mind, then, has but lived in freedom of its powers-if the act of its faculties, in the continual progress of life, has been impelled from within-if it has trusted itself to feel, and rejoiced to know, as its nature led-if it has been true to itself, and cherishing its own inward discernment, and guarding the fountain of light within itself-has been able to shed from that source a pure unfailing light upon its own thought and its own motion,-if it has used intelligence and feeling as gifts made immediately to itself, for its own strength and guidance-it will, in its maturity of thought and power, and in the season of productive genius, perform the works of its great conception in the spirit in which it has lived-it will bring into being, by its operative art, substantial expression and likeness of those peculiar and individual forms of feeling and thought which it has entertained and cherished within itself in its long communion with being; and that peculiar impress on its works, may be regarded as the symbol of an individual nature unfolded in the mind -as evidence of an unoppressed spirit of life in the soul-of a mind maintaining its endowed powers entire in their native liberty.

The character, therefore, of original genius, pure and entire, on the productions of art, is by no means of an importance limited within the plea sures of taste. It has a far higher significance, referring directly to the entire courses of life in the mind, and to the entire condition of the mind in all action, of whatever importance, that springs from itself. It is not to be imagined, therefore, that the sympathy of ordinary men, with that condition, however it may be to a certain degree unconscious and unintelligent, can be unimportant to themselves.

It is an essential quality of genius in the individual mind, perhaps its distinctive and most constituent quality, that it draws its powers from sources within itself that its faculties are but the organs, as it were, of a deeper spirit, residing in, and blended with, its own deepest nature. The man himself, the living being, with all his sensibilities, recollections, loves, powerswith all his experience and all his capacities of life-is the deep and exbaustless source from which his genius draws the materials of its conception-the elements of its ceaseless

creations. It is the expression of his own individual being, the colouring of life derived through his own senses to his work, that makes the impress of genius on the productions of his art.

On the productions of a nation's genius, it may be presumed there will be read the same character-that this collective genius will express itself, will mark its own act, its own work, with the seal of its own individual character; and it may be apprehended, that this expression of an individual character in a people, will imply, as in the individual, some extraordinary self-communion in the spirit of the people.

For the spirit of a people, as that of a single being, entering upon the world of life it is to possess, finds allotted to itself its own peculiar and individual condition of existence, distinguishing it from all others. Á race of men entering upon a land to dwell there, bring with them the spirit of power which is to animate and rule over their existence during the long course of its coming ages; but the life they are to lead dawns on them as they set foot on its soil. The earth itself, and the sky, to which their existence from that hour is committed, are the groundwork of that arising life. Mountains, and waters, and woods, and soil, and the climate, which overhangs them all, give the first determination to their existence, allotting many of their avocations, and holding in themselves the numberless influences which are to be showered continually from the countenance and the hand of nature on their progressive existence. The same change of their place of abode, has drawn around them, still farther, new circumstances of life, allotting to their society its relations with other societies of men. Still more, it has begun, to that society of their own, a new internal social life-as among themselves their own relations begin necessarily to change, and new forms to grow up out of their new condition. Their manners alter to their avocations-their laws relax, or strengthen, or multiply their bonds with the changing necessities of their life; and the powers of men over men, and the affections that mingle with those relations, change the whole aspect and being of society. The memory of their anteri or being soon dies away into faint,

broken, and doubtful reminiscences; but passion cleaves to the memory of the new life they have begun, and the vigour of enjoyment, and the ardour of growing power, shew, in the strong youth of the people, the preparation of their powerful manhood. The ages roll on; and whatever their appointed life may be, it unfolds itself before them under the power of their spirit, while the power itself of their spirit is unfolding in the midst of their changing life. The men to whom they give birth, who rise up in their endowed strength among them, to perform conspicuously the offices of ordinary existence who in war, in the government of men, in the wisdom or sanctity of their lives, in the walks of peaceful genius-who by their achievements, their endurance, or their great affections, signalize the power of human nature, or the peculiar character of their people,-all these, whensoever they appear, springing forth, as they do, out of the heart of the nation, are no other than energies of its own unfoldings, as it were, of their own spirit in their own life-shewings forth of their mind in realized act; and from them, therefore, redounds upon the people, from whom they have arisen, deep-reaching and lasting energy, of the same quality which has been so highly manifested in those particular men. So, too, and in yet higher degree, what the collective people themselves have achieved, or suffered, or greatly felt, in enterprise, in calamity, in peril, in change or revo lution is to themselves at once both a part of that national life of which they are fulfilling the course, and an act of the national spirit, strengthening and exalting itself by its own great acts, and gathering future sentiment and thought from all that it passes through. That the spirit which a people bring with them to the land of their dwelling-that the life to which they are given up, and its manifold events, should form for them a peculiar character, as well as a peculiar history, seems easily to be understood. It is for the sake of examples of these courses of nature, that we read the history of the world. We can often trace, in remarkable ways, this formation of character-this growth of the genius of a people. But what we are better able to do is to observe the results-to know the charac

ter-to recognise the workings of the genius that has unfolded its strength. Men's observation of men is made intelligent, often not by their power of searching investigation, but by their quick true sympathy; and in virtue of that sympathy, and the light of intelligence which it brings, they read with strong and just interest, the characters of men, singly or in nations, and behold in their works and in their lives the discovery of their inward peculiar spirit. The strong, deep, general interest with which all the memorials of men are considered, that bear strongly impressed a peculiar and specific character, could not be explained, if we were to ascribe the intelligence of character to faculties purely intellectual; but it may be understood, if we can ascribe it to the faculties of sentiment-if we may say, for explanation, that what we call character subsists essentially in relations of the spirit to that life in which all participate, and in so much, is matter of that universal sympathy in which alone men's condition of existence is discoverable to one another-if we are at liberty to comprehend, by character, no more than peculiar modification of our common nature; and by genius itself, not simply the high endowment of intellectual powers, but the blending of intellectual powers, whatever their degree, with the tendencies and workings of each individual nature.

The individual mind, as was observed, will produce its own character in its works, only if that character has been duly unfolded; only if those properties which were strongly implanted by nature, have received due nourishment and free developement from the courses of life. But such nourishment must be self-nourishment; such developement must be self-developement. Life can do no more than lay open its fields before the mind, which must find its own nourishment, and make its own growth. But the essential principle of selfnourishment and self-developement is strong self-consciousness, maintained uniform to itself. It is, that the mind having once felt, retains that feeling; that the pleasure it has felt, from that time belongs to itself, and will recur; that the pain it has felt, from that time belongs to itself, and will recur. There is a personal identity begun and carried on in these uniform recurrences

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

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