:

boys being able to read as they would talk. It is a very awkward difficulty to get over, but being once accomplished, the effect is prodigious. Then, there is the same strong sarcastic vein of roystering pot-house humour in the one as in the other; and as for giving both sides of a question, nobody has done that more effectually than Mr. Cobbett in the course of his different writings. His style also is as good, nay, far better and if it should be said that Mr. Cobbett sometimes turns blackguard, it cannot be affirmed that he is a cat's paw-which is the dernier resort of humanity, into which Sir Walter has retreated, and shuts himself up in it impregnably as in a fortress. To conclude this parallel, we will be bold to say in illustration of our argument, that there is hardly a single page in the Scotch Novels which Mr. Cobbett could not write, if he set his mind to it; and there is not a single page in Shakspeare, either the best or the worst, which he could write for his life, and let him try ever so. Such is the genius of the three men.

So much by way of preface to our account of the most magnanimous Peveril of the Peak, and now for extracts. We have not time or limits to give the story, which, however, relates to the Civil Wars of England; but we shall furnish our readers with a specimen of the spirit with which it is written; it is the description of the meeting of Peveril with the dwarf Fenella, where she tries to prevent his going to meet Alice Bridgenorth at the Goddard Crovann-stone in the Isle of Man.

[The whole of Chap. xvi. of Peveril of the Peak is set out].

We have been led to such length by the beauty of this description that we have not room for another extract, or we would give that master-piece of wit and irony, the scene where Peveril meets with Ganlesse and Smith at a low alehouse, on his route through Derbyshire.

COMMON PLACES

The Literary Examiner.] [September-December, 1823. I. THE art of life is to know how to enjoy a little and to endure much.

II. Liberty is the only true riches. Of all the rest we are at once the masters and the slaves.

III. Do I not feel this from the least shadow of restraint, of obligation, of dependence? Why then do I complain? I have had

nothing to do all my life but to think, and have enjoyed the objects of thought, the sense of truth and beauty, in perfect integrity of soul. No one has said to me, Believe this, do that, say what we would have you; no one has come between me and my free-will; I have breathed the very air of truth and independence. Compared with this unbiassed, uncontrouled possession of the universe of thought and nature, what I have wanted is light in the balance, and hardly claims the tribute of a sigh. Oh! Liberty, what a mistress art thou! Have I not enjoyed thee as a bride, and drank thy spirit as of a wine-cup, and will yet do so to my latest breath!

IV. But is not Liberty dangerous, and self-will excessive? I do not think so for those who are not governed by their own feelings are led away by prejudice or interest; and reason is a safer guide than opinion, liberty a nobler one than fear.

V. Do I see a Claude? What is there to prevent me from fixing my eye, my heart, my understanding, upon it? What sophist shall deter me from thinking it fine? What is there to make me afraid of expressing what I think? I enter into all its truth and beauty. I wonder over it, I detect each hidden grace, I revel and luxuriate in it, without any doubts or misgivings. Is not this to be master of it and of myself? But is the picture mine? No-oh! yes, ten times over!

VI. That thing, a lie, has never come near my soul. I know not what it is to fear to think or to say what I think.

VII. I am choked, pent up in any other atmosphere but this. I cannot imagine how kings and courtiers contrive to exist. I could no more live without daring to speak, to look, to feel what I thought, than I could hold in my breath for any length of time. Nor could I bear to debar others of this privilege. Were it not that the Great would play the part of slaves themselves, they would hate to be surrounded with nothing but slaves, and to see meanness and hypocrisy crawling before them, as much as we do to see a spider crawling in our path.

VIII. I never knew what it was to feel like a footman. How many lords in waiting can say as much?

IX. When I consider how little difference there is in mankind (either in body or mind) I cannot help being astonished at the airs some people give themselves.

X. I am proud up to the point of equality-every thing above or below that appears to me arrant impertinence or abject meanness.

XI. The ignorant and vulgar think that a man wants spirit, if he does not insult and triumph over them. This is a great mistake.

XII. For a man to be a coxcomb, shews a want of imagination. No one will ever pride himself on his beauty who has studied the head of the Antinous, or be in danger of running into the excess of the fashion, who has any knowledge of the Antique. The ideal is incompatible with personal vanity.

XIII. A scholar is like a book written in a dead language—it is not every one that can read in it.

XIV. Just as much as we see in others, we have in ourselves.

XV. A painter gives only his own character in a portrait, whether grave or gay, gross or refined, wise or foolish. Even in copying a head, there is some difficulty in making the features unlike our own. A person with a low forehead or a short chin puts a constraint upon himself in painting a high forehead or a long chin. So much has sympathy to do with the operations both of the eye and the hand, with observation and practice!

XVI. People at a play hiss an unsuccessful author or actor, as if the latter had committed some heinous crime-he has committed the greatest crime, that of setting up a superiority over us which he has failed to make good.

XVII. The rich, who do nothing themselves, represent idleness as the greatest crime. They have reason: it is necessary that some one should do something.

XVIII. What a pity that kings and great men do not write books, instead of mere authors! What superior views they must have of things, and how the world would be benefited by the communication!

XIX. The greatest proof of superiority is to bear with impertinence. XX. No truly great man ever thought himself so.

XXI. Every man, in judging of himself, is his own contemporary. XXII. Abuse is an indirect species of homage.

XXIII. From the height from which the great look down on the world, all the rest of mankind seem equal.

XXIV. It is a bad style that requires frequent breaks and marks of admiration.

XXV. It happens in conversation as in different games. One person seems to excel, till another does better, and we then think no more of the first.

XXVI. Those who can keep secrets, have no curiosity. We only wish to gain knowledge, that we may impart it.

XXVII. Genius is native to the soil where it grows-is fed by the air, and warmed by the sun-and is not a hot-house plant or an exotic.

XXVIII. All truly great works of art are national in their character and origin.

XXIX. People are distinguished less by a genius for any particular thing, than by a peculiar tone and manner of feeling and thinking, whatever be the subject. The same qualities of mind or characteristic excellence that a man shows in one art, he would probably have displayed in any other. I have heard Mr. Northcote say, that he thought Sir Joshua Reynolds would have written excellent genteel comedies. His Discourses certainly are bland and amiable (rather than striking or original) like his pictures.

XXX. The same kind of excellence may be observed to prevail in different arts at the same period of time, as characteristic of the spirit of the age. Fielding and Hogarth were cotemporaries.

XXXI. There is an analogy in the style of certain authors to certain professions. One writes like a lawyer: it seems as if another would have made an eminent physician. Mandeville said of Addison that he was a parson in a tye-wig:' and there is something in The Spectator to justify this description of him.

XXXII. Salvator Rosa paints like a soldier; Nicholas Poussin like a professor at a University; Guido like a finished gentleman; Parmegiano with something of the air of a dancing-master. Alas! Guido was a gamester and a madman; and Parmegiano a searcher after the philosopher's stone. One of the happiest ideas in modern criticism was that of designating different living poets by the cups

Apollo gives them to drink out of: thus Wordsworth is made to drink out of a wooden bowl, Lord Byron out of a skull chased with silver, &c.

XXXIII. Extreme impatience and irritability are often combined with a corresponding degree of indifference and indolence. When the eagerness of pursuit or the violence of opposition ceases, nothing is left to interest the mind, that has been once accustomed to a state of morbid excitement.

XXXIV. Artists and other studious professions are not happy, for this reason: they cannot enjoy mental repose. A state of lassitude and languor succeeds to that of overstrained, anxious exertion.

XXXV. It is the custom at present to exclude all but Scientific and Mechanical subjects from our fashionable Public Institutions, lest any allusions to popular sentiments or the cause of humanity should by chance creep in, to the great annoyance of the polite and wellinformed part of the audience.

XXXVI. People had much rather be thought to look ill than old: because it is possible to recover from sickness, but there is no recovering from age.

XXXVII. I never knew but one person who had a passion for truth-and only one who had the same regard to the distinction between right and wrong, that others have to their own interest.

XXXVIII. Women are the sport of caprice, the slaves of custom.

XXXIX. When men are not favourites with women, it is either from habits of vulgar debauchery, or from constitutional indifference, or from an overstrained and pedantic idea of the sex, taken from books, and answering to nothing in real life.

XL. The object of books is to teach us ignorance; that is, to throw a veil over nature, and persuade us that things are not what they are, but what the writer fancies or wishes them to be.

XLI. My little boy said the other day, 'He could not tell what to do without a book to read-he should wander about without knowing what to do with himself.' So have I wandered about, till now, and, waking from the dream of books at last, don't know what to do with myself. My poor little fellow! may'st thou dream long amidst thy darling books, and never wake!