come, for the time being, by some violent passion; which would nevertheless, if it had might, as it has right, if it had power as it has authority, absolutely govern the world."

Strange indeed must have been the view of our common nature taken by the philosopher of Malmsbury from the low, pestiferous, and fog-encircled grounds of the selfish system in which he was inextricably mired. It must have been absolutely hideous. The best things, as Lord Bacon says, can be most abused. So the sticklers for this admirable system do not scruple to turn even the very best face poor human nature can put on, into a proof positive of her guilt. Every quality of human actions, heretofore accounted a virtue, is by their ingenuity tortured into a vice, and made to bend to the Procrustean demands of an arbitrary and unnatural hypothesis. If we are pre-determined to think all men completely bad, or that most are so, it will be easy to find the arguments, however scarce, to get rid of difficulties, however puzzling, and answer objections, however strong. We have only to shut our eyes to all that is destructive, and open them to all that is confirmatory, of our dogmas. Let me, however, rather err with Butler, than be right with Hobbes, in the idea that pity is merely imagination, or fiction of future calamity to ourselves, proceeding from the sense (he means sight or knowledge) of other men's calamity.'

The sophistical and ensnaring author of the Fable of the Bees' sinks still lower than his predecessor. He represents man as a weak and odious being, and is ever holding up the darkest shades of his character to view, and concealing or distorting the brighter side of the picture. His writings can find favor only among the morose, the malignant, and the cross-grained. Let every one who wishes to retain his good humor, his bonhomie, and above all, that charity which is the alpha and omega of goodness, avoid these infernal sentiments. How much more pleasant is it, to put our argument on its weakest foot, to entertain generous and honorable thoughts of our race, and reverence for those noble capacities that lie folded up in the human mind? For surely it cannot but make one feel ill-natured, and almost misanthropic, to look upon the greatness of his fellow-beings around him as so many devils, and the world itself as a miniature hell. Existence in such a world could be no blessing, but an intolerable curse. But, thank Heaven! such is not the scene in which we live: such a sepulchral, wo-begone philosophy is not taught by the actual circumstances of mankind, and is equally opposed by reason, religion, and common sense.

The easiest, and as it appears to us most rational doctrine, on this subject, and that by which all the most difficult problems of human nature can be easily solved, is that to which we have already adverted, viz: that no man is wholly good, or wholly bad; that the virtue of the best of men is like the numeral expression of a radical quantity in algebra, only an approximation to the real value; and furthermore, there are few human beings so low in the moral scale, in whom good qualities do not flourish, and, it may be, form the predominant party in the mind. This is eclecticism. But let it be recollected, that we are advocating the rule merely in its practical applications to a particular, and what some may erroneously suppose a very narrow branch, of intellectual action we mean that which consists in judging of human actions and estimating human character. It is not our purpose at present to

advocate the revivification of the eclectic school of olden time for such a school flourished once in the Christian church -the professed principle of which was, that the truth should be culled from all systems. We have no fault to find with this rule, for it appears sensible and wise. But to the other point.

He who would be an apt scholar in the study of human nature, must remember that its good qualities are seldom found in juxtaposition. They are, for the most part, separated by sensible, and sometimes, too, by very unlovely partitions. Nor are they commonly found in masses or groups, but in scattered fragments and solitary specimens. Or, as a mathematician might express it, man's moral wealth comes in frac tions, not in integers. If we were mineralogists, we certainly should not hesitate to compare our fellow men to an immense collection of garnet rocks, in some of which the little purple heads of the crystals are seen protruding in every direction, in others, fewer are seen, and in most of which, the encompassing mass, in which they are irregularly packed, has by far the advantage, both in bulk and weight. The garnets, of course, are intended to typify the virtues as they actually exist in human beings. But if this view is just, how absurd is wholesale praise, as well as wholesale condemnation! We must discriminate - we must select — we must not utterly condemn, nor wholly approve; for this last we cannot do, if we retain our power of judging at all of human nature and its peccability. If,' says Dr. Johnson, man be fallible, he must fail somewhere.' And we are willing to add, if he be human, he will be good somewhere. If the tree does not produce fruit, it may leaves, that are eatable; and those are better than nothing. It is the proud prerogative of good taste, to know both when to find fault, and when to admire. On this grand idea hangs the true diagnosis of human character. How variant this rule is from popular practice in the present day, we need not stop to remark. We say 'the present day,' not for the purpose of making any invidious distinctions in favor of the past, or of causing any body to utter the foolish wish that he had been born a few centuries earlier, but because the present is the only spoke in the wheel of time with which we have any thing to do. But is it not, we ask, much too common for men, in estimating one another, to fasten their minds on the polar extremes of optimus and pessimus, without having due regard to the almost endless shades of intermediation? This is to exceed the folly of the son of St. Crispin, who had but two lasts, one for giants, and the other for dwarfs. The truth lies between the extremes. But of this we are notoriously forgetful, and are forever imagining our fellow men to be like Jeremiah's figs - the good, very good indeed; the bad, not fit to be given to the pigs. A most miserable plan of judg ing, to be sure! - a highway to mistakes a jumping philosophy, and so blind, that it discerns nothing but the broadest features, and so deaf, that it can hear nothing but the loudest sounds. Truth is seldom found in sweeping estimates. A rule without exceptions may be true, but it is certainly suspicious.

After all, it is a difficult thing to judge another; it is a serious thing to censure him; it is utter presumption to condemn him in toto. To descend into ourselves, is a great work; to penetrate others, a greater. In this respect, how true it is, that we see through a glass darkly!' This should make us exceedingly modest in indulging in philippics against others.

·

We frequently err in our conceptions of human character, from the gratuitous assumption, that a specific intellectual error, embodied in its creed, must exert as deleterious an influence upon every other mind as we imagine it would on our own, and that a fault in faith or conduct is equally censurable, by whomsoever embraced or practised. To this fancy we may oppose the fact, which almost every one's observation can verify, viz that important moral defects do actually inhere in some minds, without impairing their general tone of excellence, or proving destructive to the preexisting virtues by which they were distinguished. And it may also be true, that some are blessed with moral constitutions more capable of resisting the deteriorating properties of speculative error than others, whose apparent disadvantages in this particular are fully compensated by an almost inappreciable exposure to the inoculation. Until we have ascertained the precise rank in one's creed which a specific article is permitted to hold, how can we determine the real amount, either of its good or bad influence? The same doctrine,' says an able writer, when mixed up with one set of opinions, will cause moral and intellectual results essentially different from those which would have followed in combination with another system of mind.' The most mischievous traits of character, also, are found to flourish side by side with the most commendable. On this point we must again quote the sagacious Cousin: A man may be at the same time both very ambitious and very sincere. Cromwell, for instance, was, in my opinion, a sincere puritan, even to fanaticism; and likewise greedy of power, even to hypocrisy; and still his hypocrisy is more obscure and more doubtful than his fanaticism. His tyranny is not a proof that his republican ardor was assumed.' Another writer has observed, with a corresponding depth of thought: Good is so intimately, so invisibly mixed up with evil, that it requires not only a right feeling to love and embrace it when found, but the exercise of every faculty of man to separate the metal from the ore in which it is embedded.' We may add, that it also requires a good deal of love of human nature, both to look for its virtues where they are to be found, and to spy them out quickly when in their neighborhood. It is hard to throw off the cold wrapper of selfishness and suspicion, and wear the uniform of that divine charity which hopeth all things and believeth all things,' and which is resolved to recognise the good and the beautiful wherever they are to be found, whether in meanness and tatters, or even under the rubbish of evil habits and erroneous opinions. But it must be done, if we would be just to our fellow men. The dominion of virtue may, though feeble and wavering, be real; and while perhaps her plants maintain at the present but a sickly and precarious existence, beneath the shadow of some frightful excrescence of vice, it may be but to shoot up ere long into the most healthy and beautiful luxuriance. We must learn to respect the minutest evolutions of excellence; and above all, to disabuse our moral vision of a delusive influence, sometimes affecting even well regulated minds, that have long been directed toward the discolored points of human character, the tendency of which is to robe even the brighter phases of our nature in the same sombre hues.

It is unquestionably much easier, requires far less thought and discrimination, to have but a two-fold moral classification of human beings,

the members of each class being supposed to be the moral antipodes of one other. As a theory, it is beautifully simple; but is it correspondent to the condition, does it satisfy the varied phenomena, of humanity? We think every man's consciousness, to say nothing of his observation, must falsify it. For, says Lord Bacon good authority, we are sure-The minds of all men are at some times in a more perfect, and at other times in a more depraved, state.' But to the theory once more. Does it harmonize with what our eyes see, and our ears hear, of our fellow men? Is it not, on the contrary, guilty of the palpable oversight of real virtues, and does it not look with too severe and scathing a glance upon many human actions, of a noble and praiseworthy nature? Ah! we fear that sickly sensibility is its chronological antecedent, while we know that a surly misanthropy is its natural consequent ; for misanthropy feeds on any supposition favorable to its cheerless and heart-oppressive views of man. If it could be proved that nine-tenths of the human family are morally worthless, and completely destitute even of the feeblest scintillations of true virtue, how the demonstration would gratify the few delirious Timons of our world!

'Hoc Ithacus velit et magno mercentur atridal.'

We hope there are but few, very few, of such unhappy spirits among us. Let us do nothing to strengthen, but every thing to break, the spell that now throws its dark illusion over their moral landscape, cheating them of all that is most animating and delightful in the chequered scenes of human life.

H.

THE SIEGE OF ANTIOCH.

A TALE (IN TWO PARTS) OF THE FIRST CRUSADE.*

PART I. CHAPTER I.

THE CITY-THE SUPPLY-THE RESCUE.

THE city of Antioch, toward the end of the first crusade, occupied a mountain whose base sloped down to within a bow-shot of the river Orontes; its summit terminated in three cones, the northernmost of which, surrounded by abrupt precipices, was crowned by the lofty citadel. On one side of the city, a morass stretched from the river to the chain of mountains on which Antioch stood, across which was thrown a long, narrow bridge. On the other side, where the river approached nearest to the walls, a causeway ran from the city to the banks, where it joined a stone bridge of nine arches, strongly fortified in the centre and at the end, where it met the road leading to the gates, with iron doors. Beside these outward defences, the city was encompassed with massive walls and towers, which seemed, when united with the natural advantages of the place, to offer an impenetrable barrier to any foe, however well appointed with the warlike preparations of that day. Robert, Duke of Normandy, had forced a passage across the iron bridge,' as it was called, and three hundred thousand well armed Crusaders were now encamped around the walls, and pushing on the siege with all the skill which the rude warfare of the times possessed: but weeks had passed, and yet no impression had been made upon the mighty defences of the city, and the lavish profusion of the first few days which followed the arrival of the soldiers of the cross had already began to produce want in that immense host, and few of the leaders were hardy enough to conduct their followers in search of supplies, when every pass was guarded by a powerful and vigilant enemy; for the besiegers were themselves besieged by fierce bands without, and constantly harassed by sallies of the citizens. In addition to the famine, which daily became more and more dreadful, pestilence began to rage through the crusading camp, engendered by the proximity of the stagnant marshes which surrounded it, and scenes of horror and crime became at length familiar in that wretched and rapidly diminishing army.

In this miserable state of affairs, no leader was more active than Bohemond, Prince of Tarentum, in endeavors to diminish its horrors. He had joined the crusade with all the enthusiasm of a young and ambitious warrior, and at the preaching of Peter the Hermit, is reported to have broken his armor in pieces with his battle-axe, and caused it to be made into crosses and distributed to his followers. He was now in the meridian of life-perhaps somewhat beyond it - though toil, privation and exposure might have anticipated, by some years, the ravages of time. His stature was athletic and commanding his forehead broad and high, and his whole countenance would have worn the impress of courage, candor, and generosity, had not his small, dark and

VOL. VIII.

*The leading incidents of this tale are strictly historical.

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