and driven to and from their work like beasts of burthen? Our West India colonies were better farmed under the slave system, especially when fresh slaves could be imported from Africa, than probably they can ever be by free labour. Which is the happiest state of the population? Our agricultural writers, indeed, tell us that labourers in agriculture are much better off as farm servants than they would be as small proprietors. We have only the master's word for this :-ask the servant.”—Page 37.

The question is, after all, one of population,- that is, of proportion of people to land and capital. The manner in which the Udal tenure operates, in keeping down numbers, has been already fully explained. We are firm believers in the doctrine that "the restraints of property" are, more than all other things, efficient as a check upon population.

To supply the want of a regular market for grain, and of a regular class of dealers, by whose instrumentality the surplus of one district or one season may be rendered available for the supply of another district or season, the Norwegians have a remarkable expedient in what Mr. Laing calls a "Corn Bank." It is a species of depôt of mutual assurance, a species of office of deposit and discount, where the medium is not money but grain. The farmer who has grain to spare deposits eight bushels, and can take out nine at the end of twelve months. This is equivalent to a dividend of about twelve per cent. If he require a loan, say a discount, he has to repay ten bushels for every eight he takes out: the difference between the rate charged and the rate received pays all expenses. It is entirely under the management of the bonder or peasant proprietors. In the duchy of Mecklenburg there is a species of mutual assurance establishment called a Credit-Verein, where the proprietors pledge their estates for mutual accommodation. Indirectly it operates as the Norwegian corn banks do, but through the intervention of a market and a market price. It checks great advances and great declines; in other words, it equalizes price, and therefore consumption and supply; and in fact takes the place of the active operations of the competition of buyer against buyer and seller against seller.

Education is very generally diffused, and there is a small tax for the support of district schools; but the higher class of university education is unaccountably expensive. From the general diffusion of periodical publications Mr. Laing infers

that there is a very extensive reading public. One word here to the Bible societies. Whilst Mr. Laing found no difficulty in procuring many useful books, Bibles could not be found, either among the booksellers of Drontheim (p. 112), or the book-dealers at the fair of Levangor (p. 243); and the reason given in both cases was the same, namely that they dared not supply themselves in the usual way of trade for fear of being undersold. An amateur or dilettante trade is not likely to be nearly so regular, nearly so well adapted to the demand, as one which is regulated by the ordinary interests of trades. No one has any great interest in the due distribution, and accordingly it does not take place. Left to the ordinary operation of private interest there is no fear of the demand not being adequately supplied. The only effect produced by the operations of the societies who profess to diffuse the Scriptures is, that they "have evidently been driven out of the market" (p. 243).

The worst feature, perhaps the only bad one, in the institutions of Norway is that trade is not free. Each trade is monopolized by a sort of guild or fraternity, by which even country dealers are licensed; so that in this respect, but in this only, the Norwegians are in the same abject state of ignorance as a London alderman.

Two faults only we have to find with Mr. Laing; the first is, that his antiquarian disquisitions (always, however, acute and interesting,) are sometimes carried too far. By this we mean that in tracing the Norwegians to the East by means of the analogies of language, he contents himself with insufficient evidence, and does not give weight enough to physical conformation. The reader will do well, while reading Mr. Laing's eighth chapter, to have Blumenbach and Lawrence at his side.

The other portion of Mr. Laing's book to which we object is the coolness with which he speaks of the probable seizure of the country north of the 62nd degree of latitude by Russia. If England be bound to respect the integrity of the Norwegian kingdom in one case, she is in another; and the necessity of an Atlantic port to Russia would certainly be no justification of a glaring aggression, which we apprehend all the powers of Europe would be interested in preventing. This

is only a case of that most mischievous fallacy, that "the end "justifies the means."

In spite of these two defects we take leave of Mr. Laing's book with regret. The task of reviewing the work has been one of really vivid pleasure. We have seldom met with so much that is valuable in a single volume; and we have no hesitation in saying, that its perusal should be deemed a paramount duty by all whose station involves any degree of influence over the destinies of their fellow-creatures.

ARTICLE II.

Imaginary Conversations of Literary Men and Statesmen. By WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR, Esq. 3 vols. 8vo, 1826-8. Second Series, 2 vols. 8vo, 1829.

Pericles and Aspasia. By WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. 2 vols. 12mo. Saunders and Otley. 1836.

AN author who presents himself to the public in an unusual dress, partaking neither of the lighter nor the more solid fashions of the literature of his age, must make his way to notice by native force and elasticity of character; since men resist nothing so pertinaciously as novelty, in works of argument or imagination. Schiller describes the "literary artist," who has a true spiritual commission to enlighten and instruct his generation, as "the enemy of his age ;" and, were other proofs wanting, the literary history of this century alone would show, how surely clamour and opposition await the first appearance of genius on the intellectual horizon, and how reluctantly they give way to its final ascendancy. Genius is solitary and singular; and any writer who does not embrace a side, or wear the colours of party, has every side and party against him, as in a religious war the neutral and the moderate are persecuted and plundered by each belligerent. We are sufficiently tolerant of known and established differences in opinion; but novelty in either form or sentiment gives an

D

unpleasant shock to our indolence or self-love, and we directly quarrel, not with ourselves for having slumbered, but with those who awaken us.

The author of the "Imaginary Conversations," having read both men and books attentively, must have been aware of this common tendency; and therefore, when he first published them, could hardly have expected any immediate popularity for his works. Had his speculations been confined to philosophy and criticism, he must have awaited at least one turn of the tide before he could take his proper station; but introducing persons and politics, and tracing them with a pen of no common sharpness and strength, the tardy growth of his reputation can have caused him little surprise. The interest however excited by the announcement of his later works proves, that his earlier ones were of materials stout and solid enough to resist the buffetings which every sterling writer must look for when he first presents himself.

Mr. Landor's name has long been associated with whatever is elegant and profound in scholarship and literature; he ranks high for his compositions, both in prose and verse, among the modern writers of Latin, and his English works have confirmed and extended his classical reputation. In both languages, in his poems and in his prose, he is distinguished for a rich imagination, for manifold erudition, and for his peculiar skill in the conception and impersonation of character. His "Imaginary Conversations" have rescued some illustrious characters from misrepresentation and neglect, by placing their actions in another light and under new points of view; and if a zealous temper has sometimes led him to extol or decry on insufficient grounds, he has furnished the correction of his error, by awakening curiosity and pointing to the sources of information and inquiry.

The pains bestowed by him on questions of grammatical analogy, and the cultivation of style, are especially valuable at a time when such studies are in general but lightly prized. He has tried the capabilities and added to the harmonies of our language. The example he has set of correct and polished diction will not be followed by many; for it is the result of labour and meditation, not a gift or quality of the mind. His language may sometimes appear too stately, and deficient in

simplicity and ease, but it is always remote from verbiage and free from affectation, and generally borne out by a corresponding weight and energy of reasoning and reflection.

Mr. Landor's reputation has been slowly won; perhaps it has not yet reached the meridian. He is too massive in the structure of his intellect and his language to move easily or swiftly upon the current of popular favour. His opinions are less the fruits of practical experience, than of learned and leisurely meditation: too steady and reflective for those who seek in books for excitement only, he requires more attention and previous knowledge than such readers are able to bring with them. He is too uncompromising and contradictory to be acceptable to the admirers of the things and powers that be, and too familiar with history and experience to be a good innovator, or to join or start readily a popular cry. They who would follow him must bring with them some reverence for the past, to balance and direct their aspirations for the future. They must be competent to remember and to feel how much we have inherited of intellectual and social order and truth, and how much we are therefore bound to transmit to others unimpaired and improved. Landor is no blind iconoclast, but would rather retain and renovate both image and shrine, than give them over for desecration to the ignorant and interested. His zeal is speedily kindled at the presence or by the apprehension of corruption and abuse; his sympathies presently awakened by suffering and sorrow; but remove abuse and lighten oppression, and the tendency both of his heart and understanding is reactive, and inclined rather to steadiness than change.

Other causes however than aloofness from party and singularity of temperament and manner have hindered the general acceptance of his works. The most ready to acknowledge the hand of a master in the "Imaginary Conversations" must admit, that some of the opinions advanced in them are eccentric, and many inconsiderate. We do not speak of those only which from their subjects are evidently ephemeral, but of some of graver import and contents. But we are inclined to look upon them as the ebullitions and escapes of an irregular humorousness, which in another edition, to the great improvement of the whole series of Conversations, may be reconsidered,