The Sun.
London, England, 1849-12-10 00:00:00

IVIAGAZINES, &c.—(CONTINUED.)

TAIT S.

Tails Magazine for December is full of intens,
The delightful paper on " Amicitre Shdespeariante,'
is continued, from which we quote the following
beatriful and truthful remarks :
"Lorenzo, the husband of Shy lock's daughter, Jessica,
struck with admiration at her (Portia'a) self-denial and
disinterested genersity, exclaims,
" Madam! although I speak it in your presence,
Y,:u have a noble and a true couceit
Of God-like amity.'
" To this she replies:—
" I never did repent for doing good,
Nor shall I do now, for in companions
That do converse and waste the time together,
Whose souls do bear an equal yoke of love,
There must be needs a like proportion
01 lineaments, of manners, and of spirit;
Which makes me think that this Antoni.),
Being the bosom-lover of tr y lied,
Must needs be like my lord. If it be so,
How little is the cost I have b, stowed
. la i-tirehasing this semblance of my soul
From oat the s ate of hellish cruelty !'
"The rt!' is und philosophy here, and a distinct veri-
fication of the first hallof our pr,,position—' Friendship
is based on similarity and contrast.' Portia justly reasons
when slle thinks that Antonio must nf cessarily resemble
Bassani() in all the leading features of his character and
manners—similia aimilihus, noscitur a sociis, are axiom-
atic. She, Lowey, r. goes a little too fur when she in-
cludes lineaments' in the sf ries resemblances. But
she was a woman, and this is her excuse.
" Here. aeuin, we see the expansive and diffusive in-
fluence of this relation. It first chains you in sweetest
bonds to a single individual, then to all be loves, and
then to the whole circle Of humanity. We have no con-
fidence in the theory of those who would have us believe
that we must first embrace, in the ample folds of our
affections, all the myriads of the world's population, and
then, proceeding inwards by a system of concentric
circles, arrive at last at the solitary central individual.
No; we must begin at the individual, and end with the
species. Our love must be like the wavy circle produced
by the projection of a stone into the calm, deep sea,
which widens and extends till it loses itself amid the
distant waters of the boundless waste. It may be here
objected—As it is impossible that we can love as frierds
without first loving as worshippers of Deity; as our
affections must flow to man through the medium of God;
and as He is infinite; do we not thus first love the uni-
versal, and then the particular?—do we not first love the
All-embracing, and then the all-embraced ? Our answer
is this, that while it is perfectly true that, in order to a
stable, disinterested, genuine friendship. we must first
love that Being from whom all our affections spring,
and to whom all our affections should return, we love
Him not us many, but as one—not as multitude, but as
unity—not as an abstract universal diffusion, but as a
distinct personality. We love -Him as an individual
Being—we love Him first as the centre, then as the cir-
cumference, of the universe. Thus, in loving primarily
the Deity, we do actually proceed from the one, to the
many, from the simple to the complex, from unity to
multitude, from the particular to the universal, from the
solitary individual to the mighty class of Being."
" The Double Trial," a tale of circumstantial
evidence, is as its name almost indicates, a story of
horrible but fascinating interest. A murder has been
committed, a young girl is accused, found guilty, and
executed. Years after a man is accused of the same
crime, and also found guilty, and ultimately it is
discovered that the crime had been committed by a
third and unsuspected party. So much for circum-
stantial evidence. Mr. St. John's romantic and pic-
turesque journey:" There and Back Again" is continued.
" A Legend of Ulster," by Francis Brown, " The
Position of the Colonies," " The Correspondence of
General Wolfe," criticisms, and poems, fill up the
remaining pages of Tuit.