enny, and that
annihilation is the most satisfactory end of human life. From such views
both the intellect and the heart of man will recoil with well-founded
disgust--his logical powers will perceive the absurdity of the argument,
and his taste and affections will lead him to exclaim with Wordsworth:--

----'Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn:
So might I standing on this pleasant lea
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus, rising from the sea,
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.'

"The new lights promised by our authors turn out to be chiefly composed
of very old-fashioned rays of darkness, and, after a careful perusal,
many will come to the conclusion that the way to be a modern
philosopher, is to quote the ancients, praise Bacon, and talk 'bosh.'"

* * * * *

New editions of the works of Fielding and Smollett, profusely
illustrated by Cruikshank and Kenny Meadows, will soon be published by
Stringer & Townsend. These great classics will never cease to be read
with the keenest relish by all the English race. The London publishers
of the present edition of Fielding observe in their advertisement:

"It is altogether unnecessary to enlarge upon the genius of
Henry Fielding. There is no man in the brilliant history of
English literature, with the single exception of Shakspeare, to
whose genius has been paid the homage of a more general
attestation. Calumny and misrepresentation--the offspring of
envy and malice--these, in his day, he had to endure or to
deride, and these, with their authors, have long sunk into
oblivion. The greatest of his contemporaries knew and
acknowledged his transcendent merit, and since his death, there
has not been one man of genius whose opinion of Fielding is
recorded, that has not spoken of him with veneration and
delight. Dr. Johnson, spite of a personal enmity, could not but
concede his extraordinary powers. Lady Mary Wortley Montague
reluctantly confessed that 'cousin Fielding' was the greatest
original genius of the age; the fastidious Gray was charmed
with him; and the more fastidious Gibbon has left his opinion
on record, that the illustrious house of Hapsburg, from which
Fielding was descended--its name erased, its towers
crumbled,--will be forgotten, when the roma