Orangeries, pineries, heronries, rookeries, fishe-ever she could go, with her cub by her side.

Before I had the rifle capped and ready, they Time and barbaric men have swept them away were far enough out of our reach. - Markham's Himalayan Adventure.

From the Eclectic Review. Essays. Selected from Contributions to the Edinburgh Review." By Henry Rogers. 2 vols. 8vo. London: Longman & Co.

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pher. Macaulay thinks generally like an eloquent special pleader. Henry Rogers is a candid, powerful, and all-sided thinker, and one who has fed his thought by a culture as diversified as it is deep. He is a scholar, a MR. ROGERS has only risen of late into mathematician, a philosopher, a philologist, a universal reputation, although he had long man of taste and virtu, a divine, and a wit, ago deserved it. It has fared with him as and if not absolutely a poet, yet he verges with Thomas Hood, and with some others who often on poetical conception, and his free and had for many years enjoyed a dubious and fervid eloquence often kindles into the fire of struggling, although real and rising fame, till poetry. some signal hit, some "Song of the Shirt," Every one who has read the "Eclipse of or "Eclipse of Faith," introduced their names Faith," and who has not?-must remember to millions who never heard of them before, how that remarkable work has collected all and turned suddenly on their half-shadowed these varied powers and acquisitions into one faces and broadest glare of fame. Thousands burning focus, and must be ready to grant that upon thousands who had never heard of since Pascal no knight has entered into the Hood's " Progress of Cant" or his "Comic arena of religious controversy better equipped Annuals," so soon as they read the "Song for fight, in strength of argument, in quickof the Shirt" inquired eagerly for him, and ness of perception, in readiness and richness began to read his earlier works. And so, of resource, in command of temper, in punalthough literary men were aware of Mr. Ro-gency of wit, in a sarcasm which "burns gers's existence, and that he was an able con- frore" with the intense coolness of its severitributor to the "Edinburgh Review," the ty, and in a species of Socratic dialogue which general public knew not even his name till the son of Sophroniscus himself would have the "Eclipse of Faith" appeared, and till envied. But as the public and press generally its great popularity excited a desire to become have made up their minds upon all these acquainted with his previous lucubrations. points, as also on the merits of his admirable We met with the "Eclipse of Faith" at its" Defence," and have hailed the author with first appearance, but have only newly risen from reading his collected articles, and propose to record our impressions while they are yet fresh and warm.

acclamation, we prefer to take up his less known preceding efforts in the "Edinburgh Review," and to bring their merits before our readers, while, at the same time, we hope to find metal even more attractive in the great names and subjects on which we shall neces sarily be led to touch, as, under Mr. Rogers's guidance, we pursue our way. We long, too, shall we say, to break a lance here and there with so distinguished a champion, although assuredly it shall be all in honor and not in hate.

Henry Rogers, as a reviewer and writer, seems to think that he belongs to the school of Jeffrey and Macaulay, although possessed of more learning and imagination than either, of a higher moral sense and manlier power than the first, and of a freer diction and an easier vein of wit than the second; and the style of deference and idolatry he uses to them and to Mackintosh might almost to his From his political papers we abstain, and detractors appear either shameful from its propose to confine ourselves to those on lethypocrisy, ludicrous from its affectation, or ters and philosophy. His first, and one of his silly from the ignorance it discovers of his own most delightful papers, is on quaint old Thoclaims and comparative merits. We defy any mas Fuller. It reminds us much of a brilunprejudiced man to read the two volumes he liant paper on Sir Thomas Browne, contribuhas reprinted from the "Edinburgh Review," ted to the same journal, we understand, by and not to feel that he has encountered, on Bulwer. Browne and Fuller were kindred the whole, the most accomplished, manliest, spirits, being both poets among wits, and wits healthiest, and most Christian writer who ever among poets. In Browne, however, imaginaadorned that celebrated periodical. If he has tion and serious thought rather preponderate, contributed to its pages no one article equal while wit unquestionably is, if not Fuller's in brilliance to Jeffrey's papers on Alison and principal faculty, the faculty he exercises most Swift, or to Macaulay's papers on Milton and frequently and with greatest delight. Some Warren Hastings, his papers, taken en masse, authors have wit and imagination in equal are more natural, less labored, full of a richer quantities, and it is their temperament which and more recondite learning, and written in a determines the question which of the two they more conversational, more vigorous, and more shall specially use or cultivate. Thus Butler, thoroughly English style. His thought, too, of "Hudibras," had genuine imagination as s of a profounder, and, at the same time, well as prodigious wit, and had he been a clearer cast. Jeffrey had the subtlety of the Puritan instead of a Cavalier, he might have lawyer rather than the depth of the philoso-indited noble serious poetry. Browne, again,

and enviable is that fecundity of fancy which can adorn whatever it touches, which can invest naked fact and dry reasoning with unlooked-for beauty, make flowerets bloom even on the brow of the precipice, and, when nothing better can be had, can turn the very substance of rock itself into moss and lichens. This faculty is incomparably the most important for the vivid and attractive exhibition of truth to the minds of men." We quote these

they go (we think the imagination not only exhibits, but tests and finds truth), but because we want afterwards to mark a special inconsistency in regard to them, which he commits in a subsequent paper.

was of a pensive, although not sombre dispo- and Fuller, says finely, "Most marvellous sition, and hence his "Urn-burial" and "Religio Medici" are grave and imaginative, although not devoid of quaint, queer fancies and arabesque devices, which force you to smile. Fuller, on the other hand, was of a sanguine, happy, easy temperament, a jolly Protestant father confessor, and this attracted him to the side of the laughing muse. Yet he abounds in quiet, beautiful touches both of poetry and pathos. Burke had, according to Mr. Rogers, little or no wit, although pos- sentences not merely as being true, so far as sessing a boundless profusion of imagery. To this we demur. His description of Lord Chatham's motley cabinet, his picture, in the "Regicide Peace," of the French Ambassador in London, his description of those "who are emptied of their natural bowels and stuffed We have long desired to see what we call with the blurred sheets of the "Rights of ideal geography, i. e. the map of the earth Man," his famous comparison of the "gesta- run over in a poetical and imaginative way, tion of the rabbit and the elephant," his reply the breath of genius passing over the dry to the defence put in for Hastings that the bones of the names of places, and through the Hindoos had erected a temple to him ("He link of association between places and events, knew something of the Hindoo mythology. characters and scenery, causing them to live. They were in the habit of building temples Old Fuller gives us, if not a specimen of this, not only to the gods of light and fertility, but something far more amusing; he gives us a to the demons of small-pox and murder, and geography of joke, and even from the hallowhe, for his part, had no objection that Mr. ed scenery of the Holy Land he extracts, in Hastings should be admitted into such a Pan- all reverence, matter for inextinguishable theon "), these are a few out of a hundred merriment. What can be better in their way proofs that he possessed that most brilliant than the following? "Gilboa.-The mounspecies of wit which is impregnated with tain that David cursed, that neither rain nor imagination. But the truth is, that Burke, dew should fall on it; but of late some Engan earnest if not a sad-hearted man, was led lish travellers climbing this mountain were by his excess of zeal to plead the causes in well wetted, David not cursing it by a prowhich he was interested in general by serious phetical spirit but in a poetic rapture. Edrei. weapons, by the burning and barbed arrows-The city of Og, on whose giant-like proof invective and imagination rather than by portions the rabbis have more giant-like the light glancing missiles of wit and humor. lies. Pis-gah.-Where Moses viewed the Jeremy Taylor, with all his wealth of fancy, land; hereabouts the angel buried him, and was restrained from wit partly by the subjects also buried the grave, lest it should occasion he was led through his clerical profession to idolatry." And so on he goes over each awful treat, and partly from his temperament, which spot, chuckling in harmless and half-conscious was quietly glad rather than sanguine and glee like a school-boy through a morning mirthful. Some writers, again, we admit, and church-yard, which, were it midnight, he as Mr. Rogers repeatedly shows, vibrate between wit and the most melancholy seriousness of thought; the scale of their spirits, as it rises or sinks, either lifts them up to piercing laughter or depresses them to thoughts too deep and sad for tears. It was so with Plato, with Pascal, with Hood, and is so, we suspect, with our author himself. Shakspeare, perhaps alone of writers, while possessing wit and imaginative wisdom to the same prodigious degree, has managed to adjust them to each other, never allowing either the one or the other unduly to preponderate, but uniting them into that consummate whole which has become the admiration, the wonder, and the despair of the world.

Mr. Rogers, alluding to the astonishing illustrative powers of Jeremy Taylor, Burke,

would travel in haste, in terror, and with oft-reverted looks. It is no wish to detract from the dignity and consecration of these scenes that actuates him; it is nothing more nor less than his irresistible temperament, the boy-heart beating in his veins, and which is to beat on till death.

Down the halls of history, in like manner, Fuller skips along, laughing as he goes; and even when he pauses to moralize or to weep, the pause is momentary, and the tear which had contended, during its brief existence with a sly smile, is "forgot as soon as shed." His wit is often as withering as it is quaint, although it always performs its annihilating work without asperity, and by a single touch. It is just the tap of the keeper on the shoulder of the escaped lunatic. Hear this on the Jesu

Egyptian architecture in its chaotic confusion and misproportioned magnificence.

its: "Such is the charity of the Jesuits, that lightful nonsense. Rogers justly remarks, they never owe any man any ill will-making too, that not withstanding all the rubbish and present payment thereof." Or this on Machi- gossip which are found in Fuller's writings, he avel, who had said "that he who undertakes means to be truthful always; and that, with to write a history must be of no religion," all his quaintness and pedantry, his style is "if so, Machiavel himself was the best qualifi- purer and more legible than that of almost ed of any in his age to write an history." Of any writer of his age. It is less swelling and modest women, who nevertheless dress them- gorgeous than Browne's, but far easier and selves in questionable attire, he says, "I con- more idiomatic, less rich but less diffuse than fess some honest women may go thus, but no Taylor's, less cumbered with learning than whit the honester for going thus. That ship Burton's, and less involved, and less darkened may have Castor and Pollux for the sign, with intermingling and crossing beams of light which notwithstanding has St. Paul for the than that of Milton, whose poetry is written lading." His irony, like good imagery, often in the purest Grecian manner; whilst his becomes the short-hand of thought, and is English prose often resembles not Gothic, but worth a thousand arguments. The bare, bald style of the schoolmen he attributes to design, "lest any of the vermin of equivocation Mr. Rogers's second paper is on Andrew should hide themselves under the nap of their Marvel, and contains a very interesting acwords." Some of our readers are probably count of the life, estimate of the character, smiling as they read this, and remember the and criticism of the writings of this "AristiDRESS of certain religious priests, not unlike des-Butler," if we may, in the fashion of Mithe schoolmen, in our day. After comment-rabeau, coin a combination of words, which ing on the old story of St. Dunstan and the seems not inapt to represent the virtues of Devil, he cries out in a touch of irony seldom that great patriot's life, and the wit and biting surpassed: "But away with all suspicions and sarcasm of his manner of writing. He tells queries. None need to doubt of the truth the old story of his father crossing the Humthereof, finding it on a sign painted in Fleet-ber with a female friend, and perishing in the street, near Temple Bar." waters; but omits the most striking part of In these sparkles of wit and humor, there the story, how the old man in leaving the is, we notice, not a little consciousness. He shore, as the sky wus scowling into storm, says good things, and a quiet chuckle, a gentle threw his staff back on the beach and cried crow, proclaims his knowledge that they are out-" Ho for Heaven!" The tradition of good. But his best things, the fine serious this is at least still strong in Hull. Nothing fancies, which at times cross his mind, cross after Marvel's integrity, and his quiet, keen, it unconsciously, and drop out like pearls from caustic wit, so astonishes us as the fact, that the lips of a blind fairy, who sees not their he never opened his lips in parliament! He lustre, and knows not their value. Fuller's was "No-speech Marvel." He never got the deepest wisdom is the wisdom of children, and length of Addison's "I conceive, I conceive, his finest eloquence is that which seems to I conceive." There are no authentic accounts cross over their spotless lips, like west winds of even a "Hear, hear," issuing from his lips. over half-opened rosebuds,-breathings of the What an act of self-denial in that of bad Eternal Spirit, rather than utterances of their measures and bad men! How his heart must own souls. In this respect, and in some others, sometimes have burned, and his lips quivered, he much resembled John Bunyan, to whom and yet the severe spirit of self-control kept we wonder Rogers has not compared him. him silent! What a contrast to the infinite Honest John, we verily believe, thought much babblement of senators in modern days. And more of his rhymes, prefixed to the second yet was not his silence very formidable? Did part of the "Pilgrim's Progress," and of the it not strike the Tories as the figure of the little puzzles and jokes he has scattered moveless Mordecai at the king's gate struck through the work, than of his divinely artless the guilty Haman? There, night after night, portraiture of scenery, passions, characters, in front of the despots, sate the silent statueand incidents, in the course of the wondrous allegory. Mr. Rogers quotes a good many of Fuller's precious prattlings; but Lamb, we think, has selected some still finer, particularly his picture of the fate of John Wickliff's ashes. Similar touches of tender, quaint, profound, and unwitting sublimity, are found nearly as profusely sprinkled as his jests, and clenches through his varied works, which are a perfect quarry of sense, wit, truth, pedantry, learning, quiet poetry, ingenuity, and de

like figure, bending not to their authority, unmovable by their threats, not to be melted by their caresses, not to be gained over by their bribes, perhaps with a quiet stern sneer resting as though sculptured upon his lips, and doubtless they trembled more at his dumb defiance, than at the loud-mouthed attacks and execrations of others; the more, as while others were sometimes absent, he was always there, a moveless pillar of patriotism, a still libel of truth, forever glaring on their fascin

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ated and terror-stricken eyes. Can we won-in his "Memoirs," sneering at Lord Nelson's der that they are very generally supposed to talents, because his writings were careless and have removed him from their sight, in the only poor. Nelson did not pretend to be a writer way possible in the circumstances, by giving or an orator; he pretended only to do what him a premature and poisoned grave? he did -to sweep the seas with his cannon,

In his third paper, Rogers approaches a and be the greatest naval commander his mightier and more eloquent, but not a firmer country ever produced. Mungo Park and Ledor more sincere spirit than Marvel Martin yard were no great authors, but they were Luther. Here he puts forth all his strength; what they wished to be, the most heroic of and has, we think, very nobly vindicated both travellers. Danton never published a single Luther's intellectual and moral character. page, but he was incomparably a greater man Hallam (a writer whom Rogers greatly over- than Camille Desmoulins, who wrote thousands. estimates, before whom he falls down with Would it have added an inch to the colossal "awful reverence prone," from whom he ven- stature, or in any measure enhanced the lurid tures to differ with "a whispered breath and grandeur of Satan, had Milton ascribed to bated humbleness," which seem, considering him the invention not of fire-arms but of the his own calibre, very laughable, yet of whose printing-press, and made him the author of a incapacity as a literary critic, and especially few hundred satires against Omnipotence? as a judge of poetry, he seems to have a Channing, in his essay on Napoleon, has constifled suspicion, which comes out in the paper tributed to the circulation of this error. He on Fuller, whom Hallam has slighted) has gives there a decided preference to literary underrated Luther's talents, because forsooth over other kinds of power. But would even he his works are inferior to his reputation. Why, have compared Brougham or Daniel Webster what was Luther's real work? It was the to Washington? It seems to us that the very Reformation. What library of Atlas folios highest style of merit is when the powers of aye, though Shakspeare had penned every line actions and authorship are combined in nearly in it-could have been compared to the rend- equal proportions. They were so in Milton, ing of the shroud of the Christian church? As who was as good a school-master and secretary soon accuse an earthquake of not being so me- as he was an author. They were so in Bacon, lodious in its tones as an organ, as demand ar- who was an able if not a just chancellor and tistic writings from Luther. His burning of statesman, as well as the first of modern phithe pope's bull was, we think, and Mr. Rogers losophers. Notwithstanding Mr. Rogers, they thinks with us, a very respectable review. were so, we think, in Napoleon, whose bulleHis journey to Worms was as clever as most tins and speeches, though often in false taste, books of travel. His marriage with Catherine were often as brilliant as his battles. They Bora was not a bad epithalamium. His ren- were so in Burke, who was a first-rate business dering of the Bible into good German was man and a good farmer, as well as a great nearly as great a work as the "Constitutional orator, statesman, and writer. They were so History." Some of those winged words which in poor Burns, who used the plough as well as he uttered against the Pope and for Christ, he used the pen. And they were so in Scott, have been called "half-battles." He held the who was an excellent Clerk of Session and pen very well too; but it was only with one capital agriculturist and landlord, besides beof his hundred arms. His works were his ac- ing the first of all fictionists except Cervantes, tions. Every great book is an action; and the who, by the way, fought bravely at Lepanto, converse is also true every great ac- as well as wrote Don Quixote. Even in Lution is a book. Cromwell, Mr. Rogers says, ther's case, Mr. Hallam is proved by Rogers very justly, cannot be judged by his speeches, to be sufficiently harsh in his judgment. Lunor Alexander. Neither, we add, could Ca- ther's productions, occasional as most of them, sar by his "Commentaries," which, excellent and hastily written as all of them were, are as they are, develop only a small portion of not the mediocre trash which Hallam insinuates the "foremost man of all this world;" nor them to be. If tried by the standard of that could Frederick of Prussia, by his French species of literature to which they all in reality verses; nor could Nelson, by his letters to belong, they will not be found wanting. They Lady Hamilton; nor could even Hall, Chal- are all letters, the shorter or longer epistles mers, and Irving, by their orations and dis- of a man greatly engrossed during his days, courses. There is a very high, if not the and who at evening dashes off his careless, mulhighest order of men, who find literature too tifarious, but characteristic correspondence. small a sheath for the broadsword of their Mark, too, everything he wrote was sent, and genius. They come down and shrink up sent instantly, to the press. Who would like when they commence to write; but they this done in his own case? What divine, make others write for them. Their deeds sup- writing each week his two sermons, would care ply the material of ten thousand historians, about seeing them regularly printed the next novelists, and poets. We find Lord Holland, day, and dispersed over all the country? Who,