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 use fulness 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

manners, habits, and modes of thought far removed from the truth. You glean but little from the long-trodden field-is it because you find it comparatively barren? You leave almost untouched whatever we have gathered into our garner. Though you have had free access, you deign not to enter, as though in the qualities of the food it contains, there was something pernicious and deleterious. You have, of course, your own reasons for thus abstaining, for thus forsaking that temple to which so many offerings have been made, and to which so many congenial spirits have bowed for many ages past. Wherever the fountain of truth is, there I wish you to drink. I would fain lead you from that which is made turbid by error; much more from one whose impurity would reflect discredit on the character of a nation so renowned for its philosophy, or rob it of any portion of that virtue it is known to possess.

PHRENOLOGIST.

We desire to give as faithful a portrait of the mind as Hogarth did of the features; yet we wish not to see it under so many contortions and disadvantages. We have not neglected the theories of others wilfully, or from bigotry. We have made use of every material supplied by our predecessors that was likely to advance our cause. In the society of the mentalists, among whom you stood foremost and ranked high, nothing but reason, that subtle and subverting faculty, was made the anchor of faith-the link by which such a society was bound together, and on which it depended for support.

STEWART.

There have been three reigns in England remarkable for the progress of literature. These were the time of