turned into their Old-Clothes Market to worship. With awe-struck heart I walk through that Monmouth Street, with its empty Suits, as through a Sanhedrim of stainless Ghosts. Silent are they, but expressive in their silence the past witnesses and instruments of Woe and Joy, of Passions, Virtues, Crimes, and all the fathomless tumult of Good and Evil in the Prison called Life.' Friends! trust not the heart of that man for whom Old Clothes are not venerable. Watch too, with reverence, that bearded Jewish Highpriest, who with hoarse voice, like some Angel of Doom, summons them from the four winds! On his head, like the Pope, he has three Hats,-a real triple tiara; on either hand, are the similitude of Wings, whereon the summoned Garments come to alight; and ever, as he slowly cleaves the air, sounds forth his deep fateful note, as if through a trumpet he were proclaiming: Ghost of Life, come to Judgment!' Reck not, ye fluttering Ghosts: he will purify you in his Purgatory, with fire and with water; and, one day, new-created ye shall reappear. Oh! let him in whom the flame of Devotion is ready to go out, who has never worshipped, and knows not what to worship, pace and repace, with austerest thought, the pavement of Monmouth Street, and say whether his heart and his eyes still continue dry. If Field Lane, with its long fluttering rows of yellow handkerchiefs, be a Dionysius' Ear, where, in stifled jarring hubbub, we hear the Indictment which Poverty and Vice bring against lazy Wealth, that it has left them there cast out and trodden under foot of Want, Darkness, and the Devil, then is Monmouth Street a Mirza's Hill, where, in motley vision, the whole Pageant of Existence passes awfully before us; with its wail and jubilee, mad loves and mad hatreds, church-bells and gallows-ropes, farce-tragedy, beast-godhood,-the Bedlam of Creation !'"

Teufelsdröckh is not less solemn and awakening, as it ought to be, when he comes to treat of the residence and locus of Pure Reason.

"To the eye of vulgar Logic,' says he,' what is man? An omnivorous Biped that wears Breeches. To the eye of Pure Reason what is he? A Soul, a Spirit, and divine Apparition. Round his mysterious ME, there lies, under all those wool-rags, a Garment of Flesh (or of Senses), contextured in the Loom of Heaven; whereby he is releaved to his like, and dwells with them in UNION and DIVISION; and sees and fashions for himself a Universe, with azure Starry Spaces, and long Thousands of Years. Deep-hidden is he under that strange Garment; amid Sounds and Colours and Forms, as it were, swathed in, and inextricably overshrouded: yet it is skywoven, and worthy of a God. Stands he not thereby in the centre of Immensities, in the conflux of Eternities? He feels; power has been given him to Know, to Believe; nay does not the spirit of Love, free in its celestial primeval brightness, even here, though but for moments, look through? Well said Saint Chrysostom, with his lips of gold,‘the true SHEKINAH is Man :' where else is the GOD'S PRESENCE manifested not to our eyes only, but to our hearts, as in our fellow man ?'”

But we must hasten to shut this extraordinary book, so full of a new system built upon a new subject of philosophy. Before doing so, however, let us see what the professor considers to have been

the most remarkable incident in modern history. It is not, he

asserts

"The Diet of Worms, still less the Battle of Austerlitz, Waterloo, Peterloo, or any other Battle; but an incident passed carelessly over by most Historians, and treated with some degree of ridicule by others: namely, George Fox's making to himself a Suit of Leather. This man, the first of the Quakers, and by trade a Shoemaker, was one of those, to whom, under ruder or purer form, the Divine Idea of the Universe is pleased to manifest itself; and, across all the hulls of Ignorance and earthly Degradation, shine, in unspeakable Awfulness, unspeakable Beauty, on their souls who therefore are rightly accounted Prophets, God-possessed; or even Gods, as in some periods it has chanced. Sitting in his stall; working on tanned hides, amid pincers, paste-horns, rosin, swine-bristles, and a nameless flood of rubbish, this youth had nevertheless a Living Spirit belonging to him; also an antique Inspired Volume, through which, as through a window, it could look upwards, and discern its celestial

Home."

Such was George's academy. The clergy of the neighbourhood were to him blind leaders of the blind.

"For what end were their tithes levied and eaten; for what were their shovel-hats scooped out, and their surplices and cassock-aprons girt on ; and such a church-repairing, and chaffering, and organing, and other racketting, held over that spot of God's Earth,-if Man were but a Patent Digester, and the Belly with its adjuncts the grand Reality? Fox turned from them, with tears and a sacred scorn, back to his Leather-parings and his Bible. Mountains of encumbrance, higher than Etna, had been heaped over that Spirit: but it was a Spirit, and would not lie buried there."

And time flies fast, and the Leicester shoe-maker will be free. I will meditate and pray, he is made to resolve; tranquillity and leisure will be found in the woods. The hollow of a tree will shelter me, and the wild berries feed me. But what of clothes?" Cannot I stitch myself one perennial suit of leather ?"

"Let some living Angelo or Rosa, with seeing eye and understanding heart, picture George Fox on that morning, when he spreads out his cutting board for the last time, and cuts cow-hides by unwonted patterns, and stitches them together into one continuous all-including Case, the farewell service of his awl! Stitch away, thou noble Fox: every prick of that little instrument is pricking into the heart of Slavery, and Worldworship, and the Mammon-god. Thy elbows jerk, as in strong swimmerstrokes, and every stroke is bearing thee across the Prison ditch, within which Vanity holds her Work-house and Rag-fair, into lands of true Liberty; were the work done, there is in broad Europe one Free Man, and thou art he!

"Thus from the lowest depth there is a path to the loftiest height: and for the Poor also a Gospel had been published. Surely, if, as D'Alembert VOL. 111. (1838.) No. I.

F

asserts, my illustrious namesake, Diogenes, was the greatest man of Antiquity, only that he wanted Decency, then by stronger reason is George Fox the greatest of the Moderns; and greater than Diogenes himself: for he too stands on the adamantine basis of his Manhood, casting aside all props and shoars; yet not, in half-savage Pride, undervaluing the Earth; valuing it rather, as a place to yield him warmth and food, he looks Heaven-ward from his Earth, and dwells in an element of Mercy and Worship, with a still Strength, such as the Cynic's Tub did nowise witness. Great, truly, was that Tub; a temple from which man's dignity and divinity was scornfully preached abroad: but greater is the Leather Hull for the same sermon was preached there, and not in Scorn but in Love.",

The pretended editor's conception of his hero's intention in this new treatise and scheme of philosophy, is stated in the following short passage:

"As a wonder-loving and wonder-seeking man, Teufelsdröckh, from an early part of this Clothes-Volume, has more and more exhibited himself. Striking it was, amid all his perverse cloudiness, with what force of vision and of heart he pierced into the mystery of the World; recognising in the highest sensible phenomena, so far as Sense went, only fresh or faded Raiment; yet ever, under this, a celestial Essence thereby rendered visible: and while, on the one hand, he trod the old rags of Matter, with their tinsels, into the mire, he on the other everywhere exalted Spirit above all earthly principalities and powers, and worshipped it, though under the meanest shapes, with a true Platonic Mysticism."

Or we may say that sound as well as great principles, gathered from, and illustrated by, the spirit of the age, taking the subject of clothes, or dress, for a starting point, have been with strange force, a prodigality of imagination, and often an amazing splendour of language, made by Mr. Carlyle to bear on wide domains of social life, literature, the arts, politics, and religion.

1838.

ART. VIII.-Speeches of Henry Lord Brougham, upon Questions relating to Public Rights, Duties, and Interests: with Historical Introductions, and a Critical Dissertation upon the Eloquence of the Ancients. 4 Vols. 8vo. Edinburgh: Black and Co. SELDOM has any publication awakened greater expectations, or held forth more of promise than the present. It is reported that in modern Athens, nothing equal to the excitement and confident interest has been experienced or witnessed since the palmy days of the Waverley Novels, when a new creation by the minstrel of the North was about to be added to the great family. At any rate Scott's Magnum Opus, his edition of his Tales and Romances with Notes and Prefaces by himself, has in a striking and relative degree been matched by Lord Brougham, seeing that the latter has prefixed certain historical and biographical Introductions, which,

from his known talents, boldness, and principles, every one was assured would be as splendid and vigorous in the way of portraits, as they are original and uncopied. His Lordship's late performances of a similar nature which have appeared in the Edinburgh Review, led the public to expect still greater treats in the work before us, seeing that the preparation of its contents is understood to have engaged the noble author for the last few years when an unusual measure of leisure was at his command.

The Speeches themselves, which have undergone the author's careful revision and corrections, and which have been classed according to their nature, and not according to a chronological regard to the period of their delivery, present a wonderful variety of interest. Not only do they extend over nearly thirty years, but they embrace and touch upon, often elaborately, all the great public questions which have engaged the country during this period; a period too which has been singularly rife of subjects of grand importance. Not only on the leading concerns of Commerce, Manufactures, Agriculture, Finance, Domestic, and Foreign Policy has he often and earnestly spoken, but the Reform of Parliament and of the Laws, Military Punishments, the Liberty of the Press, Slavery, the Poor Laws, and Education, not to speak of a Royal Impeachment, and the rights of oppressed individuals, are subjects and questions which have each in turn, or repeatedly, occupied the orator, and called forth as much energy, ability, and study as if each of these great and multifarious topics had solely and ceaselessly employed his mind.

There cannot be a doubt of Lord Brougham's sound judgment in coming to a resolution to publish these Speeches, or of his being authorised to believe" that some good service may be rendered to the cause of human improvement," by presenting a corrected edition of those oratorical efforts, the tendency of which must be to fix, as his Lordship hopes, "the public attention upon some of the subjects most important to mankind." As mere specimens of public, forensic, or senatorial eloquence, they possess an extraordinary value. Especially in the art of debating Brougham is without a rival. His knowledge is universal, his memory hardly ever fails him, his command of language is perfect and endless, his self-possession is equally complete, his boldness is unscrupulous, his tact and dexterity are ever a match for the growing exigency. As a politician there have been some doubts of his steadiness. From the habits of advocacy he is apt to throw himself unreservedly upon one-sided views, and to commit himself so far as to expose him to a charge of inconsistency, when on some after occasion he may plant himself upon a new topic or stand up in behalf of another party. His temper, besides, is sometimes his enemy; and master as he is of the most withering sarcastic powers, as well as ambitious of popularity, frequently has he mistaken a display which has excited bursts of laughter, or called forth tumultuous cheers, for solid admiration and permanent

confidence. He cannot be acquitted of rashness, either of temper, speech, or action. When called to office by Earl Grey, it seems as if his pride had been excessively flattered. Certain it is that he said and did things in support of that Ministry which, out of office, he never would have done, till at length he lost the confidence of the country; and the people especially, whose strenuous advocate he had been for the far greater part of his public life, were so cruelly vexed by his conduct as to become crest-fallen and distrustful of all men in power. It must be conceded, however, that never did our orator exhibit such irrefragable proofs of his genius, his resolution, and his principles as by the triumphant reconquest, in the course of a few months, of all and more than all he had lost in estimation. True, personal disappointment and rancour, instead of conscientious opposition, it is very easy to allege to his disparagement; but so long as this opposition squares with enlightened principles and has for its most obvious motives a regard to freedom, justice, and good faith, his Lordship need not much fear any illiberality of construction, nor will the country at large be thereby driven from its adherence to him.

In going through the Introductions there will be found frequent attempts to show that their author has all along been consistent, and that it is Lord Melbourne together with his Cabinet and others, that have diverged from pure Whiggism: and it is very natural for a man of Lord Brougham's ardent temperament and habitual selfreliance, to take a strong and perhaps untenable position as to this question. We need not endeavour to set him or our readers right on the subject; allowances must be made; but so long as he fights the people's battle, manfully struggles in behalf of universal education, liberty of conscience, and concomitant enlargements of rights and privileges, it will be very unjust and very difficult to weigh scrupulously every expression, or to deprive him of the honour to which consistency on all the great questions that concern human improvement and human happiness entitles him.

Before coming to some passages in these Introductions, which may be regarded not merely as a confession of his Lordship's political faith, but as containing his account of the rupture between him and the Melbourne ministry, let us see what he has to say on the subject of party, its uses, influences, and province.

The repression, or at least the subjugation, of party feelings, must be always of material benefit to the community, and tend to remove a very serious obstruction from the great course in which legislation is advancing. Party connexion is indeed beneficial as long as it only bands together those who, having formed their opinions for themselves, are desirous of giving them full effect. But so much of abuse has generally attended such leagues, that reflecting men are now induced to reject them altogether. Their greatest evil certainly is the one most difficult to be shunned-their tendency to deliver over the many to the guidance of the few, in matters where no dominion ever should be exercised-to make the opinions adopted