great favour for a term which tends naturally to familiarize us with such an assumption. What are called faculties of the mind, we would consider as different acts, or rather states of it. But if this be the just view of the matter, it is plain that it renders it in the highest degree improbable, if not truly inconceivable, that those supposed faculties should each have a separate material organ." "It really is not very easy to understand how there should be an external organ for every particular act, or state, of the mind, or rather for an arbitrary number of these states. And when the question is about the existence of some thirty or forty organs in distinct regions of the brain, it is absolutely necessary to inquire what proof there is of the existence of the thirty or forty separate faculties to which they are said to minister, or rather, we think, which they are held to create; or upon what grounds they have been limited to that precise number." He then proceeds to mark some important distinctions between the external senses, and what he calls the inaginary faculties of the phrenologists. "We believe," he says, "the functions of seeing and hearing, &c. to be carried on by material organs, only because we know, and feel, that they are so." Feeling and knowledge are, undoubtedly, very good grounds of belief, but Mr. Jeffrey has not attempted to show that they extend, in the cases alluded to, beyond the mere locality of the organs of sense. Now, so much may be said of these internal faculties to which the senses are contradistinguished. It is not more true that the generality of men refer vision to the eye, than that they refer thought and sentiment to the head; and, therefore, the doctrine, that the brain is the organ of the mind, does not appear to contain any thing contradictory to what may be called the primary suggestions of nature. Mr. Jeffrey proceeds: "All the organs which we actually know to be used by the mind, are used to connect it with material and external objects; and indeed it is difficult for us to conceive how we could ever have become acquainted with such objects, except by means of a material apparatus in our living bodies. But the other functions of mind do not so connect us with matter; and therefore, there is not only no such reason for supposing their existence, but there is a corresponding difficulty in the conception." That is, a corresponding difficulty in the conception of immaterial results from material causes! We confess we do not feel it. What will Mr. Jeffrey say of music? Is not that an immaterial product of a material instrument? And the melody, assuredly, is not more essentially different from the instrument, than the various trains of thought and feeling are from the organs in the brain. We confess, therefore, that we do not see the force of this objection. He goes on: "All those functions which operate through the organs of sense, are of a definite and peculiar nature, and so totally unlike those which phrenologists would furnish with like instruments, as to make the inference of their being actually so furnished, in the highest degree improbable and extravagant." Mr. Jeffrey had before made the analogy between the external senses and the mental powers, a reason for asserting that the former ought, as well as the latter, to have organs in the brain. He now makes their dissimilarity the ground of an opposite conclusion, and argues that a material instrumentality, for the developement or manifestation of immaterial processes of thought, is, in the highest degree, absurd and inconsistent. We think phrenologists may safely leave these two statements to combat each other, and content themselves with adopting the distinction which Mr. Jeffrey recognizes as affording a full justification for the diversity observable between our sensual, and our moral and intellectual organization. From the very nature of the theory, the one must, obviously, be more palpable than the other. But we cannot agree with Mr. Jeffrey in thinking, that, in the case of the bodily senses, "our knowledge of the organ is antecedent to our knowledge of the faculty, and that it is truly by reference to the former that the latter is recognized and determined." We did not before think that it could be seriously maintained, that our knowledge of the eye, for instance, as an instrument of vision, was antecedent to our knowledge of the faculty of vision, and that we could not know that we really saw, until we had learned that we saw by means of the eye. A blind man knows that he cannot see, before he knows why it is that he cannot see. In this case, a knowledge of the cause is obviously posterior to a knowledge of the effect;-and we cannot understand why, in the opposite case, it is necessary for a man to know that he has an eye, before he is qualified to enjoy the use of it. How does a man know that he has an eye? Can any answer be given to that question, which does not imply a previous knowledge of the exercise of vision? And if that be so, is not the assertion of Mr. Jeffrey as preposterous as it is startling and dogmatical? THE HEART'S CHANGE. There is a change, an utter change Undimm'd-unaltered-still, the eye Beams forth on all around- O'er us-we scarce know whence or when That change begins to steal, Which teaches that we ne'er again 'Tis not that earth withholds its joys And still we seek the giddy round, Our hearts have now no share. Yet mourn we not this early change, 'Tis sent to bid our youth aspire To those whose pleasures ne'er can tire, R. C. LINES ON THE LATE NORTHERN EXPEDITION. "And now there came both mist and snow, And it grew wondrous cold And ice most high, came floating by, As green as emerald: And through the drifts, the snowy clifts Did send a distnal sheen Nor shape of men, nor beasts we ken, The ice was all between. The ice was here-the ice was there, It crackled and growled, and roar'd and howl'd, COLERIDGE-Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Once more we roam together—on the sea Hangs the foul shade of Infamy and Woe. * Such were the thoughts that wrung the Seaman's mind, As once again he woo'd the Northern wind, And sought the surge, to win from Danger's smile Strange mystery of Nature-when the sense When groundless shame thus rends th' untainted breast, And Love's fond voice, and Friendship's calm relief Now joy to England! o'er the raging spray 'Tis well known that the result of Captain Ross's first expedition was not received so satisfactorily as it deserved. On entering the Arctic circle, the musical noise of the white whales is heard. Yet shrink not in mid ocean-once again Glad Commerce hears, and leads her canvass'd host; "Tis past-that hour of peril-calmly now Tho' her bent masts and shatter'd sides declare Oh! who may know,-save he whose grief-worn heart The Seaman's anguish on that lonely way, His sleepless nights, his fruitless toil by day? Desolate Land! amid the drear expanse, To break the stillness of thy solitude; Thy stagnate mountains own no fostering toil, Pale sheeted phantoms speed their ceaseless flight, In allusion to the supposed passage between the Northern Sea and the Pacific, which washes the East Indies. No very musical name to be sure; but historians must be correct. It was the island where the mariners first landed. They used to raise walls of snow round their ship to defend themselves from the inclemency of the weather. And yet we mourn not-o'er the earth and sea, The rocks, His altars, rear their shrines for Him ; Still roams the seaman forth, nor long his stay Their dog-drawn sledges scour the unyielding plain : But say-hath hither o'er this trackless way Where dove-like Peace may find a resting place? • These beautiful" Oases of the Desert," are described by Captain Parry. Mention is made of some strange "port-wine-coloured" rocks, in the Narrative of Captain Ross's expedition. I need hardly say I allu le to the Aurora Borealis. |