dred, sympathetic arms of
modern German. For myself, I neither share their regret, nor
their terror. Willing at all times to pay filial homage to the
shades of Hengist and Horsa, and to admit they have laid the
base of our compound language; or, if you will, have prepared
the soil from which the chief nutriment of the goodly tree, our
British oak, must be derived, I am yet proud to confess that I
look with sentiments more exulting and more reverential to the
bonds by which the law of the universe has fastened me to my
distant brethren of the same Caucasian race; to the privileges
which I, an inhabitant of the gloomy North, share in common with
climates imparadised in perpetual summer, to the universality
and efficacy resulting from blended intelligence, which, while
it endears in our eyes the land of our fathers as a seat of
peculiar blessing, tends to elevate and expand our thoughts into
communion with humanity at large; and, in the 'sublimer spirit'
of the poet, to make us feel

"That God is everywhere--the God who framed
Mankind to be one mighty family,
Himself our Father, and the world our home."

What nice shading of thought do his remarks on Petrarch discover!

"But it is not so much to his direct adoptions that I refer, _as
to the general modulation of thought, that clear softness of his
images, that energetic self-possession of his conceptions, and
that melodious repose in which are held together all the
emotions he delineates_."

Every one who knows anything of himself, and of his fellow-men, will
acknowledge the wisdom of what follows. It displays an intimate
knowledge both of the constitution and history of man, and there is much
in it suited to our present need:--

"_I do not hesitate to express my conviction, that the spirit of
the critical philosophy, as seen by its fruits in all the
ramifications of art, literature, and morality, is as much more
dangerous than the spirit of mechanical philosophy_, as it is
fairer in appearance, and more capable of alliance with our
natural feelings of enthusiasm and delight. Its dangerous
tendency is this, that it perverts those very minds, whose
office it was to resist the perverse impulses of society, and to
proclaim truth under the dominion of falsehood. However
precipitate may be at any time the current of public opini