the Support of Sunday Schools throughout the British dominions, 1785; Philological Society for the Education of the Sons of Clergymen, Naval and Military Officers, Professional Men, Merchants, Manufacturers, Clerks in Public Offices, the higher Order of Tradesmen, and other gentlemen who, from misfortunes or limited incomes, cannot afford a liberal education to their children, 1792; Westminster New Charity School, for Clothing and Educating Fifty Male and Fifty Female Children, 1786; School for the Indigent Blind, 1799; Royal Military College, Berks, 1797; Hibernian. Society for Promoting Schools in Ireland, 1800; East India College, Hertford, 1805; City of London School of Instruction and Industry, 1806; African Institution, 1807; National Society for the Education of the Poor, 1811; The Corporation of the Caledonian Asylum, for Supporting and Educating the Children of Indigent Scotch Parents residing in London, 1815; The Adult Orphan Society, 1819; Dr. Bray's Institution for Parochial and Lending Libraries; British and Foreign School Society; Welch Charity School; Philanthropic Society; The Insolvent Debtor's Friend, for Educating the Children of Insolvent Debtors.-Our establishments and discoveries relaling to letters, science, arts, manufactures, during this time, have been— British Society for extending the Fisheries and Improving the Sea-coasts, 1786; Linnæan Society, 1788; Royal Society of Musicians, 1790; Board of Agriculture, 1793; Royal College of Surgeons, 1800; Royal Institution, 1800; Committee for the Inspection of National Monuments, 1802; Society for Painters in Oil Colours, 1804; Medical and Chirurgical Society, 1805; British Institution for Promoting the Fine Arts, 1805; London Institution, 1805; Surrey Institution, 1808; Russel Institution, 1808; Philosophical Society of London, 1810; Geological Society, 1815.-Vaccination, if not discovered, at least applied to relieve the human species from one of the most dreadful diseases to which it is exposed.-Various improvements in education, to an immense extent, according to the methods devised by Bell, Lancaster, and others, and which have been introduced from this country into almost every nation of the globe.-Improvements in the steam-engine, and its infinite applications to the highest uses, as well as to promote the hourly convenience of every class of society, and most especially of the poor. By means of this instrument, one of the most powerful which human ingenuity has yet put into the hands of man, which is of British conception, growth, and completion, its immortal author has new modelled the industry, not merely of his own country, but given the means of unexpected comforts to the whole civilized species, and a new impulse to the human mind. Application of burning gas to public and domestic purposes, on the most extensive scale; Welch china, the clay of which is inferior to none in whiteness; Ironstone china, in imitation of Indian, and which can with difficulty be broken; Lifeboat; Life-preserver; Congreve Rockets; Shrapnell Shot; Improvements in Boring Cannon; Improvements in Manufacturing Gunpowder; Wernerian Society; Horticultural Society; Bible Societies; Missionary Societies; Society of Engravers; Westminster Library; Panoramas; Camera Lucida by Dr. Wollaston; Discovery of three New Metals in the Ore of Platina, by Dr. Wollaston and Mr. Tenant.-By means of the galvanic battery, greatly improved and modified in England, Sir Humphry Davy operated the decomposition of at least twenty substances, earths, alkalis, acids, etc., before thought simple; and, by introducing a great number of new agencies into the chemical science, subverted a large portion of

the theory unjustly attributed to Lavoisier. The Atomic Theory of Chemical Combination fully demonstrated by experiment and calculation.— The improvements made by Sir William Herschell in Optics, and his subsequent discoveries in Astronomy; a new planet, the Georgium Sidus, with its satellites; a long list of new stars, nebulæ, double and triple stars, changing stars, motion in the stars hitherto supposed fixed; translation of our solar system, through infinite space, towards a spot in the heavens occupied by the constellation Hercules, as confirmed by forty-four observations out of fifty-six; his discoveries upon light and heat, etc.

Such is a part, and indeed it could hardly be expected we should give more than a part, of the advantages which the British empire has been adding to its former stock since the year 1780. We shall not discuss their merits, lest we should be induced to expatiate too largely. We must, however, observe, 1st, That we have confined ourselves principally to the metropolis, in our enumeration of charitable, religious, moral, and intellectual establishments. But the metropolis contains about one-eighteenth of the entire population of the British islands: hence we shall be within bounds when we say, that such establishments there do not form one-sixth of all those which are diffused over these islands, not reckoning those which we have spread over our most distant possessions; for London, though bearing a greater ratio of population to England than Paris does to France, is far from bearing the same overweening ascendancy in every other respect. 2d, That as great a portion of our benevolence is addressed to foreigners and to foreign nations, as to our own subjects; and this without the hope of profit or return. 3d, That it has rarely fallen to the lot of a nation to make so large an addition to so large a previous stock of good, in so short a time and under such circumstances. 4th, That this vast development of national bounty and intellect, so honourable to the British heart and head and hand, has taken place while we were engaged in the most expensive war that ever has been waged; while we were struggling to protect European civilization from the military despotism of France, and to deliver France herself from that same despotism, of which she did not feel the disgrace or the disaster until it was harassed and disabled by defeat. 5th, That if we have undergone some sufferings and been afflicted with some calamities; if a precious portion of our countrymen has been reduced to want, or goaded on to intemperance and insubordination, we have minds to bear with dignity our own distresses, and hearts to relieve those of others, and virtues to oppose the wild spirit of disorganization; that with all our real ills, and all our fancied grievances, we have yet less to deplore from the effects of foreign levy or domestic strife, than any of the nations which were drawn along with us into the same vortex of contention; that, issuing from the severest trial to which a nation could be put, we have not only preserved our wonted energy, and good faith and wisdom, but that the struggle has added new matter to our moral resources; and that while we pay the debt of suffering which human creatures owe, our debt of gratitude is still more vast and sacred, when we reflect, that now, more perhaps than ever, our country is the first among nations. How long it may remain so, is in the hands of inscrutable Providence; but the day on which it ceases to guide the public opinion of Europe, will be a day of bitterness for the whole human species, and most of all for the nations which most desire our ruin. Happy, if we ourselves never shrink from the high post of duty which this pre-eminence

imposes upon us, or permit the sordid calculations of Despots to prevail over the generous maxims of British Liberty.*

THE LITERATURE OF THE MIDDLE AGES.+

Among the various revolutions which literature has experienced, none are more remarkable than those which it underwent in the period included in the work before us. The high and dazzling prosperity of the Augustan age; the rapid and deep decline of the succeeding times; the long period of ignorance and barbarity which ensued; and the commencement of a new state of things, destined to no retrogression, present a spectacle interesting to every imagination, and a series of phenomena of which the causes and effects may justly be ranked among the most interesting subjects of philosophical invesigation.

The causes by which literature is promoted, are so nearly the same with those by which human happiness is advanced, that one cannot be surprised at the deep interest which mankind have taken in tracing its progress through the different stages of society. It is in fact regarded, and with justice, as the most infallible criterion of the point of civilization at which any people have arrived.

It is not however so much, perhaps, to its intimate connexion with the general happiness of society, as to its connexion with the happiness of individuals, that literature is principally indebted for the favour which it has enjoyed. As the manners of men are refined, and the taste for the coarse or boisterous enjoyments of the barbarian declines, no amusement is found to occupy so delightfully the vacant hours of life, even to those whose principal pursuit is amusement. No pleasure is so little subject to wear itself out, by exhausting either the materials or the faculty of enjoyment. It is one of those tastes which grow by indulgence; of which the objects become more numerous, and the emotions more exquisite, the greater the cultivation which it receives. It is more independent of the will of other men ; more independent, in point of all external circumstances, than almost any other source of enjoyment. The objects about which it is conversant, too, fill the mind with a consciousness of its own elevation; while it traces the innumerable events which are passed, or pierces through the veil that covers the future; ranges over the globe upon which it is placed, or flies from planet to planet, and world to world, through the regions of infinite space. The indulgence of a literary taste is naturally attended with a perception of increasing power-of a more enlarged dominion over the objects of nature, animate and inanimate, rational and irrational. It is attended with the delightful conviction of giving a higher claim upon the love and esteem of mankind, and of acquiring a greater command over those feelings and passions which render men odious to their fellow-creatures. How naturally it combines with the best feelings incident to every condition of life-with what advantages it engages and employs the thoughts of the wretched, tem

See a masterly article On the Comparative Skill and Industry of France and England, contributed to the E. Review by the distinguished author of this Essay, Vol. xxxii. page 340; and one on the Comparative State of Science in the two Countries, Vol. xxxiv. page 383.

+ Berington's Literature of the Middle Ages.-Vol. xxiii. page 229. April, 1814.

pers and moderates the elevation of the prosperous, directs the enthusiasm of the young, and relieves the ennui of the old, has been so long felt, and so often expressed with all the powers of language and of genius, that it may well be regarded as one of the laws to which universal assent is attached. "If the riches of both Indies," said the elegant and amiable Fénélon, ""if the crowns of all the kingdoms of Europe were laid at my feet, in exchange for my love of reading, I would spurn them all."

In surveying the extended field which Mr. Berington presents to our view, it is of importance to set out with an accurate estimate of the original standard by which all that follows is to be measured. Literature, to whatever perfection it was carried in the Augustan age, in the branches on which culture was bestowed, must be allowed to have possessed but a narrow, and by no means a very elevated range. The departments of Roman literature were in number hardly more than three; poetry, history, and rhetoric. In regard to philosophy, at least, their pretensions, we think, cannot be ranked very high. Of physical science they were altogether destitute. And of their most celebrated writings, or what they dignified with the name of Moral Philosophy-those, for example, of Cicero-besides that they were only transfusions from the Greek, we should hardly, in the present day, allow that they were of the nature of science or philosophy at all. Though moral precepts are enforced with persuasive elegance, and practical questions of morals discussed in our Spectators and Ramblers, we are not accustomed to rank these popular productions among our works of philosophy. But, unless where he enters upon the trite and puerile questions,—whether the summum bonum consists in pleasure, or in the absence of pain,whether it consists in virtue along with riches and pleasure, or in virtue alone; or where he undertakes to prove that all opinions are doubtful, and that, with regard to the human mind, there is no such thing as truth or falsehood, frivolities which still less deserve the name of philosophy, and are of kin to those with which the human mind is uniformly caught in the infancy of civilization,-the writings of Cicero certainly ought not to be considered as of a higher cast than the serious papers in the Spectator, or the moral sermons of Blair.

If we carry our criticism even higher, to the masters of the Romans in literature-the Greeks, we shall find that their legitimate pretensions lie within a very limited compass. In Geometry, one of the branches of mathematical science, they had, indeed, made a noble and astonishing progress; but, into the properties of physical bodies, or the order of physical events, they had hardly pushed their inquiries beyond the obvious results of vulgar observation. In regard to the Philosophy of Mind, the writings of Xenophon, and even those of Plato, exquisite models as they are of the arts of disputation, and instructive beyond example in all the resources of attack and defence-are by no means entitled to rank higher than the works of Cicero. Among all the philosophers of antiquity, Aristotle alone appears to have made any considerable attempts in what we now should think worthy to be called the philosophy of mind. But even he appears not to have conceived the scheme of collecting and arranging the phenomena of thought, and ascertaining the order of their succession. His Logic is undoubtedly an attempt-astonishing for the powers which it displays, and instructive by the lights which it communicated-to analyze the process of general reasoning, one of the complicated operations of the mind; the pature of which, after all, he entirely mistook. It is indeed a remark,

which is worthy of mention, that not one of the ancient philosophers had any conception of the real nature of general terms, or of the operation of mind, which is called Abstraction;-and that it is chiefly by this radical defect that they are perpetually perplexed, and led into all their trifling and absurdity. The Metaphysics of Aristotle, are either an effort to explain the various uses which were made of the most general terms of the language, without an attempt to explain their real nature, or to penetrate into what is placed beyond the reach of human faculties, the essence and causes of things. His Ethics are a sort of manual of practical morality, to explain and enforce the four cardinal virtues. His Politics are an attempt, and an attempt which exhibits the vigour of his genius, to explain some of the most striking phenomena of government, which had been exhibited among the states of Greece, or the neighbouring countries. But to penetrate to the general principles of government,-to show the powers which it implies, -the mode in which they are formed, and in which they operate,-the ends at which they aim,-the causes of their aberration, and what is necessary to keep them true to those ends;-these are inquiries, to which it is evident that his mind had never expanded itself. The feebleness of his general speculations is indeed so remarkable, that the most wretched pamphleteer of the present day would be ashamed of the trifling and absurd remarks of which the greater part of his treatise is composed. It is however melancholy to relate, that this treatise, destitute as it must be of any instruction to men of the present age,-is the only work on the science of politics, which the most opulent and powerful of our seminaries of education thinks proper to teach.

It thus sufficiently appears, that in the most useful branches of literature, the Romans had made no progress at all, and the Greeks very little. That the chief object of poetry is to delight and amuse, we suppose will be allowed; and we know, that some of its most exquisite specimens have been produced when intelligence and civilization were at a very low ebb. When Horace therefore pronounces Homer a more instructive teacher of moral and political wisdom than Chrysippus and Crantor, the condemnation of the philosophers, we dare say, is just enough; but for the instruction to be derived from the poet, we must be permitted to think that it is infinitely inferior to that which may be gained from the fables of Esop.

With regard even to historical composition, it is worthy of remark, that notwithstanding the exquisite perfection to which, in one of its branches, the ancients carried this art, a perfection to which the moderns, perhaps, have never attained, it is yet the meanest of its branches, if useful knowledge be the measure of esteem. In the hands of the ancients, history is only the art of weaving an exquisite narrative out of the common and vulgar recollections of events. From the profound research of materials, they were no doubt debarred, because events in those days left, in writing at least, but few traces of themselves behind. But the ancient historians appear to have had little or no conception of the dependance of the events which they related upon the most remarkable of their causes, upon the state of government, and the state of society, among the people to whom the events related. To learn that one people made war upon another, and that a number of incidents of such and such a description ensued, is a tale, how frequently soever repeated, of which the instruction is soon exhausted. To make appear, in relating the transactions of nations, in what they were guided towards their real interest, and in what they were led astray from it; what were the chief