The British Press; or, Morning Literary Advertiser.
London, England, 1824-06-28 00:00:00

TO THE EDITOR OF THE BRITISH PRESS.

Si a—A Correspondent, under the signature of "
roe," in a letter which appeared in your Paper some short
time since, made several strong and pointed observations on
the science of PHRENOLOGY, upon the subject of which,
as no answer has hitherto appeared to them, I shall beg,
I leave to off'.:r a few remarks. I admit that his objections
are well put, and I know that, to many, they appeared to
be unanswerable; and this has been considered by some as
the reason why no refutation of them has been attempted.
But this, I beg leave to assure him, is by no means the
case; a reply to them has been given in various shapes,
and by reference to Ads much► more difficult to refute than
his arguments ; this cavamstance will make my remarks
more brief thsn otherwise they would have been. To
many, the belief of this science has an air of credulity. but
it has cnly this appearance to those who have never exa-
mined its :principles. Many within the circle of my own
acquaintance, who began with ridiculing it, after being
struck by evidence, the truth of which Ws irresistible,
have ended in becoming the strongest converts, and are, at
this moment, ranked among its mast avowed and ardent
eliiciples. The conclusions at which the phrenologists have
hitherto arrived being founded on an actual observation of
mature, and being the result of facts open to every one's ex-
amination, ought to be assailed only by arguments deduce-1
equally plan fuels, and this is the legitimate process by
which the principles cf any science can be put to the proof.
" Lumps and bumps" may furnish good materials for a
joke, but these tenas are worth nothing in the way of ar-
gument. If it be true that grief and anxiety, though
affections of the mind, product., after a time, a sallow and
bilious complexion, no one disposed to deny the fact,
could laugh it away by any ridicule upon " a green and
yellow melancholy." There are many that have nit at
will, who have very little reason at command: and even
one that has a very fair supply of both seldom has recourse
to the former till the latter fails him. The ribaldry of the
Edinburgh Reviewers on this subject produced no perma-
nent effect, and the spread and progress of phrenology among
the more enlightened classes of society in Europe has since
made its authors ashamed of it.

That there are great intellectual differences among men
in society no one can deny. These remarkable differences
are matter of every-day observation. What is them, then,
unphilosophie in supposing that these differences may be
manifested by the external conformation of the skull ? The
answer generally given, 1 know, is this—if these indivi-
dual distinctions are marked out iu the developeir.ent of the
different portions of the brain, it follows that the indivi-
duals were intended be their Creator to be the characters
they actually arc, whether good or bad, in which case we,
are not free agents, and, consequently, as Via roil puts it,
"we are no longer accountable beings." But this reasoning is
quite erroneous, and the conclusion drawn from it is con-
sequentiv unfounded. The higher faculties of the mind,
and all its moral qualities, are as capable of cultivation
under the phrenological system as if nn such system existed,
and mankind bare the same power likewb of restraining
all their evil propensities. It follows, therefore, that they
are equally responsible if they neglect to improve the
former, or to keep a watch over the latter.
I shall content myself, Sir, with having made these few
remarks, leaving it to those who are better skilled in the
science than I can profess to be, to reply to the objections
urged by those who are not familiar with its principles,
anti who, I am well satisfied, have n aver investigated the
truths upon which they are founded.

SEM PROM S.

BAPTIST MISSIONARY SOCIETY.—In our R'-Fort of the
Rue. Mr. hinghortes sicecia at this meeting, given in cur
paper of Friday, the Resv. Gentleman is remounted to have
said, that as the Roman Catholics bad taken great freedom
with the Sacred Volume in the translation of it, others were
at liberty to do the same. This was an error. The 11,v.
Gentleman centended for the fidelity of the modern trans.
lations made by the various religious societies, in opposition
to the objections that had been made by the Abbe Dubois,
a Raman Cath2lic Priest.

LORD BiIION.

•
[Rem the Nr.ca of Litrratara and Fashion.l

It is not possible to account for the strange extent toI
`which the character of Lord Byron has been misunderH
mord and misrepresented in any other way than by sup- d
Ipotting, that he had found in himself, not in imagination
inertly. but in ac:ion and in practice, all those dark lino;
and sketches of human nature which he drew. Now this,.
i although among a certain class of farsons, it seems, in his ,
case, to have been so very general, none of the grossest ab-
surditit s that was ever attempted to be foisted upon men ;1
I and that it should have he.ai given utterance to, even by
the most vacillating apostate from youthful faith whom
Byron ever chastised for his backsliding, or by the most
cold and cunning hypocrite whom he ever dragged from
his hole and held up to public scorn, is a matter not easy
to be guessed at. If Lard Byrou must have done all the
deeds of his Giours, his Conrades, his Alunfreds, and
14111:41 then so twist Ililton have revolted and fallen with
his Satan, and Shakspeare lied with lag and murdered
with Macbeth. Byron, taking the ground-work of his
Characters no doubt from human nature, yet gave them,
both in their compuitien and in their colouring, with that
boldness, that novelty, that energy of the creative power of
gt nius, which always characterises the hand of a master.
it was not to be supposed that he would brilwl out his de-
scriptietts like some dull doctor lecturing for his bread, or
spare the b i;;It places of vice,like some gentle dean, who had
becOme all tenderness to place and rank, through virtue of
the near prospect of a mitre. If it was a character that he
had to draw, it mattered not whether that character was a
i beau), or a bandit—every line of it was upon the canvass,
sml every lineament tingled with life. If it was a vice he
had to lash, he sacrificed no truth to situation; he never
made exalted worthlessness or hypocrisy to shine with the
oil of his flattery, or beconie Sweet with the perfume of his
prostituted praise: if the subject dills infliction called fee
the lash, he laid it on, whether ins subject was prints
or Peasant, prime minister or 'poet-laureate. It was
this fnarleuness, and this perfect distribution of poetical
justice, which formed the most precious jewel in Ilyron's
character, and the jewel which placed him at the head of
these benefactors of the human race, who are able, and can
dare to take vengeance upon such vices as are either above
the exercise of common law, or too extended for its grasp;
and it was the knowledge of his having an unbendable dm-
positito h to do this, and a pot er of doing it with the most
complete effect, which stirred up against him the hostility
of small minds, whether those minds tenanted the bodies
of the high or the low. If be would only have spared
those persons who are spared of the reprover, whom tet.
selves procure—if he would have given a pledge that be
would never look at the follies of the highest classes of so-
ciety—then there is not the least doubt that these would
have given him the whole of the people to lash and laugh
at, and welcome.
Had it not boen that higher powers felt the cloak falling
from their ore hypocrisy, and the light of disclosures
streaming in upon their own vices, we. Should never have
heard that there was infidelity in Harild, or licentiousness
in Don Juan ; these would have been allowed to take their
places in the library alongside of Bolingbroke and Otway ;
and any thing too bold or too warm for squeamish under-
standings, would have been allowed to escape, is falling
under the category of the excusable, and even necessary
I exuberance of genius. With regard to the infidelity of
Byron's works, it has been found Out only by those who are
constantly boasting of what they have done, and u con-
stantly complaining that this incomprehensible enemy
is getting the better of them. Now we believe it to be the
fact, that for one man who has become doubtful as to the
truth of any one doctrine of religion, or even onerculiarity
of any reli;ious creed, in censequence of the satire of poets
or the speculations of ithilosophers, twenty have so become
doubtful in consequence of the immoralities of chutch-
men. Men of genius may sing or speculate as much as ever
they please, and no harm ensue; but when thCy who call
themselves the chosen depositories of a system of doctrines
which are to banish vice from the world, Ms found in the:
daily, or even the occasional exercise of those vices, the,
ground of doubt, however lamentable the fact may be, be..
comes plain and practical, and level to the capacity of many,
who cannot follow the poet in his flights, or the philosopher
in his theories; and if those busy men who me so fearful
Last the world be contaminated through the dissemination
of bad penaciples, would justveflumbeer tereigtwore
serous is the example of bad practice, and act upon the re-
flexien, they would save others a great deal of trouble, and
themselves a great deal of shame.
As to the immorality again, we apprehend that the person
who really finds it in the writings of of Laid Byron must
copy it after himself, just as be imagines Byron has done
with his outlaws ; for we have examined the whole of his
works, not only with the greatest care, but with a critical
disposition to find fault even upon this very score, and we
never Were able to discover any thing tending to excite the
least alarm. No doubt, some of the scenes sketched by
Byron are warm ; but tbey are not warmer than the real
actions ; they are never brought forward recommended as
match for imitation; they rather stand as beacons to be
shunned. In Don Juan, for example, the one of Byron's
works which has drawn forth the greatest quantity of bad
temper and worse English, (always excepting Cain, which,
being a purely poetical creation, such persons could not be
expected to understand, and therefore were not to be
blamed for being alarmed at)—in Don Juan there is a very
wholesome and a very fine moral throughout—a moral
which applies to a greater range' of persons, and comes
more home to the business and bosom of each, than the
moral of any volume of sermon, extant. Where can there
be a better warning against the forming of unequal alli-
ances, upon mercenary grounds, than in the union of l/on
Jose and Donna Inez.? Where can there be a more com-
plete caution against giving to a young man a retired and
monkish education, and then trusting him in perilous si-
tuattons Upon the faith of that, than in the education and
subsequent conduct of Juan himself ? And where can
there be found so pointed and so powerful a reproof to those
who make the heart and the virtue of woman their prey,',
as in the letter of 'lulls, and the reflections by which it is
accompanied ? Then, when he leaves home scenes, as it
were, how admirable and how keen is his disiection of the
vices of foreign courts ? And when be turns his eye upon
the vices of England, how ? " Ay, there is the rub:"
—so Byron must be a preacher of immorality ! Would,
for the sake of morality—for the sake of the cutting down
of that cant and hypocrisy which are the poisons and the
curses of the age, we had hint still ! But he is gime ! If
Heaven shall send us such another, perhaps our disap-
pointment in the present case may teach us to treat him
with a little more justice.

_ .
FRAUD ox Ma. Roan ecifito.--intelligence was re-
ceived froth Paris on Saturday, respecting the fraud practised
upon Mr. Rothschild by Mr. Doloret. The bills have been
regularly accepted, but it is presumed not discounted, as
no account bad been received of smell a circumstance at
Baron Itothschild's in Paris up to Thursday evening. Mr.'
Doloret or some person for him had applied for cash fbr
the bill at three days sight, which had been prudently
refused, on the ground of the party being a stranger, un-
less the indorsetnent of a respectalle banker could be ob-
tained. This was promised, bat the party did not return,
and the telegraphic dispatch would of course prevent that
bill being cashed. The French police bas taken up the
matter, anal issued a public notice, to caution persons
against taking the accepted bills.
We understand that the journeymen tailors of this town
have compromised their differences With their masters, and
returned to their employment ; but the ?hike of Cm brick.
layers and sawyers still continues.—Leeds 3frrcury.
DOCTRINE OF GIIOSTE.—Some pneumatoloeiets main-
tained that the devil was a slender and incomprehenaible
spirit, who reigned in a thousand shapes, anal, cor.ee-
guently, might assume, if such were his pleasure, the form
of an angel. They taught that unclean spirits, insinuating
themselves in the body, and mingling in its humours,
sported there with at much glee as if they hail been inhal-
ing the brightest region of the stars; that they go in and
out of the body as bees go in and out of a hive ; and hence
that melancholy persons are most au*et to diabolical
temptations. To this doctrine, taught by the learned
clerks of the 16th and 17th century, Hamlet evidently
alludes. when he conceives that it might have been " a
damned ghost" which he had seen, or the result of sonic
diabolical art operating throurh the medium of his f-tataide
or imagination. Accordingly, the regular plot of the drama
turns upon the test to which the veracity of the apparition
is submitted. The trial is satir-ifactory, and Hamlet de-
clares that he will " take the ghost'; word for a theuza:al
potuole."..-Tie Medical .fdri,:,;7.