to point out the errors of some systems, along with their discoveries, we ought not to pass over in silence, the extravagancies into which Godwin has been betrayed, by the affectation of originality, or rather of singularity. Ambitious of being thought the Rousseau of England, he resembles his model, only in his intemperate hostility to social institutions. He has, indeed, pushed his invectives still further, and in his crude and short-sighted strictures, appears to have made it his study, to attack whatever is truly respectable, thus prostituting talents, not unworthy, in some instances, of a better cause. We should not omit to notice also, the paradoxes of lord Monboddo, who has elucidated by some useful remarks, the history of language, but who has at the same time, disfigured that of the human race, by the most absurd chimeras.-It should be observed, that the opinion which we here express, belongs equally to the enlightened portion of the English public."

"The progress which the physical sciences have made in England, has not been useless to philosophy. The theory of vision, which, as it is well known, is so largely indebted to Priestley, has been illustrated by some precious observations from Dalton, on the manner of seeing colours.-The theory of instinct has been improved by some new views, contained in the small treatise on the external senses, by Adam Smith, and in the Zoonomia of Darwin, whose bold and not unfrequently luminous conceptions, carry with them but too often, the stamp of arbitrary hypothesis."

"The theory of the beautiful, that brilliant part of moral philosophy, now so emulously cultivated in Germany, has recently been the subject of a new system in England. Burke has endeavoured, after the example of Hogarth, to determine and explain the ideas which we attach to sublimity and beauty, by restricting the first, to what is terrible in itself, or allied to terrible objects; the second, to what excites (to a very limited extent, however, and in a small degree) agreeable sensations and benevolent dispositions. He deduces the sublime and the beautiful from two principles, self-preservation and society, which, according to him, constitute the objects about which all our passions are conversant. Mr. Uvedale Price has attempted to supply what he thought deficient in this system, by introducing a third principle, to which he has given the name of the picturesque, and which he makes to consist, in complication and diversity. This theory, the weakness of which not even the genius of Burke was adequate to disguise, has been attacked with success, in particular by sir Joshua Reynolds; but VOL. III.

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it has induced discussions highly useful to the philosophy of the fine arts, and its illustrious author, although pursuing a wrong track, has founded upon the knowledge of the human heart, and the laws of the imagination, those profound maxims which he reduced to practice, in so brilliant a manner, in the career of eloquence."

"We cannot too often repeat this fundamental axiom, that philosophy is then most efficaciously fulfilling its true ends, when it is employed in the exposition of practical morality; a branch which, for a long time, and particularly among the oriental nations, was in some sort, the only philosophy.-Several English writers have cultivated it with an honourable zeal.Of the number, we take pleasure in mentioning Aikin, Wilberforce, Gisborne, Miss Hannah Moore, M. Edgeworth, his daughter Miss Edgeworth, Morrice, who have collected and developed the precepts appropriate to every class of our actions, and to every condition of society; and applied the lessons of morality to the first of arts,-education.-Without doubt, we may be allowed to rank among the number of these estimable moralists, the illustrious Blair, the model and the guide of the sacred orators of Great Britain;-Blair, that truly philosophical orator, who so happily united to a deep knowledge of the human heart, the talent of inspiring it with the love, and of animating it to the practice, of virtue."

"We ought to offer here this additional testimony, in favour of the writers of whom England can boast, particularly during this period;-that not only have they professed a sincere and enlightened respect for religious ideas, but many of them have made it the special object of their labours, to strengthen the august alliance between religion and philosophy; an alliance which yields fresh support to the one, and invests the other with all its dignity."

"Among the works to which this noble design has given birth, there are two which deserve to be placed in the first rank; that of Butler upon the Analogy of Religion natural and revealed, and that of the respectable Paley upon Natural Theology. Both the one and the other of these works, devoid as they are, of every kind of exaggeration, perfectly in unison with the present state of knowledge, and the dictates of sound reason; opening as they do, with new and more brilliant attractions, the most noble prospects to elevated minds,-both, we say, may be considered, in the age in which we live, as true blessings for humanity."

51

Die Wahlverwandtschaften ein Roman von Goethe. Tubingen, in der Cottaischen Buchhandlung, 1809.

Elective Affinities; a Novel by Goethe.-Tubingen, 1809. The German vernacular literature of the present day, offers several striking peculiarities, which render it worthy of engaging the attention of every general scholar. It may be said to date only from the last century, and the fathers of it, have not yet passed away, but enjoy the satisfaction, almost peculiar to themselves, of seeing the fabric which they have raised, vie in strength and beauty with those of neighbours so long pre-eminent in excellence.

This literature seems by some great effort to have attained, in a comparatively short space of time, a pitch to which that of France and England only rose by slow degrees. There is no style of writing in which they cannot produce an author of distinguished merit.-To Milton the Germans can oppose their Klopstock; to Shakspeare their Schiller and Goëthe.However unsuited their climate to the perception and delineation of pastoral feeling, yet Gesner has been translated, and read in almost every language. However ill adapted their own language may appear to grace and elegance, yet Wieland has clothed in it appropriately, the effusions of a brilliant imagination. Their theatre produces a collection of plays, equal in volume to those of the French and English, and admirable in many points of view. In the minor walks of poesy, we find them succeeding in the delicate expression of feeling, and giving to the world several very popular styles of writing, which however faulty, have been very generally admired in their day, and continued to be so, as long as it was probable trifles would, which depend entirely on the wavering taste of the greatest class of readers. By the numerous fictions with which their presses teem, they have proved themselves to be singularly inventive; but above all, their minds seem to have been turned towards metaphysics; and throughout their views of it, they show themselves to be profound thinkers. At this moment, indeed, one of their philosophers is about operating on the continent of Europe a great change, if not an entire revolution, in that science.

With all this merit, however, there reigns in their productions a certain tone which must at first be more or less disagreeable to a foreigner. We can only give an idea of the effect it has upon us, by comparing it with a very fine aqua-tinta

drawing, of which the general tint happens to be displeasing to the eye. When, however, we have recovered from the disagreeable impression which it conveys at first sight, and prevail upon ourselves to examine it, we may discover through its medium, a thousand excellencies of composition and execution, and by degrees the eye tolerates, nay perhaps reposes with satisfaction upon, that very hue which shocked it so much at first.

If we may judge from a partial knowledge of this literature, its characteristics seem to be, great richness of imagination, profundity of thought, and force of expression, accompanied at times however, with much obscurity of phraseology, an excessive proneness to abstruse speculation, and generally, with a vein of affected sentiment. Some of these faults may be attributed in part, to the unsettled state of the language; which is such, that every author assumes to himself more or less, the liberty of compounding whatever words may suit his purpose; a license which, if it were continued to be granted, in any proportion to the freedom, with which it is now used, would in time, give them an idiom constituted of as many characters as that of the Chinese. We are far from meaning to insinuate, that a limited use of this freedom is not advantageous to a language, but we wish, particularly as the opportunity is here offered, to appeal against the abuse of it; the more so, as we regard it as one of the growing vices of our American literature.

The Germans have at least the excuse that their language is as yet unformed; that the great masters who have raised for them a body of literature, may be considered of authority high enough to re-model, or multiply at pleasure, the elements of it; whilst it is probable that the code of laws they may leave on the subject, will be held sacred by succeeding generations, and the constitution of their literature (if we may so express ourselves) never be violated. But what shall we say of any set of men inheriting a rich and sonorous language, composed, it is true, of many distinct idoms, but forming a body in which the excellencies of each have been retained, and the imperfections rejected; which has been gradually refined, during a long series of years, by the classical ear and taste of men whose authority in literature is paramount, not only among the English, but throughout the world;-what excuse, we say, can those have who, inheriting a language so constituted and brought to perfection, are daring enough to violate its rules, and deform its rich and flowing periods, by the introduction of words unsanctioned by custom, and incompatible with its purity and majesty? To say the least of it, this is a miserable attempt at singularity, and we should be rather inclined to call it an arro

gant design to divert, and give a new direction to the taste of the nation;-a design which can only be the result of ignorance or vanity. Let us hope, however, that this conspiracy against our rising republic of letters, will be frustrated by the good sense of the people, and that we may one day have a body of authors who, by aiming at that excellence, of which we have models before us in every way, will re-assert our claim to respectability in literature.

But to return from this digression. That obscurity of phraseology so very observable in German literature, is probably in part also, the result of too great a dependence, on the clearness generally arising, from a declension of the nouns of any language. This circumstance which so eminently contributes to the perspicuity of the Greek and Latin, leads by its abuse in the German, to a tedious, drawling cacophony. In the ancient languages, we find many authors remarkable for their brevity and closeness, with whom the casual suspension of the sense until the final word, tends only to vary their sentences, and adds to their elegance. But the almost invariable rule in German, of placing (both in speaking and writing) the verb towards the end of the sentence, gives the foreigner a sensation almost as disagreeable, as that of hearing a string of enigmas repeated one after the other, with the solution immediately following.

The work before us, which it is time for us to present to the notice of our readers, is from the pen of Goethe, the well known author of Charlotte and Werter. As he is generally revered in Germany as the patriarch of their literature, and as we think this last production, of the father of German sentiment, highly original, and an example of many of the defects and excellencies of the sentimental species of writing, we shall give a detailed account of its plan.

The title explains in some degree the ground-work of the novel, and the agency which the author makes use of, in order to produce his different situations. The "Wahlverwandtschaften" is the German term employed to express that affinity, which is known in chemistry to exist between certain bodies. This the author transfers to human nature, and supposes that there exists in every person, a moral attraction for some other which, whenever the two come together, must inevitably be brought into action. The irresistible mutual impulse constitutes Love!

He exemplifies this in the persons of a rich German baron, and his lady, (Edward and Charlotte), who it would seem had made some years before, what is commonly termed a well assorted match, and who at the opening of the novel are