is inclined to radicalism, but that is no proof of toryism or conservatism being the less able to preserve inviolate the interests of the people: dive into the deepest depths of the human heart, and sound its religious persuasions, and more unbelief will be discovered than even Satan himself could suggest, and yet the truth of Christianity loses nothing, the gem we failed to find none of its value and brilliancy. STEWART. I am willing to grant that the little progress your science has made must not be received as a positive proof of its fallacy. If all truths met with toleration, you would be a blessed people. Phrenology may be one of the truths which have been neglected. Christianity has ever been rejected by some individuals; and several of the sublimest doctrines and most brilliant discoveries in morals and philosophy have been pointedly condemned as fallacious and injurious, for which the experience of ages alone could obtain an universal recognition. The greatest truths have met with opposition-their advocates imprisonment, bloodshed, and death. PHRENOLOGIST. In earlier periods, when schism, intolerance, bigotry, and superstition were at their height, phrenology, in its first rude and unpolished state, would have met with but few disciples. Whatever interfered with the fixed notions and creeds of the ancients, was looked upon as a daring innovation, and often punished as a crime. The fate of Galileo, who protested against the futile systems of astronomy then in vogue, substituting for them one that involved a doubt of their correctness, i. e. the diurnal and annual revolution of the globe, is impressed upon the memory of every reading and reflecting mind. The de clension of that superstitious adherence to antiquated doctrines, crude and unreasonable as they might have been, is favourable to the development of rational systems and the preponderance of truth. Gall had much to encounter in his struggles to penetrate into the region of phrenology, a region never before explored with success or zeal. Divested of all prejudice, and possessing an unusual degree of observation, he was bent upon culling the sweets from every flower in this comparatively untrodden land. In its general features there was something that attracted him. By degrees his reason and sagacity were fed, his enthusiasm and ardour enlivened and increased. The deeper he penetrated the more treasures and beauties he discovered. Of what he explored he gave a history which embraces many interesting as well as undigested topics. He had not time to mature his ideas, none to separate the clay from the ore, the beauties from the deformities. The mower was wanted to cut down the thistles and briars, the pruner to prune many excrescences which the soil produced. Like Columbus, who went in search of the new Continent, he had but few supporters, but little patronage to assist him through the toilsomeness of his researches. Prompted by a generous enthusiasm, and upheld by strength of mind, he broke down barriers which divided him from other mentalists of his age and country. STEWART. It has been said that Gall relinquished the doctrine in his latter days, because he could reduce it to no fixed principles. PHRENOLOGIST. That he made no very useful application of his discoveries none pretend to doubt; but that he ever rejected the principles, which, by a long course of observation and reasoning, he had formed, is not likely. It is too much to say he saw himself the victim of indiscretion, in that he found himself to be his own dupe. To have been carried back by the stream against which he had been so long struggling, and the force of which he had mainly conquered by his perseverance, is not what one can suspect a mind like Gall's to have been subject to. If he had any object in view which he ultimately abandoned, it was one which the immature state of his own system would not warrant. No doctrine was ever yet projected, of which its projector did not anticipate events that would form an important era in his history, but which were not likely to be realized, at least by him. Systems of usefulness have always been tardily framed, new truths (for nothing but truth can be made useful) must undergo great analysis, great elaboration, and suffer somewhat by contortions before they can be moulded so as to suit the habits and prejudices of the public, and made the lifesprings of action, the mediums of usefulness. As in the laboratory of the chemist pure elements and atoms are separated from such as are noxious, so in the invention of a science, which is only truth separated from error, good from evil, are precautionary and analysing means equally required. I look upon Gall as a man of deep penetration, as a scientific hero of his time, as the reviver of a light which had been dimly revealed in days prior to his own, and which he rendered more luminous by drawing whatever was possible from men and manners. In conversing with Dr. Elliotson some time since, I was glad to find he took a similar view of the merits and originality of this man. It is his opinion that we have heretofore neglected Gall for Spurzheim to our disadvantage. He sees a sententiousness in Gall's writings, a truth, a life, which he does not discover in those of the pupil, and has determined upon shewing how much they are to be preferred, how great is the claim which Gall has upon the phrenological world, and how much of what is, in reality, his, has been assigned to Spurzheim, who, instead of being the originator, is merely the propounder. This is a laudable object, as we are unwilling that men should wear wreaths to which they have no right-wreaths plucked from the brow of the proper and successful owner. COLLOQUY III. THE Professor presented himself to me this time unexpectedly. Sitting alone in deep meditation at midnight, when my little family had retired to rest, the fire burning briskly, the lamp brightly, and a deathlike stillness prevailed, I turned to reach a book on the constitution of mind, when, lo! I espied my friend. Anticipating my object, and, as it would seem, knowing, by some unaccountable mystery, the bent of my thoughts, he, without the least ceremony, immediately pursued the subject on which I was dwelling. STEWART. Think you not it is an omission on the part of phrenologists, to disregard the commonly received notions of the nature of mind? I would not wish you to give credence to every thing in the poet's song, or the historian's page, as they often give unfaithful portraits of man. The one may present you with high-wrought images of mental excellence or mental deformity, sometimes to give vivacity, and life, and energy to their delineations, a boldness to their fiction, an interest to their narrative, a euphony to their numbers; while the other, from some religious or political prejudice, some partial or illiberal views of human nature, may furnish a description of |