of development to the human intellect even in the youngest infants, much more frequent than is commonly observed.*

I believe that there is no great call for preliminary explanations as to any difficulties in the following papers, except, perhaps, as to these six cases:-

I. The suggesting-ground of the paper entitled "Protestantism" was really a pamphlet, or rather book, judging by its careful and erudite composition; and this work, if now forgotten naturally after a lapse of a dozen years, was really ascribed to two separate bishops of distinguished literary pretension. I know not who it really was that I commented upon, but certainly he was no ghostly creation of mine: he was incarnate at that time, and I hope still continues to be so.

II. In speaking of the equation between the expenditure of a family in two remote times, or two remote places (as France and England), on the suggestion of the "Chronicon Preciosum," I omitted to fix the reader's attention (as properly I should have done) upon a common oversight affecting such equations—viz., that very often a large share of the difference forms no exponent of the mere price scale ruling in the two countries compared; since much of the difference should be often charged upon varying usages of life. For instance, about twentyfive years ago I saw a letter from a poor baronet, who had fixed his residence in Southern France, vaunting the prodigious cheapness of his own neighbourhood by comparison with any part of Great Britain. He had a large family of daughters, and an income of very little more than £500 per annum; and yet he described himself as keeping (and ordinarily using for the benefit of his five daughters) a coach-and-four. But, on further explanation, it came out, that the usage of that province allowed him a large social intercourse without the cost of dinner-parties. Otherwise, in several points, Eng

* I have elsewhere mentioned, as a fact which ought to have a powerful interest for psychologists, that on the morning next after a severe paroxysm of "griping" pains, every infant manifests a striking advance, a bound forwards per saltum, in its apprehensiveness, and generally in its intellectual development.

land was the cheaper land. To A, therefore, on a review of all the circumstances--personal as well as local-France might be much the cheaper. To B, with very different habits, or a household very differently composed, England.

III. and IV. In the paper on "Oracles," and in the closing paper on "Greece under the Romans," there occur two suggestions that will be pronounced by many possibly in a high degree paradoxical. But in any bad sense (however erroneous a sense) neither of these suggestions is paradoxical. To the Delphic Oracle, as amongst Greeks-to the Byzantine Empire, as a great barrier standing through eight centuries, breaking and sustaining the assaults of Mahometanism, else too strong on that quarter for infant Christendom in the West-I have assigned majestic functions. So far as the ordinary current of history is not confluent with my view, so far the reader will see cause, perhaps, to remodel his opinion, and to amend his appreciation of two mighty organs working through ages on behalf of human progress, and only not historically acknowledged, because not truly understood.

V. "Schlosser on Literature" was not written with the slight or careless purpose to which the reader will probably attach it. The indirect object was, to lodge, in such a broad exemplification of German ignorance, a protest against the habit (prevalent through the last fifty years) of yielding an extravagant precedency to German critics (on Shakspere especially), as if better and more philosophic (because more cloudy) than our own. Here is a man, Schlosser by name, bookmaker by trade, who (though now perhaps forgotten) was accepted by all Germany, one brief decennium back, as a classical surveyor and reporter on the spacious fields of British literature through a retrospect of a hundred and fifty years. But the Schlegels were surely not so poorly furnished for criticism as Mr Schlosser? Why, no: in special walks of literature, if they had not arrogantly pretended to all, they were able to support the character of well-read scholars. What they were as philosophers, or at least what Frederick Schlegel was, the reader may learn from Schelling, who, in one summary foot

note, demolished his pretensions as by a pistol-shot. For real serviceable exposition of Shakspere's meaning and hidden philosophy, I contend that our own domestic critics have contributed very much more than Germany, whether North or South, whether Protestant or Catholic. And, in particular, I myself find, in Morgan's brief essay on the character of Falstaff, more true subtlety of thought, than in all the smoky comments of Rhenish or Danubian transcendentalists. Then, as to those innumerable passages which demand a familiarity with English manners, usages, and antiquities, provincial dialects, &c., naturally the very gates of entrance must be generally closed against all but native critics.

VI. In the little paper on "Miracles," the reader, who is new to the subject, must understand that no question is raised (as too probably he will be supposing) on the possibility of a miracle. That question is left entirely untouched. The discussion commences at a point lower down-viz., after assuming the possibility of a miracle, then next as to its communicability; meaning, whether a miracle, if it should actually take place, could have any power to propagate its own existence amongst mankind; that is, whether it could translate itself upon the wings of testimony from the little theatre of spectators or auditors, before whom it had been exhibited, to the great theatre of the world, and the still greater theatre of posterity.

WALKING STEWART.

He was a man of very extraordinary genius. He has generally been treated by those who have spoken of him in print as a madman. But this is a mistake, and must have been founded chiefly on the titles of his books. He was a man of fervid mind, and of sublime aspirations: but he was no madman; or, if he was, then I say that it is so far desirable to be a madman. In 1798 or 1799, when I must have been about thirteen to fourteen years old, Walking Stewart was in Bath-where my family at that time resided. He frequented the pump-room, and I believe all public places-walking up and down, and dispersing his philosophic opinions to the right and the left, like a Grecian philosopher. The first time I saw him was at a concert in the Upper Rooms; he was pointed out to me by one of my party as a very eccentric man who had walked over the habitable globe. I remember that Madame Mara was at that moment singing: and Walking Stewart, who was a true lover of music (as I afterwards came to know), was hanging upon her notes like a bee upon a jessamine flower. His countenance was striking,

and expressed the union of benignity with philosophic habits of thought. In such health had his pedestrian exercises preserved him, connected with his abstemious mode of living, that, though he must at that time have been considerably above forty, he did not look older than twentyeight; at least the face which remained upon my recollection for some years was that of a young man. Nearly ten years afterwards I became acquainted with him. During the interval, I had picked up one of his works in Bristol —viz., his “ Travels to discover the Source of Moral Motion," the second volume of which is entitled, "The Apocalypse of Nature." I had been greatly impressed by the sound and original views which, in the first volume, he had taken of the national characters throughout Europe. In particular, he was the first, and, so far as I know, the only writer who had noticed the profound error of ascribing a phlegmatic character to the English nation. "English phlegm" is the constant expression of authors, when contrasting the English with the French. Now, the truth is, that, beyond that of all other nations, it has a substratum of profound passion: and if we are to recur to the old doctrine of temperaments, the English character must be classed, not under the phlegmatic, but under the melancholic, temperament; and the French under the sanguine. The character of a nation may be judged of, in this particular, by examining its idiomatic language. The French, in whom the lower forms of passion are constantly bubbling up from the shallow and superficial character of their feelings, have appropriated all the phrases of passion to the service of trivial and ordinary life: and hence they have no language of passion for the service of poetry, or of occasions really demanding it: for it has been already enfeebled by continual association with cases of an unim