the streets by the colour of the corn, and its sole manu facture is in members of Parliament.

QUEEN MARIE ANTOINETTE.

Ir is now some sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the Queen of France, then the dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she just began to move in, glittering like the morning star, full of life, and splendour, and joy.

Oh, what a revolution! and what a heart must I have to contemplate, without emotion, that elevation and that fall. Little did I dream, when she added titles of veneration to that enthusiastic, distant, respectful love, that she should ever be obliged to carry the sharp antidote against disgrace concealed in her own breast; little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fallen upon her in a nation of men of honour and of cavaliers. I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult.

But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators, has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished for ever. Never, never more

shall we behold that generous loyalty to rank and sex, that proud submission, that dignified obedience, that subordination of the heart, which kept alive, even in servitude itself, the spirit of an exalted freedom. The unbought grace of life, the cheap defence of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise is gone! It is gone, that sensibility of principle, that chastity of honour, which felt a stain like a wound, which inspired courage, while it mitigated ferocity, which ennobled whatever it touched, and under which vice itself lost half its evil, by losing all its grossness.

DUGALD STEWART.

DUGALD STEWART, Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh, born A.D. 1753, wrote a treatise on the Philosophy of the Human Mind, View of the Active and Moral Powers of Man, and the dissertation On the Progress of Ethical and Metaphysical Philosophy for the Encyclopædia Britannica. He died in 1828.

IMITATION.

WHENEVER we see in the countenance of another any sudden change of features, more especially such a change as is expressive of any particular passion or emotion, our own countenance has a tendency to assimilate itself to his. Every man is sensible of this when he looks at a person under the influence of laughter, or in a deep melancholy. Something of the same kind too takes place in that spasm of the muscles of the jaw which we experience in yawning; an action which is well known to be excited by the contagious power of example. Even when we conceive in solitude the external expression of any passion, the effect is visible in our own appearance. This is a fact of which every person must be conscious in his own case; and it has often been remarked with respect to historical painters when in the act of transferring to the canvas the glowing picture of a creative imagination. A mimic, too, without consulting a mirror knows, by a sort of consciousness, the moment when he has hit upon the resemblance which he wishes to exhibit. This phenomenon, which has always appeared to me an extremely curious and important one, seems to be altogether inexplicable, unless we suppose that when the muscles of the mimic's face are so modified as to produce the desired combination of features, he is conscious, in some degree, of the same feelings or sensations which he had when he first saw the original appearance which he has been attempting to copy.

Nor is it the visible appearance alone of others that we have a disposition to imitate. We copy, instinctively, the

voices of our friends, their tones, their accents, and their modes of pronunciation. Hence that general similarity in point of air and manner observable in all who habitually associate together, and which every one acquires in a greater or lesser degree; a similarity unheeded, perhaps, by those who witness it daily, and whose attention is more forcibly called to the nicer shades by which individuals are discriminated from each other, but which catches the eye of every stranger with uncomparably greater force than the specific peculiarities which, to a closer observer, mark the endless varieties of human character.

It is in consequence of this imitative propensity that children learn, insensibly, to model their habits on the appearance and manners of those with whom they are familiarly conversant. It is thus, too, that with little or no aid on the part of their instructors, they acquire the use of speech, and form their pliable organs to the articulation of whatever sounds they are accustomed to hear.

As we advance to maturity, the propensity to imitation grows weaker, our improving faculties gradually diverting our attention from the models around us to ideal standards more comformable to our own taste, whilst, at the same time, in consequence of a physical change in the body, that flexibility in the muscular system by which this propensity accomplishes its end is impaired or lost. The same combination of letters which a child of four years utters without any apparent effort would twenty years afterwards present a considerable difficulty; and a similar inflexibility, it may be reasonably presumed, is acquired by those muscles on which depend the imitative powers of the face and other parts of our material frame.

Like other powers, however, exercised by the infant mind, this faculty may be easily continued through the whole course of life by a perseverance in the habits of early years. By systematic culture, it may even be strengthened to a degree far exceeding what is ever attained to by the unassisted capacities of our nature. It is thus the powers of the mimic are formed-powers

which almost all children have a disposition to indulge, and of which it is sometimes difficult to restrain the exercise. The strength of the propensity varies a good deal according to the physical temperament of the individual; but wherever it meets with encouragement, it is well known that no faculty whatever is more susceptible of improvement; and, accordingly, when at any time the possession of it happens to be fashionable in the higher circles, it very soon ceases to be a rare accomplishment. In the other sex, the power of imitation is, I think, in general, greater than in ours. A frequent reiteration of any act communicates to the mind not only a facility in performing it, but an increased proneness or disposition to repeat it. This observation is remarkably verified in those who accustom themselves to the exercise of mimicry. Their propensity to imitation gains new strength from its habitual indulgence, and sometimes becomes so powerful as to be hardly subject to the control of the will. Instances of this have more than once fallen under my observation, and in a few well-authenticated cases, the propensity has become so irresistible as to constitute a species of disease.

SIR JAMES MACINTOSH.

SIR JAMES MACINTOSH (A. D. 1765-1832), an eminent lawyer and politician in his day, claims the regards of posterity as a philosophical historian and critic. His chief works are the well-known Dissertation on the Progress of Ethical Philosophy, prefixed to the Encyclopædia Britannica, and Vindicia Gallica, a reply to Burke's Reflections on the French Revolution.

REPLY TO MR. BURKE.

In the eye of Mr. Burke the crimes and excesses of the French people assume an aspect far more important than can be communicated by their own insulated guilt. They form, in his opinion, the crisis of a revolution more im