and not in succession.’ Connected, in Hartley, with this premature development of the imagination, there was a singular deficiency in what may be called the _sense_ of reality. It is alleged that he hardly knew that Ejuxrea, which is the name of his kingdom, was not as solid a _terra firma_ as Keswick or Ambleside. The deficiency showed itself on other topics. His father used to tell a story of his metaphysical questioning. When he was about five years old, he was asked, doubtless by the paternal metaphysician, some question as to why he was called Hartley. ‘Which Hartley?’ replied the boy. ‘Why, is there more than one Hartley?’ ‘Yes, there is a deal of Hartleys; there is Picture Hartley (Hazlitt had painted a picture of him), and Shadow Hartley, and there’s Echo Hartley, and there’s Catchmefast Hartley,’ seizing his own arm very eagerly, and as if reflecting on the ‘summject and ommject,’ which is to say, being in hopeless confusion. We do not hear whether he was puzzled and perplexed by such difficulties in later life; and the essays which we are reviewing, though they contain much keen remark on the detail of human character, are destitute of the Germanic profundities; they do not discuss how existence is possible, nor enumerate the pure particulars of the soul itself. But considering the idle dreaminess of his youth and manhood, we doubt if Hartley ever got over his preliminary doubts—ever properly grasped the idea of fact and reality. This is not nonsense. If you attend acutely, you may observe that in few things do people differ more than in their perfect and imperfect realisation of this earth. To the Duke of Wellington a coat was a coat; ‘there was no mistake;’ no reason to disbelieve it; and he carried to his grave a perfect and indubitable persuasion that he really did (what was his best exploit), without fluctuation, _shave_ on the morning of the battle of Waterloo. You could not have made him doubt it. But to many people who will never be Field Marshals, there is on such points, not rational doubt, but instinctive questioning. ‘Who the devil,’ said Lord Byron, ‘could _make_ such a world? No one, I believe.’ ‘Cast your thoughts,’ says a very different writer, ‘back on the time when our ancient buildings were first reared. Consider the churches all around us; how many generations have passed since stone was put upon stone, till the whole edifice was finished! The first movers and instruments of its erection, the minds that planned it, and the limbs that wrought at it, the pious hands that contributed to it, and the holy lips that consecrated it, have long, long ago been taken away, yet we benefit by their good deed. Does it not seem strange that men should be able, not merely by acting on others, not by a continued influence carried on through many minds in succession, but by a single direct act, to come into contact with us, and, as if with their own hand, to benefit us who live centuries later?’