The Sun.
London, England, 1835-10-01 00:00:00

MAGAZINE DAB'.

FRASER'S MAGAZINE.

In the notice of Lord Brougham's late " Treatise on
Natural Theology," which occupies a large space in
Fraser's present Number, the Reviewer extracts a pas-
sage from that Essay, whcrcin his Lordship endeavours
to prove that " the existence of the mind is entirely
independent of the existence of the body." As this
passage is a curious one, we cannot resist the tempta-
tion of quoting, and offering a few continents on it :
" The body," observes Lord Brougham, " is constantly un-
dergoing change in all its parts. Probably no person at the
age of twenty has one single particle in any part of his body
o Mich he had at ten ; and still less does any portion of the
body he was horn with continue to exist in or with him. Yet
the mind continues one and the same, without change or sha.--
dow of turning. None of its parts can he resolved ; for it is
one and single, and it remains unchanged by the changes of
the body. If then the mind continues the same, while all, or
nearly all, the body is changed, it follows that the existence of
the mind depends not in the least degree upon the existence of
the body."

This may he ingeniously reasoned, but the argu-
ment is scarcely tenable ; for so far from the mind re-
maining unchanged through life, we firmly believe
that it undergoes as many mutations as the body, and
even corresponds with the corporeal changes. Who,
for instance, possesses the same mind at thirty that he
possessed at fifteen ? Does not every man's experience
convince him that the confidence, the faith, and the
bounding elasticity of the one age, is as different from
the caution, the scepticism, and the sobriety of the
other, as sunshine from shade ? Surely the mind of
Ben Jonson—the bustling, worldly, practical soldier of
twenty-eight, was any thing but the mind of Ben Jon-
son at forty—the thoughtful, learned, and imaginative
writer of " masques, and such dainty devices." What
resemblance, too, is there between the intellect of the
author of the essay on the " Sublime and Beautiful,"
and that of the author of the " Letter to two Noble
Lords," the first of which works, penned in youth,
was strait-laced and even intolerant in its poetic canons ;
while the last, written in age, rushed headlong into
the wildest and most ungovernable excesses of the
imagination ? Is there no mental " change or shadow
of turning" in these two instances ? To our iiiink-
ing—we make the assertion with deferenc, remember-
ing whose authority it is we are ens? savouring to contro-
vert—the change is quite complete enough to show
the sophistry of 1,.`:.,rd Brougham's reasoning. Dia
we need furtter proof, we might perhaps find it in the
case of his Lordship's predecessor on the woolsack,
whose mind, now that he is an Ultra-Tory, can scarcely
be the same that it was, when he announced himself as
a " Whig and something more ;" unless, indeed, we
are to look on him as a mere political huckster.
The Reviewer, attacks Lord Brougham for asserting
that the ancient philosophers believed in the future exist-
ence of the soul after death, and then quotes, what he
calls, some "hesitating exclamations" of Cicero on the
subject ; but which have so little to do with it, that
we half incline to suspect that he is ignorant of the
meaning of the passages which be extracts. His cri-
ticism, though in parts laudatory, is on the whole un-
favourable to Lord Brougham's Essay, and makes a
greater show of learned lore than of sound reasoning.
We must not omit the following passage, which he
quotes from Stobceus, because we have met with it in
Montaigne, in Hume, and in Hazlitt, all of whom
have adopted it, unacknowledged, as the ground-work
of their Essays on the subject of Death :—" Your
friend is gone ; he will not be again. Well, he had
no existence ten thousand years ago, nor during the
Trojan war, nor with your immediate forefathers.
You are not grieved at these things ; but you are con-
cerned because he will not exist, for the futur,
" Theocritus " is an imitation of some of Professor
Wilson's admirable classical criticisms in 'Blackwood.
It evinces marks of reading, but is yfnolly deficient in
the ease, the sprightliness, and ,'tie refined poetic dis-
cernment that characterise Christopher's Essays. The
best thing in it is one quotation from " Old Giles
Fletcher's Dec:ence of Poetry," which is so solemn and
affectin-
-6 in its tone, that we cannot forbear extract-

i• •
it :
" It is only poetry can make us be thought living men
when we lie among the dead; and therefore I think it un-
equal to thrust them out of our cities that call us out of our
graves, to think so hardly of them that make us to be so
well thought of; to deny them to live awhile among us, that
make us live for ever among our posterity."

NEW MONT ILLY MAGAZINE. CoMtn.

If to direct public attention to periodical literature
were our sole object in giving Notices of the. Magazines,
we might content ourselves with simply stating that the
New Monthly for October contains three letters from
Algiers, by Thomas Campbell, the author of the
" Pleasures of Hope." Not another word is
wanted to induct every body to read what deserves
to be read by every body. But it so happens that we
have other objects, although we are not disposed to
say much about them, except on very rare occasions.
One of them we may, and perhaps ought to mention.
We are not satisfied that the public should read only : we
wish it to feel as we do, and now and then to forewarn
it of any disappointment which it may feel, whether
of a painful or a pleasurable nature. With respect to
these very letters, for instance, the public may be the
better for knowing that their brevity will disappoint
it—that they will excite a sensation not dissimilar to that
which a- traveller feels when a few drops of water—the
earnest of a long-expected draught—glide over his
parched tongue. They excite, but they do not satis-
fy : when we begin to feel their full force—their va-
riety—their ease—their eloquence—their sly hu-
mour—their metaphysical subtlety—and their topogra-
phical and historical importance, we find that we have
reached the end of them, and that we must wait for
a whole month before we can hope to be further
gratified. These letters are dated from Algiers, 19th
September, 1834—50 that they are not only valuable
as the production of one of the most elegant writers in
the language, but they present, moreover, a perfect
picture of that celebrated city and its inhabitants since
its possesssion by France. Mr. Campbell travelled
from Paris to Marseilles, whence he embarked for Al-
giers on board of a merchant vessel. His adventure
with the Valet, who could not determine whether he
was a Briton, a Spaniard, or a Neapoliton, and to
whom the representatives of every European Sovereign
refused a passport, is amusing ; but certainly the most
humourous part is where the deputation on board the
vessel implored the mother to throw her child over-
board, because it was fond of beating a toy-drum at
unseasonable hours. The non-compliance of the mo-
ther was unquestionably very annoying, especially as
she had herself previously threatened the child with
pitching it overboard unless it was more peaceable.
As a sort of reparation for this attack on children in
his first letter, the author gives us the following ex-
quisite little morsel :
" In spite of some bad jokes that I may have made about
children, I am sure, when they are endearing►, that nobody
loves them better. It is true, that when I conjure up an idea
of purgatory, I always imagine it to resound with the cries of
cross brats. Virgil himself feelingly hints at this in describ-
ing the entry to Tartarus. • But a •nutiful child, I have often
thought, is the only living gei)ey Mat could bear to be truss..
feted alive to Ilya; ;444.°

We put the last sentence in italics, because the idea
strikes us as one of the most beautiful we have ever
met with. Mr. Campbell's description of the city of
Algiers, t}ilAc f ithe several races who inhabit it, is
iuteresting. Such parts of the letters as
41V Pf publie importance, shall, if we can find spacr,,
appear in The Sun in the course of a few
The « Love Charm," by Laidon, is much
yrettier than thc aelitirtlental verses from the same