names inspired. But yet it cannot, equally with the qualities placed as second and third in each table, be called a national characteristic; though, in the appropriation of these likewise, we refer exclusively to the intellectual portion of each country. GERMANY. Talent, Fancy.* ENGLAND. Genius, Sense, Humour. FRANCE. Cleverness, Talent, Wit. So again with regard to the forms and effects, in which the qualities manifest themselves intellectually. GERMANY. Idea, or law anticipated,+ * The latter chiefly as exhibited in wild combination and in pomp of ornament. Imagination is implied in genius. + This, as co-ordinate with genius in the first table, applies likewise to the few only; and conjoined with the two fol Totality,* ENGLAND. Law discovered,t Selection, Clearness. FRANCE. Theory invented, Lastly, we might exhibit the same qualities in their moral, religious, and political manifestations: in the cosmopolitism of Germany, the contemp lowing qualities, as more general characteristics of German intellect, includes or supposes, as its consequences and accompaniments, speculation, system, method; which in a somewhat lower class of minds appear as notionality (or a predilection for noumena, mundus intelligibilis, as contra-distinguished from phænomena, or mundus sensibilis), scheme, arrangement, orderliness. * In totality I imply encyclopedic learning, exhaustion of the subjects treated of, and the passion for completion and the love of the complete. + It might have been expressed ;-the contemplation of ideas objectively, as existing powers, while the German of equal genius is predisposed to contemplate law subjectively, with anticipation of a correspondent in nature. Tendency to individualize, embody, insulate, as instanced in the advocacy of the vitreous and the resinous fluids instead of the positive and negative forces of the tuous nationality of the Englishman, and the ostentatious and boastful nationality of the Frenchman. The craving of sympathy marks the German; inward pride the Englishman; vanity the Frenchman. So again, enthusiasm, visionariness seems the tendency of the German; zeal, zealotry of the English; fanaticism of the French. But the thoughtful reader will find these and many other characteristic points contained in, and deducible from the relations which the mind of the three countries bears to time. GERMANY. Past and Future. ENGLAND. Past and Present. FRANCE. The Present. power of electricity. Thus too, it was not sufficient that oxygen was the principal, and with one exception, the only then known acidifying substance; the power and principle of acidification must be embodied and as it were impersonated and hypostasized in this gas. Hence the idolism of the French, here expressed in one of its results, namely, palpability. Ideas and a Frenchman are incompatible terms; but I confine the remark to the period from the latter half of the reign of Louis XIV. Ideas, I say, are here out of the question; but even the conceptions of a Frenchman ;-whatever he admits to be conceivable must be likewise, according to him, imageable, and the imageable must be fancied tangible -the non-apparency of either or both being accounted for by the disproportion of our senses, not by the nature of the objects. A whimsical friend of mine, of more genius than discretion, characterizes the Scotchman of literature (confining his remark, however, to the period since the Union) as a dull Frenchman and a superficial German. But when I recollect the splendid exceptions of Hume, Robertson, Smollett, Reid, Thompson (if this last instance be not objected to as savouring of geographical pedantry, that truly amiable man and genuine poet having been born but a few furlongs from the English border), Dugald Stewart, Burns, Walter Scott, Hogg and Campbell-not to mention the very numerous physicians and prominent dissenting ministers, born or bred beyond the Tweed;-I hesitate in recording so wild an opinion, which derives its plausibility, chiefly from the circumstance so honourable to our northern sister, that Scotchmen generally have more, and a more learned, education than the same ranks in other countries, below the first class; but in part likewise, from the common mistake of confounding the general character of an emigrant, whose objects are in one place and his best affections in another, with the particular character of a Scotchman: to which we may add, perhaps, the clannish spirit of provincial literature, fostered undoubtedly by the peculiar relations of Scotland, and of which therefore its metropolis may be a striking, but is far from being a solitary, instance. ESSAY II. Η δος κάτω. The road downward. HERACLIT. Fragment. AMOUR de moi-même, mais bien calculé-was the motto and maxim of a French philosopher. Our fancy inspirited by the more imaginative powers of hope and fear enables us to present to ourselves the future as the present, and thence to accept a scheme of self-love for a system of morality. And doubtless, an enlightened self-interest would recommend the same course of outward conduct, as the sense of duty would do; even though the motives in the former case had respect to this life exclusively. But to show the desirableness of an object, or the contrary, is one thing; to excite the desire, to constitute the aversion, is another the one being to the other as a common guide-post to the "chariot instinct with spirit," which at once directs and conveys; or employing a more familiar image, we may compare the rule of self-interest to a watch with an excellent hourplate, hand, and regulator, but without its spring and wheel-work. Nay, where its sufficiency and exclusive validity are adopted as the maxim (re |