_exclusive_ philanthropy, that are inconsistent with the order of Providence, and destructive of the nature of man: Vetus in avoiding one extreme has fallen into another, for the extremes not only ‘of faction’ but of folly meet; though we should be loth to compare the splendid dreams of the philosophical enthusiast, who wished to raise man above the pitch of his common nature, to the groveling, sordid, shuffling paradoxes of Vetus, who would degrade him below the level of the brutes, and whose maxims are as repugnant to common sense, and the practical rules of life, as they are devoid of every thing elegant in imagination, or consistent in reasoning. ILLUSTRATIONS OF VETUS (CONCLUDED) ‘What do you read, my lord?—Words, words, words. What is the matter?——_Nothing_.’ _Jan. 5, 1814._ We gave in our last article Vetus’s quaint denunciation of the principles of patriotism and philanthropy. It appears by this, that the same ‘jargon of metaphysics,’ and the same vapid rhetoric may be employed against both these sacred and inviolable feelings, by any one who is weak and vain enough to suppose that language was given us, not to communicate truth to others, but to impose falsehood on ourselves. Does Vetus mean to assert, that his _topics_ are fatal to all patriotism, as well as all philanthropy? Or (which is the alternative) that they are fatal to neither, properly understood,—that there is a true and a false patriotism, a true and a false philanthropy? What will ‘the acknowledged saviours of Europe, the magnanimous defenders of the commonwealth of nations, the liberators of Spain, the recreators of Portugal, the regenerators of Germany,’ say to Vetus’s exclusive patriotism? Or, we would ask, whether the abuse of reason, of which he complains in certain moderns, is a sufficient cause that we should explode it altogether? In the dialect of Don Quixote’s books of chivalry, must ‘the unreasonableness of their reason so unreason our reason,’ that we are to reject the faculty, both root and branch? Shall we impiously renounce the goddess, because she has been personated by a strumpet? Reason is the queen of the moral world, the soul of the universe, the lamp of human life, the pillar of society, the foundation of law, the beacon of nations, the golden chain, let down from heaven, which links all animated and all intelligent natures in one common system—and in the vain strife between fanatic innovation, and fanatic prejudice we are exhorted to dethrone this queen of the world, to blot out this light of the mind, to deface this fair column, to break in pieces this golden chain! We are to discard and throw from us, with loud taunts and bitter imprecations, that reason, which has been the lofty theme of the philosopher, the poet, the moralist, and the divine, whose