure ; nevertheless his original genius almost ranks him with the greatest names in the history of thought. He it is who has, more markedly than any other, realised that doctrine of the moderns, that the human mind, in itself, isolated from all that it reflects, from all that it acquires, from all that it assumes, is the pure object of philosophy. The science, when thus understood, is both narrow in its limits and profound. It gives to reason an absolute certainty, and throws absolute doubt over all beside. If the world is problematical, if the human mind alone is not, then the existence of the world depends entirely on the human mind, and reason creates all that it conceives. This, at least, in the inference which Fichte has drawn from Kantism-Fichte, that patriot Stoic, whose creed was limited to the soul, and who raised upon the foundation of spiritual independence the whole of moral and political philosophy. But if thought produces all that it comprehends, that which exists exists only in conformity to the laws of thought, and the world is identical with intelligence; the representation of the ideal agrees with the representation of the real, and natural philosophy has, for its type, the philosophy of the human mind. Thus has Schelling been bold enough to think, and with the skill of a Grecian philosopher in blending poetry and physical science, this he has endeavoured to establish by the united force of method and imagination. Hegel has invested this same system of universal identity with the rigorous forms of a vast deduction, disguising the hypothesis under an algebraical formula, and creating from the whole a philosophy romanesque and demonstrative. Thus the idea only warrants its own existence," said Kant. Fichte adds: the idea creates nature." "Nature reproduces the idea," continues Schelling. The idea is nature," concludes Hegel. And thus the pantheism of Spinoza has revived under our eyes in the form of a sceptical idealism." -pp. iv.—vi. 66 We lay this translation before our readers in entire agreement with our author. Pantheism, under the form of a sceptical idealism, has been reproduced before us by Hegel and his school. And none would be more resolute in their protest against it than ourselves as against a theory which denies all mental as well as material objectivity-thus making the universe all mind and but one mind, and thus destroying all moral relation whatsoever. With it the least compromise is impossible. Thus far do we agree with the remonstrants against German philosophy. But we deny that it is the necessary and natural offspring of transcend |