and we judged by their parental transports, as they beheld the gambols of their children, how sweet it was to be a parent. Once, too, the inconsiderate Marquis said, as he held one of his babes up in his arms to be kissed by Angela, "See, my dear cousin, what a cherub this girl is! And such a blessing might have been yours, had not you been called upon to resign all worldly ties, and even the lawful indulgence of the purest affections, for the still higher joys of the selfdevoted vestal.' "Aye, and you too, holy father,' cried his innocent wife, you too gave up a great deal to gain the height at which you now stand. What a beautiful couple would you and sister Angela have been! Your children would have been little angels!' "It is strange, though true, that, till this moment, the veil had never been removed from the eyes of either of us; but it now fell, never to be replaced ! "I felt a mist come over my sight, and should have fallen to the ground had not a scream from the Marchioness restored me to myself; for Angela, conscious like my self, too late, of the sacrifice we had made through the delusions of a heated fancy, had sunk nearly insensible at her feet. However, my support she determinedly avoided, while to the arm of the Marquis she clung with conscious preference. But she had not an equal power over her eyes; for when she unclosed them again they involuntarily sought mine; and that look, given and returned, discovered by a single glance the heart of the one to the other. "Terrible was the night I passed.She, I conclude, had slept as little; and we appeared the next day with such altered looks, that our kind-hearted relations, who had rejoiced in our renovated bloom during our stay at Baia, now grieved to think they should restore us to our cells with the same pallid cheeks we wore at our arrival. Restore us to our cells! As well might they have hoped to restore the Neapolitan to his dwelling which had been covered with a burning tide of lava. "We had indeed recovered our health during our fatal visit, for we were happy in the unconscious gratification of the dearest feelings of our nature. We loved, and we were near each other; no pang of remorse clouded over our pleasure; and when we retired at night, we knew that we should meet and converse the next day, and nearly all the day, with each other. But now, what was to be done? I felt that we must separate; at least 1 thought this in my cooler moments: but sometimes, as I was sure my passion was returned, I had serious thoughts of conjuring Angela to fly with me from the unnatural fetters in which the frantic dreams of our youth had bound us, and vow at another altar to pass our lives together. Next moment, shocked at my own delinquency, I shrunk not from the less criminal resolve,-as I considered it,—of self-destruction: for how could I bear to live, and live without Angela ? "Weak, deluded being! Now was the time to prove the reality of that holy vocation, in whose imagined security I had so presumptuously gloried, proudly sup posing myself raised above the frailties and temptations of human nature, because I had never been exposed to their assault. Now was the time to show my faith, by conquering my weakness: hitherto I had claimed the honours of a triumph, before I had fought, or even beheld a battle. "What was passing in the mind and heart of Angela was, as I afterwards found, a transcript of mine; but, more capable of self-command than I was, she continued to avoid me, and for two days, under pretence of indisposition, she kept her chamber. This conduct, instead of exciting my respect and my emulation, piqued my pride; for I began to fear I had deceived myself in thinking that she loved me, and that her avoidance of me proceeded from a desire to repress the daring hope which my looks had displayed. Not from principle, therefore, but from pique, I resolved to avoid her. I did so; and I had soon the cruel satisfaction of seeing that she was wounded by my averted eyes, and that her resolution of avoiding my presence was fast failing her. But where, you will say, was the penetration of the marquis and marchioness? Did they not guess the cause of your altered conduct ?-No; there are some persons, and such were they, who, when they have once conceived an opinion, never can be led to change it. They had believed, that for a monk, though he was only a monk of one-and-twenty, to feel the power of beauty and the force of passion was impossible; and that a nun, though only a girl of nineteen, could not be susceptible of any love but that of her Saviour. Therefore, they interfered not to save us from each other and from ourselves, and we were too faithless to our best interests to implore with sincerity of heart the aid of a higher being. "At this critical moment, Angela's sister, who had just been united to the man of her heart, came to pass the first days of her marriage at the baths of Baia; as she longed to make the sister whom she loved the witness of her felicity. Little did she think, that the nun whom she had seen absorbed in her religious exercises had now learnt to hold the cloister in abhorrence. "They came; and we, whose bosoms burned with as warm a flame, were doomed to witness the happy love which we were forbidden to know. "At length my resolution was taken.I would return to my eell; I would re sume my labours; the dreams of ambition mating details of plots, conspiracie, should replace those of love, and by fast- and politics, to feel any great concern ing and penance I would drive Angela about those famous subjects of disfrom my thoughts. Yet, I was resolved pute which once agitated whole kingto grant my passion one indulgence,-Idoms, and in which even monarchs would own it to its object; I would wring sometimes condescended to take a from her a confession of a mutual attachshare. The Nominalist and Realist ment, and then resign her for ever. And I did not long watch in vain for an oppor- now sleep together in equal oblivion; the feelings of men are no longer so extremely combustible on metaphysical controversies; and one may, therefore, pretend to give a theory even of Impersonal Verbs, without the appalling anathema above-mentioned being cast in one's teeth. tunity. "One day, as the shade of twilight stole over the lovely gardens filled with a thousand odours, and gently tinged with the beams of the setting sun, the two pairs of married lovers left us alone together.Conscious of the weakness of her own heart, and suspecting that of mine, Angela rose, and would have followed them; but I forcibly detained her, and, grasping her trembling arm, pointed to the objects of our united envy, and exclaimed, Sec, Angela! see those happy husbands! and think what tortures I endure, who love as tenderly as they do, and never must hope to be as happy!--Speak, thou whose beauty has undone me! Say, have you no pity for a wretch whom you have made? Tell me, Angela, do I suffer alone?' "As I spoke with passionate violence, but in a voice subdued even to woman's gentleness, I pressed her to my heart; and as her head fell upon my shoulder, she murmured out, Yes, you must go; but know that my sufferings and my love are as great as yours.' Then why should we part?' cried I. "The scene, the hour, the sight of the wedded happiness before us, and my impassioned tenderness, laid the voice of conscience to rest; nor was it long before she bore to hear me talk of the means of our elopement." Vol. I. pp. 225-239. And so, of course, elope they did, and a pretty kettle of fish follows. But we have quoted the only part of the story which is finely done, and we give it as a fair specimen of the best parts of these new Tales. ON IMPERSONAL VERBS. THE fierce and foolish logomachies of grammarians, on the subject of impersonal verbs, have been long proverbial. "God confound you for your theory of impersonals," exclaimed one of these enraged controversial verbalists against his meeker and more philosophical opponent. We manage these matters differently now-a-days. The world are too busily occupied in the mysteries of traffic, the pursuits of ambition, or the endless and ani In that very learned and ingenious book, Ted Tregoavid, or Diversions of Purley, the author, by a process of decomposition, the most rigid and demonstrative, has shown that what has been commonly denominated the faculty of Abstraction is a mere nonentity, and is in fact a name which we have borrowed from the schoolmen, without ever having inquired whether it has any precise and definite meaning. In language, every word, when traced to its source, is significant, and expresses a simple idea. In the progress of improvement, however, that idea, or, what comes to the same thing, the sign of that idea, is placed in juxtaposition with another idea or its sign, and, by the simultaneous presentation of both to the mind, we obtain a complex idea. Complex ideas, Mr Locke has reduced to three heads, viz. Modes, Substances, and Relations. In the reception of simple ideas, the mind is purely passive, but in the composition of complex ideas, it exerts acts of voluntary power, as it must be apparent that nothing but an act of the will can account for the juxtaposition of the ideas, man and horse, (assuming these as simple,) which create the complex idea of a centaur. Now, in the formation of complex ideas, under the three heads of modes, substances, and relations, I apprehend we discover the existence of no new faculty, such as that denominated Abstraction, (which indeed is a synonym with an act of voluntary attention,) but are to refer the whole process of generation to the conjoint operations of the faculties of Memory and Association : of Memory, which retains ideas of simple impressions, and presents them to the mind's eye; and of Association, which, depending on some original affections, or relations, subsisting among our ideas, or which the mind imagines to subsist among them, groups them together according to these fundamental laws of our intellectual frame, in total independence of any act of volition on our part. To put this doctrine in a clearer light, let us take an example. The substantive tree, when enunciated, in this unqualified and unrestricted form, conveys, to the mind, no tangible or distinct meaning; at least, as far as I am able to perceive. In the same manner, the word angle, or any other word put in a general form, is, per se, equally non-significant. Men become acquainted with every object in nature by its properties or attributes. What are the properties of the words tree and angle, put in the abstract form, without any limitary adjunct? What idea can we possibly have, of tree, which is neither an apple-tree, a pear-tree, a fig-tree, nor in short any tree, which is still tree, and yet has none of the possible properties of any tree? The same thing may be said of the word angle. The archetypes of simple ideas exist in nature: general terms have nothing to which they correspond: they are, therefore, mere non-entities, about which men may busy themselves till the crack of doom, without knowing more of the subject than we do now, or making one step of advancement in real science. But here it may be asked, why introduce into language words that are utterly non-significant, which, moreover, is inconsistent with your fundamental position, that every part of language is significant, and that, in point of philosophical precision, there neither does nor can exist any thing but simple ideas, the combinations of, which constitute the dogmas and lessons of science? To this objection, pertinent and german to the subject certainly, the answer is easy. The word tree, in the first stage of the formation of language, was appropriated to one individual of a great multitude, and only received this extended and general form, when experience and reflection showed that there were vast numbers of individuals, differing in many points specifically, but, at the same time, possessing many qualities in common, to which, of course, particular and descriptive epithets could not be applied. And this was accom plished in a very easy and satisfactory manner, by doing nothing more than removing the idea of restriction, limitation, or individuality. For the convenience of illustration, let us suppose the words an apple-tree to express a simple idea, and, of course, an individual of a species. Remove the words an apple, and there remains the word tree, totally unlimited, within a certain range, and the application of which will consequently receive a corresponding latitude. But although it neither has, nor, indeed, can have any archetype in nature; although we cannot tell what the word tree really means, except that we may use it in certain relations, and within certain limits, we can nevertheless, with perfect accuracy, describe what it is not,-how far such a word can be applied, without absurdity,-and when its application ceases to be recognized by the mind in an intelligible form: in other words, we can perceive, as already hinted at, that the word stands in certain relations to other terms and ideas, the limits of which relations are perfectly precise and definite. Thus, were we ranging an immense forest, replenished with the most diversified forms of trees, we could instinctively recognize that the application of the term tree was limited only by the extent of the class of objects, before and around us, and beyond them, would become inconceivable and absurd. In short, a, the unknown quantity, on the left side of an algebraic equation, is the only illustration of this extremely nice and ticklish matter, which I am able, at present, to call up. As soon as the equation is constituted, we discover, at once, how z is limited, and the relation which it bears to other ideas that are known: And having this point fixed, we can reason, with mathematical certainty, of a, narrowing, more and more, the limits of its relations, till, at last, it turns out a relation of equality to one thing known from the commencement of the operation, being part of the data necessary to the solution. But it must be obvious that, until we arrive at the last step in the process, we continue in total ignorance of x, and can no more tell what it is, than we can define the word angle, without employing the words right, obtuse, acute, isosceles, or scalene. Having made these preliminary ob non decet te. I need not remark, that the infinitive is often the nominative to a verb, the antecedent to a relative, and, in one instance, (scire tuum, &c.) is construed as a substantive, with an adjective in the neuter gender. Again, omnibus bonis expedit salvam esse rempublicam, is a form of expression in which the clause salvam esse rempublicam is obviously to be taken as the nominative to expedit; for the salvation of the state is the thing profitable to all good men. Tædet me vite might readily and easily enough be converted into vita tædet me, were it not that vita being in the genitive, this form of resolution makes no account of that accident of the word. And here let me remark, that, in the Latin language, words are very precisely and philosophically applied. It is not life, in general, or in the abstract, (if you will,) of which I am weary; no man was ever weary of life, unless on account of some of its concomitant circumstances; it is, therefore, something connected with life, say the pains, miseries, and sorrows of which unhappily it is so fertile, something attendant upon life that embitters, and renders me weary of, my existence. Now, the genitive is, that case which expresses the dependency of one thing on another, or the relation which it bears, in the most general terms possible. It was, therefore, the proper case to be employed on this occasion. Assume, then, the most general term you can find, negotium, for instance, which is by far the best, as it will leave the sentence, when resolved, as general and extended, in its import, as it was evidently the purpose of the author that it should be. The resolution will then stand thus: negotium vita tædet me, "something of life, or proceeding from it, wearies me." Another example of this kind will suffice, as the principle upon which they all proceed is the same. servations, I am now in a condition to Miseret me tui. The meaning of this phrase is plainly not that I pity you in every respect, and in all that belongs to you, but that you share my pity only on account of something connected with yourself. Hence negotium tui miseret me; something connected with you moves my pity. In all these examples the verb called, or rather miscalled, Impersonal, is only a common verb used after a general and inde finite manner, like the general words Tree, Angle, &c.; the nominative to which we must seek, not in what precedes but in what follows. The sentence is merely reversed. A hysteron proteron takes place, and that is all; and when that slight change takes place, what was before as great a mystery as the Universal Solvent, becomes the plainest and simplest thing in the world. To remove all objection, let us now take an example of those impersonals (refert and interest) which are said (erroneously) to require the genitive. Says Quintilian, Plurimum refert compositionis quæ quibus anteponas, which, when resolved, according to the principles here laid down, will become quæ quibus anteponas plurimum refert (negotia) compositionis. Here quæ quibus anteponas is the nominative to refert, and compositionis is governed in the genitive by negotium, or negotia understood. Again, Interest omnium recte facere, becomes Est inter negotia omnium (sup. hominum) recte facere, or, better still, recte facere est inter, &c. where, as before, recte facere is the nominative to the verb est. To show that these resolutions are not merely imaginary, I beg leave to produce a passage from Ovid, the only one of the sort which I can lay my hands on at present, although I am satisfied there are many similar to be found in the classics: Cui peccare licet, peccat minus, in which sentence peccare is obviously placed by the author himself as the nominative to the impersonal verb licet. The same general principle may, in its application, be extended to the passive impersonals. Pugnatur is equal to pugna pugnatur-(I need only refer to the Greek phrase pay soda Max to show that the resolved expression is not absurd: a Latin example, though there are very many, does not at present strike me ;) pugnabatur equal to pugna pugnabatur, &c. it being somewhat difficult to represent the passive form with the same distinctness as the active, because the pronoun, which, in the active voice, is the nominative to the verb, is, in the passive, thrown into the ablative, and governed by the preposition a or ab. Now, from the whole of this induction, I think it most incontestibly appears, that "there is no such thing, in reality, as an impersonal verb, strictly so called.” xi. Before I proceed farther, I must here beg leave to disclaim all the merit of a discovery in grammar, if such a bagatelle as that to which I have been calling your attention may be dignified with so proud a title. The same idea has frequently presented itself to other grammarians, as for example, to Ruddiman (Grammaticae Latina Institutiones, Lib. II. сар. p. 176) and Dr Crombie, (Gymnasium, Vol. I. p. 157;) but then these distinguished scholars seem not to have been aware of the importance of the idea upon which they appear to have stumbled, and never thought of applying it to resolve the hitherto perplexed construction of these famous verbs. As far as this goes, the merit or demerit is mine, and no farther. I shall conclude this long, and, I fear, not very interesting paper, with some remarks on a resolution of a few of these verbs attempted by Dr Hunter of the United College, St Andrews, so justly celebrated for the depth, accuracy, and extent of his philological learning; and, as I have the misfortune to differ from this very learned and excellent person, to whom I am indebted for the small share of classical learning which I possess, I profess I do so with extreme diffidence and humility, but, at the same time, in prosecution of the spirit which he delights to cherish in all who have enjoyed the benefit of his instructions, Me, vel duce, vel comite utimini." If, at this distance of time, I recollect right, it is the opinion of this distinguished scholar that the impersonal verbs involve their own nominatives in themselves. Now, for my part, I must say that this would be a very anomalous construction indeed, and that it would be just as easy for me to conceive a nominative to involve in itself its own verb, as a verb to involve its own nominative. Besides, if the opinions stated above be at all well founded, impersonal are just common verbs generally or abstractly applied; and, therefore, it follows, by inevitable consequence, that, if these verbs involve their own nominative, all other verbs do so likewise, and, when, in the common course of reading, we supply a nominative different from that involved in the verb, we are |