ject which, artificial as it is, is capable, in chaste and tender hands, of the most imaginative treatment. Who, following in their footsteps, shall write the rhymed history of dress, from the first reeking lion-hide worn by a warrior of the infant world, down through the coloured skins of the Picts, the flowing toga of the ancients, the "garb of old Gaul," the turban of the Turks, the picturesque attire of the American Indians, the gorgeous vestments of God's ancients people, the kilt, the trews, and the plaid of Caledonia, the sandal or symar, or cloak, or shawl, or head-dress of various ages to the great-coat of the modern Briton, who, in the description of Cowper, is

"An honest man, close buttoned to the chin,

Broad-cloth without, and a warm heart within."

The finest of Keats' smaller pieces are, "Lines written on Chapman's Homer," (the only translation which gives. the savageism, if not the sublimity of Homer-his wild beasts. muzzling and maddening in their fleshy fury, and his heroes "red-wat-shod," and which, in its original folio, Charles Lamb is said once to have kissed in his rapturous appreciation); the "Ode to a Nightingale," or rather to its voice, singing of summer in full-throated ease;" the "Ode to a Grecian Urn," elegant as that "sylvan historian itself," (what a sigh for eternity in its description of the pair of pictured lovers, whom he congratulates

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"that ever thou wilt love, and she be fair ;")

the "Ode to Autumn" "sitting careless on a granary floor," "her hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind ;" and the dewy sonnet beginning—

"Happy is England, I could be content

To see no other verdure but its own."

In originality Keats has seldom been surpassed. His works "rise like an exhalation." His language had been formed on a false system; but, ere he died, was clarifying itself from its more glaring faults, and becoming copious, clear and select. He seems to have been averse to all speculative thought, and his only creed, we fear, was expressed in the words

Beauty is truth,-truth beauty."

His great defect lay in the want, not of a man-like soul or spirit, but of a man-like constitution. His genius lay in his body like sun-fire in a dew-drop, at once beautifying and burning it up. Griffin, the author of the "Collegians," describes him (in deep consumption the while) hanging over the fatal review in the Quarterly as if fascinated, reading it again and again, sucking out every drop of the poison. Had he but had the resolution, as we have known done in similar circumstances, of dashing it against the wall, or kicking it into the fire! Even Percival Stockdale could do this to The Edinburgh Review when it cut up his "Lives of the English Poets" and John Keats was worth many millions of him. But disappointment, disease, deep love, and poverty, combined to unman him. Through his thin materialism he "felt the daisies growing over him." And in this lowly epitaph did his soaring ambitions terminate :—“ Here lies one whose name was writ in water." But why mourn over his fate when the lamentation of all hearts has been already enshrined in the verse of "Alastor?" Let "Adonais" be at once his panegyric and his mausoleum.

"The inheritors of unfulfilled renown

Rose from their thrones, built beyond mortal thought,

Far in the unapparent. Chatterton

Rose pale his solemn agony had not

Yet faded from him.

And many more, whose names on earth are dark,
Though their transmitted effluence cannot die
So long as fire outlives its parent spark,

Rose robed in dazzling immortality.
Thou art become as one of us,' they cry;

It was for thee yon kingless sphere has long

Swung blind in unascended majesty,

Silent alone, amid a heaven of song.

Assume thy winged throne, thou Vesper of our throng.'"

THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY.

WE heard recently a keen discussion on the question, Is Thomas Macaulay, in the strict sense, a man of genius? Now in order to qualify ourselves for determining this question, we must first inquire what genius is? a question of some moment in a book which professes to be a gallery of contemporary genius.

We can conceive of nothing more undefinable than genius. It is so on account of the complexity of the elements which make it up. It is not one thing, nor is it many things, but it is the one subtle result of many elements subordinated into harmony and completeness. We shall perhaps best attain our object by showing, after the fashion of the scholastic divines, what genius is not, ere we proceed to inquire what it is.

Genius, then, first of all, is not mental dexterity. How many seem to think that it is! With how many people does the expert player of chess, and the acute solver of riddles, and the accurate summer up of intricate accounts, and the man of mere verbal memory, who has equally by heart Milton and Mallet, and the expert versifier, and the

flippant declaimer, pass, each and all of them, for men of genius! One reason of this is, that this kind of power is so tangible in its effects that only the external senses are required to perceive its results. It can neither be disputed or denied. All are agreed about it. It needs no exertion of mind to form an opinion about its merit; and an opinion, when once formed, is rarely, if ever, altered. No circumstance can fritter away the character of the man who has only to open his mouth to pour forth puns and acrostics by the thousand. The merit, mean as it may be, is something positive and incontestable. Again, this sort of cleverness is habitual and inveterate; hence its displays are masterly and imposing the thing is done, and done quickly, and as well as it is possible to conceive. The achievement, whatever it may be, has distinctness, prominence, and perfection. Perhaps mechanical were a better name than mental dexterity. Mechanism performs its wonders with unerring effect, and at all times equally. In given circumstances the application of steam has, of course, the same result. So, set a man of this kind to write, and he writes, and writes well, but writes like an automaton. And yet the impression made by this kind of merit upon the majority is wonderful. A man of genius may go on for a lifetime. digging wells of beauty and rapture, and one out of ten may talk about him, and one out of a hundred may read him, and one out of a thousand may partially understand him, and he may die unappreciated. But let one arise who can express commonplace in sounding phraseology, or work up weakness into epigram, or even disguise nonsense under copious and splendid verse, and he will be appreciated and admired as infallibly as any able mender of soles or stitcher of broadcloth. Wordsworth, (to translate principle into fact,) during half his long lifetime is neglected, while Waller

is loaded and suffocated with panegyric. The reason is, Wordsworth is a poet, and Waller was a mere mechanist. It is easy distinguishing the characters. The mechanist has probably not one original thought in his mind. He is perhaps even incapable of appreciating the original thoughts of others. It is to say much if we grant that a "plastic stress," such as called in chaos, might perhaps stir him into the genuine animation of mind. As it is, he neither thinks, nor dreams of thinking. Far from welcoming those impulses to deep and thrilling meditation, which more or less affect all intellects, he repulses them, and turns eagerly to his machinery. There, however, he is perfectly at home. He can handle his tools to admiration. He can throw off a poem, which, though not a "Paradise Lost," tickles the ear a great deal more, and is far more easily understood. He can dash down commonplaces on any given subject as fast as his pen can move. He can perhaps mimic all sorts of styles in succession with the skill of a mocking-bird. He can write a "Poetical Mirror," though a "Kilmeny " be beyond him. Nay, he can perhaps even shed off apparent and surface originalities as fast as the thistle its down: and he may be able to do all this, and much more, without the appearance of effort, at a moment's warning, and at all times equally. He is subject to no moods, no shadows, no sudden loathings of his occupation, no ambitious towering above the dead level of the paper on which he is inscribing his thoughts. His merit is thus great; and, what is more, is beyond all question. He has done all this; and no one doubts but he will do it again. Still his merit is very different from the merit of a man of genius. What his merit is we may afterwards see; what it is not let us now partially notice:-The man of genius, then, cannot refrain from thinking. All impulses which affect him are