tastes, opinions, manners, habits, antipathies, and passions, so fully agree with our own, that we feel drawn towards them by a species of kindred relation! What! kindred relation between two persons who never met before? whose families, perhaps, had come from opposite points of the compass? How can such a supposition be maintained for a moment? How can it be said, that one spiritual immaterial essence is a-kin to another? Material bodies are related when they draw the stream of life from the same fountain: moulded in the same original frame, they may resemble each other in feature and form, may be ruled by the same appetites, and inoculated with the same humours. But what impress can one immaterial soul receive, which shall make it resemble another so exactly in its dispositions, that they shall seem to have one and the same presiding mind between them; that when they meet, they shall seem rather to recognise each other, than to become newly acquainted; that such a reciprocal congeniality shall be instantly discovered between them, as exists between light and the eye of the infant the moment he opens it?

I do not hope to be able to explain these things. The mind, with its various faculties and operations, is, and ever must remain, the greatest of all mysteries to man. Those beings who, in the great chain of creation, are above him, may haply perceive and develope the sources from which his impulses emanate. But, the more intensely man turns his mental eye upon his own mind, the more dazzled and confounded it becomes. Such examinations have led the German metaphysicians into the wildest absurdities. Nor have they been unproductive of extravagance in a certain distinguished land, which I could mention, where they have given rise to a sect of poets and philo-critics, whose imaginative faculties have absolutely emancipated themselves from all the restrictions of common sense.

I may, however, be permitted to observe, that some writers pretend to account for presentiments and extraordinary apparent associations, by reducing them to the same cause, viz. the previous existence of the soul. Presentiments, they say, are no other than the exertion of that natural sagacity which the mind has acquired, by having been placed before in circumstances resembling, in some degree, those in which it stands when those presentiments are conceived. In the same way, extraordinary associations are no other than faint recollections of feelings which the soul had experienced in a previous life, and which are excited by some agent, similar to one that had impressed the memory in that prior state of existence.

This doctrine must not be confounded with that of Pythagoras; who, as every one knows, held that the soul migrated from

one earthly body to another, and was in a state of perpetual revolution, each new body being assigned to it as the reward of desert, or the punishment of crime *. This doctrine differs

widely from the Pythagorean system; it does not suppose a previous existence of the soul on earth, but in some other region of the creation. It was believed by many of the Fathers; more particularly by the celebrated and eloquent Origen, who, indeed, was quite an enthusiast upon this singular tenet. The Indian Bramins and the Persian Magi have also inculcated the doctrine of a spiritual pre-existence; and Ben Israel, one of the great Jewish Rabbins, tells us, in his Problems De Creatione, that this was the common belief of all wise men among the Jews without exception. Indeed, the Jews have made this doctrine a part of their cabala, and profess to have received it from Moses; though upon this point Scripture is silent, not a word being found in the Old Testament, either affirming or discountenancing this belief.

At the middle of the seventeenth century, this subject was

It is curious to see the various opinions which the ancient philosophers maintained concerning the nature of the soul. Zeno, the founder of the stoics, held that it was "the quintessence of the four elements;" Galen, that " every part of the body had its soul;" Hippocrates, that it was a "spirit diffused all over the body;" Hesiod, that it was a "thing composed of earth and water;" Parmenides, of "earth and fire;" Thales, "a nature without repose ;" Varro, that it was an "air received at the mouth, heated in the lungs, moistened in the heart, and diffused over the body;" Heraclitus Ponticus, that it was the light;" Xenocrates and the Egyptians, " a mobile number;" Aristotle with his usual precision, defined the soul to be "that which caused the body to move," which is true enough, though it leaves us as much in the dark as ever. To these opinions we may subjoin the opinion of Plato, which has been followed by Virgil, and improved upon by Horace. In the dialogue with Timæus he maintains that the Deity formed souls out of what he calls "the soul of the world," gave them reason and intelligence, and then scattered them as seed on the sun and moon and other stars, or rather, as he expresses himself, "the other instruments or organs of time"-ETTELPE TOUS μὲν ἐς Ἥλιον, τοὺς δ ̓ εἰς Σελήνην, τοὺς δ ̓ εἰς τὰ ἀλλᾶ ὅσα ὄργανα χρόνου. &c. Plutarch, adopting the idea of Heraclitus, says, that the pure soul is of superior excellence, darting from the body like a flash of lightning from a cloud; but the soul which is carnal and immersed in sense is like a heavy and dark vapour kindling and aspiring with difficulty. Milton seems to have had an eye to this passage, when he wrote those fine lines in Comus

The soul grows clotted by contagion,

Imbodies, and imbrutes, till she quite lose

The divine property of her first being.

Such are those thick and gloomy shadows damp,

Oft seen in charnel vaults and sepulchres,

Ling'ring and sitting by a new-made grave,

As loth to leave the body that it loved;
And links itself, by carnal sensuality,

To a degenerate and degraded state.

"Some regard the soul," says the Indian epic poet, "as a wonder, others hear of it with astonishment, but no one knoweth it. The weapon divideth it not, the fire burneth it not, the water corrupteth it not, the wind drieth it not away for it is indivisible, inconsumable, incorruptible; it is eternal, universal, permanent, immoveable; it is invisible, inconceivable, and unalterable."

agitated in our own country, and controverted on both sides. with great zeal and no mean ability. It would, however, extend this article to an undue length to enter minutely into the merits of the controversy. Nor shall I offer any opinion of my own upon the doctrine of pre-existence, further than to say, that to me it appears consistent with every tenet of Christianity; and that it tends in some degree to account for that reach of the imagination beyond the limits of this world, which we have all, at some time or other, experienced. One negative advantage of the theory is, that, if no one can demonstrate its truth, no one can prove it to be false.

MORALITY OF NEWSPAPERS.

̓Αλλ ̓ ἔγωγε οὐ σχηματίζειν βούλομαι. =Aristoph.

PRAY, Mr. Editor, do you ever read the newspapers? I do not mean the tissue of impertinences and personalities, which disgrace that part of our journals technically called " the leader," nor the weekly lists of ministerial dinners, nor the parvenues ladies' routs, nor the cabinet councils of Almack's. Every body reads these, with an avidity proportioned to their acknowledged importance. But, sir, do you ever read the advertisements? I need scarcely ask the question: the first glance of every individual connected with "the trade" falls on the daily list of " NEW PUBLICATIONS*," in order to form an omen of the sale of a work, from the appearance of its title, in print. A handsome advertisement, like a genteel figure, is a letter of recommendation; nor do I see any reason why a good sounding title should not be the passport of a literary production, as well as of a man. In both cases it must often cover a reasonable portion of insipidity. A motto too should work equally well, under a smart vignette, or at the bottom of a coat

* True enough-where there happen to be any ;-but we are too often disappointed in this respect, and feel quite at a loss to account for the unjust neglect, or rather determined hostility of newspaper-proprietors to the interests of their brethren of the press. Notices of new works form the most interesting advertisements; yet, strange as it may appear, these are the only class which are excluded from a regular insertion: all others, including many of a very questionable nature, are inserted in rotation as received, but advertisements of NEW BOOKS are filed to be used only when there happen not to be enough of others to fill the paper. Thus at the several periods of Christmas, Easter, and other holidays, when people of fashion and buyers of books are no longer in town to peruse them, shoals of advertisements (miscalled) "New Books," may be observed, which, in fact, are become quite old. The increase of weekly literary papers, however, which are exclusively devoted to Book advertisements, will at no distant period, it is more than probable, entirely supersede the political prints for this purpose.

of arms; and both books and authors now-a-days derive no small part of their consequence from supporters. But, in these professional inspections, does not your eye sometimes wander along the columns, to rest upon claims to immortality not founded on books? For my own part, although I am as great a quidnunc as another, and am more concerned about the President's speech, or the proceedings of Bolivar and Morillo, (ungracious reprobate that I am) than in a proof-sheet, yet I confess my predilection to be altogether with the advertisements, as forming by far the most interesting portion of our daily miscellanies; for which reason I always keep them, as Shakspeare says, "first mouthed to be last swallowed."

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Of all the improvements of civilization, there is nothing in life like a newspaper; and the newspapers of our times are the ne plus ultra of journals. Venimus ad summum fortuna." Such variety, such abundance, such an happy adaptation to all sorts of tastes! Whigs, tories, ultra-royalists, radicals, and half-radicals-all have their measure accurately taken; and from "The Hue and Cry," up to " Cobbett's Register," there is such an infinity of shadings, that a man's politics must be as badly shaped as Yorick's head, if he does not somewhere find the echo of his opinions. In this point of view, a newspaper is no bad index of men's dispositions and pursuits. My maiden sister (who is full ten years older than I am, though she will not own it) ever casts her eyes first on the marriages; my wife reads, par préférence, the fashionable intelligence; my daughter, the theatrical bulletin; young hopeful, my son, is divided between Tattersall's and Dutch Sam; my brother looks to the price of stocks; and I to the advertisements; while Dr. Drowsy, my son's tutor, begins patiently at "Wednesday, March the seventh," and reads straight down to "semper eadem," and " "London, printed and published."

The advertising columns of a newspaper are, to a philosopher, who sees into the essence of things, a camera obscura, or moving picture of the world, in which whatever is passing abroad is reflected with a fidelity and perspicacity that delight and edify; and I protest, were I historiographer to the king, or a compiler for the " Annual Register," I would rather have the newspaper advertisements for my original documents, than the "Gazette" and the "Moniteur" both together. Indeed, I am quite convinced, that if those veracious continuators of Smollet and Hume, who, for a reason the very opposite of Pope's,

"Write in numbers, for the numbers-Go,"

were to pay more attention to this branch of philosophy, their works would at once be more lively and more accurate.

Do not, for example, the advertisements from the Ordnanceoffice give "dreadful note of preparation," more certain and trust-worthy than "We are credibly informed,"-" Advices received from Trieste," or "We have it from the best authority"? ---in all which, credence follows in the inverse ratio of asseveration. Then again, in matters of trade, revenue, and other branches of political economy, the notices to insolvents, afford much plainer indications of national prosperity or adversity, than could be gathered from all the Custom-house returns that ever were printed.

It must, however, be freely confessed, that documents of this description are not every body's market, and that not only genius is necessary to pick the marrow from the bone, but much perspicuity also, to avoid such errors as that of the Frenchman, who inferred the political corruption of England from the column which he imagined an address to Lord C, and which is headed in large capitals--"Want Places." Those who know the details of office can best tell how egregious a blunder the presuming traveller* made; and can answer that the whole newspaper would not contain all the applications to the heads of departments from gentlemen who "want places:" applications, which employ so many corresponding clerks in the answering them.

But it is chiefly for the minor moralities that the advertisements of a newspaper may be usefully studied, though occasionally the more heroic virtues are both theoretically and practically illustrated in these productions. The devotion and gratitude of members of Parliament, as set forth in their addresses to the electors after the return, and their humility and patriotism during the canvass, are enough to move the stubbornest hearts, and have touched mine again and again almost to tears..di

ཙྩཱ ཝཱ The offers of money-lenders are splendid testimonies of the innate generosity of our dear countrymen, among whom Jews and Christians rival each other with a zeal and devotion the most flattering to the national character. The hospitality of those who provide board and lodging for young men who are in need of such accommodation, is no less praiseworthy; while the terrible denunciations against vicious indulgences, so fear

This blunder of the Frenchman reminds me of another-" Pourquoi," said a gen-, tleman of that nation to his travelling companion, "Pourquoi Monsieur Pitt s'appelle-t-il Billy?" and then immediately answering himself, he went on," "apparemment c'est parcequ'il introduit tous les bills' dans le parlement." Some of our own countrymen, however, make worse mistakes at Paris, and, I am sorry to say, of more serious importance, such as forgetting to pay their bills before they return to England, &c. &c. But it is with nations as with books: in their composition, “ Suni bona, sunt quædam mediocria, sunt mala plura”---and neither are mended by virulent and misplaced abuse.