THE

PHRENOLOGICAL

JOURNAL AND MISCELLANY.

VOL. VII.

MARCH 1831-SEPTEMBER 1832.

Wherefore our decision is this; that those precepts which learned men have
committed to writing, transcribing them from the common reason and common feelings
of human nature, are to be accounted as not less divine than those contained in the
Tables given to Moses; and that it could not be the intention of our Maker to supersede
by a law graven upon stone, that which is written with his own finger on the table of the
heart."-MELANCTHON.

EDINBURGH :

JOHN ANDERSON JUN., 55. NORTH BRIDGE STREET,
AND SIMPKIN AND MARSHALL, LONDON.

MDCCCXXXII.

BF 866 .757

THE

PHRENOLOGICAL JOURNAL.

No. XXVII.

ARTICLE I.

LETTERS ON DEMONOLOGY AND WITCHCRAFT.

Addressed

to J. G. LOCKHART, Esq. By SIR WALTER SCOTT, Bart..

IN the present condition of human knowledge," every thing that comes from our gifted countryman's pen is pronounced to have of course the impress of his genius; and is ushered into notice by all the journals, with the opinion reduced to a formula, that no other man but Sir Walter Scott could have written the matter or thing now before us." With regard to his volume on Demonology, however, there is a certain set of heretics to this faith, whom posterity at least will not laugh to scorn when they bring that imposing work to their bar; and, in so far as it is any thing more than a compilation of ghost and goblin stories, with no essential advantage over Mother Bunch, in point of literary exaltation,-in other words, in so far as it attempts to supply a philosophical solution of its subject,-pronounce it one of the most solemn failures, Dr Hibbert's not excepted, which the prevailing non-philosophy which yet darkens and deranges human thinking could have brought forth.

Phrenologists claim an especial title to tell Sir Walter Scott when and where he fails, when and where his order of talent and kind of acquirements are at work in a wrong direction; just because they, of all his critics, have done him the most honour when Occupying his own peculiar and high literary station, and have best understood and appreciated his legitimate efforts of genius; for they alone have applied to them a test, which they have been found to stand, a strict philosophical analysis on those principles of human nature which their science has demonstrated to be true. They have repeatedly said, and have never seen reason to alter or even modify the opinion, that Sir Walter Scott, like Shakspeare, is a painter, and not a philosopher. Although endowed with matchless powers of observing, and also of delineating human

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