people become an integral part of their existence, when moulded into being by their spirit. They are all that is durable of that existence. How are they unimportant if they survive to bind together, by venerating love, brotherhoods of men, who are separated by the interspace of ages?

But if the genius and character of a people be thus highly derived, is there no corresponding importance to ourselves of our own participation in that character? and what are the means we possess for augmenting its power over ourselves? We know that the character and genius of a people are at all times their most important inheritance from their ancestors. Whatever energies, whatever virtues, whatever capacities and means of happiness we possess, are but in part our own, in greater part they are received by us from those whose offspring we are. But of the importance of those energies, virtues, capacities, there is no question; they are indeed our possession of life, the natural powers that determine to us the good of existence. The obligation therefore which each mind owes to the society from which it is sprung, its connexion with that society, its derivation from it of good, is in kind and degree not appreciable. To the genius, the character of those successive generations to which we succeed, we owe OURSELVES. It may be a question of some interest how far it may be in our power to heighten the beneficial influence which derives to us from those preceding us; rather what power there may be in ourselves to determine the degree of the benefit we will receive.

If our derivation of power, sensibility, and virtue, be from others, it may seem evident that the derivation will be greatest the nearer we approach, in character of mind, to those from whom we inherit. The quality we derive will be transfused in more vigour the more nearly our whole temper of mind, and all that influences it, our whole frame of life approaches to the temper and life of those from whose minds it issues to us. It is known accordingly, that the most powerful derivation of character, from age to age, is among those nations, whose simple forms of life, and purity from foreign intercourse, maintain the nearest a continual uniformity of the state and disposition of the people.

VOL. IV.

But the maintenance of such a continued uniformity seems to be neither in our power, nor according to the course of nature. Rather there seems an adaptation for continual progressive change; and it would appear that by such change only can the greatest good of mankind, or of any nation be attained. It may be said that we hold our welfare under a double law-subjected, in part, to those from whom we descend-in part free, and deriving the good of our existence from ourselves. As far as we are subjected, the law of our life would bind us to continual unchanging uniformity. As far as we are free, having the measure of good in our own intelligence, it leaves us open, and, indeed, continually solicits us to change, inasmuch as the possible or imaginable good which lies before us unpossessed, is always great, as well as that which we possess and enjoy. It must be the wisdom of life, it would appear, duly to combine our subjection and our independence, the principle of stability and the principle of change. It is to be desired that the living generation should derive as much as possible of good from those which have preceded, without being so far subjected to them as to lose the good which is open to it to acquire. But it ought not, in eagerness for acquisition of its own, to forego the good which may be inherited.

In what manner this difficult combination may be affected, is a distinct question. But it is important towards affecting it, that the danger of deviation either way be distinctly understood. Among ourselves, the tendency of deviation seems to be towards too great relaxation of the subjection of our minds to the great generations from which we spring; and it appears, on that account, of more need to urge the consequences of that deviation...

It seems of necessity, if we hold at all in our hands the courses of our own minds, the prospects of our own welfare, that we should understand how much of our welfare, or of that character in which our welfare is determined, depends on our adherence to the spirit and life of our forefathers. To possess and to enjoy life as it arises before us, is not all that is required of

us.

We must look reflectingly, not on ourselves merely, but on generations that have preceded us. We must know, from thoughtful examination,

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what there is great, good, beautiful, that has descended to us in their line, and which it is in our power to possess or to forego; and once enlightened to an intelligent love and veneration of that excellence in any kind, which has been in such transmission tendered to our acceptance, it only remains for us, so far as the moulding of our minds is in our own hands, to frame them to that excellence we love and admire. But that is the less difficult, because love and admiration do of themselves, by their own strong affection, produce in the mind the qualities on which they fix their impassioned contemplation.

It would be interesting to consider in what way the derivation of good from one generation to another, in the ordinary course of nature, is effected. Indeed, without such a consideration, even much at large, all the preceding observations and suggestions of argument must be very imperfectly intelligible. Yet it is itself an argument of far too great extent to be merely involved in the discussion of other questions. It would be curious and important in such an inquiry, if there were here room to enter upon it, to observe in things of the greatest and the least magnitude the same derivation; to behold it in the great national virtues and powers by which a people subsists, and to trace it in its minuter currents, in the smaller pleasures of life, and the subtlest play of intellect. The question that has been brought forward, more or less, in all that has been said above" of the influence upon a people of adherence in the productions of genius in the arts, to the character of preceding times,"-holds somewhat of a middle place of importance amongst such topics. What belongs to virtues of public action-what belongs to the virtues of domestic life, is far greater. These are the great substantial parts of our inheritance, with the loss of which we forfeit ourselves. But connected with these, and participating even in their importance, is the character which genius maintains in the works it brings forth to adorn and delight a country.

The human intellect, searching life, nature, and itself, and re-moulding what it has seen into forms of its own, is not an unfettered intelligence, ranging through absolute existence, and creating ideal form. It is the power of a being who in all parts of his na

ture is subjected to conditions of life, who, in his sensibilities, his knowledge, his productions, is under restraint and limitation of his individual nature, and of his place among mankind. What it requires for its most perfect energy, is, that its free and ideal intelligence and conception should be blended in the highest degree with its individual constitution or character. He who, in consciousness of the powers that are discovered to him in his manhood, slights and foregoes the sensibilities of his earlier life, rejects the best half of his power; and he who, in the pride of his own age, believes himself independent of the ages to which he succeeds, shuts out from himself the highest influences under which it was given to his mind to live. To each nation to each individual, there is given peculiar good. That is their felicity, SUA si bona nôrint. To intellectual genius there is given its own discernment of the nature and qualities of things.

He who belongs to a people of thoughtful moral spirit, will, by his place among them, possess peculiar moral insight. He lives in a world which to many is unrevealed; and if his subtle and searching intellect-if his mighty and creative soul delight itself in such knowledge-in such imagination, he derives a power to himself out of the blood from which he springs, which he could have found in no other sphere of thought. Is his work in vain? or does he exalt and prolong to his people that moral thought which he has embodied in most beautiful and unperishing forms? If the people of a country are endowed with peculiar sensibility to the beautiful face of existence; if their exquisite sense apprehends, with a delight known only to themselves, the beauty with which shape and colour have invested all living and insensate things, and the harmonies that breathe in sound, shall genius, by intellectual pride, separate itself from the lot of its people, refuse the bounty of nature, and imagine to itself sources of power opened up to it in its own bosom alone? It cannot shake off the nature in which it lives; it cannot hold its power in independence of the bounty that nourished it up.

Not the sym

pathy alone of the people for whom it exists, requires of it the recognition and acceptance of their own common

being; but the maintenance of its own power speaks the same dictate. The sensibilities which were opened up in the life of its childhood, are those of the whole nation. The numberless, unfathomable springs of delight which well up through its whole nature, and from which are the impulses of living energy that feed and animate its power, were all unlocked by the touches of delight which struck in earliest years on those native sensibilities. Let him dread lest those springs subside into their own silent depths, if the power be withdrawn which first solicited them to play. In those sensibilities he has possessed his power. Can he tell what that power may become without them? Let the Italian painter dare to trust to his magic pencil, not his fame alone, but his power over the minds of his people. Has he himself a moral will, or intellectual aspiration? To these his art shall find a way. From nature he shall acquire her own solemn spells; from the face of earth and sky, from the wondrous universe, he shall take those aspects of things, those mighty scenes, by which the spirit of nature holds dominion over the human soul. He shall not use a skill of vain delight; but, true to highest purposes, he shall seize, by mysterious powers, the imaginations of men, and through their imagination shall bind their hearts. Unknown to themselves, covering his moral end, in the beauty of his genius, he shall woo them by delight from the lower bent of their frailer nature, and draw them over to rejoice and to dwell in higher sensibilities, and in more solemn thought. As nature herself gives no tongue to her most dread admonitions, as her sweet persuasive influences fall silently on the heart; so genius, in the hour of its dominion, has no need to declare the end for which it works. It fulfils its own spirit, and trusts the consequences to the might of that nature, for, and with which it humbly uses its own frail instruments and feeble skill. It is scarcely to be doubt ed, that genius thus working will not only find itself richest in its own power, but will most powerfully infuse its own virtue into other hearts. It is

hard to tell in words how intellect can carry over its severe energy into the forms and colours of the pencil; yet those who have looked with understanding eyes on the shapes which sprang from Michael Angelo's stern and giant thought, on the dim and serious hues which shadow out the workings of Pousin's studious mind, they know well that intellect will bring out upon these materials its own impress, that it can find in them fit matter for its own labours, and require of others minds energy, toil, and exaltation of thought kindred to its own, rejecting from the circle of its sympathy all those who approach unprepared to the contemplation of its works. Who would wish an Indian philosopher, if the iron age of India can yet teem with the sacred birth, to found his speculations of wisdom on the almost material logic of Hartley or Locke? or who would counsel her poets to arrest the sympathy of their countrymen by spreading before them in vivid picture, the burning strife, and angry tumult of ordinary mortal life? This may be philosophy to our intelligence, and poetry to our imagination. But India has hid her spirit of thought in invisible worlds, and held her power in the spiritual being of man. There is the strength she still offers to her sons: the powers with which she broods over the continual arisings of their life. Wo to the degenerate son who should sever himself from her ancient might! She has darkened truth, and laid heavy oppression upon groaning life. But if ever her teacher of truth shall arise, let him speak to her in the might of her own spirit-in the voice of her own tongue. If the avenger of prostrate life should ever lift up her head into liberty, let him remember the ages of the past, and give her strength which her nature can embrace, and powers in which her spirit can walk. Alas! our civilization, our knowledge, wars with her spirit; and subjugated as her strength is by our arms, her ancient mind will perhaps, be yet more prostrate under the ascendancy of our conquering intellect.