seldom remembered. With the kindest feelings to their relations, the French, it is true, do not think it inconsistent to mix the sociability of a larger circle; and they endea vour to be happy through the short period of existence allotted them; whilst the English lose half their lives in becoming acquainted with those who are jumbled into the same half-century as themselves."

The Englishman began with the most diffident air, by refusing any comparison with the Spaniards, the Italians, or the Germans. The first, he said, had no political liberty, the second had not even independence, and the Germans could scarcely be said to possess a classical literature: without every one of these advantages no nation could claim the pre-eminence. It was now his duty to shew that the English nation was the wisest, the happiest, and the best. The only mode of estimating the rank of England in science and literature, was to enumerate the men she had produced. Whatever claims the Parisians (for Paris was France) might have to distinction in the annals of modern science, they would not dispute that Bacon was the first theoretical teacher, and Newton the greatest practical discoverer of sound philosophy. Nor could England be said to be inferior to any in the science of the day; namely chemistry; when Priestly and Cavendish made discoveries contemporary with those of Lavoisier, and Davy had pushed his researches to a distance which none of his rivals or fellowlabourers had reached.

"If we turn from physical science, and look to history, which joining the investigation of fact, with the exercise of moral judgment, and the use of a cultivated style, seems to form the link between the exact sciences, and polite literature, we shall find that Hume is the most profound, and Gibbon the most learned of modern historians. I will not compare them with De Thou or Rapin, D'Anquetil or Lacretelle; but I will assert, without hesitation, that they have far surpassed Davila, Guicciardin, Mariana, and Schiller.

"In the region of poetry we fear no com parison with France; in fact, except the tragedies of Racine, two or three of Voltaire, and some passages of Corneille, France has no poetry of the higher class: but even in those, have they any thing so sublime as the conceptions of Milton? have they any characters so true, or an invention so various as that of Shakspeare?

"If we look at the present state of literature, our superiority is still more apparent; the six poets of our day have no parallels in France.

"I have now to speak of the happiness of England. Good Heavens, what a fertile theme! No cold dissertation on the advantages of liberty, no detailed statement of the blessings derived from industry, can give an inhabitant of the Continent an idea of the well-being and prosperity of our island; VOL. VII.

every man can there think, and speak, and write as he pleases; no previous censorship of the press prevents the general communi cation of facts and of ideas; truth is not squeezed under the hat of a cardinal, or screwed by the voice of an officer of police, but carried into the broad day-light, and appreciated by the general judgment of enlightened men.

Nor have we stained the cause of liber. ty by innumerable murders and proscrip. tions; our revolution was fruitful in great qualities and great virtues; it produced but few crimes.

"Perhaps of all the advantages our constitution has procured to us, none is more considerable than the freedom of industry.

"The consequence is, a perfection in the arts of life, a solidity and completeness of happy comforts, which one of your countrymen," said he to the Frenchman, " called La poesie du bienêtre. The English shop. keeper has ten, times the comfort of the Spanish grandee, and is twenty times as independent as the Roman cardinal.

Nor have the English been less remarkable in foreign war; during the late war they gained by sea the battles of Cainperdown, St Vincent, Aboukir, Copenha gen, and Trafalgar."" Oh, but then," said the Frenchman," your nation are islanders, and cannot cope with us on the land."-"Talavera, and Barrosa, Salamanca, Vittoria, and Waterloo, are the answers to this objection."

When all the parties had been heard, I said, with the gravest face, and the most solemn tone I could put on, that I would read over my notes, and give my judgment another day. I did not say, however, that I would give the cause another hearing, as they do in the English chancery court, although it might have been done, in this case, without costing the parties a hundred pounds a-piece.

We certainly wish very sincerely, that our author had entirely confined himself to such subjects as these, for every one must admit, that he never fails to treat them in a graceful and beautiful manner. But the most laboured, if not the most extensive part of his volume is political; and in it, although his cleverness is not less apparent, we think the wisdom of his views is abundantly more questionable. In a very lively and sceptical essay "on the English constitution," he has embodied the result of his observations concerning the present state of public affairs, and it is to this that we cannot help calling in a more particular manner the attention of all his readers, Tories and Whigs, and if any such be among them, Radicals.

The topics on which he enlarges in 3 Y

this essay are not indeed very new; but it is written in a style so superior to any thing that has appeared for a long while in the Edinburgh Review, or any other Whig journal, that we doubt not the praise even of novelty will be ascribed to it by the common trumpeters of the party. Even on ourselves indeed it is wonderful how great an effect was produced at first reading by the ability of his turns and illustrations; and, we are free to acknowledge, it was not till we had glanced over the pages once more, that we could satisfy ourselves they contained nothing but a better-put state ment of the same eternal old cant about the "bad effects of the Pitt system and government on freedom," the "late amazing increase of influence in the crown," the "rise of a totally new and unconstitutional party in the state," (viz. the boroughmongers), the "absurdity of asserting that the late restrictive enactments are not so many dangerous infringements on the native liberty of Englishmen ;" and finally, and worst of all," the necessity of having some sympathy with men, however mistaken they may be in minor particulars, who have the great fundamental merit of being ranged under the banner of freedom!!!"

We must content ourselves with referring to the political papers, which have already appeared in this journal, for our opinion concerning the merits of all these Whig common-places, excepting only the last, which, although it has not remained altogether without animadversion, has not as yet attracted our notice at so much length as the others. We are sorry that it should have been brought forward by such a person as the writer now before us, because, saving his presence, we think it implies a greater allowance, not of blindness only, but of pusillanimity and meanness, than any other of all the hackeneyed topics of that mean and pusillanimous party with which we are sorry to find such a writer capable of holding any sympathy. It is true, our author is far from going all the lengths of most of his party; but it is too certain, that his reasonings are such as point the same way with the declamations of the most violent among them, and that men who read what he has written, without being possessed of that calmness of temper, and elevation of sentiment, which nature and education

have conferred upon him, will be so much the more ready to join the wild and treacherous cry of those who have for the last three years been lending, not indeed open countenance, but real and effectual encouragement, to our own deluded artisan-philosophers at home

and who are at this moment making their cup run over with the last drops of inconsistency and guilt by the libations with which they are greeting two decidedly military revolutions, the work and the triumph of the ever freshening sprouts of Jacobinism, the symbols of the purity and patriotism of the Josefinos,-the magnanimity of the Muratists,-the piety of the Carbonari.

It must be admitted, that there is no inconsistency in the spirit, however much there may be in the pretences, of these two leagues which the Whigs appear to be so proud of hav ing ratified with the domestic and foreign enemies of established government. The truth is, every day makes us more and more convinced, that, at any price short of ruin to themselves (which, such is the overweening mea sure of their conceit, they always flatter themselves they shall in the issue find means to avert), the Whigs are willing to purchase the downfall of the present administration in England;and that in applauding any efforts of any body of men, however near, however remote, which they think have any tendency to further this blessed consummation, they are guided by no restrictions except those of the merest selfish prudence. When a set of deluded mechanics think fit to dub themselves enlightened," and proceed, in the confidence of this self-bestowed graduation, to wage open war against the authority of the state at home, our Whigs indeed do not brandish the pike along with them ;—but, while the work of evil is in its progress, they do every thing they can to throw difficulties in the way of that FIRM HUMANITY, which seeks to arrest, in order that it may not be compelled to punish, the spirit of evil; and after, chiefly by reason of the partial protection afforded by these mischievous arts, the disaffected mob have gained courage to hazard themselves in arms, and been taken and triedwhat is then the behaviour of their secure patrons? Do they not make it a matter of gratulation among themselves,

whenever it turns out that the cunning of traitors has been such as to shield the persons of traitors? Do they not hail every acquittal as a triumph, not of the insulted purity of British justice, but of the checked spirit of Reform? Do they not, to all safe limits and all safe purposes, proclaim common cause with the enemies of England? Did they not toast last spring, at their Erskine-Dinner, "The memory of HARDY?"-and will they not, at the next of their "enlightened as semblages of noblemen and gentlemen," toast the uncondemned heroes of the West of Scotland, whose necks have just been saved from the halter by the blunders of one ancient statute, which has made it necessary that when ever traitors are to be tried in Scotland, the juries should be compelled to listen to a phraseology as new to them as that of Otaheite, and to vote in a manner which custom and prejudice may be said to have rendered impracticable, rather than ungrateful, among the people of Scotland ?*

It requires no great perspicacity to see to the bottom of these tricks; but, if possible, the wickedness of their behaviour, in regard to the recent revolutions of Spain and Naples, is still more open to the eye of day. There is not one man in England-Whig, Radical, or Tory-who needs to be told, that for the last thirty years (we might safely say for a much longer time) the continual cry of Whiggery has been lifted up against standing armies above all other parts of the British establishment. The soldiery has been all along their very byeword of detestation. They have written and talked themselves weary with proving, or attempting to prove, that no state in the world ever derived any thing but evil from the interference of the military:-nay, of King William's Revolution itself, it has been a thou

sand times said and sung by them all, that the only stain upon it, is its having been in part aided by the Dutch troops who came over with the Stadtholder, and the English troops who de serted King James. But mark how the weather-cock veers! The governments of two European countries are changed by two armies, which are confessedly the worst disciplined and the worst officered armies in all Europe, and nobody knows or can hazard a single conjecture what may hereafter be the effects of these most suspicious works of most suspicious instruments. But Liberty has triumphed !—The Cause of Freedom all over the World! -Behold the panacea which closes every thrust of jealousy !-hear the rallying cry that drowns in its joyful uproar sounds, above all others, for a hundred years, cursed and loathed by all Whiggish ears

It is now for the first time that British Whig journals have the audacious meanness to lick the indignant feet of those they had ever before been indefatigable in insulting. It is now that we hear of the " Drum of Spain sounding a note from Cadiz to Kirkwall!" and of that voice being at length lifted up, which, when it speaks, must be imperative."

There are other topics on which we might yet more enlarge; but from which, although not without difficulty, we shall still, as we have hitherto done, restrain ourselves from touching. "The approach of death," says Plato, "is indicated, in honest men, by crutches, and other plain symbols of weakness and fainting nature; by

all sides, must ere long be approached in Parliament much more closely and decidedly than it has ever yet been. It is in vain to expect that any men of any party will much longer be found to extend even the shadow of their protection to such a system of abuses as appears to be now ruling the ecclesiastical affairs of Ireland; and it is chiefly on account of this our belief that we are most peculiarly rejoiced by the calm and conciliating temper in which the author of this pamphlet has written. May his wisdom go forth with his knowledge; may all that write or speak of Ireland learn from him how it becomes a loyal gentleman and a true Christian to tread on that field of perilous controversy.

Taken altogether, it must be admitted that there is more of education in the British Islands than in any other empire of the world; but the quantum of that blessed distinction possessed by the three great districts of the empire is obviously very unequal. The author before us observes, that there are two sorts of education-that of habits, and that of letters, a distinction, by the way, which has been but too much lost sight of by speculators on human happiness. In England the former chiefly obtains. She alone possesses all those advantages which impress good habits on a people, -"a long settled order of things, a fixed government, defined and ascertained rights, property, particularly in land, unchanged for ages by war or violence, religion as established by law, the religion of the great majority of the people, a resident government, a resident aristocracy; liberty."

"All these elements entered into the mighty fabric of British greatness. They went to create that love of justice and true perception of it, that obedience to the laws that respect for authority-to form that sober and orderly conduct-which were, and which are, in an eminent manner, the peculiar characteristics of the people of England. They went also to build up that high prosperity, that comfort, security and abundance, which surrounded this people, and which, excluding every strong tempta tion to crime, left the individual free to col lect round himself those feelings of personal respect, and of national importance, which, elevating the general tone of mind even of the lowest ranks of society, place them beyond the meanness and the guilt of petty delinquencies."

Scotland," adds our author, "on the other hand, less happily circumstanced,

has found in the education of letters, and in a system of religious instruction suited to the wants and to the genius of her people, means to correct the evils of her condition, and to place her high on the scale of moral and civilized nations." All this is most true. Suppose that Scotland had not had such a Reformation as she worked out for herself, and what would she now have been? The impetus which her mind then received never has ceased, and never can cease. It gave her mind a direction which all the education of letters in the world never could have given it-and now that very education, which is of a religious character, and inseparably combined with its spirit, produces habits which triumph over all the numerous and formidable difficulties of her situation and her history, and justifies her people in holding up their heads unabashed in competition with the more favoured inhabitants of what we call the South. Such an education of letters as she now enjoys creates also that other education of habits. They play into each others hands-and the result is a national character, honest, upright, and even austere-inferior to none that ever dignified humanity, in originality, dignity, and strength.

What then shall we say of Ireland? What does this admirable writer say of it, whose opinion is ten times bettǝr worth hearing than ours, though we too have been in that troubled Ar

cadia.

"At the bottom of this scale is Ireland, un

provided with any of those wise institutions, those fortunate circumstances which impress good habits upon a people. She is, indeed, furnished in no mean degree, with the knowshe is at least equal with England, though ledge of letters. Perhaps, in this particular, inferior to her northern neighbour. And when the condition of the lower Irish is considered, and compared with that of the other two nations, it will be seen how little the mere knowledge of letters is capable of effecting upon the humbler classes of society. This did not escape observation. It was observed too, that a mere knowledge of letters, when superinduced upon depraved habits, did no more than furnish a new and powerful weapon to the enemies of social order; we were referred to the dreadful shedding of blood for bank forgeries, and to the innumerable and ingenious frauds, the guilt of which the unlettered escaped. We were told, that we introduced a new vice amongst servants, and a new danger into families; that we opened a new and alluring view of society to him who is cut off from all its enjoyments; that we infused