We must confess to some difficulty in distinctly appreciating such an impulse from such a cause, further than as the transient impression of an hour, which the next would dispel. The excitements of Quintus Curtius are scarcely to be expected in the page of regular history. A more natural impulse is attributed to the accident of his being initiated in the range of romantic fiction, which was, we are bound to say, a most grievous error, which cannot be too strenuously deprecated in these pages, and which we shall therefore pause to discuss more fully. The circumstances are these:-During his stay at Eton he was attacked by a fit of the tertian ague, of such severity and duration, that his constitution, naturally delicate, became very much debilitated, and a long time elapsed before he recovered his strength sufficiently for the purpose of his studies. In this condition it occurred to his tutor-who, after all, was more of the scholar than the philosopher—to indulge his craving and restless mind by the perusal of novels and romances. Some reflections in a contemporary memoir, on the same incident, convey our sentiments with so much truth that we shall here extract them,—“As might be presumed, the effect was to leave on his mind a distaste for less stimulative aliment, and to excite his mind to a state of undue activity. The sense of martial ardour,—the pride and stimulus of military emulation, ambition, and danger,—the physical sympathies of action, with all the vain glories of romance, were acted on and called forth. He became a castle-builder and a dreamer. He makes a remark on this subject, of which we have long since had occasion to learn the value that it is unfortunate for those who have busy thoughts to be without timely employment for their activity. Such, indeed, is the misfortune which-worse than even the corruptions of passion-has consigned many a high and far-grasping intellect to a life of dreams. Gambling, and debauchery, and the seductions of sense, are not more sure in their fatal effects, so uninterruptible in their course, or so seductive, as this refined and intellectual fascination,—more sure and dangerous, because it operates in loneliness, and finds its good within itself. When the imagination is once fairly seized with this self-seeking desire, even the slightest thing that occurs, or that is seen, read, or heard of, is enough to give it impulse and direction, and the heart acts the hero or voluptuary's part; the Augustus, or Nero, or Heliogabulus; the Paris, or Achilles; and, in its own secluded recess, rules or disposes of more worlds than Alexander could have conquered. There is an interest in finding our infirmities reflected in a mind like Boyle's; but it is both instructive and encouraging to learn, by what timely resolution and prudence, in the

Alexander he was affected by a sympathy of a kindred mind, and became a warrior. Quintus Curtius wrote for a corrupt and luxurious age, when the nobles of the latter periods of the Roman empire were excluded from politics and war, and only alive to the stimulants of sense and taste. His invention and eloquence were of a high order, and he wrote for effect-his success was worthy of a better object. His descriptions and pictorial touches, his dialogues and characteristic sayings and incidents,-and even his description of the private reflections of the persons of the narrative, while they materially diminish his credit as a historian, must still have produced on his ancient readers an effect, not greatly inferior to that produced on the readers of Ivanhoe."-Dublin University Magazine, May, 1836.

application of means, he shook off this disease of the spirit. To recover his power of application he had recourse to the study of mathematics, and found in its precise relations and rigid conclusions that interest and necessity of attention, which was the remedy his case required."* There is indeed prevalent, in our own times, an error well worthy of the most serious consideration upon the subject of a very large class of works of fiction-we mean that most pernicious of all literary compositions, of which it is the real aim to tamper with passion and sentiment, and the pretence-no doubt sincere to inculcate some good lesson in morality and prudence. Such lessons are not only useful, but necessary to young and old; but it is known that their operation is slow, and the result of much and repeated trial and experience: it is also known that the truths of experience are long known to the understanding before they have any very practical influence on the heart; while, on the contrary, passion and sentiment, the main impulses of conduct, operate with a spontaneous force in the fullest maturity of that head wisdom which is expected to constrain them. Reason may be called the helm, and experience the chart of prudence and principle; but passion and sentiment have pretty much the same relation to the tempest, the current, and the shoal, and it seems a curious inconsistency of purpose which would make the latter instrumental to the uses of the former. A lesson, for example, of the delicate embarrassments, cross-purposes, and misunderstandings of the tender passions, may be made the vehicle for noble sentiments and virtuous conduct; but the young and tender bosom which has thus been betrayed into those fearful and seductive sympathies, will be infected by their clinging influence, when the noblest maxims of virtue and its loftiest examples are forgotten. In vain the charms are spread which are to sweeten the lesson of virtue, if they have a far nearer connexion with infirmities, follies, and vices. The Minerva, with the naked bosom, may preach in vain on the charms of abstinence and heroic self-denial; human nature will seize the thoughts, and be attracted by the sense for which its affinity is nearest. Heroism, set off by beauty, and softened by the glow of the passions, will, for a moment, appear doubly heroic; but the enthusiasm of taste will subside, and the pupil or spectator will find some more interesting and congenial way of applying the lesson. As we do not here think it necessary to repeat the commonly urged objection to works of fiction-that they offer false views of society—we will say that it is not, certainly, from any want of concurrence in them; and we may observe, by the way, that it is the high praise of the Waverley novels that they avoid all these objections, neither giving false views, nor deriving interest from deleterious materials.

As to the effect of such influences upon the mind of Boyle, it must have been materially diminished by the great counteraction, if not entire preponderance of dispositions of an opposite tendency, which will show themselves plainly enough as we proceed. Without entering into any refinement upon intellectual powers and tendencies, the character of Robert Boyle was eminently practical, and his temper

* Dublin University Magazine, May, 1836.

conscientious in an unusual degree. The general tenor of his early life was in itself adapted to favour, and, in some measure, produce these dispositions: the unsettled character of the times in which he lived; the rude emergencies of even a change of place, attendant on such times; and the universal agitation and tempest of the period in which he came to man's estate, were, in no small degree, calculated to turn the attention of thoughtful spirits on the external scene, and to give development to the turn for observation and practical application. It is perhaps not improbable, that such was the general effect of the civil wars of that period upon the times and the public mind, the fine-spun cobwebs of philosophy, and the gorgeous cloudwork of poetry, are probably deprived of their influence upon the mass of minds when so kept painfully on the stretch by startling realities. But with such considerations we are evidently unconcerned.

After having continued four years at Eton, Boyle was recalled by his father, who had at this time come to live at Stalbridge, in Dorsetshire. He, nevertheless, sedulously applied himself to the acquisition of classical knowledge, and also of ancient history. His father engaged a Mr Marcombes, a foreigner, to assist his studies. This gentleman had been first employed as travelling tutor to his brothers, the lords Broghill and Kinalmeaky.

In 1638, when he had attained his eleventh year, he was sent on his travels, under the charge of the same gentleman. His destination was Geneva, where he was to continue his studies,-a plan most probably originating with Marcombes, who was a native of the town, and, having a family resident in it, was evidently very much convenienced by the arrangement. They took their route by London. where his brother, who was also to be the companion of his foreign sojourn, was to be married to Mrs Anne Killigrew, a maid of honour to the queen. From London they found their way to Paris, and from thence to Lyons, and on through Savoy to Geneva.

Boyle, in his autobiographical memoir, attributes much of the moral improvement of his mind to the care, and to the influence of some strong points in the character of Mr Marcombes, and we are strongly inclined to join in the opinion. He mentions his tutor as one who was an acute observer of the ways of men, who formed his opinions from life, not from books, and had not merely a contempt, but an aversion for pedantry, which he hated "as much as any of the seven deadly sins." It is also very evident that Mr Marcombes was by no mean an indulgent observer, but nice, critical, choleric; and to the quickness of his temper Mr Boyle ascribes the fortunate subjugation of his own. If, indeed, Mr Boyle's temper was as irritable as he himself represents it to have been, this is a fact not unimportant to the instructors of youth; for he is one of the most perfect models which biography affords, of patience and mildness. In this, however, other and far superior influences must claim a larger share, as Mr Boyle was pre-eminently a christian. To religion, we are inclined to think, there was in his mind a very peculiar tendency. Such tendencies, we are aware, do not, as a matter of course, lead to the actual adoption of any religion, still less of the christian religion. When the great truths of christianity are not instilled into the heart with

the first rudiments of education, they can only be afterwards received on evidence which claims the assent of the understanding, and this must be sought and studied with much careful attention. In Boyle's time, this evidence was easily overlooked for many reasons; and it is always listened to with strong reluctance,—the severe, simple, and practical requisitions of christian teaching being strongly opposed to the whole bent of human nature, and the entire spirit of social life. Butler, and Paley, and other eminent men, afterwards called up to crush the hydra of infidelity, had not yet placed the question within the easy reach of the public mind. Notwithstanding the able writings of Grotius, and those of the more ancient apologists, unhappily, during the middle ages, christianity had been displaced from its basis of evidence, and placed upon a foundation of quicksand, so as to present neither its genuine form nor its real credentials.

From these considerations, we lean to suspect that religious truths had no very strong hold of Mr Boyle's mind, at the period of which we speak. The incidents which had a decided effect to unsettle his belief, are such as to illustrate some of the foregoing remarks very strongly, while, at the same time, they indicate a very singular impressibility. He himself mentions the solemn impression upon his mind of a tremendous thunderstorm in the dead of the night; it led him to reflect earnestly upon his state of mind, and to recollect his great deficiencies according to the standard by which he professed to walk. Some time after this, however, an impression of a very different nature was made upon him, in one of those excursions which he was accustomed to make from Geneva into the mountains that lay around. Visiting the ancient monastery of Chartreuse, in a wild alpine recess near Grenoble, his feelings were so powerfully wrought upon by the savage and gloomy scenery, the curious pictures, and mysterious traditions of the monastery, that his excited imagination called up and lent a momentary reality to the legendary superstition of the place. The powerful impressions thus made upon a mind, characteristically impressible, were such as to obscure and cast a dimness upon his far less vivid impressions of christianity, of which, it must be observed, he knew not any distinct proofs; and his reason, bewildered between the appeals of a strongly impressed and sensibly imbodied superstition, and of a vague and imperfectly conceived belief, became unsettled upon the momentous truths of religion, which, under the same common name, offered such opposite and irreconcilable demands on faith. The traditions of St Bruno, which were thus brought as a sensible reality to the imagination, stood, as it were, nearer to the eye than the remote and dimly apprehended truths of the gospel; and, while the fancy gave power to the one, reason ceased to discriminate with accuracy, and lost its inadequate hold of the other. The process is by no means one confined to a youthful fancy and a visionary turn, but, with some modification, can be distinctly traced to the pseudo-philosophy of the last century. The shallow but eloquent Vol

"Mr Boyle's mind was of that reflective and sensitive cast, on which slight influences had great effects; nor, without the full allowance for this, can the construction of his character be distinctly understood.”—Dublin University Magazine.

ney has expanded the fallacy into a systematic argument; the imposing sophistry of Gibbon-so far as it can be extracted from the ambiguities of style-indicates a mind labouring under misconceptions of the same order.

With respect to Boyle, his own account of the result substantiates the important fact affirmed in the foregoing remarks. Like Gibbon, Paine, Volney, and other persons, the history of whose scepticism is known, he was ignorant of the actual evidences of the facts and authorities of christianity, and knew it only, as it is most commonly known to the multitude, through its moral and doctrinal rules and principles; and thus, when it became reduced into the mass of clashing creeds and dogmas, its hold upon mere reason was, as a matter of course, obscured. But it is to the praise of Mr Boyle, that with him to doubt was to inquire, and to inquire was to cast away the prepossessions, and resist the prejudices which obscure the shallow depths of human speculation. He was determined to "be seriously inquisitive of the very fundamentals of christianity, and to hear what both Jews and Greeks, and the chief sects of Christians, could allege for their opinions; that so, though he believed more than he could comprehend, he might not believe more than he could prove." The intellectual soundness thus perceptible in a youth of fourteen is very remarkable; and the more so, because it shows a just discernment of the fallacy upon which so many clever, and sometimes profound reasoners, have been wrecked in all times. Some refuse to assent to that which cannot be explained, while others invent systems for the mere explanation of the same difficulties: both confounding explanation with proof, and overlooking the most elementary conditions of reason and the limits of human knowledge. Boyle proceeded with the characteristic sincerity of his temper to fulfil his wise resolution. A mind, so happily constituted for research, could not fail to receive ready satisfaction as to the evidences which offer the clearest and best examples of every proof within the compass of human knowledge. He is known as an eminent christian; and this part of his history may be said to have its illustrious monument in the foundation of a lecture for the defence of the Christian religion, which has been occupied by some of the most eminent names in christian theology.

In September, 1641, he left Geneva, and visited many of the principal towns in Italy. He made a more prolonged stay at Venice, then in its full splendour, a great centre of trade, and a concourse of nations, tongues, and manners. It was the age when the last and consummate finish of a polite education was sought in foreign_travel,—foreign travelling, still an important advantage to the scholar, was then an indispensable requisite to the polite or learned. It supplied the deficiency of books by the actual observation of things-it opened the mind by extending the sphere of its intercourse; and, while it enlarged the conversation, it softened prejudices, and gave ease, affability, and freedom to the manners and address.

In Florence he passed the winter of the same year, and, during his stay, acquired the Italian language. Here also he became acquainted with the “new paradoxes" of Galileo, an acquisition, which, to the genius of Boyle, may well be supposed to have been important.