proportionate to their fortune, have been made very common and vulgar grounds of attack. With regard to the first, we will own frankly that that mere animal habit which would confine men to the narrow circle of their firesides, and render it a misdemeanour to seek rational intercourse abroad, might, we think, be lessened, without operating in any way to the disadvantage of society. But, in fact, so rigid a domesticalness exists little among the classes for which clubs are as yet chiefly instituted. We fear that at those witching hours of night, in which the gentleman is at his club, the lady and her daughter, so far from deploring his absence at home, are enjoying themselves at the ball or the soirée. The latter charge is equally ridiculous. That all men are not rich enough to enjoy a good house, airy rooms, new publications, the constant society of their acquaintances, and the decent pleasures of the table, is a grievance very much to be lamented; but that when men can obtain these advantages without being rich, there should be any harm in enjoying them, because they are not rich; or that they should be more discontented with a small room, because they have the power of quitting it for a large room whenever they please, are notions in metaphysics with which we cannot agree. Besides, while the principle of a club is economy, its temptations are not those of extravagance; while a young man is enabled by its organization to save half his income, he meets there little that could allure him to spend the other half. The more attached he becomes to the quiet and orderly habits of a club life, the less he will feel inclined towards the expenses of that dissipation to which the routine of a club life is so opposed. A third objection, sometimes urged against clubs, would be serious indeed, were it generally founded in truth, viz. the custom of gaming. But gaming is not practised in the great majority of clubs, especially those lately established. In the few notorious for the support of that vice, the usual advantages of a club, viz. economy, the facility of intellectual conversation, &c., are not found; they are gaming-houses, in a word, with a more specious name; and we willingly surrender them, without a word of defence, to the indignation of their impugners.

The increase of clubs we think favourable to the growth of public principle. By the habits of constant intercourse, truths circulate, and prejudices are frittered away. 'Nothing,' observes that great writer,* in whom we scarcely know which to admire the most, the brilliant imagination, or the quiet rationality- nothing more contributes to maintain our common sense than living in the universal way with multitudes of men ;' and,

*Goethe.

let us add, that it not only maintains our common sense, but diminishes the selfishness of our motives. In the close circle of private life, public matters are rarely and coldly discussed. In public, they form the chief topic; and made interesting, first as the staple of conversation, they assume, at length, an interest and a fascination in themselves.

We cannot quit our subject without adverting to that tone of consideration and respect towards the great bulk of the people, which especially characterises the present time, and was almost a stranger to the past. Even in the ancient democracies, in which the flattery of the people was the science of power, even among the later Paladins of Chivalry,— rough to the haughty, but gentle to the low'-mirrors not less of courtesy than valour-the tone alike of literature and philosophy breathes with a high contempt for the emotions and opinions of the vulgar. Among the Greeks-the crowdthe herd-the people-their fickleness-their violence—their ingratitude, furnished the favourite matter to scornful maxims and lordly apophthegms. Taking their follies and their vices as the common subject for notice, where do we find their virtues panegyrized, or their characters dispassionately examined? And in the models of chivalry, the 'doffing to the low' was but the insult of condescension; the humble were not to be insulted, because they were not to be feared. But the instant the aspirer of plebeian birth attempted to rise against the decrees of fortune, the instant he affected honour or distinction, he was 'audacious varlet,' and 'presuming caitiff.' The tender and accomplished author of the Arcadia, that noble work in which Chivalry appears in its most romantic and lovely shape, evidently esteems it the proof of a thoughtful and lofty mind, to disdain the multitude, and rise beyond a regard for their opinion. Were it not something profane to accuse so glorious a benefactor as Shakspeare of any offence, it might, perhaps, be justly observed, that while his works abound with pithy sarcasms on the foibles of the common people, they have never brought into a strong light their nobler qualities; even the virtues accorded them are the mere virtues of servants, and rarely aspire beyond fidelity to a master in misfortune. While, in his mighty page, the just and impartial mirror has been held to almost every human secret of character among the higher and middle classes of life, how little have the motives and conduct of the great mass (beyond what are contemptible) been sifted and examined; how many opportunities* of displaying their firmness, their fortitude, their

In the Historical Plays.

resistance to oppression, of sympathizing with their misfortunes and their wrongs, have been passed over in silence, or devoted rather to satire than to praise! But not now, thank God, is it the mode, the cant, to affect a disdain of the vast majority of our fellow-creatures,-an unthinking scorn for their opinions or pursuits: the philosophy of past times confused itself with indifference; the philosophy of the present rather seeks to be associated with philanthropy.

It may be worth while to some future enquirer to ascertain, what share of the general disposition to which we refer may be attributed to writers now little remembered, and, in their own time, not unjustly condemned. It is the glorious doom of literature, that the evil perishes and the good remains. Even when the original author of some healthy and useful truth is forgotten, the truth survives, transplanted to works more calculated to purify it from error, and perpetuate it to our benefit. Nor can we tell how much we now owe of the tendency to enlighten and consult the people-how much of broad and rational opinion-to certain heated and vague enthusiasts of the last century. Time has consigned to oblivion the wild theories and the licentious morals that clouded, in their works, the temper towards benevolence and the desire of freedom. But time has ripened what was no less the characteristic of their writings-a disposition to unrobe the solemn plausibilities' that hid their interests from the people; to reduce to its just estimate the value of military glory; to direct analysis to the end and nature of governments, and to consider above the rest those classes of society hitherto the most contemned. Amidst the tumults and portents of the time, we hail this disposition as the best safeguard to one order, and the surest augury to the other; in proportion as it increases, society triumphs against whatever may oppose its welfare in prejudice or in custom; reform becomes at once tranquil and universal; the necessity of revolutions is superseded, and what once was enforced by violence, is effected by opinion.

Meanwhile, in whatsoever channels may be open to the honest ambition of literature, we trust that those who have the power to influence the bias of popular sentiment, will inculcate what has too long been the subject of jest or incredulity, viz. the glory of promoting public interests; and the necessity, in order to bring virtue from the Hearth to the Forum, of calling forth from their present obscurity and neglect those rewards to exertion, which confer, if they be but rightly considered, a deeper respect than wealth, and an honour more lofty than titles.

ART. VI.-Essays on the Pursuit of Truth, on the Progress of Knowledge, and on the Fundamental Principle of all Evidence and Expectation. 8vo. London: 1829.

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F the three treatises contained in the volume whose titlepage we have prefixed, lately published by the ingenious author of the essays on The Formation and Publication of Opinions, our present concern is only with the last. There is no reason to doubt that the author's single object is that which he professes the establishment of truth in a momentous and difficult sphere of enquiry.' The principles of the argument may also have been asmaturely considered' as they are plainly laid down. It will not, however, follow, as a matter of course, when they come to be applied to the elucidation of doctrines hitherto obscurely understood, and to the determination of 'controversies long vainly agitated,' that their refutation, if erroneous, has been thus rendered an easy task.' The subject is one which, however clearly treated, scarcely admits of being disposed of with facility. After premising a few remarks on the history and revival of the theory, as now proposed for our acceptance, we shall limit our criticism, in order that it may have the better chance of being intelligible, to a single point.

It is fully acknowledged, that former writers have sufficiently established, as the very basis of expectation, the metaphysical truth, that, with reference to the future, man unavoidably assumes, that every cause will continue to produce the same effects with which it has been hitherto attended. But there is an apparent claim to novelty in the retrospective application of the principle to past events, and of its use, both in determining the controversy of philosophical necessity, and in defining the legitimate bounds of testimony, which we do not exactly comprehend. Dr Thomas Brown is alone excepted from the remark, that philosophers have noticed only casually the truth, that in reasoning on events which have taken place, we necessarily 'assume the past uniformity of causation;' and it is added, ' that in no instance do they appear to have been aware of the consequences to which it ultimately leads.'

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Now, on the contrary, if we understand at all Hume's three chapters on the idea of necessary connexion, on liberty and necessity, and on miracles, they have anticipated the present essay, not in the principle, but in these very applications. To confine ourselves to the case of miracles. Hume's argument against the possible proof of them by testimony trode in the self

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same steps. It being a general maxim,' says the present author, that no objects have any discoverable connexion together, and ⚫ that all the inferences which we can draw from one to another are founded merely on our experience of their constant and regular conjunction; it is evident, that we ought not to make 'an exception to this maxim in favour of human testimony, whose 'connexion with any event seems in itself as little necessary as in any other.' (P. 116.)—' It is experience only which gives autho'rity to human testimony; and it is the same experience which assures us of the laws of nature. When, therefore, these two kinds of experience are contrary, we have nothing to do but 'subtract the one from the other, and embrace an opinion, either on one side or the other, with that assurance which arises from the remainder. But according to the principle here explained, this subtraction, with regard to all popular religions, amounts 'to an entire annihilation; and therefore we may establish it as a maxim, that no human testimony can have such force as to prove a miracle, and make it a just foundation for any 'such system of religion.' (P. 131.) The whole argument, of which these observations form the premises and the conclusion, indisputably involves both the physical truth, that the same causes produce the same effects;-and the mental fact, that we always take for granted this uniformity in the operation of causes. The intermediate train of reasoning supposes that there is no difference in this respect between the course pursued in judging of human testimony and of physical events; except that the sequences of cause and effect, in the material world, are so simple, that our greater certainty of knowledge enables us, in the case of physical events, to trace the uniformity of causation with a degree of assurance which, in the case of human testimony, (depending as it does on mental phenomena and voluntary actions,) the uncertainty of our knowledge never can acquire. Subject to this difference, the uniformity of causation is the ground of our belief in both cases. Consequently, if we take an instance, where human assertions professedly imply a deviation from the uniform succession of physical causes and effects, we immediately thereby raise a direct opposition between the nature of the evidence, and the nature of the fact which the evidence is to establish. In such a case, the reception of the evidence implicates us in an inconsistency and a contradictionbeing nothing less than the maintaining, on the ground of uniformity of causation, the competency of testimony to prove a fact which implies a deviation from that uniformity. What is worse, it amounts even to the unreasonableness of giving the less certain degree of knowledge the precedence over the more certain.