They were enacted in the face of a powerful opposition,-an opposition rendered more powerful by the treachery and desertion of many of the adherents of the administration. Soon after Parliament was prorogued, the ministry was dismissed. It was well understood at the time, and it stands a prominent part of history, that the King took the Rockingham administration as a dernier resort. He took it, in order to get rid of Grenville. He did not approve its principles. Every leading measure that they proposed he condemned. He was opposed to the repeal of the stamp act, and of excise duties. He was in favor of general warrants and the seizure of papers. All these measures commended themselves to his arbitrary nature. But he was willing, at almost any sacrifice, to be relieved of the thraldom, in which he had been kept by the last administration. Upon the accession of Rockingham, the King pursued a peculiar and anomalous course. He determined to make the court the fountain of favor and influence, and by means of favor and influence, to build up a party which should carry out the measures and wishes of the court.

"The first part of this plan was to draw a line which should separate the court from the ministry. Hitherto these names had been synonymous, but for the future, court and administration were to be considered as things totally distinct. By this operation two systems of administration were to be formed,-one, which should be in the real secret and confidence, the other merely ostensible to perform the official and executory duties of government. The latter were alone to be responsible, whilst the real advisers, who engaged all the power, were effectually removed from all the danger.

Secondly. A party under these leaders was to be formed in favor of the court against the ministry,-this party was to have a large share in the emoluments of government, and to hold it totally separate from, and independent of ostensible administration.

"The third point, and that on which the success of the whole ultimately depended, was to bring Parliament to an acquiescence in this project." It was the policy of the King to lessen the weight and influence of the ministry, because the ministry were in opposition to his policy-and the state of parties was such that he could not directly appoint a ministry, whose views were in unison with his own.

It was very soon discovered by the under-secretaries and placemen, that the tenure of their offices would be more secure by carrying out, so far as they might, the private wishes of the King, rather than obey the behests of the ministry. They voted against almost every capital measure proposed by the Rockingham administration. They voted against the repeal of the stamp act,-voted against the repeal of the cider tax,-voted against the resolutions condemnatory of general warrants, and the seizure of papers-and the King upheld them in this course. Indeed, they were only carrying out his wishes. Rockingham complained and remonstrated. The King played a double part. He feigned to regard the conduct of his friends as most extraordinary, and worthy of condemnation—yet it was well known that he applauded and approved their course. The whole conduct of George the Third, throughout the continuance of the Rockingham administration, was duplex and treacherous.

The result was obvious. The king had formed the ministry to be rid of Grenville. He was now to form an administration which should relieve him of both.

William Pitt, enfeebled by gout, soured by repeated rejection of his counsels, and rendered querulous by age, was invited to take the lead of affairs. Rockingham and his friends retired from office. Burke was offered a position in the Treasury, but he declined it. He chose the fortunes of his friends and adhered to them against all inducements. Burke had heretofore been obliged to struggle with the difficulties attending narrow means. He was now to be relieved, for a time at least, of that embarrassing situation. On the retirement of the Rockingham administration, or soon after its retirement, he purchased the estate of Gregories, at Beaconsfield, for £20,000. It is well known that the Marquis of Rockingham furnished the greater part of this large sum. It is known, too, that Mr. Burke regarded the aid of the Marquis in the light of a loan, but it is equally well known that the Marquis never made any demand of payment, and that Mr. Burke never, at any time during his life, could make payment. It is doubtless true that the Marquis did conceal, and intended to conceal, a gift under the pretext of a loan. Many of the enemies of Mr. Burke, while living, did not scruple to assert that this transaction was tainted with corruption-that Mr. Burke's advocacy of the principles of Lord Rockingham was the quid pro quo of the purchase of the Beaconsfield estate. The statement of the facts defeats the calumny. We have now rapidly and briefly indeed surveyed the prominent events that precedes the advent of Edmund Burke upon the theatre of affairs. We have traced his history from his childhood to the close of the Rockingham administration. We have seen that, emerging from obscurity, his genius had placed him conspicuously before the world. His position among the statesmen of England was in the first rank. We have seen his sun mount to the meridian, and there we pause in the narration. We reserve the story of its decline and setting to another occasion.

THE STARS.

WHENCE came ye glorious stars of even,
When spring to life your living beams,
Ye radiant sentinels of Heaven,

Soft mirrored on our crystal streams?
Whence came ye, with your myriad rays,
Of amber-hued and dazzling light,
Ye burning gems whose lustre plays

Forever on the brow of night?
Whence came ye, and why were ye set
In yonder Heaven's imperial dome,
Why in high glory have ye met,

And why so brightly have ye shone?
Whence came ye?-I have ever deemed
That ye were near the fount of light,
That ye were gems which ever beamed
Around His Throne of boundless might.

Or, that ye were the far off homes
Of some freed spirits of the blest,
TOWANDA, Penn.

Which through the azure archway roams,
Yet finds with thee their place of rest.
And I have dream'd ye were the smiles

Of angel friends sent back from Heaven,
To light the dim earth's lonely isles.

And woo our hearts to be forgiven. But your clear rays which ever burn,

Oh! come they not from realms on high, Whose favored inmates never learn

That lesson-" Man was born to die!"

Whence came ye? When creation woke
For joy, together then ye sang,
And your undying radiance broke

Night's shadows when your anthem rang.
Whence came ye? To your quenchless rays
I feel some purpose high was given,
Known but to His mysterious ways-
Ye glorious blazonry of Heaven.

THE EDINBURGH REVIEW-LORD JEFFREY.

DURING the past summer Great Britain has lost two of her most distinguished public men. Though moving in somewhat different spheres, each had exerted a wide influence over his countrymen, and made his name celebrated on both sides of the Atlantic. For a long series of years, while one swayed the Senates of the most enlightened and powerful kingdom in Europe with consummate skill, the other ruled one of the most important and rich departments of letters, with regal majesty. The former, though not clad in the robes of office at the period of his death, saw his policy moulding the measures of his own and other nations. The latter, though he had long since descended from the critic's throne, saw the influence of his pen upon the current literature of every people speaking the English language. The statesman had not been merely a politician, but had cultivated a taste for letters, was a scholar of no mean attainments, and had been the official and private patron and friend of genius. The writer was not merely a literary critic, but had mingled in all the political conflicts of his times, and was known as an eminent lawyer and a steady advocate of liberal principles. Though Sir ROBERT PEEL and LORD JEFFREY-for, of course, it is to them that we refer were, during some thirty years, arrayed on different sides of almost every public question;-yet the mutations of the times, and the gradual loosening of party ties, had, for the last three or four years of their lives, made the number of political issues on which they agreed, greater, probably, than of those about which they differed. This substantial identity of position was caused not so much by the retreat of the Scotch liberalist, as by the advance of the English conservative.

His

Peel commenced his public career an illiberal Tory. After rendering distinguished services to that party, being, next to Pitt and Canning, its most illustrious leader, he gradually softened his asperities, discarded his prejudices, and ultimately came to occupy a position not very remote from that which the antagonist party held when he began his career. name is identified with three of the most important measures of relief that mark his times: The amelioration of the criminal code--the emancipation of the Catholics-and the repeal of the corn-laws. Unforeseen events gave him the power to engraft each of these reforms upon the policy of the country, while a rare combination of circumstances pressed him to exercise that power. Each of these measures had, for long years, roused the fiercest opposition of his party. But, of all the statesmen that had ever guided the affairs of England, he was one of the most sagacious in foreseeing when resistance to the popular demands ceased to be either wise or profitable; and no political chief could yield with more grace to the inevitable tendencies of things, or more intuitively seize the right moment to throw himself into the current and guide its course. By his magic skill he was able to carry with him, in each of the instances we have specified, a majority of his followers, and to bend to his purposes the most inflexible of Tories, the Duke of Wellington. In these crises, his wellearned and much cherished popularity with his party, received a shock; and in the last, it was rude and severe; nor had he recovered from its

effects at the time of his death. But then, as in both the previous trials, what he lost with bigoted partizans, he more than gained among the body of the people.

On the other hand, Jeffrey commenced life an ultra-liberal. One of the founders and chief conductors of the Edinburgh Review, he and the brilliant coterie who made that celebrated journal their organ, were denounced as Jacobins, levellers, agrarians, and incendiaries. But he lived to see public sentiment gradually advance towards, and ultimately reach, the ground occupied by them, when they declared war on the leading statesmen of their times, so that the ultraism of the dawn of the century became almost the conservatism of the middle of that century. He also saw considerable portions of the party with which he was identified, advance their standard beyond the spot where he had aided to plant it. This will account in part for the middle ground he undoubtedly occupied at the time of his death. In his youth, he took a position far in advance of the great majority of his contemporaries, and beckoned them forward to his stand-point. About the time public sentiment reached this point, he left the gladiatorial arena of the forum for the calm seclusion of the bench, and during his evening years maintained a dignified statu-quo; while the ever-restless tide of progress carried many of his old associates to a position somewhat beyond that at which he left political life. Hence it is, that through the influence of the causes we have suggested, we find the ultra-Tory and the ultra-Whig, of the days of Pitt and Fox, holding the same opinions, at the close of their eminent careers, on many of the leading questions that now agitate the councils of Great Britain. The lesson which this fact teaches, is obvious and simple. He who early takes a stand in advance of his age, has, if his advance be in the right direction, only to "labor and wait," and he shall have his reward.

We have lost sight of the main object we had in view when we commenced this article. It was not to compare the public career of Sir Robert Peel with that of Lord Jeffrey, but to briefly notice the journal of which the latter was one of the founders, and with which, as its able and brilliant editor for nearly thirty years, his name and fame are so closely identified.

The advent of the EDINBURGH REVIEW was an era in English literature. Previous to its establishment, the best literary periodicals of that country hardly occupied as commanding a position as the first class of weekly newspapers in our day. Nobody looked to them for the elucidation of grave questions in science and philosophy; for elaborate and brilliant reviews of the works of celebrated authors; for masterly disquisitions on public affairs; for acute and profound essays on law and government; nor for graphic sketches of important events and eminent individuals. They were merely miscellaneous repositories of the current news; of meagre items relating to the fine arts; of gossip concerning theatres, actors and playwrights; of sentimental or shocking tales about love or murder; of scraps of poetry and bits of biography; and of tedious extracts from old or new books, strung together with a slender thread of jejune criticism.

Into the midst of this wide sea of insipidity and inanity the Edinburgh Review was suddenly launched, fully officered and manned, her decks cleared for action, and the red flag flying at the mast-head. Her first broadside thundered in the ears of puling literature, corrupt politics, and

VOL. XXVII.-NO. IV.

3

bigoted prelatism,-the war-cry, "No quarter asked for ourselves, or given to our foes." The conductors of the new journal proclaimed their object to be, to secure a purer taste and a more vigorous and natural style in literature, by subjecting the works of authors to a loftier standard of criticism; and to test the value of public men and measures by the teachings of philosophy, the demands of truth, and the aspirations of humanity. The difficulties that environed the accomplishment of these ends, were fully equalled by the novelty of the undertaking. Three young Scotch advocates without clients, and one young English curate without parishioners, had raised the standard of rebellion in the empire of British letters and law. Totally destitute of professional reputation, with names wholly unknown to literature, and with purses so lean that they were compelled to print the first number of their journal on credit, these nameless and penniless men aimed at nothing short of revolutionizing the literary productions, the political policy, and the ecclesiastical establishments of the most enlightened, powerful and intolerant nation of Europe. The result of the enterprise is among the most extraordinary phenomena of this remarkable century. The founders of the Review saw the objects they avowed in the dawn of the century substantially attained ere its noon, while they enjoyed the gratifying consciousness of knowing that their periodical had essentially contributed to this result. And not only had its authors aided in swelling the tide, but, unlike most originators of great enterprises, they themselves were borne forward on the topmost wave. They all rose to eminent stations. They all became lords except one, and he might have been created a right reverend prelate, and sat among nobles in the House of Peers, had he not been so fond of displaying his rather irreverent wit on the platforms of meetings to promote Catholic Emancipation and Parliamentary reform. If Smith had been more respectful to metropolitan ecclesiastics, and cracked fewer jokes about Mrs. Partington, he might have put on the lawn of a bishop. But he never disguised his contempt for all sorts of starched flummery, and so had to put up with the humbler vestments of a canon of St. Paul's. Jeffrey, having won golden honors at the bar, and shed new lustre upon the robes of the Lord-Advocate of Scotland, became Lord-Justice of its highest court. Murray, the least conspicuous of his literary associates, filled the same stations. Brougham, having sent his fame as a barrister and parliamentarian over the world, took the great seal and ascended the wool-sack.

For a quarter of a century, Jeffrey, Smith and Brougham were the great lights of the Review. Around them early clustered a galaxy of writers, whose productions adorned its pages, while its increasing celebrity enhanced their fame. When its firmly established reputation had secured it a wide circle of readers, who admired and applauded, or hated and denounced, it was eagerly sought by writers of the first class as their medium of communication with the public. Scott, Playfair, Stewart, Macintosh, Hallam, Horner, Romilly, Leslie, Brewster, Brown, Hazlitt, and the productions of other equally eminent pens, so enhanced its celebrity, that the fame of the author of a standard work grew pale before that of the writer who reviewed him in the Edinburgh.

The advent of the Edinburgh Review was speedily followed by a revolution in the tone of criticism. It led the van in an exterminating war on the tribe of literary scavengers that burrowed in Grub-street. It