From the French of Madame De Staël. German Philosophy. Some persons have tried a long time to cast great disgrace on the word "Philosophy." This is the lot of all those words whose acceptation is very wide; they are the objects of the benedictions or of the maledictions of the human species, according as they are applied to happy or unhappy eras; but, in spite of the abuses and of the accidental favors of individuals and of nations, philosophy, liberty, religion never change in value. Man has cursed the sun, love and life; he has suffered, he has felt the touch of fire from these torches of nature; but should he therefore wish to extinguish them? Every effort which tends to enslave our faculties is debasing; it is our duty to direct them toward the sublime end of existence, moral perfection; but it is not by the partial suicide of such or such a power of our being that we become capable of raising ourselves toward that end; in order to reach it, with all our means, we have not too many; and if heaven had granted to man more of genius, he should have so much the more of virtue. Among the different branches of philosophy, that which has particularly occupied the attention of the Germans, is metaphysics. The objects which it embraces may be divided into three classes. The first relates to the mystery of creation, that is to say, to the infinity in all things; the second to the formation of ideas in the human spirit; and the third to the exercise of our faculties without tracing them back to their source. The first of these studies, that which applies to the knowledge of the secret of the universe, has been cultivated among the Greeks as it is now among the Germans. One cannot deny but that such an inquiry, howsoever sublime it may be in its principle, only makes us feel our weakness at each step; and discouragement follows efforts which cannot reach a result. The use of the third class of metaphysical observations, that which is included in the cognisance of the acts of our judgment, cannot be disputed; but that use is limited to the circle of the experiences of every day life. The philosophical meditations of the second class, those which are directed upon the nature of our soul, and upon the origin of our ide as, appear to me altogether the most interesting. It is not probable that we can ever know the eternal truths which explain the existence of this world: the desire which we experience on this point is among the noblest thoughts which attract us toward another life; but it is not without cause that the faculty of self-examination has been given to us. Doubtless, it is to make use of this faculty by observing at once, the progress of our spirit, such as it is; yet in exalting itself to the highest degree, in seeking to know if that spirit acts spontaneously, or if it can think only when excited by exterior objects, we have more lights on the free will of man and consequently on the subjects of vice and virtue. A crowd of moral and religious questions depend upon the way in which one considers the origin of the formation of our ideas. The difference of systems on this subject is the main point which distinguishes the German from the French philosophers. It is easy to conceive that, if the difference is at the source, it should manifest itself in all the results; it is therefore impossible to understand Germany, without noting the progress of philosophy, which, from the days of Leibnitz to our own, has continued exercising such supreme sway over the republic of letters. There are two ways of viewing the metaphysics of the human understanding; the one in its theory, the other in its results. The examination of the theory demands a capacity beyond my own; but it is easy to observe the influence which this or that metaphysical opinion exercises upon the development of the mind and of the soul. The Gospel tells us by their works ye shall know them: this maxim can also guide us among the different philosophies; for every thing which tends toward immortality is something else than a sophism. This life is of value only when it leads to the religious education of our heart, when it prepareз us for a higher destiny, by the free choice of virtue on the earth. Metaphysics, social institutions, arts, sciences, all these should be appreciated next to the moral perfection of man; it is the touch stone which is given to the ignorant as well as to the wise. For if the knowledge of the means belongs only to the initiated, the results are brought home to the capacities of all the world. [To be continued.] CHRISTOPHER NORTH. Messrs. Editors. In the death of Professor Wilson, well may the fields of literature and the shrines of philosophy be shrouded in gloom, and well may the genius of Scotland weep over the loss of one of her most gifted spirits-one whose talent has exercised perhaps not less influence on the moral and social developments of modern times than upon its triumphs in literature. Those who have read Blackwood's Magazine, must know with what singular ability, and with what zeal and devotion it has maintained the supremacy of its own party principles for the last four and thirty years. It has not only triumphed in party polemics over the old and well established despotism of the Edinburgh Review, but has built up a solid and substantial character for refinement and taste, for sober judgment and sound criticism, which has never before been so well sustained in the whole range of periodical literature. Professor Wilson-a true lover of nature-with poetic susceptibilities of the first order, with a warm heart and generous affections, with an ardent and enthusiastic temperament, when thrown in this political arena, soon manifested an originality which placed him among the best writers of the age. In his literary productions his knowledge of nature in all her amptitude and beauty, in all her loveliness and grandeur, enabled him so skillfully to strike the cords in the bosom of every right-feeling reader, as to make them responsive to his own. Warm hearted, with more kindness than austerity in his disposition, the cauterizing power of his criticism was exercised not in wantoness, but in suppressing some criminal obliquity, or some growing depravity in the moral tendencies of the political world around him. As a poet, he wanted neither imagery nor inspiration, but his poetry found its best expression in his prose writings. His pen had the power of portraying scenes in lowly life, the success of which was mainly dependent upon their truth to nature, their unaffected simplicity, and the deep and overpowering pathos which characterized them. Like the Cottager's Saturday Night, of Burns, his pictures stand out in bold relief before us, and we can scarcely destroy the illusion that some shifting scenes, some substantial actors are not in transitu before us. The Lights and Shadows of + Scotish Life, The Trials of Margaret Lindsay, The Foresters, are gems of this kind, and gems of the first water. For force and clearness of style, for truth to nature in the secret workings of the deeper emotions of the heart, for purity and elevation of moral sentiment, and above all, for the power and influence which they exercise, they will forever stand as lasting monuments of the genius which planned them. These are however but a small portion of the writings on which the fame of Wilson reposes. It is not our purpose to bring these in review, but to introduce a few reflections which we sketched some twelve years ago, after reading the Miscellanies of this gifted author, first collected and published in Philadelphia, about the year 1842. This manuscript we found among our old papers which we were assorting the other day, with view of preserving some, and burning others. We are doubtful whether we ought to send it to you or the spirit of Caliph Omar. If you think it worthy of publication, please give it a place in your Journal. A. The Critical and Miscellaneous Essays of Christopher North, [Professor Wilson.] BY ALGERON. This is the title of a work recently published embracing all the essays of the gifted editor of Blackwood's Magazine, from 1828 up to the present time. At the name of Christopher North, how many pleasing associations are awakened in our memories, when, in looking back through the dim vistas of the past, and through the hazy light tinged with the softened and mellowed hues of distance, we behold the shadowy forms of the blooming fields of heather and hawthorn, through which we have passed with one who was as the voice of a solemn and sportive spirit," throwing around us a veil of silver frostwork, and investing the living forms of bird and bee, and flower, of mountain and low land, of cottage and hamlet, of lake and river, of torrent and mountain mist, with a beauty and poetry all their own. Christopher North! why God bless the man who, in the loneliness of the wilderness, when we reclined among the odor breathing oranges of another clime, came like a spirit of paradise on purple wing spotted with gold, and communed with us in the deep and pensive musings not of melancholy, not of gloom, but of pure, chastened and sublimated adoration which consecrated nature and nature's God in the secret chambers and spotless shrines of the temple within. "Mirrored in thought methinks to me And we are again in the field, and over the moor, and on the mountain side, near some happy shieling, and hear the distant notes of the bag-pipe, the merry ringing voices of children, and the glad murmurings of the brook, all mingling as they swell and fall in softened cadence, coming like a spirit on the breeze; or like the voice of some Naiad from the snow-white foam which settles upon the dimpled waters of the gurgling stream. Amidst scenes like these we again see our companion in his sporting jacket-his tall and stately form, a noble presence-his radiant face richly glowing with benignity-his sportive smile telling of a heart all at ease with itself his mischievous and quaint gravity, indicative of the fanciful associations in his own mind, of the incongruous with the symmetrical, the imaginative with the real - his quiet eye full of benevolence, and beaming with kindness and sympathy for all human kind. for none have known better how to shed gracefully a tear over the infirmities and the sorrows of life; whilst the joyful spirit which has sported with the beautiful vageries of his own midnight and midsummer and winter dreams, has left some traces of playfulness on his furrowed cheek. With one thus formed, could you not consent to journey along through green lanes and hawthorn copses and yellow harvest fields, and purple heather the balance of your days, and "Muse on Nature with a poet's eye?" But from these regions of the treasured past let us turn back to the subject of our thoughts-the book. Start not, gentle reader, we are not about to write a criticism, for in doing so we should be much more likely to write a rhapsody, and fly off to climes where the solitary bee is humming in the flower cup on some lonesome desert with its brown vesture of stunted grass, or where the lonely rose is blooming on some moss-covered and mouldering and forgotten ruin of temple or tower amidst the deep solitude of the arid and sandy plain. For our spirit likes not the sober russet garb or the precise habiliments of a cold and passionless carping about words and style, and plots and figures; for as the rudest dress may conceal a bosom in which there glows the proudest and noblest aspiration and the holiest affections, so words as a rude covering may conceal gems of feelings and emotions, which can find no expression in these symbolical representatives of conventional modes of speech. The Pythoness was supposed to be inspired only when fully under the influence of some deadly drug, but however inspired, we |