the mass of the people of the North are in any way interfered with by the Government. These acts occur in places in which the people of the Northern States would gladly see the Government adopt more stringent measures. The majority thoroughly support the Government at Washington. Redress, therefore, is hopeless. Mr Seward's system is lenient compared with the measures which might to-morrow be passed by popular vote in the Northern States. For a minority placed in such a position there is no safety,

except in separation. This is beginning to be practically felt in the border States, and, consequently, a leaning towards the South is daily gaining ground. They must join the South in self-defence.

The prosecution of this war will not only array the States which have already seceded into a compact and hostile nation, but it will probably drive the border States to seek security in joining the Southern Confederacy.

WASHINGTON, July 27, 1862.

THERE is no peculiarity in Montaigne which more called forth the censure of his earlier critics than the frequent want of correspondence between the subject matter of his discourse, and the title prefixed to it.

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Witness," says one of the friendliest of his commentators,-" Witness the Essays On the History of Spurina,' On some Verses of Virgil,'' On Vanity,' 'On Physiognomy,' &c.; in these the author incoherently rambles from one subject to another without any order or connection."

Now, whether this peculiarity in Montaigne be really a fault or not, there is no doubt that, in him, it is not to be ascribed to the want of premeditation and care. With all his vivacity, Montaigne was essentially artistic, sparing no pains to do his best for the work to which his genius was the best adapted.

If in each succeeding edition of his Essays he did not materially correct what had been already writ

ten, it was because, as he tells us,

"Writers should well consider what they do before they give their wares to the light-they have no excuse for haste-who hastens them?" But though he so deliberately weighed the substance and so elaborately settled the form of sentences once set in type, that he found no cause to recast them,-still, in each succeeding edition he interpolated new sentences rich with new illustrations from riper experience or extended scholarship. So that his style, as it now comes down to us, has been compared to a pearl necklace, in which all the pearls were originally of equal size, but to which, from time to time, pearls much larger have been added, increasing the value of the necklace, but impairing the symmetry of the setting.

But it is evident from his own frank avowals that Montaigne deliberately resolved, at the first, upon that freedom of movement, that licence of "leap and skip,"

which he continued with unabated vivacity to the last. "I go out of the way," he says, "but it is rather from a wantonness than heedlessness. I love the poetic ramble by leaps and skips-it is an art, as Plato says-light, nimble, and a little maddish." He proceeds to defend himself by the authority of his acknowledged model among the ancient writers. There are," he observes, "pieces in Plutarch, where he forgets his theme,-where the proposition of his argument is only found by incidence, and stuffed throughout with foreign matter. Good God! how beautiful then are his variations and frolicsome sallies, and then most beautiful when they seem to be fortuitous and introduced for want of heed. It is the inattentive reader that loses my subject, and not I: there will always be found some phrase or other in a corner, that is to the purpose, though it lie very close."

It is clear from all this that Montaigne wrote as great artists do write-viz., from an unerring perception of that which was most suitable to his own genius, and let me add, of that which may be less evident to the commonplace order of critics-viz., the true theory and spirit of the kind of work which had engaged his forethought and concentrated his study.

For in the art of essay-writing there appear to be two extremes necessarily opposed to each other towards one or the other of which the intermediate varieties of that class of composition tend to gravitate-firstly, the essay which is in spirit and form didatic, and sets forth a definite proposition, to be established by logical reasoning and connected argument. In such essays, addressed rigidly to the understanding, the personality of the writer disappears. In a treatise on the Circulating Medium, on the Comparative Populousness of the Ancient States, on some vexed point in political economy, statistics,

moral science, &c., the author, even where his name gives to his opinions a recognised authority, must not distract your attention from his argument by attempts to engage your interest in himself. Directly opposed to this species of essay is that in which the writer does not profess to enforce any abstract proposition by sustained ratiocination, but rather pours forth to the reader, as he would to an intimate friend, his individual impressions and convictions, his sentiments, his fancies; not imposing on you a schoolman's doctrine, but imparting to you a companion's mind. He does not sternly say to you, "You should think this or that;" but rather, "This or that is what I think, fancy, or feel." As the first-mentioned kind of essay, addressed solely to the understanding, is inherently didactic in the substance, so it is essentially prosaic in the style. Whatever the elegance of its periods, whatever the felicity of its ornaments, still the elegance is that of appropriate lucidity in statement and polished vigour in reasoning; and the ornament is only felicitous, where, like the golden enrichment of the Milanese coats of steel, it renders more conspicuous the sterner metal on which it bestows an additional value. But the second kind of essay has in it much of the generical spirit of poetry. And so Montaigne himself very justly conceived, implying the excuse for his own playful licences, where alone it ought to be sought, and where his critics had neglected to look for it-viz., in the truth that poetical genius of high order will have its way, and though its mode of expression may dispense with verse, it can never be justly understood if it be only looked on as prose. "A thousand poets," says Montaigne, in treating of his own compositions, "creep in the prosaic style; but the best old prose (and I strew it here, up and down, indifferently for verse) shines

throughout, and has the lusty vigour and boldness of poetry, not without some air of its frenzy.

I mean that the matter should distinguish itself; it sufficiently shows where it changes, where it concludes, where it begins, and where it rejoins, without interweaving it with words of connection, introduced for the service of dull and inattentive ears.' "'* And the kind of poetry to which such form of essay belongs, is that which is most opposed to the didactic, and may be described in the words with which Hegel has defined the character of lyrical poetry in its difference from the epic.

"That," says this exquisite critic, "which the lyrical poetry expresses is the subjective, the interior world, the sentiments, the contemplations, and the emotions of the soul; instead of retracing the development of an action, its essence and its final goal are the expression of the interior movements of the mind of the individual. . . . It is the personal thought, the internal sentiment and contemplation, in whatsoever they have truthful and substantial. And the poet expresses them as his own thought, his passion peculiar to himself, his personal disposition, or the result of his reflections."

Apply this definition to the Essays of Montaigne, and it fits as exactly as it does to the Odes of Horace. Elsewhere I have called Montaigne the Horace of Essayists-an appellation which appears to me appropriate, not only from the subjective and personal expression of his genius, but from his genial amenity; from his harmonious combination of sportiveness and earnestness; and, above all, from the full attainment of that highest rank in the subjective order of intellect; when the author, in the mirror of his individual interior life, glasses the world around and without him; and, not losing his own identity, yet identi

fies himself with infinite varieties of mankind.

Just as Shakespeare has precedence over all poets who deal with the objective, inasmuch as his own personality is so abnegated or concealed that it needs the finest observer to conjecture what might be Shakespeare's individual opinions and beliefs apart from those which he puts into the lips of his characters, so Montaigne's precedence over all essayists who have regarded nature and life from the subjective point of view is maintained by the hardy frankness with which he carries out to the extreme the lyrical characteristic of individualised personality. That which is called his egotism forms the charm and the strength of his genius. And here it is that he stands alone, because no other essayist has united the same courage in self-exposition with the same close family resemblance to the generality of mankind. Rousseau or Cardan may be as confidingly egotistical as Montaigne, but they present to us in their personalities creatures so exceptional, so unlike the general character of mankind, that they appear almost abnormal, and we are not even sure that they are thoroughly sane.

Between these two opposed schools in essay-viz., that which argues, like Hume, for a specific proposition, and that which, like Montaigne, rather places before the reader the thoughts and sentiments of an individual mind-there are many gradations, in which both schools are more or less mingled, and to which, therefore, I give the name of the Mixed Essay. In Bacon's Miscellaneous Essays there is little logical argument; but there is a laconic adherence to the thesis set out, maintained by sententious assertion on the authority and ipse dixit of the writer, who thereby rather insinuates than proclaims his personality: with Johnson the personality is somewhat more obtruded, and the assertion more supported by argu

ment: with Addison the distinctions between the two classes of composition are more obviously preserved. In the Essay on the 'Pleasures of Imagination,' for instance, Addison is almost wholly scholastic and objective, arguing his question as a truth deduced from principles exterior to his own personal impressions; but in the Essay on 'Superstition' (Spectator,' 12), or on ' Professions' (Spectator,' 21), there is little more than what we may assume to be the lyrical effusion of his own contemplations and reflections. The charming Essays of Elia are almost wholly of the latter description. Their egotism is chastened and subdued, but their personality is never relinquished: it is not philosophy that selects its problem, and proceeds to solve it-it is Charles Lamb who, philosophising through whim and fancy, allures you to listen to Charles Lamb.

These humble lucubrations are necessarily of the mixed or eclectic school of Essay. I am too Englishthat is, too shy-to become the candid reporter of myself, and emulate the courageous confidence in the sympathy of his reader with which Montaigne dilates on his personal habits and his constitutional ailments. Neither do I desire so to contract my experience, and so to reject the free play of speculation and fancy, as to move undeviatingly along the straight line of logic towards some abstract proposition. It is not every bird that flies as the crow flies towards its food or its nest. Unquestionably, herein I retain my personality, because without it all other kind of essay than the argumentative and scholastic would be characterless and lifeless. In fiction the writer rarely speaks for himself; when he does so, it is but episodically-covertlywithout giving us any tangible guarantee of his individual sincerity. In politics, and indeed in all polemics, the disputant argues for a cause, and in so doing it is better to cite any other authority than his own. But in monologues of this kind it is a mind, and a heart, and a soul

that are honestly giving out to the world what they have imbibed from experience, through the varied process of observation, reflection, outward survey, and interior contemplation. Certainly many may say," What care we what this man thinks, fancies, feels, believes, or questions? His opinions or sentiments are in no account with us. If he affirms 'I will prove a truth,' we will listen to him, not for his sake, but for the sake of the truth. But when he merely says, 'I think, I feel,' a fico for his thoughts and his feelings!"

Certainly many may so say, and I have no right to blame them. I can only reply, with all possible meekness, that I entertain no such contempt for the mind of any fellow-man; that to me no class of reading is more pleasant, and not many classes of literature more instructive, than that in which a man, who has lived long enough in the world of men and of books to have acquired a wide experience of the one, and gathered some varied stores for reflection from the other, imparts to me the results to which one mind arrives from lengthened and diversified interchange with many minds. I need not necessarily take him as a judge upon matters of controversy; but at least I may form my own judgment the better by admitting him as a witness. I do not ask him to be always saying something new. If, having wit or courage enough to say something new (than which nothing is more easy), he yet, after the siftings and weighings of his own unbiassed judgment, arrives at a conclusion as old as a proverb, I am pleased to find a fresh corroboration of some belief which I have been accustomed to cherish as a truth.

Charmed with observing in Degerando's 'Comparative History of the Systems of Philosophy,' the reflected image of his own life and thought from youth, Goethe exclaims, in that careless strength with which he flings abroad solid masses of truth,

"The great thing, after all, is to know on which side we stand, and where."

Thus it never occurs to me, in the composition of these essays, to aim at that praise for originality which is readily obtained by any writer who embodies paradoxes hostile to common sense in language perversive of common English. I know that I cannot fail to say much that is original, whether I will or not, because I am here simply expressing my own mind, as formed by life and by read ing. No other human being in the world can have gone through the same combinations of experience in life, or the same range of choice in reading. Therefore, whatever its general resemblance to others, still in many respects my mind must be peculiar to myself, and the expression of it must in many respects be original. It is so with every man, whatever the degree of his talents, who has lived variously and read largely. He may not be original when he deals with fiction; for invention there is intuitive, is genius, the gift of the gods. But when he is not inventing a fable, nor imagining beings who never existed, and going utterly out of himself to assign to them motives he never experienced, and actions he never committed;-when, in short, he is merely taking off the stamp of his own mind, there can be no other impression wholly like it, and he is original without genius and without labour.

In fiction I am nothing if I do not invent; that cannot critically be called a novel which does not artistically convey a novelty; but in this confessional of thought I say what I think, indifferent whether it be new or old. Though I may come to conclusions to which millions have arrived before, and in passing onward to those conclusions may utter much which thousands have already uttered, yet I am not the less sure that, here and there, I shall chance upon combinations of ideas which have never

hitherto been so combined, and that there is not a single one of these Essays in which some remarks wholly original will not be found by a reader to whom a fair degree of knowledge has taught the required justice of observation. He who accuses me, herein, of the want of originality, accuses himself of that want of discrimination which comes from carelessness or ignorance. "There are things," says Goethe, "which you do not notice, only because you do not look at them." All the leaves in an oak tree, all the faces in a flock, are the same to the ordinary eye; but the naturalist can find no two leaves exactly alike, and the shepherd can distinguish every face in his flock by some original peculiarity.

I leave it to professed philosophers to group certain facts together, and then form them into a definitive system. Schelling, while showing how unstable, shifting, evanescent all systems are, still thinks it essential to pure reasoning that a sage must make choice of a system which, as it were, holds together the threads of his argument, and converges the rays of his thought.

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'System," says Sir William Hamilton, " is only valuable when it is not arbitrarily devised, but arises naturally out of the facts, and the whole facts, themselves. On the other hand, to despise system is to despise philosophy; for the end of philosophy is the detection of unity."

Certainly I do not despise philosophy; but I cannot help remarking how much Time despises system. To the system of Locke, more rigidly narrowed by Condillac, and culminating in Hume, succeeds the system of Reid. From the system of Reid grows the system of Kant; from the system of Kant emanates the system of Schelling, the system of Hegel-whatever other new system may now be rising into vogue. Systems spring up every day, wither down, and again effloresce. Scarcely does