by consulting him, or by hearing him consulted, upon intellectual difficulties, or upon schemes literary and philosophic. Such applications, come from what point of the compass they might, found him always prepared. Nor did it seem to make any difference, whether it were the erudition of words or things that was wanted." It may-and ought to-be added, that he is just as unostentatious of his mental wealth, as the foregoing legend makes Porson demonstrative of his. At any rate Sir William has no occasion to load his pockets with bijou editions of the classics, nor inclination to appal undergraduates by haling from the stores of memory as exhaustless an array of authorities, as (O the illegitimate triumphs of the legitimate drama, in days of yore!) the grave-digger in "Hamlet" used to doff of waistcoats, in the bleak churchyard of Elsinore. M. Victor Cousin has somewhere pronounced Sir William Hamilton the greatest critic of the age. His celebrated edition of "Reid” attracted and fixed the attention of Christendom at large. That his own part in it should be left unfinished in the middle of a sentence, has had the effect of suggesting words of censure and objection to criticasters who could find no other weak point for which to rate him. His recently published "Discussions on Philosophy "-comprising some of his most valued contributions to the Edinburgh Review, with a mass of supplementary matter, which for various extrinsic reasons, polemical and personal, as well as for its intrinsic worth simply as coming from him, had a special interest to all concerned-have deservedly enhanced his reputation, and present a noble collection of essays, the result of laborious thought (ille gravem duro terram vertit aratro), wide-sweeping vision, and indefatigable research. "The results of his reading are now sown and rooted at Paris, not less than at Berlin; are blossoming on the Rhine; and are bearing fruit on the Danube." We have seen these "Discussions" pooh-poohed in one London journal, as though they involved, after all, nothing better than verbal subtleties, and were expended on shadows and chaff, and airy nothings. Sir William is not the man to spend his strength for nought, in that sort of way. He must have tangible interest for his solid capital. He is not to be satisfied with Bank of Elegance notes, payable during the next Greek Calends. His philosophy is not a system of dry chopping logic. Nor can it content itself— for it is of British, not Deutsch growth-with transcendental reveries of baseless fabric, nor put up with unfurnished apartments in castles of the air. His spirit, though Habitant, par l'essor d'un grand et beau génie, is far too practical and sagacious to become absorbed in profitless abstractions. He is as impatient as the veriest utilitarian can be, of that pompeux galimatias, that spécieux babil, which, as Molière says, "vous donne des mots pour des raisons, et des promesses pour des effets." Words, with him, must represent things, and scientific formula must show cause for their use, and find bail for their good behaviour. No officious slave Is he of that false secondary power *E. g., his tilt with Archdeacon Hare. March-VOL. XCVII. NO. CCCLXXXVII. 2 c Deem that our puny boundaries are things That we perceive, and not that we have made. In his purest speculations he is too entirely saturated with the Aristotelian spirit to lose himself in Platonic dream-worlds, and too genuine a representative (more robust and independent, however, than any dead or living confrère) of the esprit Ecossais, and its Baconian tendencies, to deal with logic and its subtleties as an end, not a means. The section of these "Discussions" which is devoted to literature and miscellaneous questions, holds out naturally the chief, perhaps the only, attraction to general readers: among the subjects of discussion being, the Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb, the Revolutions of Medicine (from the humourism of Galen to the solidism of Hoffman and Boerhaave), the Study of Mathematics as an Exercise of Mind, the Conditions of Classical Learning, the State of the English Universities, and that celebrated German satire, the Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum. The review of the last is an admirable specimen of Sir William's range of powers, natural and acquired, and a worthy treatise on a work which, by the testimony of Herder, effected for Germany incomparably more than Hudibras for England, or Garagantua for France, or the Knight of La Mancha for Spain,-which gave the victory to Reuchlin over the Begging Friars, and to Luther over the Court of Rome-" and never, certainly, were unconscious barbarism, self-glorious ignorance, intolerant stupidity, and sanctimonious immorality, so ludicrously delineated; never, certainly, did delineation less betray the artifice of ridicule."* The inquiry into the value of Mathematics as an engrossing study, is another highly characteristic paper-a perfect curiosity as a repertory of authorities pro and con.: the writer's conclusion being, that an excessive study of mathematics not only does not prepare, but absolutely incapacitates the mind, for those intellectual energies which philosophy and life require-disqualifying us for observation, either internal or external, for abstraction and generalisation, and for common reasoning; nay, disposing us to the alternative of blind credulity or irrational scepticism. Very striking passages in confirmation of his views, that mathematics are not a logical exercise, and that in no sense is geometry a substitute for logic, are cited by Sir William from a host of witnesses-many of them distinguished highly in mathematical science-such as Aristotle, D'Alembert, Descartes, Pascal, Arnauld, Du Hamel, Joseph Scaliger, Le Clerc, Buddeus, Basedow, Gibbon, Berkeley, Goethe, Dugald Stewart, De Staël, &c., &c. But if there is one investigation in this volume, which, more than another, may be recommended to all who would appreciate, after their manner, the veteran Professor's grasp of thought, system of metaphysical doctrine, and lucid elaboration of ideas necessarily obscure in themselves, we incline to name the thesis "On the Philosophy of the Unconditioned" --though the bare name may suffice to repel those ab extra, especially when the alias of the article is added, "In reference to Cousin's Infinito * Erasmus is said to have been cured of an imposthume in the face by the laughter these satires excited. Sir William contends that the actual authors were three, viz., Hutten, Crotus, and Buschius. "Morally considered," he observes, "this satire is an atrocious libel, which can only be palliated on the plea of retaliation, necessity, the importance of the end, and the consuetude of the times." Absolute." Smart and petulant sarcasms have been pelted at Sir Wil liam's choice of terms-his "uncouth," and "barbarous," and neologistic terminology. Nibble away, gentlemen: laugh as you please, carp as you will, be as witty as you can. Only remember, the while, that a terminology of some sort is needed, and that novel combinations of thought require new modes of expression. Even in the base appliances of the dinner-table, the terms mutton and beef will hardly suffice, in the present day, to describe in all their individual varieties and culinary nuances, the preparations ovine and bovine due to a Soyer or a Francatelli. And surely an aristocracy of transcendental ideas may be allowed a haute noblesse of titles. In such a case, the quarrel about names is a quarrel about things. Cancel the name, and, unless you provide another equally graphic, comprehensive, and precise, you cancel the thing. The new wine must have for its receptacles, new bottles; if you try to preserve it in old bottles, it is marred. Discretion is of course desirable in the selection or origination of the necessary terms. But certainly Sir William Hamilton is not pedantic or puerile enough to coin neologisms only to perplex the vulgar. It remains to be shown, that, in a field of research so emphatically his own, so many fallow parts of which he has put into cultivation, and from which he has removed so much obstructive matter, he had not a perfect, a peculiar right, to appropriate descriptive titles to the objects of his toil. As he had the right to bestow some kind of title, so he has the ability-as a profound philosophic grammarian and philologist, to choose such titles as would duly convey his meaning and answer the purpose of his science. Compare his terminology with that adopted by the several leaders of German metaphysics; and you find that while his innovation demands, for its ready comprehension, only such ordinary attention at starting, as every reader of metaphysical works may be supposed to bring to the subject, on the other hand, the Hegels, and Fichtes, and Kants, require each a lexicon for himself. Depend upon it, had Sir William met with an existing system of terms which would serve to transmit accurately and completely the ideas he discusses, he would not have troubled himself to create, or us to master, the novelties in question. And after all, these novelties are really few in number and mild in form. Do you object to the "Unconditioned?" If you strain at a gnat of that sort, what capacity of swallow have you for the caravan of camels trooping In silent horror o'er the boundless waste of German Saharas? For this particular term we happen to entertain a particular regard, because of its connexion with a metaphysical doctrine of primary value, in the elucidation and limitation of which Sir William has employed such rare gifts of Energic reason and a shaping mind. The doctrine affects the whole question of absolute and relative knowledge. And with consummate tact Sir William shows, that as the eagle cannot out-soar the atmosphere in which he floats, and by which alone he is supported; so the mind cannot transcend that sphere of limitation, within and through which exclusively the possibility of thought is realised. Thought, he argues, is only of the conditioned, because to think is to condition: conditional limitation is the fundamental law of the possi bility of thought. Hence, philosophy, if viewed as more than a science of the conditioned, is impossible. How he demonstrates this, and proves that reason is weak without being deceitful, and that its testimony is valid so far as it goes-how he enforces the salutary lesson that the capacity of thought is not to be constituted into the measure of existence, nor the domain of our knowledge to be recognised as necessarily co-extensive with the horizon of our faith-and how he deduces from the very consciousness of our inability to conceive aught above the relative and finite, a justifiable belief in the existence of something unconditioned, beyond the sphere of all comprehensible reality-how, in short, he confronts M. Cousin's doctrine of the Absolute and the Infinite on one hand, and the hopeless negations of Positivism on the other, will be examined with real profit and interest, if only with diligence and docility, by every the minutest shareholder in common vous. In further illustration of this doctrine, should be studied the Appendices entitled "Conditions of the Thinkable Systematised," and "Philosophical Testimonies to the Limitation of our Knowledge from the Limitation of our Faculties." In them, it has been said, we have a kind of guarantee that the age is not becoming wholly shallow. Another appendix is assigned to Logic-and is incomparably harder to read, and, to ordinary readers, next to impossible to digest. Sir William, in this section, treats of Syllogism and its varied functions-of Affirmation and Negation-of Propositional Forms, &c. As a Reformer in logical details much of his celebrity has been won. There are cases in which, says Mr. de Quincey, he is the "very first revealer of what had lurked unsuspected even to the most superstitious searchers of Aristotle's text." To him men still look with hope for a comprehensive treatise on every part of logic, "adapted to the growing necessities of the times." Should this hope come to nought-should the construction of an "edifice of so much labour and fatigue" be declined by this potent master-builder -yet, thus much is evident, adds the critic just named, "that whensoever, and by whomsoever, such an edifice shall be raised, the amplitude and the beauty of the superstructure will depend largely upon foundations already laid, and ground plans already traced out, by the admirable labours of Sir William Hamilton." One other publication we may more definitely expect from him-and one of exceeding value-namely, his Lectures before his classes in Edinburgh. It is a becoming Lenten reflection, suggestive of mortifying ideas, that in such a paper as we have just perpetrated, on such a subject, no subscriber to the New Monthly may have cared to follow us. Albeit, we have the consolation of knowing that we are sure of an audience of three-which is a number not to be sneezed at, as times go. Do turbulent sceptics dun us with shouts of Name! Name!-Well; the triad consists of no other than Editor, Compositor, and Reader to the Press. True-their perusal of us may be ex officio, and in the quality of nolentes volentes: but to analyse men's motives is sometimes to inquire too curiously for one's comfort and peace of mind. And here a triumphant thought strikes us-causing the addition of a glorious Fourth to the severely scrutinised list: Sir William Hamilton reads everything; needs there syllogism to show, then, that he will read, or has read, us?— And "put us down" again with a portentous, thorough-bass Bah! FOUR Montenegrins, and their sister, aged twenty-one, going on a pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Basilio, were waylaid by seven Turks in a rocky defile, so narrow that they could only thread it one by one; and hardly had they entered between the precipices that bordered it on either side, when an unexpected discharge of fire-arms killed one brother, and desperately wounded another. To retrace their steps was impossible, without meeting certain and shameful death, since to turn their backs would give their enemy the opportunity of destroying them at pleasure. The two who were unhurt therefore advanced, and returned the fire, killing two Turks-while the wounded one, supporting himself against a rock, fired also, and mortally injured two others, but was killed himself in the act. His sister taking his gun, loaded and fired again simultaneously with her two brothers, but at the same instant one of them dropped down dead. The two surviving Turks then rushed furiously at the only remaining Montenegrin, who, however, laid open the skull of one of them with his yatagan, before receiving his own death-blow. The hapless sister, who had all the time kept up a constant fire, stood for an instant irresolute; when, suddenly assuming an air of terror and supplication, she entreated for mercy, but the Turk, enraged at the death of his companions, was brutal enough to take advantage of the unhappy girl's seeming agony, and only promised her life at the price of her honour. Hesitating at first, she pretended to listen to the villain's proposal, but no sooner did she throw him off his guard, than she buried in his body the knife she carried at her girdle. Although mortally wounded, the Turk endeavoured to make the most of his failing strength, and plucking the dagger from his side, staggered towards the courageous girl, who, driven to despair, threw herself on her relentless foe, and with superhuman energy hurled him down the neighbouring precipice, at the very moment when some shepherds, attracted by the continued firing, arrived just too late for the rescue. Such is the character of the Montenegrins, as illustrated in the above anecdote, derived by Sir Gardener Wilkinson from Vialla. Trained from earliest youth to the use of arms, which are through life inseparable from their persons, living in hereditary and perpetual hostility with the Turks, with the memory of cruelties and suffering inflicted upon their forefathers traditionally handed down-their ferocious feeling of vengeance upheld by human trophies, and considering it a grace of God to die in battle, no wonder that the Montenegrins should be brave, and that such a natural and hereditary courage should even be participated in by the women, nursed in the same traditions, and companions by Christianity of man, although by custom, slaves of Montenegrin husbands. The mountain fastnesses of this heroic people being at the present moment invaded for nigh the fiftieth time by the Turks, and Russia and Austria rivalling with one another in the interest openly manifested in their fate, the latter even to avowing such an invasion at this present moment to be a casus-belli-it becomes a paramount interest to determine, First-Who are the Montenegrins, or Tchernagori? Secondly-Already consigned by rude map-makers within Turkey in Europe, and several |