and now we have these amiable and enlightened citizens defending the wholesale piracy of British authors, not on the plausible but unjust pretext of the benefit to be derived from an extended acquaintance with English literature, but, only conceive, because if "English authors were invested with any control over the republication of their own books, it would be no longer possible for American editors to alter and adapt them as they do now to the American taste." However incredible this may seem, the passage formed part of a document actually submitted to congress, and favourably received by that body. This is not the place for me to dwell on the unprincipled usurpation by which men who have contributed nothing to the production of a work, assume the power of reaping its benefits and profiting by its success. The wholesale robbery of English authors has been of late well and ably exposed. The gifted and accomplished author of "Darnley" and "The Gipsy" has devoted his time and his talents to the subject; and although the world at large have few sympathies with the wrongs of those who live to please them, yet the day is not distant when the rights of a large and influential body, who stamp the age with the image of their own minds, can be no longer neglected, and the security of literary property must become at least as great as of mining scrip, or the shares in a rail-road.

My present business is with the Yankee declaration, that English authors to be readible in America must be passed through the ordeal of re-writing. I scarcely think that the annals of impertinence and ignorance could equal this. What! is it seriously meant that Scott and Byron, Wordsworth, Southey, Rogers, Bulwer, James, Dickens, and a host of others, must be converted into the garbage of St. Giles, or the fœtid slang of Wapping, before they can pass muster before an American public? Must the book reek of "gin twist," "cock tail," and fifty other abominations, ere it reach an American drawing-room? Must the "bowie-knife and the whittling-stick" mark its pages; and the coarse jest of some tobacco-chewing, wild-cat-wipping penny-a-liner disfigure and sully the passages impressed with the glow.

ing brilliancy of Scott, or the impetuous torrent of Byron's genius? Is this a true picture of America? Is her reading public indeed degraded to this pass? I certainly have few sympathies with brother Jonathan. I like not his spirit of boastful insolence, his rude speech, or his uncultivated habits; but I confess I am unwilling to credit this. I hesitate to believe in such an amount of intellectual depravity as can turn from the cultivated writings of Scott and Bulwer to revel in the coarseness and vulgarity of a Yankee editor, vamping up his stolen wares with oaths from the far west, or vapid jests from life in the Prairies. Again, what shall I say of those who follow this traffic? Is it not enough to steal that which is not theirs, to possess themselves of what they have no right or claim to ? Must they mangle the

corpse when they have extinguished life? Must they, while they cheat the author of his gain, rob him also of his fair fame ? "He who steals my purse steals trash," but how shall I characterize that extent of baseness that dares to step in between an author and his reputation-inserting between him and posterity their own illiterate degeneracy and insufferable stupidity.

Would not the ghost of Sir Walter shudder in his grave at the thought of the fair creations of his mind-Jeany Deans and Rebecca-Yankeefied into women of Long Island, or damsels from Connecticut? Is Childe Harold to be a Kentucky-man? and are the vivid pictures of life Bulwer's novels abound in, to be converted into the prison-discipline school of manners, that prevail in New York and Boston, where, as Hamilton remarks, "the men are about as like gentlemen, as are our new police?" What should we say of the person who having stolen a Rembrandt or a Vandyke from its owner, would seek to legalise his theft by daubing over the picture with his own colours -obliterating every trace of the great master, and exulting that every stroke of his brush defaced some touch of genius, and that beneath the savage vandalism of his act, every lineament of the artist was obliterated? I ask you, would not mere robbery be a virtue beside such a deed as this? Who could compare the sinful prompt. ings to which want and starvation give

birth to, to the ruffian profligacy of such barbarity? And now, when I tell you, that not content with this, not satisfied to desecrate the work, the wretch goes a step farther and stabs its author-what shall I say of him now, who, when he had defaced the picture, marred every effect, distorted all drawing, and rendered the whole a chaotic mass of indistinguishable nonsense, goes forth to the world, and announces," This is a Rembrandt, this is a Vandyke: ay, look at it and wonder: but with all its faults, and all its demerits, it is cried up above our native artists; it has got the seal of the old world's approval upon it, and in vain we of younger origin shall dare to dissent from its judgment?" Now once more, I say, can you show the equal of this moral turpitude? and such I pledge myself is the conduct of your transatlantic pirates with respect to British literature. Mr. Dickens, no mean authority, asserts that in the same sheet in which they boast the sale of many thousand copies of an English reprint, they coarsely attack the author of that very book, and heap scurrility and slander on his head.

Yes, such is the fact; not satisfied with robbery, they murder reputation also. And then we find them expatiating in most moving terms over the superiority of their own neglected genius. Hear Mr. Matthews, who, himself opposed to piracy, thus held forth at a New York dinner to Mr. Dickens :

"I do not hesitate to say, that he,”—

it is the native author he speaks of,— "had he thousands to lavish on the printing of a single work; a press in every village; a publisher of enterprise and spirit in every city; the purchased control of fifty newspapers;-would be only beginning to enter the field with Mr. Lever."

Egad, our editor must be making a fine thing of it. It must be excellent sport to be robbed after this fashion. I remember once hearing of a young medical friend, who was so ambitious of practice, that to obtain a patient he supplied the medicine gratis, and actually supported the family of a labouring man for several weeks, merely from the gratifying reflection of the confidence his professional skill was creating. At the end of a couple of months, however, the cure did not seem to progress, and he was thus accosted by the wife of the sick man, at the close of one of his daily visits"Well, doctor, how is he to-day?"

Ir is a singular and beautiful characteristic of all the sources of delight furnished to us by external natureherein differing, alas, materially from the moral landscape-that what pleases us at first, and to our unsophisticated view, becomes invested with new charms as we examine it more closely, proves itself deserving of an attention, which, perhaps, with all our admiration, we should have hesitated to deem it worthy at first sight.

It is observed, moreover, by those who pay attention to such matters, that there is something more peculiarly worthy of examination in those natural objects which seem most adapted to afford us sensible pleasure, and that we unconsciously fasten in our affections and feelings upon what is in reality and indeed distinguishable by some intrinsic perfection or harmony of parts, so that the delight experienced by our senses becomes a measure, as it were, of what is, for other reasons, delightful, and may be admitted to test it.

Philosophers, who took up these observations as they found them, and reasoned upon them, were long at a loss to account for the universally admitted accordance between unconscious impressions and after results; and numerous theories were adopted and rejected, each having for its aim, and each successively failing, to unite the phenomena as cause and effect, in a way to satisfy a reasonable mind. St. Augustin, Cruzas, André, Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, and Gerard, exhibited their ingenuity without coming nearer the truth, and their researches were followed by the more advanced though still inadequate theories of Burke, Price, Diderot, and Père Buffier.

It was in the year 1790 that Alison gave to the world his Essay on the principles of taste, in which was contained the first complete promulgation

of the theory of association, as it has been since carried out, regulated, and illustrated by various subsequent philosophers, beginning with Knight, including Dugald Stewart and Thomas Brown, and reaching its climax with Lord Jeffrey, whose article on "Beauty" in The Encyclopædia Britannica is considered at the present day the most complete, as Alison's work is the most original, of all the multitude of treatises on this interesting and agreeable subject.

Öne, indeed, there was, who, at a time when the world was younger than it is, had a glimmering of truth, which the imperfect state of philosophy, particularly in its method of investigation, and the inability of others to comprehend, much less to carry out, his theories, had suffered to subside into darkness again-we mean Plato; and there seems no doubt that his eagleglance had detected the connexion of external beauty and sublimity with the mind within, to a certain degree as it has been held to exist since. But as our business is more with the practical details of modern discovery, we shall content ourselves with thus far doing justice to the penetration of one, who, with Aristotle, may be said to have scaled the walls of darkness, and had a momentary glance across the gulf of ages into the wonders and the secrets of future discovery; anticipating to the unprepared ears of mankind things which to them "seemed as idle tales," though to after-times the visions had their accomplishment in the results of a matured and substantial philosophy.

It is far from our intention to draw the reader into a learned disquisition, or detain him from what is intended to amuse, by endeavouring merely to instruct him; but thus much was necessary, by way of introduction to the two very valuable and entertaining books before us-a pair which go singularly well together, the one

being the science of which the other is the practice carried out to the last perfection.

Sir Uvedale Price's work on the picturesque has been many years before the public, and furnishes a complete manual of landscape gardening, abounding in all that can make that study at once easy and delightful; but when it pursues the subject up into philosophy, it becomes an unsafe guide, and abounds in those errors which are the consequences of an imperfect system or method of scientific investigation. Here, then, the present editor, Sir Thomas Dick Lauder, has taken the matter up, and in a masterly and eloquent introduction, "on the origin of taste," and in copious notes, very ably corrected what was erroneous in the text, without detracting from the merits of its author, whose many beauties indeed he illustrates and sets off with the zeal of a friend and disciple. From him we learn what this "theory of association" is, which has elevated the "picturesque" into a science, and given to it the right and title to be from henceforth philosophized upon, establishing for it a claim to legitimate fellowship with its elder relations, the "sublime" and "beautiful," to which it had before stood in pretty much the position of Cinderella to her haughty and supercilious sisters.

"The fundamental point of Mr. Alison's theory is, that all the beauty of material objects depends on the associations that may have connected them with the ordinary emotions or affections of our nature. In other words, the beauty which we impute to such objects is nothing more than the reflection of our own inward emotions."

Here, without going a step farther, we see how it comes that the subject is elevated and ennobled. We are thrown from particular external objects back upon the mind of man, and told to look there for what pleases and animates the senses; we are shown that here-within-is the true sublime, the true beautiful, the true picturesque; and are instructed to examine into the obscure recesses of the soul for the archetypes of those grand and noble and divine forms, which ravish us in their reflection from without, like the image of the fabled Narcissus. We are referred from body to spirit, from

motion to emotion, from sensual to metaphysical nature, and bid to think and to feel accordingly.

It is under this view that we become reconciled to the devotion of such master-minds as Stewart, Brown, and Jeffrey, to the study of the "picturesque," even when pursued, as in the case of the second mentioned of these philosophers, into the humble channel of landscape gardening; for, as we have taken occasion to observe on a former occasion, whenever what is lowest in practice is followed up and carried out to its highest philosophic limits, it becomes as worthy of the most dignified investigation, as pure, in short, as if it had never been contaminated by ignoble application lower down. The humble stream has been traced by the theorists in question, up to the well-head of important truth; and we are bound to honour it accordingly, just as we still look with interest on the dull and diminished flow of that river, which, now divided, defiled, disfigured, almost nameless, amidst the swampy morasses of Holland, has been in more favoured regions and sublimer scenes the theme of an hundred poets-the majestic, the mighty Rhine.

In the higher walks, indeed, all the arts having affinity or acting in harmony with nature, join hands, and as they rise to the plane of science, present a sort of family likeness, having the features of a divine intelligence impressed upon them; and exhibit, moreover, the universal and high connexion that subsists between this associated family of nature, and that strange microcosm the mind of man -which, like a reflecting globule, seems to glass every thing in creation, above, below, and around, upon its minute and polished sphere.

Here, for instance, we learn that, as in the case of sublimity and beauty, so in that of the picturesque, we are to go within for the types of that which is without, as far as it affects our feelings, and there get at the "removed fountains" of pleasure and pain, to discover what it is that so much moves us. Now in music, there is a beautiful mathematical disposition of vibrations having its effect in involuntary pleasure to the senses; and we are not by any means so sure that there may not be something of the very same nature traceable in the de

light accompanying certain impressions on the eye-of form especially, and in all probability of colour also;-whether vibrations on the retina, in fact, may not make up a considerable portion at least of the satisfaction derived from the vision of external objects; and whether "the picturesque" in one sense may not bear the same relation to vision that harmony and melody do to hearing; the one of these latter being analogous to colour, the other to form. But these are our own speculations, and not in any degree suggested by our annotator, who, in making mind the seat of the pleasurable sensations of sight, confines the process, as Alison and Jeffrey have done, to association; that is, to a recovered or remembered similitude to some thing or some thought that had given pleasure before. We entirely agree with him in assuming that a great part of our delight may be so accounted for, but we cannot but think that the argument from analogy is of great weight between organs so intimately connected as the eye and the ear, and that what is proved to exist in the latter, may be looked for or suspected in the former, in the absence of direct demonstration.

The question is one which it is impossible here adequately to discuss; and at all events, without touching upon it, we may observe, that it leaves the main position of Mr. Alison and his disciples intact, and allows of our proceeding to take up and illustrate their views without prejudice to our own; for as in music, by admitting the physical effect of vibrations, we by no means exclude its chief charm and chief power, that of association, which renders it the language of the heart and affections, intelligible in proportion to their cultivation, and eloquent as the soul that creates it, and the feelings to which it is directed are exalted and inspired so here we attempt not to dethrone the mind from its paramount place, by placing the senses, as it were, in intermediate ministrant posts, to receive and transmit, and approve or reject to a certain degree, the external ideas that would crowd in upon it. All is ultimately referred to the mind, and the medium, material, though governed by exquisitely harmonious. laws, may or may not be taken into consideration, according to the mode in which it is proposed to view the subject.

We have given Alison's naked proposition; and instead of following him through its proof, we will conduct the reader at once to a beautiful two-fold illustration of Lord Jeffrey's, a picture and its pendant so beautifully wrought, that we are inclined in perusing it to barbarize the words of the poet, and call the painter "himself the great picturesque' he draws."

"It is easy enough," his lordship says, "to understand how the sight of a picture or statue should affect us nearly in the same way as the sight of the original; nor is it much more difficult to conceive how the sight of a cottage should give us something of the same feeling as the sight of a peasant's family, and the aspect of a town raise many of the same ideas as the appearance of a multitude of persons. We may begin, therefore, with an example a little more compli cated. Take, for instance, the case of a common English landscape; green meadows, with fat cattle; canals or navigable rivers; well fenced, well cultivated fields; neat, clean, scattered church, cottages; humble, antique

with churchyard elms, and crossing hedge-rows, all seen under bright skies, and in good weather: there is much beauty, as every one will acknowledge, in such a scene. But in what does the beauty consist? Not certainly in the mere mixture of colours and forms; for colours more pleasing, and lines more graceful (according to any theory of grace that may be preferred) might be spread upon the board of a painter's palette, without engaging the eye to a second glance, or raising the least emotion in the mind; no, it is to be found in the picture of human happiness that is presented to our imaginations and affections, and in the visible and unequivocal signs of comfort, and cheerful and peaceful enjoyment-and of that secure and successful industry that ensures its continuance and of the piety by which it is exalted-and of the simplicity by which it is contrasted with the guilt and the fever of a city life-in the images of health, and temperance, and plenty, which it exhibits to every eye-and in the glimpses which it affords to warmer imaginations of those primitive and fabulous times, when man was uncorrupted by luxury and ambition, and of those humble retreats in which we still delight to imagine that love and philosophy may find an unpolluted asylum. At all events, however, it is human feeling that excites our sympathy, and forms the object of our emotions. It is man, and man alone, that we see in the