The Boston ladies, in particular, ought surely to feel a due self complacency, and a becoming gratitude to their generous encomiast. After praising the Quaker costume in Philadelphia, and doubting whether the characteristic shrillness of voice, which slides from the tongues of some of the fair inhabitants of that city of brotherly love, would pass without remark in England; and after showing how it is, that the females in this country cannot be expected to have their taste so much matured, and their intellect so widely expanded, as in his native island, he closes the description of his second class as follows. Among the young ladies of Boston there appeared to me to be, if less refinement than in the Carolinians, yet a very agreeable union of domestic habits and literary taste, and great kindness and simplicity of manners.'

The third class may be despatched in one word. It comprehends all, that stand on the scale below the second, and thus takes in the great mass of our population.

As admirable as this new mode of classification undoubtedly is, it has the peculiar merit of tending to a still greater simplicity. By the author's account, the first class is already in a sickly state, and must soon dwindle away, and be numbered with the days before the flood, never more to be called

'From the dark shadows of o'erwhelming years.'

We shall then have two classes only; beyond this point classification cannot be simplified; art can do no more. Let us applaud the ingenuity, which, in the important matter of settling the ranks of society among us, has hit on a method so congenial with the structure and tone of our political establishments.

In conclusion, we have only to say, that we cannot conceive of any possible harm in Mr Hodgson's amusing himself with writing letters to his friends, during his rambles in America. This was natural in a man of an amiable temper, and kindly feelings. But we cannot commend the judgment, which should print and publish such letters as these before us. A traveller should not believe all he hears, and be struck with wonder at all he sees, nor think the whole world has seen and heard as little as himself. A few months' residence in a country is not enough to qualify one to write

a book on the government, manners, laws, customs, peculiarities, and morals of the people. Mr Hodgson travelled over an extent of seven thousand miles, and was always in motion, and yet he undertakes to classify and characterize all the inhabitants of this immense region. The consequence is, that he is wise without knowledge; he makes distinctions where none exist, and talks too much of trifles. He is credulous, and loves to tell of strange things, and repeats the idlest tales with an air of faith and seriousness. The value of the real information, which he gives, is much diminished by his want of discrimination, and by his propensity to think all people as honest and well meaning as himself. His book is creditable to his heart and his principles; we should be glad if as much could be said of his discretion and judgment,

ART. XIII.-Histoire comparée des Systèmes de Philosophie, considérés relativement aux Principes des Connaissances humaines. Par M. DE GERANDO, Membre de l' Institut de France. Deuxième Edition, revue, corrigée, et augmentée. 4 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1822.

THE History of Philosophy is an entire blank in English literature, excepting always the elegant dissertations by Mr Stewart in the Edinburgh Encyclopedia. These, however, treat exclusively of the three last centuries, and of that period in a very summary way. They are rather fitted to make us feel the want of a more complete work on the same subject, than to supply it. The abridgment of Brucker by Enfield, though valuable to the mere English reader for the information contained in it, does not possess the character of an original treatise; and one or two imperfect essays of an earlier date are now forgotten. We are told by Mr Stewart, in his life of Adam Smith, that this eminent philosopher had conceived the design of writing a full history of the intellectual and moral sciences, which he had cultivated with so much success, and that he had in part prepared the materials. It can never be sufficiently regretted, that he did not carry his intention into effect, or that the knowledge of it had not

moved his biographer, in the vigor of life, to undertake the same task upon the same scale.

The literature of France was, in this particular, nearly as ill furnished as our own, until the appearance, in 1804, of the great work of the Baron de Gerando, the second edition of which is now going through the press. This work consists of three divisions. The first treats of the period anterior to the revival of learning; and the second of the three last centuries. In the third, the author reviews the whole subject, and states the conclusions to which he is led by this survey. The first of these divisions is the work, which we now propose to notice; the republication of the second and third being not yet completed. We may, probably, take some future occasion to invite the attention of our readers to the other parts of this valuable treatise.

The reputation of Monsieur de Gerando stands high with the public, in consequence of the commendations, which Mr Stewart has repeatedly bestowed upon him, in almost all his works. In France he is regarded, by general consent, as the first metaphysician of the day; and even in Germany, where the intellectual and moral sciences have been more diligently cultivated of late, than in any other part of Europe, and where the learned in this department are apt to undervalue, in some degree, the productions of foreigners, the merit of M. de Gerando has been felt and acknowledged. His book has been translated into the language of that country, and accompanied with a careful commentary by Professor Tenneman, himself the author of one of the best works on the same subject. If, however, our author has gained the approbation of his neighbors beyond the Rhine, it has not been by adopting their peculiar modes of thinking, and still less of expressing their thoughts. His style is uncommonly perspicuous and elegant; and his opinions are in general nearly the same with those of the Edinburgh school. has imitated the Germans only in the unwearied industry, with which he recurs to the original writers, however difficult and barren of attraction, instead of resting satisfied with the compilations and extracts of modern commentators. position, in the neighborhood of the King's library at Paris, has given him the greatest possible advantages for this purpose; and he seems to have improved them to the utmost. He not only follows the great masters of antiquity to the

He

His

charming retreats of the Porch and the Academy, a labor that rewards itself by the pleasure which accompanies it; not only penetrates, with fearless and scrupulous fidelity, the 'palpable obscure' of Kant and Aristotle, but makes it a matter of conscience to investigate the ecstatic mysteries of the new Platonists, and to dwell in the monasteries of the middle ages, with Albert the Great, and Duns the Scotchman. We consider this exemplary care in consulting the originals, as a merit of a very high order; and it gives to the researches of M. de Gerando a solid and lasting value, independent of the correctness of his own private opinions.

This gentleman has devoted himself, from his youth upward, to the cause of philosophy; and, besides the work before us, has published several others of great value on different branches of intellectual science. He is still living in the full vigor of his faculties, and actively occupied with his favorite studies, and with the discharge of various official functions of the most respectable character. It may be remarked, as an additional recommendation of his writings, that their moral tendency is entirely different from that of the productions of the French philosophers of the preceding generation. Without giving at all into the extravagance and mysticism, which, by a natural reaction, are too apt to grow up after the temporary prevalence of sensual doctrines, and of which we see many symptoms in all parts of the Christian world at the present day, he has nevertheless adopted a generous and elevated notion of the nature and destiny of man. His writings are warmed with a genial glow of good feeling, and exhibit a firm though temperate attachment to the cause of rational liberty. They breathe the mild spirit of toleration and charity; and we rise from perusing them with a conviction, that their author is not only a just and powerful thinker, but, what is still better, a most amiable and virtuous man. It is with us a matter not only of regret, but of some surprise, that books of so much real value, and at the same time of so popular a character, considering their subjects, should not yet have found a translator, either with us, or in England, while the presses of both countries are constantly teeming with republications, and translations of French productions, of a wholly worthless and ephemeral class. The invention of printing, by giving popularity to learning, will accelerate its decline, as much as it has done its progress, if

those persons, who make it their profession to direct the public taste to proper objects, neglect their noble office, and basely pander to the vilest passions and most frivolous caprices of the multitude.

The work before us, although it has done much to supply the deficiency in French literature of a good history of philosophy, does not, however, profess to give a complete account of the origin and progress of intellectual and moral science. The author has been led, by taste and habit, to direct his attention principally to that branch of the general inquiry, which considers the sources and certainty of knowledge. He has treated this subject in a separate work, and Mr Stewart has also examined it in one of his essays. This question is obviously the first in order; since, before we take the trouble of exploring our intellectual domain, it is obviously necessary that we should review the titles by which we hold it, and ascertain whether it is really our own.

'I found,' says our author, 'in studying the various systems of philosophy, that there is one preliminary question upon which the whole discussion seems to turn; to wit, the origin of knowledge. To determine the real nature of the relation between the mind and the objects of which it takes cognizance, and to ascertain upon what principles it draws conclusions respecting them, and how far those conclusions may be depended on, must be the first objects of attention with every philosopher. This inquiry constitutes, in my opinion, the true first philosophy of Descartes and Bacon; and contains within itself the essence and the elements of every other. It is obvious, that before we can decide the questions respecting the three great objects of all philosophy, God, Man, and the Universe, we must first examine by virtue of what title, we decide upon any thing.'

This question is not only the first in the natural order of the inquiry; but the decision of it regulates, in a great measure, the character of our conclusions upon the vast subjects mentioned above.

'The ideas, that we form upon the sources and certainty of knowledge, determine us in the choice of the methods by which we examine other subjects. The methods we choose fix the course of our ideas, and conduct us inevitably to one or another of certain opinions. Materialism on the one hand, and Idealism on the other, are the two extreme points towards which we tend, as we New Series, No. 18.

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