template break their force by being spread over a larger surface, and borne at intervals; but those that come upon us suddenly, for however short a time, seem to insult us by their unnecessary and uncalledfor intrusion; and the very prospect of relief, when held out and then withdrawn from us, to however small a distance, only frets impatience into agony by tantalizing our hopes and wishes; and to rend asunder the thin partition that separates us from our favourite object, we are ready to burst even the fetters of life itself!

I am not aware that any one has demonstrated how it is that a stronger capacity is required for the conduct of great affairs than of small ones. The organs of the mind, like the pupil of the eye, may be contracted or dilated to view a broader or a narrower surface, and yet find sufficient variety to occupy its attention in each. The material universe is infinitely divisible, and so is the texture of human affairs. We take things in the gross or in the detail, according to the occasion. I think I could as soon get up the budget of Ways and Means for the current year, as be sure of making both ends meet, and paying my rent at quarter-day in a paltry huckster's shop. Great objects move on by their own weight and impulse; great power turns aside petty obstacles; and he, who wields it, is often but the puppet of circumstances, like the fly on the wheel that said, "What a dust we raise!" It is easier to ruin a kingdom and aggrandize one's own pride and prejudices than to set up a green-grocer's stall. An idiot or a madman may do this at any time, whose word is law, and whose nod is fate. Nay, he whose look is obedience, and who understands the silent wishes of the great, may easily trample on the necks and tread out the liberties of a mighty nation, deriding their strength, and hating it the more from a consciousness of his own meanness. Power is not wisdom, it is true; but it equally ensures its own objects. It does not exact, but dispenses with talent. When a man creates this power, or new-mould's the state by sage counsels and bold enterprises, it is a different thing from overturning it with the levers that are put into his baby hands. In general, however, it may be argued that great transactions and complicated concerns ask more genius to conduct them than smaller ones, for this reason, viz. that the mind must be able either to embrace a greater variety of details in a more extensive range of objects, or must have a greater faculty of generalizing, or a greater depth of insight into ruling principles, and so come at true results in that way. Buonaparte knew every thing, even to the names of our cadets in the East-India service; but he failed in this, that he did not calculate the resistance which barbarism makes to refinement. He thought that the Russians could not burn Moscow, because the Parisians could not burn Paris. The French think every thing must be French. The Cossacks, alas! do not conform to etiquette: the rudeness of the seasons knows no rules of politeness!-Some artists think it a test of genius to paint a large picture, and I grant the truth of this position, if the large picture contains more than a small one. It is not the size of the canvass, but the quantity of truth and nature put into it, that settles the point. It is a mistake, common enough on this subject, to suppose that a miniature is more finished than an oil-picture. The miniature is inferior to the oil-picture only because it is less finished, because it cannot follow nature into so many individual and exact par

ticulars. The proof of which is, that the copy of a good portrait will always make a highly finished miniature (see for example Mr. Bone's enamels), whereas the copy of a good miniature, if enlarged to the size of life, will make but a very sorry portrait. Several of our best artists, who are fond of painting large figures, invert this reasoning. They make the whole figure gigantic, not that they may have room for nature, but for the motion of their brush (as if they were painting the side of a house), regarding the extent of canvass they have to cover as an excuse for their slovenly and hasty manner of getting over it; and thus, in fact, leave their pictures nothing at last but over-grown miniatures, but huge caricatures. It is not necessary in any case (either in a larger or a smaller compass) to go into the details, so as to lose sight of the effect, and decompound the face into porous and transparent molecules, in the manner of Denner, who painted what he saw through a magnifying-glass. The painter's eye need not be a microscope, but I contend that it should be a looking-glass, bright, clear, lucid. The little in art begins with insignificant parts, with what does not tell in connexion with other parts. The true artist will paint not material points, but moral quantities. In a word, wherever there is feeling or expression in a muscle or a vein, there is grandeur and refinement too. I will conclude these remarks with an account of the manner in which the ancient sculptors combined great and little things in such matters. "That the name of Phidias," says Pliny," is illustrious among all the nations that have heard of the fame of the Olympian Jupiter, no one doubts; but in order that those may know that he is deservedly praised who have not even seen his works, we shall offer a few arguments, and those of his genius only: nor to this purpose shall we insist on the beauty of the Olympian Jupiter, nor on the magnitude of the Minerva at Athens, though it is twenty-six cubits in height (about thirty-five feet), and is made of ivory and gold: but we shall refer to the shield, on which the battle of the Amazons is carved on the outer side: on the inside of the same is the fight of the Gods and Giants; and on the sandals, that between the Centaurs and Lapithæ; so well did every part of that work display the powers of the art. Again, the sculptures on the pedestal he called the birth of Pandora : there are to be seen in number thirty Gods, the figure of Victory being particularly admirable: the learned also admire the figures of the serpent and the brazen sphinx, writhing under the spear. These things are mentioned, in passing, of an artist never enough to be commended, that it may be seen that he shewed the same magnificence even in small things."-Pliny's Nat. Hist. Book 36.

THE OBLIGING ASSASSIN.

FROM THE FRENCH.

ONCE sleeping in an Inn at Dover,
Dreaming of thieves-my passage over-
And murderous hands that grasp'd a trigger,
The door flew open-I awoke,

When a pale heteroclite figure,

With dusty shoes stalk'd in, and spoke :
"You see what 'tis I want-make haste!
Dress!-you've no moment's time to waste."
Trembling all over with the notion

Of being suddenly dispatch'd,

I huddled on my clothes, and snatch'd
My hat-prepared for locomotion ;
But thrust into a chair, he put

Round me a winding-sheet, or shroud:
Behold me pinion'd hand and foot,
What horrors to my fancy crowd!
While no resistance could be plann'd
To one with instrument in hand,
Who with a grin began to seize and
Grasp me firmly by the wesand.
In this alarming plight compell'd
To keep as silent as a fish,
Some compound to my lips he held,
Mixing it in a brazen dish;

And when I winced, and made grimace,
He dash'd it foaming in my face.
Fuming and fretting, white as snow,
Expecting some terrific death,

Drops from my face began to flow,

I clench'd my teeth, and pump'd my breath.

Moved by the terror I betray'd,

And wishing to dispatch me quicker,

He flourish'd an alarming blade,

Whose very aspect made me sicker: To work he went-my throat soon ran With blood from an incision given; More than half dead, I then began

To recommend my soul to Heaven.

The cut-throat presently repenting
That all my pangs should thus be sped,
Stepp'd back, and then came on, presenting
A sort of fire-arm at my head.

He seized me by the throttle fast,
Until my visage black became;
And then, to finish all at last,

Th' assassin took deliberate aim.-
Amazement! spite of all his pains,
By miracle I'scaped his ire,
For meaning to blow out my brains,
The powder hit me-not the fire.
Madden'd to find his purpose balk'd,
He tried a different method quite,
In clouds of dust, as round he stalk'd,
Striving to stifle me outright.

Ir has often been a subject of meditation with me, whether there be really any difference between men and women-I mean in their intellectual powers. It is argued by some, that there is naturally no difference whatever, and that all the difference we observe is produced by

Education has certainly a wonderful influence in fashioning the mind, and some philosophers have carried this principle so far, as to ascribe to it all the varieties in the animal creation. They say that man is indebted for his superiority solely to some accidental peculiarities in his organization; that had he had the hoof of an ox, the nails of the wolf, or the claws of the lion, he would have been no better than these animals. I confess I do not hold with this sort of philosophy; I rather think, with Galen, that man is wise not because of his hands, but that he had hands appended to his wrists instead of the hoofs of a horse, because of his pre-eminent wisdom. And I think, in like manner, it will be easy to shew, that there is a natural, or, as the Marquis of Londonderry would say, a fundamental difference between the sexes, wholly independent of social institutions.

Were there not this difference, how is it that women, in all ages and in all countries, have held only a subordinate station in society? Education is insufficient to account for this circumstance, because it is in nature for every thing ultimately to triumph over adventitious obstacles, and attain that rank for which it is qualified. Besides, we do not observe that education exerts such an omnipotent influence over the destiny of individuals. Most persons, remarkable for intellectual eminence, have attained it in spite of peculiar disadvantages; it has ever been the lot of Genius to contend with the difficulties of fortune, birth, and education. Allowing, then, that females labour under disadvantages from this source, is it not surprising that they do not exhibit similar instances of triumphing over them? yet we do not find such instances. If they afford any extraordinary examples of intellect, they are always, 1 apprehend, an inferior grade. Thus they have produced no philosopher equal to Newton, no poet like Homer, no conqueror like Alexander, no dramatist like Shakspeare,-nor, to my mind, any cook equal to the great Doctor Kitchener.

Eminent women, no doubt, there have been; but when we examine their productions, we seldom, I think, fail to discover traces to which sex they belong: the peculiarities of their nature usually reminding us of the fable of Æsop, quoted by Bacon; when puss sat demurely at table, in man's attire, till a mouse crossed the room. The late Madame de Stael was a striking instance of this sort. No female displayed greater and more varied powers of intellect; yet in her occasional vanity and egotism, and especially in her personal antipathies, she evinced all the weaknesses (shall I say?) of her sex. Queen Elizabeth is another instance of a masculine mind conjoined with womanly infirmities. She was never weary of listening to discourses on her "excellent beauties," and her most grave ministers found no way so effectual to her favour as by telling her, that "the lustre of her beauty dazzled them like the sun, and they could not behold it with fixed eyes." But perhaps the rarest example of intellectual manhood is Catherine the Second, Empress of Russia: she indeed seems to have had very little of woman in her nature; even her vices were of a manly order ambitious, cruel, and imperious; and in her amours she appears, in some respects, to have usurped the place of the opposite sex, and treated her numerous lovers more like her mistresses than admirers.

I have chosen these three examples as being the best known, and exhibiting the strongest claims to an equality with man. I perhaps might have found living instances of great merit, but I prefer confining my observations to those that are dead. The examples, however, that I have quoted, by no means decide the question: it is not by particular instances, but by comparing the most eminent of both sexes, that a fair inference can be drawn.

But perhaps, after all, it is only a dispute about words, arising from the standard to which we refer. Man's superiority is not universal. If he possess the comprehension of an angel, he has neither the eye of an eagle, nor the fleetness of a greyhound. If he excel woman ("lovely woman," as the poets say) in arts and arms, and science and philosophy, in foresight and grandeur of soul, how vastly inferior is he in all the softer graces, in tenderness, delicacy, and sentiment! What, indeed, would man have been without woman, or where would he have been!

"Oh, woman! lovely woman! Nature made you

To temper man: we had been brutes without you!
Angels are painted fair to look like you:

There's in you all that we believe of Heaven-
Amazing brightness, purity, and truth,

Eternal joy and everlasting love."

But there is no end to such a theme. For my part, I think Nature in this matter has shewn her accustomed wisdom. As she made man with a right and a left hand, so it seems meet that there should be some inequality between the sexes; for, as monogamy (Mr. Malthus notwithstanding) is clearly a state designed for man, it would obviously have been a source of endless embarrassment, contention, and difficulty, had the parties in all respects been exactly equal and homologous.

I shall conclude these observations, by remarking three paradoxes concerning females, the first shewing how much more individual security depends on public opinion than positive institutions. Although