entertainment in their town-house, and then convey him so far out again, in order to gain his favour.'

The Covenanters gave so much work to the government of Charles, in the south, that the Quakers were there little molested. But the Tolbooth of Aberdeen was for years the head-quarters and principal meeting-house of the new sect. Like the Israelites in Egypt, however, the more the Quakers were persecuted, the more they multiplied. Uncowed and unsubdued by imprisonment, they made the streets resound with their exhortations to the everlasting audience that surrounded the grated windows. There was no alternative but to board up the windows, and the poor Friends were packed in cells, in the terms of the chief magistrate's threatening, like salmon in a barrel.' But, even thus packed, the gaol became too strait' for the multitude, and a partial release became the necessary consequence of every fresh importation, while those thus liberated returned at once to their forbidden courses, and kept up their meetings with courage and patience. We sometimes meet with the ludicrous where we should least expect it. And we have been not a little amused with the following specimen of passive resist ance:-A party of Quakers is transferred from the prison of Inverury to that of Aberdeen, at the instance of Sir John Keith, a violent persecutor. It is decided that they shall go to Edinburgh, and make an ignominious progress from shire to shire, like the vilest malefactors. They are brought forth amid the cruel mockings of a vile mob, and traverse the streets amid much indignity. But, once out of the town, an infirm man, finding himself unable to proceed farther, sits down by the roadside. The whole company follow his example; sit down, and refuse to rise till horses are furnished for their journey. The attendant baillie is in a rage, but what can he do? Utterly nonplussed, he returns home to suffer the gibes of his brother magistrates, and the victorious recusants betake themselves to their respective dwelling places.

The estimation in which Jaffray was held rendered him a dangerous seducer,' and we weep over human nature when we find his old friend, Menzies, stirring up Bishop Scougal against him, and through him Archbishop Sharpe. In 1664 he was summoned before the High Commission Court, and though he spoke with a mouth and wisdom which all his adversaries were not able to gainsay or resist, he was sentenced to be confined to his own dwelling-house, and keep no meetings therein, nor go anywhere without the bishop's licence under the penalty of a fine of 600 merks Scots. It is better to obey God than man,' was his only comment on this unjust sentence. And the

ten years that were still allotted to him were spent amid the sufferings and vicissitudes to which his faithfulness to God subjected him. Cruel imprisonments, even when bowed down with bodily infirmity, moved not the man whose course was the result of a real and well-grounded fear of God.'

You cannot vanquish us,' said his fellow-sufferers in the same cause to their persecutors, you will weary yourselves with very vanity.' But there was a term to these things. The wicked must cease from troubling. The good man in whose company we have lingered so long was but in his fifty-ninth year, when he lay on his death-bed at his own mansion of Kingswells. He died as he lived. The sting of death is fully gone,' he said, and death is mine, being reconciled to me as a sweet passage, through Him that loved me.' Now, Lord, let thy servant depart in peace,' (was his repeated prayer,) for mine eyes spiritually have seen, my heart hath felt, and, feeling, shall for ever feel, thy salvation.' On the 8th of May, 1673, all that was mortal of this good man was quietly laid in his own burialground, within a few miles of the city, on whose highest offices he had conferred more honour than he had received from them; but whose magistrates and populace had now tried for years in their zeal to cast out his name as evil. We have been on pilgrimage to the lonely spot, and it is in our mind's eye while we write! No monumental marble marks his tomb. The long rank grass waves on it, but does it no dishonour. We see the avenue of old mountain ash, which, in an almost treeless neighbourhood, tells the ancient date of the house to which it leads. The old Dutch tiles, with their scenes of Scripture story, which still adorn the fireplace of the venerable mansion, are before us. And though we are no Quakers, we sympathize too deeply with all that is pure and sublime in moral action, not to feel that we are treading on holy ground.

Our readers know how great a change was wrought by the Revolution of 1688; but no week passes without obtruding on us the painful fact, that our religious liberties are even yet incomplete.

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ART. III. (1.) The New Timon. A Romance of London.

London:

1846. (2.) Poems. By LEIGH HUNT. Poems. By JOHN KEATS. Songs and Poems. By BARRY CORNWALL. New Editions. London.

If the amount of genius in any given era could be calculated after the manner of an arithmetical series, we should not hesitate in arriving at the conclusion that it was never greater, in the history of our literature, than at present. The publications prefixed to this article form but a scanty portion of those we might have named, had we regarded them as worthy of such distinction. From the catalogue at our service, a casual observer might imagine, that by those who affirm that the imaginative faculties are in a state of senility, the age had been belied, its spirit had been impugned, and its tendencies entirely misunderstood.

Amidst the strife of politics-the wonders of mechanical invention, which exceed, both in ingenuity and power, the marvels of an Arabian tale and the feats of necromancy-it would not seem unreasonable to suppose that the small still voice of Poetry should be unheard, and that, disgusted with the selfishness and turmoil which she beheld on earth, she had taken her flight, and sought for worshippers in a more genial region. Yet, amidst all this earthliness, it would appear that the pure spirit is still resident amongst us, and that through the gloom of these 'iron times,' marks of her radiant footsteps are yet visible. That her track is somewhat indistinct none can deny ; but that poetical genius is extinct, or even that it is tending to annihilation, is, as we shall endeavour to prove, very far from the truth. If we had no faith in the progress of humanity, and if we did not cherish the full assurance of its arriving at the lofty elevation which prophecy has foretold, and experience goes far to demonstrate,-we should be ready to despair of the future triumphs of genius, and be inclined to adopt the opinion, that with the master-minds of past ages every great effort had been consummated; and we might run the risk of becoming converts to a theory which we deem as pernicious as it is false, That with the increase of civilization there is a propor tional decline in the powers of imagination and fancy, and conse quently a decay in poetry and the arts-that nations, like individuals, only once in their history appear in the freshness of youth, and in the bloom of beauty; and, that such a period having once elapsed, their further attempts at originality and vigour are totally ineffectual. But for the reasons we have assigned we are still hopeful.

We

6

cannot school ourselves into the belief, that hoar antiquity,' like the insatiate divinity, is destined to devour its own offspring, or bind to one form the Proteus-like shape of genius. We believe that to be too subtle for chains-too ethereal for bonds or fetters. We think this view of the subject may be strengthened if it can be shown by a reference to the past, that The noblest productions of the imagination, and the brightest miracles of art, were invariably the result of the highest civilization of which the age was capable in which such productions appeared. If it were otherwise, if ignorance were favourable to art, where should we look with greater hope for its displays, than among the rudest tribes of men, and the most uncivilized of nations. Epic poems ought to be found as rife as summer-fruits amidst the retiring glens and sombre forests of New Zealand, or the thirsty wildernesses of Australia. Timbuctoo should rival Athens; and the magnificence of Rome should be eclipsed by the splendours of an Indian

wigwam.

The only escape from a conclusion so preposterous is by an admission which, in our apprehension, is fatal to the whole theory. It is allowed, that though men reasoned more correctly in the days of Elizabeth than in the times of Hengist, yet, during the times of the imperious queen, they wrote better poetry; but, while poetry itself was improving, the poetical faculty was in a state of decay. Imagination was more powerful in Alfred than in Shakspeare, though its manifestations were less skilful. In the former, Nature was predominant; in the latter, Art. The whole merit of the immortal dramatist lay in the adroitness with which he managed his tools-the craft with which he built up his materials. Alfred is the more original genius, Shakspeare the greater artist. The imagination displayed in Midsummer Night's Dream' or the Tempest,' is inferior to that which blazes forth in the black-letter fragments of the patriot king.

Poetry in this sense is not regarded as the pure exercise of the imaginative faculty, but as the result of mechanical dexterity; by means of which edifices of rare beauty and imposing grandeur are erected so cunningly as to conceal the meanness of the materials out of which they are constructed. The very The very admission is conclusive against the theory. If knowledge be necessary to skilful arrangement of thought, and dignity and clearness of expression; if the language of a country must have reached a high state of perfection before the bard can hope for the successful application of his art-does it not inevitably follow that civilization is not only favourable but essential to the grandest efforts of genius? The theory to which we allude takes for granted that poetry is an object of faith, not of reason-that men must be

come once more, children, ere they can sympathize with its creations-that judgment or questioning is fatal to it-and that the exercise of the understanding is the death-blow to its advancement. But to our task:

If we adopt the opinion that Homer was really the author of the Iliad,' we cannot shut our eyes to the fact, that this great poem is the production of a mind stored with all the learning and knowledge of an age highly advanced in refinement. If we had no other proof than the exquisite language in which the poet's imaginings are embodied, this, we conceive, would be confirmation strong enough to the unprejudiced, that the people who used such a polished instrument for the expression of thought and feeling, had progressed far beyond rudeness.

That art had reached to a comparatively high pitch is evident from the descriptions of the poet. Who can contemplate the single instance to which we would allude-one example among hundreds which might be quoted-we mean the graphic and picturesque and glowing delineation of the shield of Achilles, without arriving at this conclusion? Nor is this all. Mere incidental expressions-epithets which, from their frequency, amount in Homer almost to common-places-delineations of character-moral reflections on the nature of man, and the uncertainty of lifedissertations on fate and freewill-go to show very clearly that society in the Homeric times had nearly reached that culminating point which, without the guiding light of revelation and the progressive spirit of Christianity, it was destined never to surpass It will not, we think, be disputed, that the learning and the philosophy of Egypt, the arts and the commercial enterprise of Phoenicia, were known to the inhabitants of Ionia in the times of Homer. His great poem furnishes indisputable proof of this; and we are aware of nothing which can militate against the opinion, that this illustrious genius was the product of an age of the highest culture, preceded by generations of gradually increasing civilization.

The Iliad, therefore, affords the first proof that A period of great refinement is not inimical to the successful exercise of the imaginative faculty.

But upon this point our proofs are cumulative. The whole literary history of antiquity, almost without exception, is corroborative of our theory. In the ruder ages of Greece, both tragedy and comedy-(if mere 'extemporal diversions,' neither written nor published, nor preserved, are entitled to the appellationwere of the simplest kind, only choruses of men and women singing their extemporaneous songs, as Maximus Tyrius informs us, through their several districts. But with advancing civiliza