I BELIEVE that phrenologists are generally agreed in allotting to the frontal sinus an organ which they call the organ of weight, asserting that where this organ is largely developed, the individual has a special faculty in estimating not only the ponderabilities of sacks of grain and bars of iron, but the probable results of any course of action on which the pressure of circumstance rivets his more immediate attention.

Now, upon the truth of Phrenology I hazard no opinion; it is one of those vexed questions in which, not being convinced by the arguments of either party, I am contented to observe, with the Silent Gentleman in the 'Spectator,' "that there is a great deal to be said upon both sides."

But putting wholly out of consideration all reference to craniological development, and leaving anatomists to dispute whether or

VOL. XCII.-NO. DLXV.

not there be any such organ of weight in the frontal sinus, I venture to borrow from the phrenologists their technical term, and designate as the "organ of weight" that peculiar mental faculty of weighing the relative consequences of things immediately placed before them, which in some men is so saliently developed, in other men so notably deficient.

In fact, I know of no other form of words in which I can so accurately define the quality of mind of which I am about to treat. This organ of weight is distinct from what can properly be called prudence; for prudence necessitates a degree of foresight extending far beyond the immediate consequences of things immediately present. The prudent man declines to pursue such and such courses because he foresees that they will lead him astray, or that he shall have to

2 N

retrace his steps. But this organ of weight is often found most conspicuous in those who have no pretensions of foresight; they weigh only what is close before them. Hence I have noticed that such men are liable to abrupt changes of conduct, and in public life are more exposed than many politicians less conscientious to the charge of deceiving their followers and betraying their cause. They advance, as it were, mechanically along the track of ideas to which they have been accustomed, regarding as impracticable theorists those who extend their survey of the road; and when at last they come to a place where the consequences foretold by others, and disregarded by themselves as too remote to be brought into their scales, become tangibly present, and the question is not, "What shall we do by-and-by?" but, "What is to be done now?" then they cry, "This is serious! this has become a practical substance! -we must weigh it well!" And weighing it well, they often decide, with an abruptness which takes the world by surprise, that what before they had declared was too light to consider, is now too heavy to bear. In short, and without metaphor, they do exactly that, as the only prudent thing to do, which they had assured their confiding friends was the last thing that prudent men should contemplate doing.

If, then, this organ of weight cannot be correctly described by the word Prudence, neither is it to be expressed by the name more commonly assigned to it- viz., - viz., Judgment. It is indeed a part of judgment, but only a part of it: for judgment, in the full sense of that rare and admirable quality, consists in a justness of vision which comprehends a wide survey of many things near and distant, in order to ascertain the proportionate size of each thing within its scope, be it near, be it distant. Judgment comprehends measurement as well as weight; and though it does not indeed ab

solutely need the prevision essential to that prudence which the ancients esteemed the associate and counsellor of the diviner orders of wisdom, according to their famous proverb, that "No deity is present where Prudence is absent," still judgment has a logic which links circumstance to circumstance, cause to effect examines fully the grounds on which it forms its opinions, and observes each new fact which varies the value of evidence it had hitherto received. Hence, the man of judgment par excellence, when he modifies or changes any opinion that he had deliberately formed and openly professed, does so not with startling suddenness, but, gradually connecting link by link the reasons which induce him to reverse his former conclusions, prepares the minds of others for the final announcement of the change which has been at work within his own; so that he does not appear the advocate who betrays the cause of the client whose suit he had undertaken, but the judge impartially summing up, according to the facts which he does not warp, and the laws which he cannot depart from. I think, for instance, this may be said of Mr Pitt, who, whether he relinquished as impracticable what he had previously insisted on as judicious, or whether he denounced what he had before recommended, still so prepared the public mind for such changes in himself, that no man could accuse him of treachery, and only very inaccurate observers of fickleness. In this respect he was more happily constituted than Sir Robert Peel, who resembled him in many illustrious attributes, whether of dignity, personal character, or devotion to what conscientiously appeared to be the interests of the State. In Sir Robert Peel the organ of causality was not proportioned to the organ of weight. Foresight no candid admirer could assign to the man, in whom candour nevertheless finds so much to admire; nor can he be

said to have possessed that order of reason which so adjusts and accommodates its whole tenor of action, that what its possessor does to-day grows like a logical sequence out of what he did yesterday. Hence those startling changes of political conduct, in which, having unhesitatingly led his followers up to a certain point, he seemed, in deserting them, to abandon his former self. For remote contingencies he had no astronomer's telescope; for consequences immediately before him he had the mechanician's eye -he weighed them at a glance.

In men of this character there is generally a very strong sense of responsibility; and perhaps no public man ever possessed that ennobling sense in a finer degree than Sir Robert Peel. And the consciousness of his own responsibility became necessarily strong in proportion as it was suddenly revealed to him. In opposition, a man is not considered by the public responsible for the results that may follow the adoption of his advice. But both by the spirit of the constitution and the opinion of the public, the moment the same man is transferred from opposition to office, responsibility begins. And in proportion as his influence and position in office are eminent and commanding, the responsibility increases in multifold ratio. A man who had grown into so great an authority with the nation as Sir Robert Peel was responsible to other trustees than those of party: he was responsible to the people, who confided in him even more than party did; and the posterity to which his renown appealed would estimate him accordingly as that responsibility was discharged. Thus, in the two most memorable changes which affected his political career, the suddenness of his conversion may be traced to the wholly different aspect which the questions at issue assumed to his eyes when he had to weigh, as urgent and practical, the difficulties which had before presented themselves to his

mind as remote and speculative, and when the gravity of the responsibility was transferred from others to himself.

None of the censures which Sir Robert Peel not unnaturally provoked appear to me to have been more erroneous than that which ascribed his political inconsistencies to moral timidity. Moral courage he must have possessed beyond most men, in twice deliberately resolving to excite and to brave that which, to one so sensitive, reserved, and proud, must have been the most bitter of all the calamities inflicted by party war-viz., the reproach of his own army for surrendering its standards and its staff to the enemy. What has passed for moral timidity was, in fact, an acute conscientiousness, heightened, it may be, by that strong sense of his own personal individuality which was one of his most remarkable characteristics. It was a familiar observation in Parliament, that no public speaker ever so frequently introduced into his speeches the word "I." Egotistical, in the commonthat is, in the harsh-sense of the word, he was not. I have no doubt that he had more kindly benevolence of heart than many men more demonstrative. But from his youth upwards he had been singled for eminence above his contemporaries; and as he advanced in life and in fame he became more and more an individual power, distinct even from the principles which he represented. Many an honest temperate politician, caring little for Whig or Tory, turned to Sir Robert Peel for accurate information and safe opinion, as some nominal elector of a metropolitan district, too respectable or too apathetic ever to exercise his right of franchise, turns to the

not fail to be impressed with a predominant consciousness of his own Ego; and wherever he looked on the surface of the public, that Ego was reflected as in a room lined with glass. The sense of personal responsibility was naturally increased with the consciousness of personal individuality. And when he pondered on duty, he asked himself not, "What is my duty to the party I lead?" but "What is the duty that I owe to myself-I, Sir Robert Peel?" But with that duty to himself he identified, as I have before observed, the duty that Sir Robert Peel, of all men living, owed to his country-" Ego et Patria mea." And hence, whatever might be his errors as a political adviser and chief, History will doubtless accord him one of those favoured places in her temple on which the light falls full on the noblest aspect of the image, leaving in shadow whatever out lines would less satisfy admiring

eyes.

Men who weigh only what the occasion submits to them, always more impress a practical assembly than men who enter into subtle calculations of prospective contingencies. Before a legislative assembly the question is "Ay or No"-whether a certain something shall be done that night, and not whether a certain something may come to pass that night ten years! Those debaters, therefore, who weigh the reasons that immediately press for decision seem the only practical counsellors, the only safe guides for the present, even while they are confessing that they misjudged the past, and proving that they ignore the future.

Those, too, in whom the organ of weight is large generally make good administrators. For administration, in its ordinary routine, is but carrying on the customary operations of a machinery already at work. The organ of weight is indeed an invaluable faculty in what is called practical life. It is usually deficient in fervent reformers, eager

innovators, enthusiasts of every kind, who, looking forward, often with accurate vision, to distant objects, lose sight altogether of the obstacles an inch before their eyes. It is as notably absent in a Garibaldi as it is largely developed in a Cavour. This organ is more generally wanting or inactive in women than in men. We see many women remarkable for discretion, and even for prevision, who nevertheless seem to lose their heads when they have to ponder on what must be immediately done. They are discreet, for they avoid difficulties as much as fate will permit; they are farseeing, for they will predicate correctly, even in passion, what will be the results of a course to which they are urged or allured. But when Fate, despite their discretion, surprises them by a difficulty, or when that which they foresaw at a distance has actually come to pass, their intellect seems paralysed, and they fly intuitively for counsel to the practical mind of a man.

Although, in the course of my own experience and observation, I have seldom found the special faculty of weighing things immediate combined with the more abstract faculty of foreseeing and calculating on things afar, yet it by no means follows that the two faculties are so antagonistic as not to be combined. Only, where combined we recognise a very grand and consummate intellect; and intellects very grand and consummate are rare phenomena.

The combination must exist to a felicitous degree in great generals; in the founders or remodellers of States; in those who master the elements of revolution and establish dynasties. In more familiar life, the organ of weight predominates in men of business and action; the organ of causality in men of speculation and letters. In truth, the act of the statesman comes long after the thought of the writer, who, recommending such and such measures as theoretically sound, leaves it to the statesman to weigh the practical

difficulties with which he, and not the writer, has to deal so that, as Burke has shown with his usual subtlety of reasoning, the same man will advocate in writing what he may not deem it wise to execute in action.

This organ of weight appears to me more generally developed in the British than in any other civilised people. And in this, I think, there is perhaps the main difference between them and their American kinsfolk. As a general rule, English men of business look with great intentness and caution to things immediately before them; and with great indifference, often with distrustful aversion, to things at a distance. Hence their dislike to theory; hence the emphatic respect they bestow on what they call practical sense; hence too, on the whole, the English are more disinclined to political novelties than any other population endowed with so large a degree of political freedom, so that even when accepting a political novelty, they still desire to accommodate it to the political habits of reasoning to which they are accustomed; and the advocates for innovation in whom they most confide, always endeavour to show that it is not the innovation which it appears at first sight, but is either a return to some elementary principle in the ancient constitution, or the natural and healthful development of that constitution itself. The English are mostly contented with seeking immediate remedies for immediate evils, and thus, from the dislike of foreseeing and preparing for changes that do not forcibly press, when they do concur in a change with sufficient force of numbers to carry it, it is with the same promptitude and haste which characterised the eminent man to whom I have referred, and who was in this, as in other respects, the archetype and representative of the English middle class of mind. Our American kinsfolk, on the other hand, to use

their own phrase, are "a go-ahead" population. They look at distant objects with a more sanguine and eager ken than we of the Old World are disposed to do; they do not weigh the pros and cons which ought first to be placed in the balance. And hence, perhaps, of all populations so intelligent, of which the history of the world contains a record, the Americans of the Great Republic have been in theory the boldest democrats, and in practice the most inveterate anti-reformers. There is not an absolute monarchy in Europe which has not been, within the last twenty years, a more practical reformer than the North American Republic; meaning by the word reformer, the corrector of the evils that grow out of a system of government which it is not intended to revolutionise. How many intelligent North Americans foresaw, long years ago, that the South would take its opportunity to separate from the North; and yet, when the South did separate, there does not seem to have been a North American statesman who could weigh the circumstances he had so long anticipated. And all the while the empire which the Americans already possessed was imperilled from visible causes, and none more visible than these-1st, That its extent was already too vast for unity of interest; and, 2dly, That its government was too weak for unity of purpose,—the American citizens, fondly colonising Futurity, proclaimed, in every crisis of popular excitement, the Monroe doctrine, that the whole continent of America-the whole fourth-quarter of the globe-was the destined appanage of their Republic One and Indivisible.

Again, how common, within the last twenty years, has been the lament of intelligent Americans, that, by the working of their constitution, the highest order of citizens, whether in character, property, birth, or intellect, was eliminated from the action of public