Billeder på siden
PDF
ePub

the higher mathematics. I went to hear his prælection the other day, and after the boys were sent away, began to ask him a few questions about the system adopted in their tuition, but in vain. He insisted upon talking of fluxions, and fluxions only; and, as I know nothing of fluxions, I was glad to break up the conference. With him, if a pun may be allowed,

labitur et labetur, in omne volubilis aevum."

Mr. D, the Professor of Greek, has published several little things in the Cambridge Classical Researches, and is certainly very much above the common run of scholars. I observe, by the way, that in one of his Latin title-pages, he subjoins to his name a set of English initials.

[blocks in formation]

AFTER Mr. C

TO THE SAME.

and Mr. Dare supposed to have given their pupils as much Latin and Greek as people of sense ought to be troubled with, they are transferred to the Professor of Logic, and recorded in the books of the University, as students of philosophy. The style used by their new professor would, however, convey to a stranger a very erroneous notion of the duties in reality allotted to him. Logic, according to our acceptation of the word, is one of the least and last of the things which he is supposed to teach. His true business is to inform the minds of his pupils with some first faint ideas of the Scotch systems of metaphysics and

morals to explain to them the rudiments of the great vocabulary of Reid and Stewart, and fit them, in some measure, for plunging next year into the midst of all the light and all the darkness scattered over the favourite science of this country, by the Professor of Moral Philosophy, Dr. TB

I could not find leisure for attending the prælections of all the Edinburgh professors; but I was resolved to hear, at least, one discourse of the last mentioned celebrated person. So I went one morning in good time, and took my place in a convenient corner of that class-room, to which the rising metaphysicians of the north resort with so much eagerness. Before the professor arrived, I amused myself with surveying the well-covered rows of benches with which the area of the large room was occupied. I thought I could distinguish the various descriptions of speculative young men come thither from the different quarters of Scotland, fresh from the first zealous study of Hume, Berkeley, and Locke, and quite sceptical whether the timber upon which they sat had any real existence, or whether there was such a thing as heat in the grate which was blazing before them. On one side might be seen, perhaps, a Pyrrhonist from Inverness-shire, deeply marked with the small-pox, and ruminating upon our not seeing double with two eyes. The gaunt and sinewy frame of this meditative mountaineer-his hard legs set wide asunder, as if to take full advantage of their more usual integument, the philabeg-his features, bearing so many marks of the imperfect civilization and nomadic existence of his progenitors-all together could not fail to strike me as rather out of place in such a situation as this. On the other side might be remarked one, who seemed to be an embryo clergyman, waiting anxiously for some new lights, which he expected the coming lec ture would throw upon the great system of Cause and Effect, and feeling rather qualmish after having read that morning Hume's Sceptical Solution of Sceptical Doubts. Nearer the professor's table was probably a crack member of some crack debating-club, with a grin of incorrigible self-complacency

shining through his assumed frown of profound reflection-looking, as the French say, as grave as a pot-de-chambreand longing, above all things, for seven o'clock in the evening, when he hoped himself to assume a conspicuous position behind a green table, with a couple of candles upon it, and fully refute the objections of his honourable and eloquent friend who spoke last. A little farther to the right might be observed a fine, healthy, well-thriven lad from Haddingtonshire, but without the slightest trace of metaphysics in his countenance-one who would have thought himself much better employed in shooting crows on Leith sands, and in whom the distinction between Sensation and Volition excited nothing but chagrin and disgust.

Throughout the whole of this motley assemblage, there was a prodigious mending of pens, and folding of paper; every one, as it appeared, having arrived with the determination to carry away the Dicta Magistri, not in his head only, but in his note-book. Some, after having completed their preparations for the business of this day, seemed to be conning over the monuments of their yesterday's exertion, and getting as firm a grapple as possible of the last links of the chain, whereof a new series was about to be expanded before them. There was a very care-worn kind of hollowness in many of their eyes, as if they had been rather over-worked in the business of staring upon stenography; and not a few of their noses were pinched and sharpened, as it were, with the habitual throes and agonies of extreme hesitation. As the hour began to strike, there arose a simultaneous clamour of coughing and spitting, and blowing of noses, as if all were prepared for listening long to the lecturer, without disturbing him or their neighbours; and such was the infectiousness of their zeal, that I caught myself fidgetting on my seat, and clearing out for action like the rest. At last, in came the professor, with a pleasant smile upon his face, arrayed in a black Geneva cloak, over a snuff-coloured coat and buff waistcoat. He mounted to his elbow-chair, and laid his papers on the desk before him, and in a moment all was still as

the Tomb of the Capulets-every eye filled with earnestness, and every pen filled with ink.

Doctor B has a physiognomy very expressive of mildness and quiet contemplativeness; but when he got fairly into the middle of his subject, his features kindled amazingly, and he went through some very subtle and abstruse disquisitions, with great keenness and animation. I have seen few persons who pursued the intellectual chase with so much ardour; but, as I observed before, it did not appear as if all his pupils were sufficiently well mounted or equipped to be able to keep up with him. His elocution is distinct and elegant, and in those parts of his subject which admitted of being tastefully handled, there was a flow of beautiful language, as finely delivered as it was finely conceived. It is very much his practice to introduce quotations from the poets, which not only afford the best illustrations of his own speculations, but are, at the same time, valuable, as furnishing a pleasing relaxation to the mind of the bearer in the midst of the toils of abstract thought. The variety of delightful images which he thus brings before the view, refreshes the mental eye, and enables it to preserve its power of examination much longer than it could do, were it condemned to experience no relief from the dry mazes of abstract disquisition. Dr. B-, in this respect, imitates with great wisdom and success, the example of Harris, whose intimate knowledge of Shakspeare has done more good to his books, and afforded more delight to his readers, than perhaps any one of all his manifold accomplishments. Nay, I might have quoted the still higher example of the Stagyrite himself, who produces an effect equally delightful by his perpetual citations from Homer, or, as he calls him, Ο Ποιητης.

The immediate predecessor of Dr. B-, in this important chair, was no less a person than Dugald Stewart; and it was easy to observe, in the midst of many lesser deviations, that the general system of this great man's philosophy is adhered to by his successor, and that he is, in truth, one of his intellectual children. I have seen Mr. S- once since I

came to Edinburgh, but it was in a very hasty manner, so that I shall not attempt to describe him to you at present. I intend, before I leave Scotland, to pass very near the place of his residence, (for he now very seldom leaves the country,) and shall perhaps find an opportunity to become better acquainted with him. Of the style of philosophizing adopted by him and his successor, I need not say any thing to you, who are so much better acquainted with the works of both than I am. I may just venture to hint, however, that their mode of studying the human mind, is perhaps better adapted for throwing light upon the intellectual faculties, and upon the association of ideas, than upon human nature in general. There can be no doubt that the mind is, like physical nature, a theatre of causes and effects; but it appears extremely doubtful whether the same mechanical mode of observation, which enables us to understand the qualities of material objects, and the effects which they are capable of producing on each other, will be equally successful in elucidating the generation of human thoughts and feelings. In observing the manner in which a train of ideas passes through the mind, is it possible to notice and understand all that is really going on within us? Can every thing which appears, be referred to its true source? From the mode in which images and conceptions succeed each other, we may perhaps infer some laws of suggestion-and from observing the sequence of propositions, we may arrive at the principles according to which intellectual operations take place-but such, probably, will be the most important results of intellectual operations, conducted according to Mr. Stewart's method. The scope and tendency of the different affections can never be gathered from the analyses of particular trains of thought, or by such a microscopic and divided mode of observation, as that which consists in watching the succession of ideas as they arise in the mind. It seems, indeed, quite improbable, that the affections ever can be made an object of science, or that their qualities and relations can ever be properly expressed in abstract proposi-. tions. Poetry and eloquence are alone capable of exem

« ForrigeFortsæt »