I am still a poetic pilgrim, and cannot tread the marble ailes of St. Genevieve, without thinking that the authors of Merope and Héloise lie buried beneath me.

And yet their names have been breathed from too many mouths to excite much enthusiasm from mine. Their measure of fame seems full, even to overflowing; and, to be plain, it suits not my vanity to utter supernumerary panegyric. Popularity during life is, after all, a passing, as well as a vulgar reward; be it ever so merited, posterity seems more inclined to reverse than to establish the decree. We consider ourselves always the fit judges of the penultimate works of genius, and do not love to be anticipated. We are indignant with the past age of critics and admirers, who dared to usurp our rights, and attempt to confer prematurely the meed of immortality on their contemporaries. We feel that the living had no claim or title to praise each other face to face, and that these points should have been left to us to settle. The reasons may be fantastic, but the existence of the feeling is indisputable. Rousseau and Voltaire--do I not in a degree, and in spite of all my veneration, feel ashamed to repeat those hackneyed names, and to confound my taste with that of every breechless man and beardless boy, who have learned to cry bravo in honour of those sounds?

Thus

Genius must undergo a purgatory of neglect, and must pay its visit, like Dante, to the infernal regions of oblivion, ere it can reach the paradise of lasting fame. Its orbit is one of eccentricity, and like the comet, burn it ever so bright, it must disappear and be forgotten for a while. We are jealous of fame that has suffered no interruption-it offends our vision, and we must bury, if we would not hate it. it is with Pope and his school :-some critics cry out against the neglect, the inhumation they are undergoing. Let these indignant sons of taste be tranquil,—all things fulfil their destiny. Let the names of genius, so long and so much tainted by admirers and imitators, sink gently for an interval into silence, till their homeliness and satiety wear off, and their gloss returns afresh. Let us be contented with the protest generously uttered; this will suffice to lay the grass green over its momentary grave, anon it shall arise like a giant refreshed with slumber, and the succeeding age will behold but its beauty and sublimity, purified from the taints of a too vulgar and familiar admiration.

Now, luckily for us, we can afford to do this; we have a change of scenes and a new relay of actors to bring before us--and proper men they are, good ranters some and classic figures others, as any our country has ever enjoyed. But France, owing to whatever causes, has no such literary relay; and even if the genius, which it is naturally to be supposed she must possess, had been called forth, it would have terrible obstacles to overcome. The critics of that land are a cold, servile brood, adorers of sameness and things old, and dreading hugely any innovation that would distance them into their real insignificance. This body must be utterly overthrown ere any thing farther can be effected in the march of genius; and to overthrow them will be extremely difficult, backed as they are by the popular prejudice, that any attempt at originality would be to imitate the English;-true Frenchmen, they stand in awe of this most nonsensical of all parodoxes, viz. the unoriginality of originality itself. Our countrymen, on the contrary, are an independent race, and have at least two fashions in the year—

bear witness, Bond-street and the Blues. And this is as it should be: -novelty is an innate craving and law of our nature, and certain-cut poets must go out of fashion for a while as well as certain-cut coats,in a little time all will come round as before. 'Tis not perpetual banishment, but merely a momentary exile, highly advantageous to these dead wits, if they knew but all, and very amusing to them doubtless, should they have liberty or leisure to contemplate the revolutions of this nether world.

France, however, must be sparing of contempt towards her own old writers; she must be cautious in indulging caprice of this kind, inasmuch as she cannot afford to dispense with any class of her genius: the attempts that have been made by her to strike out of the beaten path, were endeavoured by men of feeble talents, and were easily and instantly put down. This confining the ranks of genius and narrowing its limits may increase the sum of enthusiasm towards individual authors, but it at the same time renders that enthusiasm stale and common-place. The critic has nothing new to say, the pilgrim nothing new to feel, and the literature of the country proceeds on its path, like the cars upon our metal roads, smoothly succeeding each other with harmonious rumbling, linked and unique, without rut or interruption, the heavy descending assisting the light to mount, and the whole apparatus for the most part employed in conveying cargoes of lumber into the deep.

We have heard of brave men being political cowards, and vice versâ ; the same observation may be applied to philosophy and taste: those who were bold and powerful enough to set aside the trammels even of religion, offered their hands, like helots, to be bound by rules of taste. That Rousseau never attacked the host of critics is surprising, but perhaps he had learned from his early tilt against French music that the nation would suffer itself more easily to be shaken out of its religious and moral principles than out of those literary prejudices, which were wound around its amour-propre. We need not be in the least surprised at Voltaire's obsequiousness, whose campaigns of argument resembled those of his military friends in war, where he never ventured a movement without being assured of a back. He seized the floating scepticism of the fashionable society in which he first moved, and borrowed far more than he invented of it. In arguing, in illustrating a case, or dressing it up with all the accompaniments of shrewdness and ridicule, no one was his equal; but the principle on which he set out, was generally taken from the first mouth or the next page. His was not the spirit that sinks into its own depths, and tries the soundings of the abyss; it was rather that which catches its own overflowings, and plays over the aperture and in the fume of thought, rather than searches or dives in its own

"Whirling gulf of fantasy and flame."

The name of Voltaire is reverenced in France, that of Rousseau is loved. Vanity cherishes the one, but the other is adored as the presiding genius of passionate thought. The state of feeling in France at this moment is indeed a curious contemplation. The impulse, given by Napoleon, was exactly suited to one half of the national character_ the enthusiasm for glory, for active and manly exertion, &c. &c. The

masculine half of the national character found its counterpart in Napoleon, and was carried by that wonderful man to its loftiest pitch. But he was an Italian as to the rest; the side of feeling was paralyzed in him he was blind and "faithless to the divinity of virtue;" and honour, love, sensibility, were but instruments of policy in his ambitious view. If he could not, however, communicate all his soul to the nation which he led and moulded, his genius was still too great to allow the existence of a spirit contrary to his own. Thus the chivalrous feelings towards the fair sex, natural to Frenchmen, their innate sensibility, their tenderness, were not extinguished, for such things die not-but they slept beneath his reign. He aroused the sterner passions of humanity, while he silenced the more delicate with awe, or shamed them with a sneer. His spirit has passed away, and old feelings begin to spring up, but they are yet young. Love once more is worshiped as a deity, and mutual affection, though yet in real life a prodigy to be met with, commences to have an existence, at least in theory*. Men of years and taste weep over the fadaises of Marmontel's Shepherdess of the Alps, as well as over the burning eloquence of St. Preux; and our English writings of the sentimental cast, which have been translated into their tongue, find in them rapturous admirers. I have seen not only ladies, but mustachio'd heroes shed tears of bitterness over the translations of Washington Irwin's tales of "The Wife," and "The Broken Heart." Their taste every way evinces infancy of feeling: they linger around the prettinesses of sentiment, and in the philosophy of the heart have not yet acquired maturity sufficient to enjoy the manly sensibility of Scott.

This is but a poor tribute to the philosophic brethren ;-I substitute speculation for feeling, and take refuge from apathy in the niceties of critical discussion. 'Tis true:-we know too much of these men-we have heard too much of them, and their lives resemble mirrors that have been breathed on and tainted by too frequent and near approaches. And even could we overcome this, there is not much to repay us. In both, human weakness is too clearly visible, and weakness of the pettiest kind—the meanest envy and the most infantine spleen. There is in them every thing that can degrade, and little that can elevate human nature. The very deism of Voltaire is cold and calculating—it has a debtor and creditor kind of tone about it, worthier of a Jew upon 'Change, than of a philosopher or a man of learning. That of Rousseau, with the same defect, is still of a loftier nature; his religious and moral works have all the narrowness of special pleading, but there is a warmth and fire in the special pleading on both sides. There is a feeling even in his very sophisms, that baffles the shrewdest logic-he is sincere, even in paradox; and if he has contributed to deceive and

It is doubtless a very laudable and prudent custom, that young gentlemen should learn the fortunes of the young ladies with whom they form an acquaintance, and also that young ladies should make the same inquiries. But all these precautions of prudence are taken secretly at least in England; in France there is no modesty of the sort, no pretence to disinterestedness; the buzz excited by a new face is audible enough, and the consideration of pounds, shillings, and pence, not at all spoken in a whisper. A lovely girl made her appearance as a new face, at a ball at the præfecture of Tours; the usual question was asked openly by every French officer in the room. The answer was, "she had the protection of Monsieur." This did not satisfy the sparks; and the lovely face, backed by the protec tion of Monsieur, went partnerless.

mislead the world, he has at least the excuse of having deceived and misled himself. Voltaire affords the example of a genius, which made the most of itself; it was formed to be vain, and it was vain-to shine, and it shone. It ran for every prize, and plucked a branch from every laurel; the world applauded, and its end was fulfilled. Rousseau, on the contrary, presents the image of genius thrown away: he lived till forty years of age, without knowing his powers, and in ignorance abused them. There can be no doubt that he indulged in habits, both of mind and body, that would have annihilated the most gigantic intellect; and the effusions of his, which we most admire, were in all likelihood but the dotage and the dregs of his original spirit. There dwelt a dissatisfaction about his pen, a straining after its natural sublimity, which, continually baffled and checked by infirmity from taking its full impulse, turned short into antithesis and abruptness. He has left us but hints of what he aimed at; and the far-removed ideas, which were connected in his expansive mind, to us appear linked without their intermediate association.

Both these beings were cursed with the same canker-that which eats through the finest spirit and undermines the proudest intellect—an habitual sensuality of thought. And "in all the catalogue of human griefs" there certainly is not one which has had such effect in paralyzing genius, and consequently in tending to make the world retrograde in wisdom and in virtue. One should think these beings of high intellect might have shaken off such taints, "like dew-drops from the lion's mane," but it is evident that they became more subjected to them the longer they lived, that they had been "given up to their own imaginations." We may pity the one, but I, who had lately fallen upon those abominable productions which issued from the grey head and trembling hand of the patriarch of Ferney, thought upon them, as I looked upon his grave, with a feeling of dread and disgust, that, I pray, may never again visit me.

We do not well admit of any diversity in our emotions, and we must be possessed very weakly with any feeling, if it consist of many shades. Thus if at times we are smitten with the genius, or dazzled by the fame of a writer, at others we are overshadowed by some prominent defect. Much unity or much consistency should not be demanded of critical taste: mine blows where it listeth, and I would have no one take it at its word. Capriciousness is as inseparable from it, as sincerity. Some volumes I like not in my chamber, that are my idols in the fields; there are few metaphysicians I can tolerate after dinner; and there are poets, who have moved my utmost indignation in the morning, whom I have mentally embraced in the evening, while contemplating the beauties of a foreign sunset. I shall publish some day "My Friendships and Quarrels with the Dead," and certainly among those, whom I have most warmly esteemed at times, and most cordially detested at others, are my friend Rousseau and my friend Voltaire.

R.

AN OLD ENGLISH GARDEN.

My earliest play-ground was an old English garden. I shall never forget its long green walks branching off at right angles to one another its well trimmed hedges, which, like so many verdant walls, shielded the flowers they enclosed from the cold and the wind-its statues of gods and goddesses-its sun-dials, and its alcoves. It is one of my pleasantest amusements, though every relic of it is now destroyed, and I am far distant from the place where it once existed, in fancy to wander once more over the well-known scene-to walk under those cool and quiet shades beneath which I have sate and talked with all that were dearest to me on earth, and to gather once more the first flowers of spring, with the feelings and hopes of childhood. It is perhaps these early associations, which have given me so great an affection for our old style of gardening. I can never pass an antique mansion-house, some two centuries old, with its lofty garden walls, half covered with moss and ivy, without stopping to admire for a few minutes, through the massy iron gates, the neatness and regularity of the grass and gravel walks the shrubberies, and the lozenge-shaped box-bordered beds of flowers. The art of gardening is lost in modern times. We have parks and grounds, and plantations and shrubberies; but we have no gardens. If our gardens are merely to consist of an imitation of nature, if the trees and the flowers are to grow, and the streams to meander at their own will and pleasure, I can find much greater delight in rambling over the hills and the meadows, where art has never interfered, than in the narrow enclosures of a garden which only mimics the grandeur and the beauty of natural scenery. In our old English gardens, on the contrary, where art was the chief director, there was no attempt to deceive. Every thing around spoke of the labour and ingenuity of man. Invention was exhausted to render them pleasant and amusing retreats. The trees were cut into dragons or peacocks--arbours were shaped out of the thick summer foliage for coolness and repose-fountains springing from a Triton's horn, produced a pleasant murmur—a thousand means, in short, were employed to engage the attention and delight the eye.

If it were necessary to justify my affection for our antique fashion of gardening, I should not have much difficulty in so doing. A garden seems to have been the supreme delight of our old authors. "God Almighty," says Lord Bacon, "first planted a garden; and, indeed, it is the purest of human pleasures. It is the greatest refreshment to the spirits of man, without which buildings and palaces are but gross handy-works." Perhaps in the shady walks of his garden, Bacon felt his mind purified from its grosser and more worldly affections. Perhaps he forgot within its quiet confines that love of place and power which tempted him to the lowest and the meanest arts. Even the sober Burnet speaks of a garden with something like enthusiasm, "The managing a garden is a noble, and may be made an useful amusement." It was about the reign of Anne, however, that gardening became most fashionable both with the nobility and the literati. Pope was a celebrated gardener, and though sacrilegious hands have destroyed many of his labours at Twickenham, his grotto yet remains as a monument of his true old English taste. He frequently mentions his gardens in his letters