Chamberss Edinburgh Journal, No. 439 | Page 3

to trouble.' However, the Dutch logicians
made no difficulty of the matter; and arguing, from the number of the
woman's husbands, that she could not be wholly innocent of their death,
prohibited her from marrying again--which, her addiction to matrimony
being considered, was perhaps, of all the 'troubles' she had undergone,
by no means the least.
The logical faculty, which not only consists with the poetical, but is
invariably and necessarily associated with it, whenever the latter exists
in an advanced stage of development, is in no writer more conspicuous
as an intellectual characteristic than in Schiller. In this respect he is not
excelled even by Wordsworth himself; but Homer sometimes snoozes,
and Schiller's reasoning is not always consequential: as, for instance,
when he denies two compositions of Ovid--the Tristia and Ex Ponto--to
be genuine poetry, on the ground that they were the results not of
inspiration, but of necessity; just as if poetry were not a thing to be
judged of by itself; and as if one could not determine whether it were
present or absent in a composition, without knowing to what influences
the author was subjected at the time the composition was produced!
Rousseau, in one of his moods of bilious cynicism, falls foul of human
reason altogether. No man despised it more in action; no one could
more consistently decry it in speculation. In his opinion, the exercise of
the reasoning powers is absolutely sinful--l'homme qui raisonne est
l'homme qui péche. Franklin, on the other hand, in a familiar tone of
playful banter, vindicates its utility, alleging that it is mightily
'convenient to be a rational animal, who knows how to find or invent a
plausible pretext for whatever it has an inclination to do.' Examples of
this convenience abound. The Barbary Jews were rich and industrious,
and, accordingly, their wealth provoke the cupidity of the indolent and
avaricious Mussulmans. These latter, whenever a long drought had
destroyed vegetation, and the strenuous prayers offered up in the
mosques had proved unavailing for its removal, were accustomed to
argue--and a mighty convenient argument it was--that it was the foul
breath of the Jews that had offended Heaven, and rendered the pious
petitions of the faithful of none effect. The remedy for the drought, then,

who could doubt? The true believers drove the Jews out of their cities,
and quietly confiscated their goods. Dryden, anxious to congratulate
Charles II. on his 'happy restoration,' amidst a thousand fulsome
compliments--all tending to shew that that prince was the author of
blessings, not only to his own kingdoms, but to universal
humanity--declares, that it was to Charles, and to him only, Spain was
indebted for her magnificent colonial possessions in either hemisphere.
Addressing the sovereign, his words are--
'Spain to your gift alone her Indies owes, For what the powerful takes
not, he bestows.'
A convenient fashion of reasoning truly: as convenient every whit as
that of Daniel Burgess, a witty Presbyterian minister, devoted to the
House of Brunswick and the principles of the Revolution, who was
wont to affirm, as the reason the descendants of Jacob were called
Israelites, and did not receive the original name of their progenitor, that
Heaven was unwilling they should bear a name in every way so odious
as that of Jacobites.
Once more: it appears from Dr Tschudi's valuable and interesting work
on South America, that in Peru rice is cheap, and servants both lazy and
dirty. Now, the servants in Lima have a theory about rice. They
consider it possesses certain qualities antagonistic to water, so that,
after eating, to touch water would be seriously injurious to health; and
thus does their frequent consumption of rice supply them with a most
convenient reason or excuse for their habitual abstinence from an
operation they detest--that of washing their hands.
Verily, they are mighty fine and convenient words, THEREFORE and
BECAUSE.

DAVID'S LAST PICTURE.
The whole population of the good city of Brussels was in a state of
excitement. Talma, the great French tragedian, was that evening to

close his engagement by appearing in his favourite character of
Leonidas; and from an early hour in the morning, the doors of the
theatre were beset with waiting crowds, extending to the very end of
the large square in which it stood. It was evident that the building,
spacious as it was, could not contain one-half of the eager expectants
already assembled, and yet every moment brought a fresh accession to
the number destined to be disappointed. The hero of this ovation, and
the object of all this unusual excitement to the worthy and naturally
phlegmatic beer-drinkers of old Brabant, was standing near a window
in the White Cross Hotel, engaged most prosaically in shaving himself;
and, from time to time, casting on the crowd, to which he