our poor widowed landlady, we should have to give her over to the tender mercies of the " Autocrat," until he should consent to leave the house or to adopt the manners of a gentleman. And yet we do not see it in that light, when we read his talk on that tinted paper and in that fair type. So it is also in the lectures which Dr. Holmes published last year, whose title we place at the head of this article. Unquestionably true as they are in their very heresies, they yet reveal a personality in the author which is most unlovely a personality which, divested of wit, knowledge, and the quick, intuitive perception of truths, would leave a most ungracious character as the residuum. We regret that in the blind admiration of this brilliant writer's knowledge, sarcasm, and wisdom not shared by the age, and in many respects in advance of it, almost all are unconscious of the hard heart, the intense conceit, and the unrivalled egotism of the man. These qualities are not hid: they are really as patent as the brilliancy of his style: but they pass unmarked and unchallenged. Mr. De Quincey domineered over his readers in a manner which was almost insufferable: he was not vain, but he was proud as hardly any other has been his arrogance in Greek scholarship, in metaphysics, and in literary criticism was all but boundless: but there was that power in the man, that unquestioned ability to sustain his own pretensions, and that grim grandeur in his movement, that his readers were spell-bound, and none arose who dared to speak of elements of weakness in his strength. But Holmes is so frisky, so fond of going dishabille, so full rather of petty conceits than of ponderous thoughts, that we are not afraid to draw near and look upon his face and see that it is the face of a man. Even the physique is in him an almost perfect index of his character. We suppose it is a perfect index in all cases; but in many it is illegible to our imperfect vision. But in Holmes it is written over in a handwriting as large as Saint Paul's. The eye feline, but full of lambent humor; the mouth tense, but cynicism and scorn written in the smile always playing around its corners; the step soft and plausible, ready for a pounce or an alert spring out of the way; the face not open and frank and fair; the frame thin and wiry, as that of a person who does not lead a happy, even life, but feverish and spasmodic. How dif

ferent a face from that of the whole-hearted, genial "Country Parson!" And yet, as in confirmation of what we have written above, that honest and wholesome friend of us all speaks somewhere of his delight in the "Autocrat of the Breakfast Table;" not the book as a book, but the author as a man. If he honors our American cynic with a fourth or a fiftieth perusal, we think he will see that he has pledged himself to what he would like to retract, for the "Country Parson" will hardly relish champagne when it has stood for hours in the glass.

And yet conceited as our Doctor is, as he flourishes his baton over the heads of staid country practitioners, and hollow as are many of his shows of learning, evincing the knowledge of 'multa sed non multum,' a kind of running and pleasant criticism of the titles and spirit rather than the real contents of books, yet he is a wise man; he is in sympathy with and gives popular expression to a wisdom in advance of the age. In his lyrics and his touching little songs, he seems to have become so consummate a master in the art of simulating pathos and real sentiment, that none is more skilful than he to touch the bubbles of shams and show their falseness. None keener to scent any delusion than he. So while a radical in some things, he is soundly conservative in others, and holds by all established scientific truths. But with a woman's intuition, he discerns other truths, and with the nicest judgment he weighs the thoughts of our recondite thinkers, and when he finds them good, he gives them expression, and then they get myriads of readers. The salient feature of the "Currents and CounterCurrents," the opening lecture, revealed no new truth, but gave an old one popular expression. We are not deeply read in medical works, but in our incidental reading we had met again and again the notion that disease is to be overcome by vital power alone; and that the function of medicine is to direct the reactive forces of nature rather than to new-create health in the "Life of Sir Astley Cooper;" in Dr. Bigelow's "Nature in Disease," in the same author's "Practical Hints;" in Dr. Forbes's various writings, and especially his "Nature and Art in the Cure of Disease;" in Dr. Gould's "Lecture on Nature's Secrets ;" in Dr. Worthington Hooker's "Lecture on Rational Therapeutics ;" and in one or two treatises on the "Water Cure." It is by

no means a new idea; and the fact that the medical profession was startled by it, as it was said to be, only showed how little acquaintance the profession had with the history of reaction, from extreme to extreme, in its alternate reliance on nature and art; and it also showed to those of us who have sovereign faith in Nature, how vast a work has yet to be done before the results of Dr. Cullen's life and labors shall have passed away.

We confess ourselves admirers of much in the writings of John Stuart Mill and Mr. Buckle. The great work of the latter is indeed vitiated by the cardinal error of confounding mere knowledge with moral power; and there are numerous passages in bad taste, to say the least. But we do admire their recognition of a divine law pervading all things; and we willingly give to them the credit of thinking on many things profoundly and well. But who can read "Elsie Venner," after perusing them, and not recognize a feebler echo of the great voices he has heard before? Compte, living obscurely in his chamber at Paris, few knowing his face or hearing his words, gets utterance in the pages of a Boston book; and an American wit, the son of a Calvinistic minister, reaffirms the fundamental doctrine of traditional sinfulness and of foreordained character.

We willingly leave to any who may care enough for the Doctor's venom as exhibited against the Trinitarian clergy, to scoff or sneer in return. Let his bitterness remain unanswered. When the paralysis which Sir James Mackintosh spoke of as resting upon medical science is quickened into life, when old doctrines, like the leading one in "Currents and Counter Currents," new dressed, no longer startle the profession, then there will be less opportunity than at present for a brilliant follower of Jonathan Edwards to turn the beneficent class of men, of which Dr. Holmes is senior neither in age nor in wisdom, to laughing-stocks for the hasty readers of a popular magazine. We know full well, that the minds of many clergymen move in an old, worn, and rather narrow channel; we know that Howe, and Baxter, and the old divines of New England, have bequeathed to them a rather antique and technical set of words to frame their sermons in; we know that there is a good deal of the seventeenth century air about them; but tell us honestly,

good Dr. Holmes, is there more deference to unquestioned traditions, is there more intolerance of opposition, is there more general ignorance with them than there is in your own profession? We are not afraid that your answer will go against us. We know by what hard words you would designate such a treatment of one religious sect by another, as your treatment of the believers in Hahnemann's doctrines. We know how your lip curls when you see ignorance or pretence in your own ranks, but are you quite fair when you raise your finger and only let it fall upon men who, if narrow and deceived, are unquestionably sincere and in earnest ?

We have heard how it was that our author was soured in his youth against orthodoxy, for the secret is whispered from mouth to mouth, We shall not tell it here; but we only vaguely refer to it as an indication of what we have often. marked in the history of ideas, that before you know the value of any, you must know the whole inner development of the man who projected them. Who can understand the philosophy of Fichte till he has studied the whole evolution of that splendid career, most splendid in its last enforced obscurity? Every man evolves his system of life from his own experiences, and then commits the grand mistake of thinking that he alone has attained to universal truth. And if the rumor referred to is correct, our American cynic has not ripened by a gradual process of growth from the precepts and influences imposed on his childhood, but was turned by a sad experience in the plastic days of youth, and since then has gone obliquely to his old direction. We do not wonder that this was so, his character being what it was; nor do we wonder that a later French education, and that shrewd insight of his into the real spirit of the age, together with the almost certain tendencies of medical science in an epoch so materialistic as ours, have converted the Professor of Anatomy into as great a sceptic as Pilate was, sneeringly insinuating to Jesus his suspicion that there is not in this world any such thing as truth.

We do not see how Dr. Holmes is to supply the most marked deficiencies of his character unless he become more truly a Christian. We speak not now in reference to Christian doctrine, but to a Christian spirit. If there were more of that

temper within him, we should never be tempted to think that his gall-bladder had, by some strange defect in his organization, occupied the place of his heart; we should not hear him call a man a fool who shed some natural tears and heaved some natural sighs on being told that he had tubercles on his lungs, and must die in a few weeks; we should not see the unblushing egotism, which always reminds us of a college classmate who used to be most irreverently called God Almighty; we should not have to think that Dr. Holmes can simulate pathos and sentiment, and then laugh at the world for supposing him in earnest; that wit of his would often soften into the most winning humor; that graceful style, and most felicitous use of words, would be the legitimate channel of true feeling, and that versatile character would be completed by the possession of one quality, now signally wanting the charity of our Divine Master.

ARTICLE III.

SKELTONIA;

OR SOME ACCOUNT OF AN ELOQUENT, LEARNED AND ECCENTRIC IRISH RECTOR.

"Qui benè fecerunt, illi sua facta sequenter;
Qui male fecerunt, facta sequenter eos."

It is well known that the late James G. Percival, poet, geolgist, had a rare and valuable library. When alive he guarded it with a vigilance amounting to fierceness. He much regretted to die, for he had a presentiment that so soon as he, purchaser, student, custodian, should step out of the flesh, all those books which did so arride and solace' him, would be scattered like a storm-struck fleet, and fall into the hands of the uninitiated.

He had been wont "to inhale learning, walking amid their foliage; and the odour of their old moth-scented coverings was fragrant as the first bloom of those sciential apples which grew amid the happy orchard."