has, gradually, from step to step downwards, through a series of propositions-No. 8 resting upon 7, that upon 5, 5 upon 3—at length reduced you to the elementary axiom that Two straight lines cannot enclose a space. Now, if space be subjective originally-that is to say, founded (as respects us and our geometry) in ourselves-then it is impossible that two such lines can enclose a space, because the possibility of anything whatever relating to the determinations of space is exactly co-extensive with (and exactly expressed by) our power to conceive it. Being thus able to affirm its impossibility universally, we can build a demonstration upon it. But, on the other hypothesis, of space being objective, it is impossible to guess whence we are to draw our proof of the alleged inaptitude in two straight lines for enclosing a space. The most we could say is, that hitherto no instance has been found of an enclosed space circumscribed by two straight lines. It would not do to allege our human inability to conceive, or in imagination to draw, such a circumscription. For, besides that such a mode of argument is exactly the one supposed to have been rejected, it is liable to this unanswerable objection, so long as space is assumed to have an objective existence, viz. that the human inability to conceive such a possibility only argues (what in fact is often found in other cases) that the objective existence of space-i.e. the existence of space in itself, and in its absolute nature-is far larger than its subjective existence-i.e. than its mode of existing quoad some particular subject. A being more limited than man might be so framed as to be unable to conceive curve lines; but this subjective inaptitude for those determinations of space would not affect the objective reality of curves, or even their subjective reality for a higher intelligence. Thus, on the hypothesis of an objective existence for space, we should be thrown upon an ocean of possibilities, without a test for saying what was what was not possible. But, on the other hypothesis, having always in the last resort what is subjectively possible or impossible (ie. what is conceivable or not by us, what can or cannot be drawn or circumscribed by a human imagination), we have the means of demonstration in our power, by having the ultimate appeals in our power to a known uniform test-viz. a known human faculty.

This is no trifling matter, and therefore no trifling advantage on the side of Kant and his philosophy, to all who are acquainted with the disagreeable controversies of late years among French geometricians of the first rank, and sometimes among British ones, on the question of mathematical evidence. Legendre and Professor Leslie took part in one such a dispute; and the temper in which it was managed was worthy of admiration, as contrasted with the angry controversies of elder days, if, indeed, it did not err in an opposite spirit, by too elaborate and too calculating a tone of reciprocal flattery. But, think as we may of the discussion in this respect, most assuredly it was painful to witness so infirm a philosophy applied to an interest so mighty. The whole aerial superstructure-the heaven-aspiring pyramid of geometrical synthesis-all tottered under the palsying logic of evidence, to which these celebrated mathematicians appealed. And wherefore ?-From the want of any philosophic account of space, to which they might have made a common appeal, and which might have so far discharged its debt to truth as at least to reconcile its theory with the great outstanding phenomena in the most absolute of sciences. Geometry is the science of space therefore, in any philosophy of space, geometry is entitled to be peculiarly considered, and used as a court of appeal. Geometry has these two further claims to distinction-that, 1st, It is the most perfect of the sciences, so far as it has gone; and, 2dly, That it has gone the farthest. A philosophy of space which does not consider and does not reconcile to its own doctrines the facts of geometry, which, in the two points of beauty and of vast extent, is more like a work of nature than of man, is, prima facie, of no value. A philosophy of space might be false which should harmonize with the facts of geometry-it must be false if it contradict them. Of Kant's philosophy it is a capital praise that its very opening section- - that section which treats the question of space-not only quadrates with the facts of geometry, but also, by the subjective character which it attributes to space, is the very first philosophic scheme which explains and accounts for the cogency of geometrical evidence.

These are the two primary merits of the transcendental

theory-1st, Its harmony with mathematics, and the fact of having first, by its doctrine of space, applied philosophy to the nature of geometrical evidence; 2dly, That it has filled up, by means of its doctrine of categories, the great hiatus in all schemes of the human understanding from Plato downwards. All the rest, with a reserve as to the part which concerns the practical reason (or will), is of more questionable value, and leads to manifold disputes. But I contend that, had transcendentalism done no other service than that of laying a foundation, sought but not found for ages, to the human understanding-namely, by showing an intelligible genesis to certain large and indispensable ideas—it would have claimed the gratitude of all profound inquirers. To a reader still disposed to undervalue Kant's service in this respect, I put one parting question-Wherefore he values Locke? What has he done, even if value is allowed in full to his pretensions? Has the reader asked himself that? He gave a negative solution at the most. He told his reader that certain disputed ideas were not deduced thus and thus. Kant, on the other hand, has given him at the least a positive solution. He teaches him, in the profoundest revelation, by a discovery in the most absolute sense on record, and the most entirely a single act-without parts, or contributions, or stages, or preparations from other quarters—that these long disputed ideas could not be derived from the experience assigned by Locke, inasmuch as they are themselves previous conditions under which any experience at all is possible: he teaches him that these ideas are not mystically originated, but are, in fact, but another phasis of the functions or forms of his own understanding; and, finally, he gives consistency, validity, and a charter of authority, to certain modes of nexus without which the sum total of human experience would be a rope of sand.

In terminating this slight account of the Kantian philosophy, I may mention that, in or about the year 1818-19, Lord Grenville, when visiting the lakes of England, observed to Professor Wilson that, after five years' study of this philosophy, he had not gathered from it one clear idea. Wilberforce, about the same time, made the same confession to another friend of my own.

My

It is not usual for men to meet with their capital disappointments in early life, at least not in youth. For, as to disappointments in love, which are doubtless the most bitter and incapable of comfort, though otherwise likely to arise in youth, they are in this way made impossible at a very early age, that no man can be in love to the whole extent of his capacity until he is in full possession of all his faculties, and with the sense of dignified maturity. A perfect love, such as is necessary to the anguish of a perfect disappointment, presumes also for its object not a mere girl, but woman, mature both in person and character, and womanly dignity. This sort of disappointment, in a degree which could carry its impression through life, I cannot therefore suppose occurring earlier than at twenty-five or twenty-seven. disappointment-the profound shock with which I was repelled from German philosophy, and which thenceforwards tinged with cynical disgust towards man in certain aspects a temper which originally I will presume to consider the most benign that can ever have been created-occurred when I was yet in my twentieth year. In a poem under the title of Saul, written many years ago by Mr. Sotheby, and perhaps now forgotten, having never been popular, there occurs a passage of some pathos, in which Saul is described as keeping amongst the splendid equipments of a royal wardrobe that particular pastoral habit which he had worn in his days of earliest manhood, whilst yet humble and undistinguished by honour, but also yet innocent and happy. There, also, with the same care, he preserved his shepherd's crook, which, in hands of youthful vigour, had been connected with remembrances of heroic prowess. These memorials, in after times of trouble or perplexity, when the burthen of royalty, its cares, or its feverish temptations, pointed his thoughts backwards, for a moment's relief, to scenes of pastoral gaiety and peace, the heart-wearied prince would sometimes draw from their repository, and in solitude would apostrophise them separately, or commune with the bitter-sweet remembrances which they recalled. In something of the same spirit-but with a hatred to the German philosopher such as men are represented as feeling towards the gloomy enchanter, Zamiel or whomsoever, by whose hateful seductions they have been

placed within a circle of malign influences-did I at times revert to Kant: though for me his power had been of the very opposite kind; not an enchanter's, but the power of a disenchanter—and a disenchanter the most profound. As often as I looked into his works, I exclaimed in my heart, with the widowed queen of Carthage, using her words in an altered application

"Quæsivit lucem-ingemuitque reperta."

Had the transcendental philosophy corresponded to my expectations, and had it left important openings for further pursuit, my purpose then was to have retired, after a few years spent in Oxford, to the woods of Lower Canada. I had even marked out the situation for a cottage and a considerable library, about seventeen miles from Quebec. I planned nothing so ambitious as a scheme of Pantisocracy. My object was simply profound solitude, such as cannot now be had in any part of Great Britain-with two accessary advantages, also peculiar to countries situated in the circumstances and under the climate of Canada: viz. the exalting presence in an under-consciousness of forests endless and silent, the everlasting sense of living amongst forms so ennobling and impressive, together with the pleasure attached to natural agencies, such as frost, more powerfully manifested than in English latitudes, and for a much longer period. I hope there is nothing fanciful in all this. It is certain that in England, and in all moderate climates, we are too slightly reminded of nature or the forces of nature. Great heats, or great colds (and in Canada there are both), or great hurricanes, as in the West Indian latitudes, recall us continually to the sense of a powerful presence, investing our paths on every side; whereas in England it is possible to forget that we live amongst greater agencies than those of men and human institutions. Man, in fact, "too much man,” as Timon complained most reasonably in Athens, was then, and is now, our greatest grievance in England. Man is a weed everywhere too rank. A strange place must that be with us from which the sight of a hundred men is not before us, or the sound of a thousand about us.

Nevertheless, being in this hotbed of man inevitably for some years, no sooner had I dismissed my German philosophy