DR. SLADE'S IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS ON PHRENOLOGY.
Tim Lyn Valley in Devonshire combines in a perfection rarely to be found elsewhere, the opposite qualities of the rich and the barren, the sublime and the beautiful. Strolling there one evening, lost in meditatiou on "mind," Dr. SsAmt encountered a grave and sedate personage, "with a mild and benevolent expression of coun- tenance, and a soft and mellifluous voice." The stranger addressed the musing metaphysician, announcing itself as the Shade of DUGALD STEWART; and then, with a directness of purpose not always, according to Geose, the characteristic of ghosts, en- gaged in a discourse on phrenology. After talking against the science for a while, and listening to Dr. SLA.DR'S defence of it, the appearance vanished ; but returned again and again, sometimes in the open air, sometimes in the Doctor's house, until the Collo- quies upon Phrenology and other subjects amounted to fifteen; the object being of course to establish the truth of the science, though this is not attempted with much logical precision or no- velty of illustration. It will be readily seen, what the author indeed admits, that he is indebted to the celebrated Colloquies of SOUTHEY for the idea of the form of his work ; and be has also studied them sufficiently to have caught some of the elegant air of his master, jibe has not imbibed his spirit. But the imitator is also obvious in want of nature in the design, of art in the execution, and of unity in the whole. Independent of digressions to a variety of subjects, which, having no direct relation to the nisi') point, will be as liable to fatigue the reader as to relieve him, there is no dramatic keeping in the dialogue. Dr. SLADE is quite on a par with the Spirit; not only taking his full part in the conversation, but even leading it. Nay, sometimes he inflicts a long-winded speech upon the Ghost, and sometimes instructs the quondam Professor upon points which he must have known better titan the teller, even when alive. The critical defect of SOUTHEY's work, as well as of moat other dia- logues of this kind—the want of a supernatural character in the
speeches of the apparition—is of course present in Dr. SLADE'S Colloquies, whilst they have not the countervailing reason of SOUTHEY'S. Sir THOMAS MORE might be assumed to be better acquainted with the condition of the people under the Feudal sys- tent and Catholicism of England than any living man; but an inge- nious medical student could have objected to phrenology as well as DUGALD STEWART'S Ghost, especially when Dr. SLADE was to be expounder and defender. As a series of compositions, the dialogues are distinguished for clearness, neatness, and elegance. The first appearance and vanishing of the Shade are managed with good taste, if not with skill ; and the introductory descriptions of the scenes where it was encountered are good in themselves, and afford a contrast to the metaphysical, religious, and critical discussions. They are in fact the best parts of the book ; as the reader may imagine from this specimen of the opening.
'ft A striking mixture of such dissimilar features is to be found in the east Lyn Valley of Lynmouth, where there seems to be a struggle for preeminence between sublimity and beauty. They exist in majestic rivalry, separated only by a purling and meandering stream, which has its rise in Exmoor, or some of the adjacent hilly country. The valley is a deep, narrow, and rather circuitous ravine, with two lines of mountainous hill, of equal height, opposite each other, diversified by precipices, woods, and rocks. What Olympus and 01143 were to the Thessalian Tempe, the renowned valley, and the once beautiful river Peneus, so are these lines and the purling streams to the Vale of Lynmouth. One line is covered from the bottom to the summit with foliage of great rich. Bess; the other line is of shingle and rock ; huge masses of which overhang the path in many places with fearful majesty. Craggy, bold, abrupt, sombre, and precipitous, a scene is presented to the eye on this side, which, in strong contrast with the other, for as a peculiar, romantic, and splendid variety. To those who seek for and delight only in rural beauty, and attach grandeur to nothing that does not carry with it some utility, a scene of this description would create disappointment. It is, in truth, not a rural, but a romantic spot. A few Exmoor sheep may be seen climbing, like the mountain-goat, the craggy steeps in search of herbage, and here and there the hand of the huebandnian may have left some traces of his industry in the cultivation of some of the least precipitous parts of the cliff; but the soil is unkind, and yields but little an recompense for the labour which has been bestowed upon it. "Those who have seen the favourite valley of the great Italian poet Petrarch, near Avignon, may form some notion of this. Vauchow is bounded on both aides by stupendous cliffs: it has an advantage in singularity over the Lynmouth Valley, having but one entrance to it, the two parallel cliffs meeting at the further end in a semicircle, In the semicircular space a cavern of great dimen- sions exists; and in a remote and gloomy part of it a reservoir of water, un- fathomable, it is said, in depth, and supplying a stream of some magnitude which meanders through the course of the valley. In this locality Petrarch passed many of his days in studious retirement."
Previous page
