are infinitely more heart-stirring than if the same air occurred as part of a train of thought, or even if the attention were called to it in conversation. In Paris, I was acquainted with a lady, the widow of an Irish patriot, who never heard Campbell's fine song, The Exile of Erin, or some of Moore's beautiful melodies, without being overpowered to a degree that would have been truly alarming, if a flood of tears had not come to her relief. This did not arise, as you might suppose, from that exquisite sensibility which attends (a very rare endowment) the musical ear; for a friend of her's, and indeed the lady herself, told me that she had not even a common-place relish for music, but that her emotion was caused by the sad and sorrowful recollections memory had associated with these particular airs. This was strikingly evinced one evening, when I was speaking to her about those traditionary scraps of history which Moore has intertwisted in his poetry of the Irish melodies:-traditions, by the bye, which I look upon as fabulous, but which she, and I believe all the genuine sons and daughters of the "Emerald Isle " adopt with the same implicit credence they do the gospel, or, if we were to judge from the late success of an honourable English missionary volunteer and his comrade, the gallant Scotch captain, perhaps with a little more. It required, she told me, and as indeed was very evident, a great effort to give me a hasty sketch of the stories involved in these unrivalled lyrics; but when I began to repeat the words of the "Minstrel Boy," for correction if misquoted, her feelings were so overpowering, that, on coming to the words "Land of song, said the warrior bard," I was beckoned to desist-she was in a flood of tears. This proves to you, that her emotions were not the effect of music, but of associations, influenced in a manner I will now attempt to explain.

I reminded you of the philosophic theory of vision-that, when we look at an object—a tree, for example-of the separate parts-the form, the size, the distance, the colour, which constitute our complex perception of the tree, the colour is the only one with which the eye is directly engaged; that the remainder of our belief is therefore associate or imaginary, showing

that Swift's remarkable definition of vision (the art of seeing things that are invisible) is by no means paradoxical. And, nevertheless, our belief of the size, form, &c. of the tree, is as immediate and irresistible as our belief of its colour. How comes this? Because the reality of the sensation of colour, one part of the complex whole, is diffused over the other, the associate parts of the percep tion. In like manner, if the mind, by that tendency of which I have spoken, has made a sensible object, your walking-stick, for instance, one part of a complex whole; when that sensible object is present, and suggests, and blends with, those inestimable images of memory, on account of which it is so highly valued, the reality of its existence is unconsciously shared with, or spread over, the associate conception, the remaining part of a complex whole. To this vague feeling of reality which the presence of your walking-stick, one part of a complex whole, shadowed over the interesting ideas that it suggested, is owing the greater vividness of your feelings when the stick was before your eyes, than when the same ideas occurred as part of a current of memory. But this will appear more evident, from a very interesting example of the influence of perceptible objects over the associate feelings which they awaken, quoted by Mr. Stewart, which I will give you with his explanation. "Whilst we were at dinner (says Captain King), in this miserable hut, on the banks of the Awatska, the guests of a people with whose existence we had before been scarce acquainted, and at the extremity of the habitable globe, a solitary half-worn pewter-spoon, whose shape was familiar to us, attracted our attention; and, on examination, we found it stamped on the back with the word London. I cannot pass over this circumstance in silence, out of gratitude for the many pleasant thoughts, the anxious hopes, and tender remembrances, it excited in us. Those who have experienced the effects that long absence, and extreme distance, from their native country produce on the mind, will readily conceive the pleasure such trifling incidents can give."

The following is Mr. Stewart's explanation of this and analogous phe

nomena. "This influence of perceptible objects in awakening associated thoughts and associated feelings, seems to arise, in a great measure, from their permanent operation as exciting or suggesting causes. When a train of thought takes its rise from an idea or conception, the first idea soon disappears, and a series of others succeeds, which are gradually less and less related to that with which the train commenced; but, in the case of perception, the exciting cause remains steadily before us; and all the thoughts and feelings which have any relation to it crowd into the mind in rapid succession, strengthening each other's effects, and all conspiring in the same general impression." Before I direct your attention to the principal circumstances in which this elegant explanation is defective, I beg leave to remark to you, I am sure unnecessarily, that the perceptible object which forms a part of a group of vivid feelings must be in itself interesting-your stick from the associations connected with it-the spoon, spoken of by Captain King, from its being so unexpectedly met with in a part of the globe far remote from the home it brought to their recollection, —that, in fact, the vividness of the associate conception is directly as the interest embodied in the co-existent object of perception. Mr. Stewart's explanation satisfactorily accounts for the longer duration of the relative feelings, from the permanence of the exciting cause; but it does no more: it does not account for the vividness of those feelings-or rather, it is an explanation directly opposite to the fact. For if Mr. Stewart's explanation were true, the excited state of feeling the mind evinces at the presence of an interesting object of perception would not be a sudden burst of emotion, as, you know, is the case, but would be the result of a train of associate images that crowd into the mind in rapid succession,"all conspiring in the same general impression." Now, the force and extent of the illusive reality of the associate conceptions is partly owing to the suddenness of the effect of the perceptible object;-so that, if Mr. Stewart's explanation were true, the longer the interval between the perception of the object and its effect on the kindred images, the more vivid

and overpowering would be the emotion,-in contradiction to the direct evidence of the case, which shows that the intensity of the emotion is directly as its suddenness,—that it is, in fact, owing to the co-existence, to the oneness, of the ideas of perception and conception, i. e. of the sensation of the external object and its associate feelings.

I have not time now further to illustrate this the great defect of Mr. Stewart's explanation. I will only remark that the same error exists in Mr. Alison's theory of Beauty, which ascribes the pleasure we feel when gazing on a beautiful object to the exercise of the mind in recalling, or gathering together, its agreeable associations. The error of both of these very elegant and ingenious writers may be explained in this way. We all know that the greater the number of our pleasurable associations, the greater will be our excitement when gazing on an object that excites them. So, if we say, that of five persons who view any fine statue of antiquity, one has but one association, another five, another ten, another twenty, and another fifty, we shall justly conclude, that he who has fifty pleasurable associations will be more vividly excited than the rest, in the proportion of fifty to twenty, fifty to ten, to five, to one. So far, Mr. Stewart and Mr. Alison are correct: where they err is, that they seem to believe, that the man who has fifty associations must travel through fifty stages of feeling before he arrives at the ultimate vivid emotion; that he will consequently be a longer time than the others in summoning or gathering together his prior recollections, in the proportion of fifty to twenty, to ten, &c.; as if indeed, fifty, or a hundred, or a thousand, were not as much one state of mind, as one, or five, or ten. As this is an interesting subject, and would itself require a letter to make it less obscure, I will shortly return to it. What I have said of the suddenness of the effect, and of the diffusion of the reality of an external object of sense, will appear more evident from the following exceedingly interesting case. During the time I passed," says the celebrated Dr. Rush, " at a country school, in Cecil County, in Maryland, I often went, on a holiday, with my school

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mates, to see an eagle's nest, upon the summit of a dead tree in the neighbourhood of the school, during the time of the incubation of that bird. The daughter of the farmer, in whose field the tree stood, and with whom I became acquainted, married, and settled in this city (Philadelphia) about forty years ago. In our occasional intercourse, we now and then spoke of the innocent haunts and rural pleasures of our youth, and, among other things, of the eagle's nest in her father's field. A few years ago, I was called to visit this woman, when she was in the lowest stage of typhus fever. Upon entering her room, I caught her eye, and, with a cheerful. tone of voice, said only the eagle's nest. She instantly seized my hand, without being able to speak, and discovered strong emotions of pleasure in her countenance, probably from a sudden association of all her domestic connexions and enjoyments with the words I had uttered. From that time she began to recover. She is now living, and seldom fails, when we meet, to salute me with the echo of the eagle's nest!"

This is a beautiful and indeed important instance of the effect of an interesting object of external sense, in suddenly awakening its associate images; and well illustrates "the utility of a knowledge of the faculties of the mind to a physician." Dr. Rush reports this case in his lecture under that head. Apply Mr.. Stewart's explanation to this case, and you will see how lamentably it fails. On the contrary, how clear and intelligible it appears when examined according to Dr. Brown's simple theory: the diffusion of the reality of the external object (Dr. Rush), one part of a group of interesting remembrances, over the awakened as sociate conceptions, the remaining portion of the group or complex whole. I need not dwell upon the suddenness of the effect, or on the many important inferences that may be deduced from this interesting case, but leave it to yourself to reflect on

You are now, I presume, able to apply to your own case the remarks I have made, which, indeed, have extended to a greater length than I intended; but the subject is extremely interesting, and one that, as far as I know, has not been before

so minutely investigated. I need not now attempt to explain to you the emotion of the widow of the Irish patriot, on hearing those songs which were intertwined with every recollection of her heart, with her husband's unhappy death. (He cut his throat an hour before he was to be led to the scaffold.) The simple explanation of that, and analogous phenomena, is, you now know, the diffusion of the reality of the suggesting object over the feelings suggested.

In this explanation of a very interesting phenomenon, which it would be impertinent, with you, to endeavour to make plainer, you see, my dear friend, there is no distorting of facts, or straining of theory, in order to give plausibility to a paradoxical hypothesis. There is nothing assumed in it, beyond what takes place every time we direct our eyes to some object, which, you know, we are doing three-fourths of our ordinary life. Many every-day occurrences which appeared to you strange and unaccountable, will now, that you have the key of their apparent anomaly, be neither one nor the other. The effect which the sound of the national air, first heard amid his native hills, has on the Swiss soldier, will no longer surprise you, when you bring to mind that that sound is not them merely the remembrance of a wellknown air, but a real constituent of a complex whole of delightful ́ ́emotion. The emotion which our young friend P. displays at the sight of a red shawl, and the more sad one that is excited in him, when the song"Home, sweet Home," is sung, which you know he cannot altogether disguise even in the bustle of a crowded theatre, will no longer appear mysterious to you, when you reflect that the reality of these perceptions of sight and sound is dif fused over feelings which, I fear, have too strong a hold of his mind. By the bye, it puzzled me very much, why he should be affected by that or any other song, for his friends say he has no taste for music; and you and I know his associations with the word-home; cannot be of such a nature as to give tenderness to their recollection.

I'must break off abruptly, but shall perhaps recur to the subject!

R. R.

ble to the popular liberty. There is moreover a double wisdom in the new sense for not only is one object [the redress of wrong secured in conjunction with another object [the king's inviolability] hitherto held irreconcileable, but even with a view to the first object alone a much more effectual means is applied, because one which leads to no schism in the state, than could have been applied by the blank negation of the maxim; i. e. by lodging the responsibility exactly where the executive power Cergo the power of resisting this responsibility was lodged. Here then is one example in illustration of my thesis-that the English constitution was in a great measure gradually evolved in the contest between the different parties in the reign of Charles I. Now, if this be so, it follows that for constitutional history no period is so important as that: and indeed, though it is true that the Revolution is the great æra for the constitutional historian, because he there first finds the constitution fully developed as the "bright consummate flower," and what is equally important he there first finds the principles of our constitution ratified by a competent authority,-yet, to trace the root and growth of the constitution, the three reigns immediately preceding are still more properly the objects of his study. In proportion then as the reign of Charles I is important to the history of our constitution, in that proportion are those to be taxed with the most dangerous of all possible falsifications of our history, who have misrepresented either the facts or the principles of those times. Now I affirm that the clergy of the Church of England have been in a perpetual conspiracy since the era of the restoration to misrepresent both. As an illustration of what I mean I refer to the common edition of Hudibras by Dr. Grey: for the proof I might refer to some thousands of books. Dr. Grey's is a disgusting case: for he swallowed with the most anile credulity every story, the most extravagant that the malice of those times could invent against either the Presbyterians or the Independents: and for this I suppose amongst other deformities his notes were deservedly ridiculed by Warburton. But,

amongst hundreds of illustrations more respectable than Dr. Grey's I will refer the reader to a work of our own days, the Ecclesiastical Biography [in part a republication of Walton's Lives] edited by the present master of Trinity College, Cambridge, who is held in the highest esteem wherever he is known, and is I am persuaded perfectly conscientious and as impartial as in such a case it is possible for a high churchman to be. Yet so it is that there is scarcely one of the notes having any political reference to the period of 1640-60 which is not disfigured by unjust prejudices: and the amount of the moral which the learned editor grounds upon the documents before him-is this, that the young student is to cherish the deepest abhorrence and contempt of all who had any share on the parliamentary side in the "confusions" of the period from 1640 to 1660: that is to say of men to whose immortal exertions it was owing that the very revolution of 1688, which Dr. W. will be the first to applaud, found us with any such stock of political principles or feelings as could make a beneficial revolution possible. Where, let me ask, would have been the willingness of some Tories to construe the flight of James II. into a virtual act of abdication, or to consider even the most formal act of abdication binding against the king,—had not the great struggle of Charles's days gradually substituted in the minds of all parties a rational veneration of the king's office for the old superstition in behalf of the king's person, which would have protected him from the effects of any acts however solemnly performed which affected injuriously either his own interests or the liberties of his people.

Tempora mutantur: nos et mutamur in illis. Those whom we find in fierce opposition to the popular party about 1640 we find still in the same personal opposition 50 years after, but an opposition resting on far different principles: insensibly the principles of their antagonists had reached even them and a courtier of 1689 was willing to concede more than a patriot of 1630 would have ventured to ask. Let me not be understood to mean that true patriotism is at all more shown in supporting the rights of the people than those of the king: