cant, and his rough cynical habit, would probably lead him to show his sense of these things in any other way rather than that of seasoning his talk with references to them, and might even prompt him to kick the words art, the ideal, transcendentalism, &c., to death, if ever they came too provokingly across his path, (a murder in which, but that the words still do serve a kind of useful purpose, we know many that would assist him); yet in his own soul he cherishes a fund of finer emotion, which will betray itself in bursts and flashes. Something of this we remark in Thackeray himself. It is seen in the general conception of some of his characters, such as Laura and Mrs. Pendennis, as well as Warrington; it is seen in occasional passages of serious reflection, of which perhaps the most remarkable is the one from which we have made an extract; and it is seen also in a frequent touch of real pathos, such as no mere affectation of the sorrowful could enable a writer to assume. On the whole, we should say that Mr. Thackeray has nowhere exhibited this serious spirit so conspicuously as in the second volume of his "Pendennis;" and remarking this, and how good the effect is, we must admit, without any prejudice to our previous observation regarding the necessity of Mr. Thackeray's keeping obstinately to his own style of art, that we should like to see him in future diminish the Pen a little and develop the Warrington.

There is one piece of positive doctrine, however, in which both Pen and Warrington agree, and of which Mr. Thackeray's writings are as decidedly the exponents in the present day, as Mr. Dickens's are of the doctrine of kindliness. This doctrine may be called the doctrine of Anti-snobbism. Singular fact! in the great city of London, where higher and more ancient faiths seem to have all but perished, and where men bustle in myriads, scarce restrained by any spiritual law, there has arisen of late years, as there arose in Mecca of old, a native form of ethical belief, by which its inhabitants are tried and try each other. "Thou shalt not be a snob," such is the first principle at present of Cockney ethics. And observe how much real sincerity there is in this principle, how it really addresses itself to facts, and only to facts, known and admitted. It is not the major morals of human nature, but what are called the minor morals of society, and these chiefly in their æsthetic aspect, as modes of pleasant breeding, that the Cockney system of ethics recognises. Its maxims and commands are not "Thou shalt do no wrong," "Thou shalt have no other Gods before me," "Thou shalt not covet," but "Thou shalt pronounce thy H's," "Thou shalt not abuse waiters as if they were dogs," "Thou shalt not falsely make a boast of dining with peers and Members of Parliament." He who offends in these respects is a snob.

Thus, at least, the Cockney moralist professes no more than he really believes. The real species of moral evil recognised in London, the real kind of offence which the moral sentiment there punishes, and cannot away with, is snobbism. The very name, it will be observed, is characteristic and unpretentious-curt, London-born, irreverent. When you say that a man is a snob, it does not mean that you detest and abhor him, but only that you must cut him, or make fun of him. Such is Anti-snobbism, the doctrine of which Mr. Thackeray, among his other merits, has the merit of being the chief literary expounder and apostle! Now it is not a very awful doctrine, certainly; it is not, as our friend Warrington would be the first to admit, the doctrine in the strength of which one would like to guide his own soul, or to face the future and the everlasting; still it has its use, and by all means let it have, yes, let it have its scribes and preachers!

We had thought, after this more grave investigation, to indulge in some remarks illustrative more especially of the humours of the two writers, as compared with each other, of the forms of the comic in which they respectively excel and show their mastery. Here also we should have seen the difference of their ultimate method and spirit; and should have found Dickens to be the more kindly, genial, and fantastic, and Thackeray to be the more tart, satirical, and truculent humorist. Forbearing any such process of contrast, however, the scope and results of which we have already indicated, we must close with a general remark, applicable to both writers.

Although the aim of all fictitious literature is primarily to interest the reader; and although, in a certain deep sense, it may be maintained that no kind of literary composition whatever is valuable that is not interesting, it would yet seem as if recently the determination to achieve that special kind of interest which consists in mere amusement, had prevailed too largely among our writers of tales and novels. We do not often see now that effort at artistic perfection, that calm resolution to infuse into a performance the concentrated thought and observation of the writer, and to give it final roundness and finish, which did exist in old times, and which supreme authorities have always recommended. The spirit of craft and money-making has crept into our artistic literature; and, even in our best writers, we have but a compromise between the inner desire and the outer necessity. Nor is this to be very harshly condemned, or very gravely wondered at. Our writers of fiction, for the most part, candidly own that they write to make money and amuse people. Their merit is therefore the greater, when, like the two eminent writers whose works we have been discussing, they do more than this. Should we suggest that their functions would be intrinsically higher, and more satis

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factory to their own better judgment, did they work less according to the external demand, and more according to the internal wish and form, they will admit the suggestion to the full, but say that on the whole they are not strong enough to follow it. Should we farther adduce the old consideration of fame, and the opinion of posterity, as an argument on the right side, they may even turn the laugh against us. "Posterity!" they may say, with Mr. Merryman in the Prelude to Faust:

Would of posterity I heard less mention!
Suppose posterity had my attention,

Who'd make contemporary fun?

Besides, in the present and still increasing multitudinousness of books and authors, the chance of having readers among posterity is, even for the best, a very sorry hope. Still, we would adhere to our wish; and that very multitudinousness of books and authors may bring us right again one day. There are two literary devices or fashions to which at present one may trace much of the particular evil now under view. The one is the fashion or device of the three-volume novel; the other the fashion of publishing novels in serial numbers. The first, which we are happy to see is losing ground, is a wretched piece of publisher's despotism in literature, redeemed from absolute vileness only by that mystical artistic value which there is, and always will be, in the number three. The other, which is still gaining ground, operates deleteriously, by compelling an author to supply the parts of his story before he has thoroughly conceived the whole, and also by compelling him to spice each separate part, so that it may please alone. These conditions exist, and it is not given to any man, in any time, to be independent of conditions that will thwart him, and compel him to deviate from his ideal of excellence. Still, if such writers. as Dickens, Thackeray, and Jerrold, who have already earned a reputation, who have as much talent as any of those past novelists of whom our literature is proud, and who may even venture now to lead the public against its own prejudices, were to set the example, by each doing his best, in the style each in his inner heart believes to be best, the good that would be effected might be very great.

ART. IV.-1. Formal Logic; or, the Calculus of Inference, Necessary and Probable. By AUGUSTUS DE MORGAN, of Trinity College, Cambridge, Fellow of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, Secretary of the Royal Astronomical Society, Professor of Mathematics in University College, London. London, 1847.

2. On the Symbols of Logic, the Theory of the Syllogism, and, in particular, of the Copula, and the Application of the Theory of Probabilities to some Questions of Evidence. From the Transactions of the Cambridge Philosophical Society. Vol. IX. Part I. By AUGUSTUS DE MORGAN, Sec. R.A.S., of Trinity College, Cambridge, Professor of Mathematics in University College, London. Cambridge, 1850.

3. An Outline of the Necessary Laws of Thought; A Treatise on Pure and Applied Logic. By WILLIAM THOMSON, M.A., Fellow and Tutor of Queen's College, Oxford. London and Oxford, 1849.

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4. An Essay on the New Analytic of Logical Forms, being that which gained the Prize proposed by Sir William Hamilton, in the year 1846, for the best Exposition of the New Doctrine pounded in his Lectures. With an Historical Appendix. By THOMAS SPENCER BAYNES, Translator of the Port-Royal Logic. Edinburgh and London, 1850.

LOGIC, in so far as it investigates the laws of the process performed, consciously or unconsciously, by all sound thinkers, has been aptly compared to grammar, which in like manner inquires into the principles of correct speech. The parallel might be carried further. There is an analogy in their perversions, as well as in their legitimate offices. Grammar, elevated into Gramarye, has been regarded as enabling its fortunate possessor to penetrate into the mysteries of the unseen world; and Logic, burdened with the incubus of Realism, has been considered as affording an insight into the no less mysterious essences of things in general. Less fortunate, however, than its sister science, Logic has scarcely yet been able entirely to emancipate itself from its early bondage. No one now regards Lindley Murray as a wizard, or those fair disciples by whom he is chiefly studied. as possessing more of the black art than is contained in the

* See Bishop Percy's note to the ballad of King Estmere.

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natural magic of a Lancashire witch. While Logic, though slowly and painfully working its way to its proper position, as the science of the laws of formal thinking, meets every now and then with a rude recall to material associations. The slave has broken prison, but the master has not yet relinquished his claim; and the fugitive still carries about him some links of his chain, by which ever and anon some emissary of his former tyrants seeks to drag him back to the burdens and the flesh-pots of his servitude.

Perhaps there is no branch of human knowledge of which the history presents anomalies so strange and startling as that of Logic. From age to age it has blended itself with the matter of predominant interest, and its nature, its form, its province, have in each successive stage been perpetually the theme of doubt and controversy. At one time an instrument of philosophy, at another the handmaid of divinity, now a method of demonstration, and now an art of thinking, allying itself at different periods with physics, with metaphysics, with psychology, with theology, now formal, and now material, in this generation a science, in that an art, sometimes both, and sometimes neither, it is scarcely to be wondered at that these Protean metamorphoses have caused at times its very basis to be questioned, and that adversaries should have occasionally applied to it the language of its founder on a very different subject, χαμαιλέοντά τινα καὶ σαθρώς ἱδρύμενον.

And yet, notwithstanding these various doctrines concerning the nature and province of Logic, its actual contents have at no time essentially varied. Scarcely any two logicians are in accordance as to what it is that they are expounding; scarcely any have in their exposition materially added to or taken from the original body of the system. Logic is not, like mathematics or physical science, the result of the united discoveries of successive generations. It is the offspring almost entirely of one master mind, to whose authority nearly every disputant has appealed, as decisive on his own side of the question. It is not like the river, which, springing at first from some obscure and insignificant source, receives in its progress the waters of tributary streams, acquiring, still under the same title, a wider channel and an ampler volume, till the name which the inland peasant associates with some petty rivulet is to the merchant the broad highway of commerce, and to the mariner a sea, bearing navies on its bosom. It is the work of one age and of one man,- a Pallas, which sprang full grown and full armed from the head of her parent, a monument which after generations have contented themselves with commenting on and elucidating, without adding to or diminishing from the original. Other gods have removed