to have a sensation or feeling that is not natural. He may have a feeling, it is true, which no man ever felt but himself, but still it is in him a natural feeling: it arises from some peculiarity in his nature, or from the situation in which he is placed; and feelings arising from peculiar circumstances are natural to those who are affected by these circumstances. An unnatural feeling is a mere chimera of the understanding, for though a profligate man may have feelings at which virtue shudders, yet as they necessarily arise from his profligacy and perversion of mind, they are as natural to him, as benevolence to a man who feels disposed to promote the happiness of his fellow creatures. In fact all feelings are natural to those who feel them, for if they were otherwise they could not be felt. As every feeling therefore is natural, and as the professed object of every writer who appeals to the heart is to express his feelings-to inform us how he is affected on such and such occasions, wherein he agrees with, and wherein he differs from, the generality of mankind, what causes are most apt to render him gay or pensive, credulous or mistrustful, irritable or composed--it is obvious, that he who gives this faithful picture of himself, produces a perfect work, because he makes us perfectly acquainted with what we seek to know, and what he has professed to make us acquainted with. It matters little that he acknowledges himself to possess feelings which we should blush to acknowledge, for if he concealed these feelings or substituted others in their stead which he never felt, we should not know the truth, we should not know what we sought to know, namely the character and disposition of the person whose work we read. Suppose a writer were to inform us that he always felt a natural abhorrence for every thing mean and dishonorable, if this be not the fact, what do we gain by the information? Certainly nothing more than deception, which is worse than nothing. We are led to believe in a something which never existed, and it is at all times better to remain ignorant than be deceived. On the other hand, we shall suppose that a writer informs us he had a natural propensity for theft and cunning from his earliest recollection, is it not evident, if he speaks the fact, that such a confession is more useful to us than if he had clothed himself in virtues to which he was utterly a stranger? By telling us his real character, we acquire real knowledge, we extend our acquaintance with the true nature of man, and if all writers were to act thus ingenuously, we should be infinitely

better acquainted with human nature than we are at present. A writer therefore should never ask himself for a moment whether his feelings be such as others would feel on similar occasions, or whether they are right feelings or not: his business is to report them exactly as they are; for it is only by doing so that we can become acquainted with him. If ho stops to think how others would feel in his situation, and gives us the result of his reflections as his own feelings, he makes fools of us, and a liar of himself.

.

But it may be said, that we are more improved by a writer of dignified feelings, of a high-born independent mind and an inflexible attachment to virtue, than by a low, insignificant character, and that a faithful portrait of the former must be more perfect than one of the latter, though equally faithful to the original. If this were true, the end of all works professing to make us acquainted with the heart and its affections, would necessarily be to display the true nature of virtue and independence of mind, for the perfection of a thing regards only its adaptation to the end proposed. The end of such works, however, is not to make us acquainted with virtue, but with human nature, and this knowledge is not to be acquired from any one order or character of men. Human nature is more easily traced in the savage, than in the profound moralist: the former acts according to the laws of his nature, simply modified by the situation in which he is placed; but in the moralist, the operations of human nature are laid under a thousand restrictions. The influence of acquired habits and opinions, the rules and modes of right conduct, deduced from systems of reasoning with which the uncultivated mind is totally unacquainted, the positive control of moral and theological dogmas, which, though good in themselves, do not belong to the creed of a man in his original state;-these and a thousand other causes throw a deep veil over human nature in men of cultivated minds and regular habits. In fact, such men do not well know themselves, for they are moulded into a se*cond nature by these influences, and they consequently cannot tell how they would stand affected in certain situations, had they never suffered these influences to exert any control over them. Whoever, then, describes himself as he is, without addition or diminution, is a faithful describer of human nature, and therefore produces a perfect work. "Rousseau's Confessions" are highly admired, though no person admires them as being a portrait of a virtuous man.

Their excellence consists in describing the man as he was, not as we would wish him to be. Had he only drawn such a picture of himself as would be pleasing to a virtuous man, he would, instead of having described human nature, describe only an ideal character that never existed. Yet "Rousseau's Confessions" are not more perfect than the pratings of the simple Jessica in Brown's "American Tales;" in the one we behold human nature as clearly as in the other. Jessica, as she herself says, "gives her thoughts as they come, not as true, but as hers." Had she given them otherwise, we should not know Jessica's real character.

I come now to the third species of writing, namely, that in which a writer describes the feelings and perceptions of others. To this species belong all works of fiction and imagination, as the Iliad, the Eneid, novels, romances, &c. Whoever would attempt to write a perfect work of this kind, attempts a something which he does not understand. A novel writer, for instance, sketches out certain characters, places them in certain situations, informs us how they act in these situations, and the passions, feelings, and emotions, which every change of circumstance and situation excited in their minds. Now though a person must know how he feels himself in every situation in which he is placed, let him be ever so dull and stupid, he cannot possibly know how he would act and feel in situations in which he never was placed, much less can he know how others would act in them. The most he can do is to guess; but how different are the guesses of a man, who supposes himself placed in certain circumstances, from him who is ipso facto placed in them. Men in distressed circumstances rail at the rich and powerful, and maintain that, if they were in their place, they would study to make all mankind happy; yet such of them as have realised their wishes have, in general, been more forgetful of promoting the general happiness of society, than those who were born to wealth and affluence. therefore, who describes the mind, feelings, and character of another, can have no certainty that he describes it right, should he even describe it to a hair. If he has not described it right, his description is imperfect, and as we cannot possibly tell whether he has or not, it is absurd to apply the term perfection to such works.

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It is singular, at the same time, that such works require more genius and comprehension of mind than those which are capable of perfection. In works of fiction and imagina

tion we make every character feel and act as we imagine such a character would really act had he been so situated. We cannot tell, however, or even guess, how he would act but by our own feelings, nor will our own feelings instruct us, unless we place ourselves in his situation. It is obvious, then, that the more plastic and yielding our feelings are, the more liable are we also to be affected by every influence which is exercised over us, and the more do we identify ourselves with the interests and passions, the fears and hopes, the enjoyments and privations, of others. Hence we can more easily place ourselves in their situations and guess how they would feel and act in them. It is this susceptibility of feeling that constitutes genius; for a man of obtuse feelings can never succeed in drawing characters, because in whatever situation you place him, his feelings scarely suffer a change, and what he cannot feel himself, he cannot imagine in others. There will, therefore, be as little variety in his characters as there is in his feelings, and a tame uniform sameness must necessarily characterise them all. It is different with the enraptured bard or the writer of exquisite feeling, who identifies himself with all the interests of humanity, who feels those very emotions and passions which he so ardently describes, whose bosom glows with that refined generosity, that tender sensibility, that heroic magnanimity which characterise his heroes, and who, in a word, finds nothing so exalted in the nature of man, nor conceives any thing so generous in the ardor of his affections, of which he does not believe himself capable. It is evident, however, that though he has this advantage over the writer of dull and obtuse feelings, he cannot still pretend to say how he would feel in the situations in which he places others, as he has not been actually in them himself, and therefore he who paints at a venture, and not from actual experience, can have no certainty of giving a faithful portrait of human nature. He may approach so near it, however, that it will be difficult to distinguish the copy from the original.

To this entire theory of perfection, it will be objected, that all animals, but man in particular, are not gifted with such qualities, instincts, and powers as are best fitted to attain the end for which they were created, or that if they do possess them, they possess others that are destructive of them; that the seeds of imperfection are thickly planted in the nature of man, that he has a continual propensity to

evil, that this propensity is eternally, though insensibly, seducing him from the proper end of his creation, and that consequently there can be no perfection in a being composed of such heterogeneous and discordant elements. reply to this objection will form the subject of another article. M. M. D.

A

OBSERVATIONES QUÆDAM

AD N. T. A SCRIPTORIBUS ORIENTALIBUS.

No. II. [Concluded from No. LIII. p. 161.]

8.-IN loco Luc. i. 63, 64. ubi de Zacharia, postquam obmutuit, dicitur: καὶ αἰτήσας πινακίδιον ἔγραψε λέγων· ̓Ιωάννης ἐστὶ Tò ovoμa avtoũ. recte quidem adnotarunt Kypkius, Kuinoelius aliique interpretes, vocabulum Aéywv vertendum esse hunc in modum, et respondere fere Hebraico, coll. locis Josephi Archæol. xi. 3, 4. xiii, 4. §. 1. Quum vero non desint interpretes qui hac phrasi offendantur, et vere locutum esse Zachariam jam non amplius elinguem, haud supervacaneum erit adnotare, dicendi vocabulum apud Chaldæos Syrosque sexcenties de eo etiam, quod aliquis scribit, adhiberi. Dan. vii. 1, 2. de Daniele dicitur: : postea notavit somnium et summam verborum dixit, i. e. narravit, scripto mandavit. Comm. 2.

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Exorsus est Daniel et dixit, i. e. scripsit. Apud Barhebræam, ubicunque de epistolis conscribendis et mittendis sermo, ita instituitur oratio. Pag. $16. lin. 4. 2014

lo scripsit epistolas ad Zangium, et dixit, i. e. hujus argumenti. Quæ enim aliquis scribit, ea simul dixisse videtur amico suo. Pag. 513. lin. 1. olo o; miserunt scripta et dixerunt, i. e. in quibus hæc dixerunt, hujus argumenti. Cf. pag. 51. lin. 11. pag. 236. lin. 12, 13. Plenam habes dictionem in ipso codice sacro 2 Paralipom. ii. 10. DI DAN”

et Huramus locutus est (i. e. h. 1. responsum dedit) scripto 9. per literas.