a lucid whole. His unfixedness of principle also to see all the scenes of my childhood; for I had operated strongly against him; for no man who is learned before the death of my father and mother. not considered honest and sincere, or can be relied There is a hill not far from the town called Crooksupon, will ever make a lasting impression on a bury Hill, which rises up out of a flat in the form of popular assembly. Cobbett's inconsistency as a a cone, and is planted with Scotch fir-trees. Here I political iter was so broad and undisguised, as to used to take the eggs and young ones of crows and have become proverbial. He had made the whole magpies. This hill was a famous object in the neighround of politics, from ultra-toryism to ultra-radi- bourhood. It served as the superlative degree of calism, and had praised and abused nearly every | height. As high as Crooksbury Hill,' meant, with public man and measure for thirty years. Jeremy us, the utmost degree of height. Therefore the first Bentham said of him, “He is a man filled with odium object that my eyes sought was this hill. I could humani generis. His malevolence and lying are be- not believe my eyes ! Literally speaking, I for a yond anything.' The retired philosophier did not moment thought the famous hill removed, and a make sufficient allowance for Cobbett: the latter little heap put in its stead; for I had seen in New acted on the momentary feeling or impulse, and Brunswick a single rock, or hill of solid rock, ten never calculated the consequence to himself or times as big, and four or five times as high! The others. We admit he was eager to escape when a post-boy, going down hill, and not a bad road, difficulty arose, and did not scruple as to the means; whisked me in a few minutes to the Bush Inn, but we are considering him only as a public writer from the garden of which I could see the prodiNo individual in Britain was better known than gious sand-hill where I had begun my gardening Cobbett, down to the minutest circumstance in his works. What a nothing ! But now came rushing character, habits, and opinions. He wrote freely of into my mind all at once my pretty little garden, himself, as he did of other men; and in all his writ- my little blue smock-frock, my little nailed shoes, ings there was much natural freshness, liveliness, my pretty pigeons that I used to feed out of my and vigour. He had the power of making every hands, the last kind words and tears of my gentle one who read him feel and understand completely and tender-hearted and affectionate mother! I haswhat he himself felt and described. The idiomatic tened back into the room. If I had looked a moment strength, copiousness, and purity of his style have longer I should have dropped. When I came to rebeen universally acknowledged ; and when engaged flect, what a change! I looked down at my dress. in describing rural subjects, or depicting local man

What a change! What scenes I had gone through! ners, he is very happy. On questions of politics or

How altered my state! I had dined the day before criticism he fails, because he seems resolved to at

at a secretary of state's' in company with Mr Pitt, tack all great names and established opinions. He and had been waited upon by men in gaudy liveries! remarks on one occasion that anybody could, at the

I had had nobody to assist me in the world. No time he wrote, be made a baronet, since Walter teachers of any sort. Nobody to shelter me from the Scott and Dudley Coutts Trotter (what a classifica- consequence of bad, and no one to counsel me to good tion!) had been so elevated. It has become," he behaviour. I felt proud. The distinctions of rank, says, 'of late years the fashion to extol the virtues birth, and wealth, all became nothing in my eyes of potatoes, as it has been to admire the writings of and from that moment (less than a inonth after my Milton and Shakspeare;' and he concludes a ludi: arrival in England) I resolved never to bend before

them. crous criticism on Paradise Lost by wondering how it could have been tolerated by a people amongst There is good sense and right feeling in the folwhom astronomy, navigation, and chemistry are lowing paragraph on field sports :understood! Yet Cobbett had a taste for what may Taking it for granted, then, that sportsmen are as be termed the poetry of nature. He is loud in his good as other folks on the score of humanity, the praises of the singing-birds of England (which he sports of the field, like everything else done in the missed so much in America), and he loved to write fields, tend to produce or preserve health. I prefer on green lanes and meadows. The following de them to all other pastime, because they produce scription of his boyish scenes and recollections is early rising ; because they have no tendency to lead like the simple and touching passages in Richard young men into vicious habits. It is where men son's Pamela :

congregate that the vices haunt.

A hunter or a After living within a few hundreds of yards of West- he is less likely to be fond of the two latter if he be

shooter may also be a gambler and a drinker; but minster Hall, and the Abbey Church, and the Bridge, fond of the former. Boys will take to something in and looking from my own windows into St James's Park, all other buildings and spots appear mean and the way of pastime; and it is better that they take insignificant. I went today to see the house I for

to that which is innocent, healthy, and manly, than merly occupied. How small! It is always thus: that which is vicious, unhealthy, and effeminate. the words large and small are carried about with us

Besides, the scenes of rural sport are necessarily at in our minds, and we forget real dimensions. The

a distance from cities and towns. This is another idea, such as it was received, remains during our

great consideration; for though great talents are absence from the object. When I returned to Eng- wanted to be employed in the hives of men, they land in 1800, after an absence from the country parts are very rarely acquired in these hives ; the surof it of sixteen years, the trees, the hedges, even the rounding objects are too numerous, ton near the eye, parks and woods, seemed so small! It made me

too frequently under it, and too artificial. laugh to hear little gutters, that I could jump over, called rivers! The Thames was but a 'creek! But

ROBERT SOUTHEY. when, in about a month after my arrival in London, The miscellaneous writings of Mr SOUTHEY are I went to Farnham, the place of my birth, what was numerous, and all are marked by an easy flowing my surprise! Everything was become so pitifully style, by extensive reading, a strain of thought and small! I had to cross, in my postchaise, the long reflection simple and antiquated, occasional diaand dreary heath of Bagshot. Then, at the end of logues full of quaint speculation and curious erudiit, to mount a hill called Hungry Hill; and from tion, and a vein of poetical feeling that runs through that hill I knew that I should look down into the the whole, whether critical, historical, or political. beautiful and fertile vale of Farnham. My heart In 1807 Mr Southey published a series of observafluttered with impatience, mixed with a sort of fear, tions on our national manners and prospects, en

a

titled Letters from England, by Don Manuel Alvarez individual. A young Chinese seems to me an anteEspriella, three volumes. The foreign disguise was diluvian man renewed. Even Englishmen, though too thinly and lightly worn to insure concealinent, not bred in any knowledge of such institutions, canbut it imparted freedom and piquancy to the author's not but shudder at the mystic sublimity of castes that observations. On the subject of the church, on have flowed apart, and refused to mix, through such political economy, and on manufactures, Mr Southey immemorial tracts of time; nor can any man fail to seems to have thought then in much the same spirit be awed by the names of the Ganges or the Euphrates. displayed in his late works. His fancy, however, It contributes much to these feelings, that Southern was more sportive, and his Spanish character, as Asia is, and has been for thousands of years, the part well as the nature of the work, led to frequent and of the earth most swarming with human life; the copious description, in which he excelled.

great officina gentium. Man is a weed in those regions. In 1829 Mr Southey published Colloquies on the The vast empires, also, into which the enormous popaProgress and Prospects of Society, two volumes, in lation of Asia has always been cast, give a further which the author, or · Montesinos,' holds conversa- sublimity to the feelings associated with all Oriental tions with the ghost of Sir Thomas More! The names or images. In China, over and above what it decay of national piety, the evil effects of extended has in common with the rest of Southern Asia, I am commerce, and the alleged progress of national in- terrified by the modes of life, by the manners, and security and disorganization, are the chief topics in the barrier of utter abhorrence and want of sympathy these colloquies, which, though occasionally relieved placed between us by feelings deeper than I can by passages of beautiful composition, are diffuse and analyse. I could sooner live with lunatics or brute tedious, and greatly overstrained in sentiment. The animals.. All this, and much more than I can say, other prose works of Mr Southey (exclusive of a

or have time to say, the reader must enter into before vast number of essays in the Quarterly Review, he can comprehend the unimaginable horror which and omitting his historical and biographical works these dreams of Oriental imagery and mythological already noticed) consist of his early. Letters from feeling of tropical heat and vertical sunlights i

tortures impressed upon me.

Under the connecting Spain; A Short Residence in Portugal; Omniana, a collection of critical remarks and curious quota- brought together all creatures, birds, beasts, reptiles, tions ; and The Doctor, five volumes

, a work partly all trees and plants, usages and appearances, that are fictitious, but abounding in admirable description to be found in all tropical regions, and assembled and quaint fanciful delineation of character.

them together in China or Indostan. From kindred feelings I soon brought Egypt and all her gods under

the same law. I was stared at, hooted at, grinned at, THOMAS DE QUINCEY.,

chattered at, by monkeys, by paroquets, by cockatoos. The Confessions of an English Opium Eater, a I ran into pagodas; and was fixed for centuries at small volume published in 1822 (originally con

the summit, or in secret rooms; I was the idol; I tained in the London Magazine), is a singular and

was the priest; I was worshipped ; I was sacrificed. striking work, detailing the personal experience of I fled from the wrath of Brahma through all the forests an individual who had, like Coleridge, become a

of Asia; Vishnu hated me; Seeva laid wait for me. slave to the use of opium. To such an extent had I came suddenly upon Isis and Osiris; I had done the author carried this habit, that he was accus

a deed, they said, which the ibis and the crocodile tomed to take three hundred and twenty grains trembled at. I was buried for a thousand years, in a-day. He finally emancipated himself, but not

stone coffins, with mummies and sphinxes, in narrow without a severe struggle and the deepest suffer- chambers at the heart of eternal pyramids. ing. The Confessions' are written by THOMAS DE

As a final specimen, I cite one of a different chaQUINCEY, a gentleman of extensive acquirements, racter, from 1820. literary and scholastic, son of an English merchant,

The dream commenced with a music which now I and educated at Eton and Oxford. He has contri- often hear in dreams a music of preparation and of buted largely to the periodical literature of the day, awakening suspense; a music like the opening of the and is author of the admirable memoirs of Shak’ Coronation Anthem, and which, like that, gave the speare and Pope in the Encyclopædia Britannica. feeling of a vast march—of infinite cavalcades filing! The following extracts would do credit to the off--and the tread of innumerable armies. The highest names in our original imaginative litera- morning was come of a mighty day-a day of crisis ture:

and of final hope for human nature, then suffering

some mysterious eclipse, and labouring in some dread i [Dreams of the Opium Eater.]

extremity. Somewhere, I knew not where—somehow,

I knew not how-by some beings, I knew not whom

May, 1818. a battle, a strife, an agony was conducting-Fas 11 I have been every night of late transported into evolving like a great drama or piece of music; with Asiatic scenes. I know not whether others share in which my sympathy was the more insupportable from i my feelings on this point, but I have often thought my confusion as to its place, its cause, its nature, and that if I were compelled to forego England, and to its possible issue. I, as is usual in dreams (where, of 1 live in China, and among Chinese manners and modes necessity, we make ourselves central to every moveof life and scenery, I should go mad. The causes of ment), had the power, and yet had not the power to my horror lie deep, and some of them must be com- decide it. I had the power, if I could raise myself, mon to others. Southern Asia in general is the seat to will it; and yet again had not the power, for the of awful images and associations. As the cradle of weight of twenty Atlantes was upon me, or the opthe human race, it would have a dim and reverential pression of inexpiable guilt. • Deeper than ever plurfeeling connected with it. But there are other reasons. met sounded,' I lay inactive. Then, like a chorus, No man can pretend that the wild, barbarous, and the passion deepened. Some greater interest was at capricious superstitions of Africa, or of savage tribes stake; some mightier cause than ever yet the sword elsewhere, affect in the way that he is affected by the had pleaded or trumpet had proclaimed. Then came ncient, monumental, cruel, and elaborate religions sudden alarms, hurrying to and fro; trepidations of of Indostan, &c. The mere antiquity of Asiatic innumerable fugitives, I knew not whether from the things, of their institutions, history, modes of faith, good cause or the bad; darkness and lights ; tempest &c. is so impressive, that to me the vast age of the and human faces; and at last, with the sense that all race and name overpowers the sense of youth in the was lost, female forms, and the features that were

6

WILLIAM HAZLITT.

worth all the world to me, and but a moment allowed ship; a giving vent to his heart's ease and over-con

-and clasped hands, and heart-breaking partings, tentment with himself and others. He would not be and then--everlasting farewells ! and with a sigh, in character if he were not so fat as he is; for there is such as the caves of hell sighed when the incestuous the greatest keeping in the boundless luxury of his mother uttered the abhorred name of death, the sound imagination, and the pampered self-indulgence of his was reverberated-everlasting farewells ! and again, physical appetites. He manures and nourishes his and yet again reverberated-everlasting farewells ! mind with jests, as he does his body with sack and

And I awoke in struggles, and cried aloud—I will sugar. He carves out his jokes as he would a capon sleep no more!

or a haunch of venison, where there is cut and come again; and pours out upon them the oil of gladness.

His tongue drops fatness, and in the chambers of his One of the most remarkable of the miscellaneous perpetual holiday and open house, and we live with

brain it snows of meat and drink.' He keeps up writers of this period was William Hazlitt, whose him in a round of invitations to å rump and dozen. bold and vigorous tone of thinking, and acute criti. Yet we are not to suppose that he was a mere sencism on poetry, the drama, and fine arts, found many sualist. All this is as much in imagination as in admirers, especially among young minds. He was reality. His sensuality does not engross and stupify a man of decided genius, but prone to paradox, and his other faculties, but .ascends me into the brain, swayed by prejudice. He was well read in the old clears away all the dull crude vapours that environ English authors, and had in general a just and deli- it, and makes it full of nimble, fiery, and delectable cate perception of their beauties. His style was shapes. His imagination keeps up the ball after his strongly tinged by the peculiarities of his taste and

senses have done with it. He seems to have even a reading; it was often sparkling, pungent, and pic- greater enjoyment of the freedom from restraint, of turesque in expression. Hazlitt was a native of good cheer, of his ease, of his vanity, in the ideal exShropshire, the son of a Unitarian minister. He aggerated description which he gives of them, than in began life as a painter, but failed in attaining excel- fact. He never fails to enrich his discourse with allence in the profession, though he retained through lusions to eating and drinking; but we never see him life the most vivid and intense appreciation of its at table. He carries his own larder about with him, charms. His principal support was derived from and he is himself “a tun of man.' His pulling out the literary and political journals, to which he con- the bottle in the field of battle is a joke to show his tributed essays, reviews, and criticisms. He wrote contempt for glory accompanied with danger, his sysa metaphysical treatise on the Principles of Human tematic adherence to his Epicurean philosophy in the Action;

Characters of Shakspeare's Plays ; A View most trying circumstances. Again, such is his deliof the English Stage; two volumes of Table Talk; berate exaggeration of his own vices, that it does not The Spirit of the Age (containing criticisms on emi- seem quite certain whether the account of his hostess's nent public characters); Lectures on the English | bill, found in his pocket, with such an out-of-the-way Poets, delivered at the Surrey Institution ; Lectures charge for capons and sack, with only one halfpenny

on the Literature of the Elizabethan Age ; and various worth of bread, was not put there by himself as a trick i sketches of the galleries of art in England. He was to humour the jest upon his favourite propensities, and

author also of Notes of a Journey through France and as a conscious caricature of himself. He is represented Italy, originally contributed to one of the daily jour- as a liar, a braggart, a coward, a glutton &c. and yet we nals; an Essay on the Fine Arts for the Encyclopædia are not offended, but delighted with him; for he is all Britannica; and some articles on the English no- these as much to amuse others as to gratify himself. velists and other standard authors, first published in He openly assumes all these characters to show the the Edinburgh Review. His most elaborate work humorous part of them. The unrestrained indulgence was a Life of Napoleon, in four volumes, which of his own ease, appetites, and convenience, has neither evinces all the peculiarities of his mind and opinions, malice nor hypocrisy in it. In a word, he is an actor but is very ably and powerfully written. Shortly in himself almost as much as upon the stage, and we before his death (which took place in London on the no more object to the character of Falstaff in a moral 18th of September 1830) he had committed to the point of view, than we should think of bringing an press the Conversations of James Northcote, Esq. excellent comedian, who should represent him to the containing remarks on arts and artists. The toils, life, before one of the police offices. uncertainties, and disappointments of a literary life, and the contests of bitter political warfare, soured and warped the mind of Hazlitt, and distorted his

[The Character of Hamlet.] opinions of men and things; but those who trace the It is the one of Shakspeare's plays that we think of passionate flights of his imagination, his aspirations the oftenest, because it abounds most in striking reafter ideal excellence and beauty, the brilliancy of flections on human life, and because the distresses of his language while dwelling on some old poem, or Hamiet are transferred, by the turn of his mind, to picture, or dream of early days, and the undisguised the general account of humanity. Whatever happens freedom with which he pours out his whole soul to to him, we apply to ourselves, because he applies it to the reader, will readily assign to him both strength himself as a means of general reasoning. He is a great and versatility of genius. He had felt more than he moraliser ; and what makes him worth attending to had reflected or studied; and though proud of his is, that he moralises on his own feelings and experi

acquirements as a metaphysician, he certainly could ence. He is not a commonplace pedant. If Lear is | paint emotions better than he could unfold prin- distinguished by the greatest depth of passion, Hamlet

ciples. The only son of Mr Hazlitt has, with pious is the most remarkable for the ingenuity, originality, diligence and with talent, collected and edited his and unstudied development of character. Shakspeare father's works in a series of handsome portable had more magnanimity than any other poet, and he volumes.

has shown more of it in this play than in any other.

There is no attempt to force an interest : everything [The Character of Falstaff.]

is left for time and circumstances to unfold. The

attention is excited without effort; the incidents sucFalstaff's wit is an emanation of a fine constitution ; ceed each other as matters of course; the characters an exuberation of good-humour and good-nature; an think, and speak, and act just as they might do if left overflowing of his love of laughter and good-fellow- entirely to themselves. There is no set purpose, no

:

straining at a point. The observations are suggested cause of his alienation, which he durst hardly trust by the passing scene-the gusts of passion come and himself to think of. It would have taken him years go like sounds of music borne on the wind. The whole to have come to a direct explanation on the point. In play is an exact transcript of what might be supposed the harassed state of his mind, he could not have done to have taken place at the court of Denmark at the much otherwise than he did. His conduct does not remote period of time fixed upon, before the modern contradict what he says when he sees her funeral refinements in morals and manners were heard of. It

"I loved Ophelia ; forty thousand brothers would have been interesting enough to have been ad

Could not, with all their quantity of love, mitted as a bystander in such a scene, at such a time,

Make up my sum.' to have heard and witnessed something of what was going on. But here we are more than spectators. We

THOMAS CARLYLE. have not only the outward pageants and the signs of grief,' but we have that within which passes show.'

The German studies and metaphysics of Coleridge We read the thoughts of the heart, we catch the pas

seem to have inspired one powerful writer of the sions living as they rise. Other dramatic writers give day, THOMAS CARLYLE, author of various works and us very fine versions and paraphrases of nature; but translations-a Life of Schiller; Sartor Resartus, Shakspeare, together with his own comments, gives us 1836; The French Revolution, a History, in three the original text, that we may judge for ourselves. volumes, 1837; Chartism, 1839; Critical and MiscellaThis is a very great advantage.

neous Essays, collected and republished from reviews The character of Hamlet stands quite by itself. It and magazines, in five vols., 1839; a series of lectures is not a character marked by strength of will or even on Hero Worship, 1841; and The Past and Present, of passion, but by refinement of thought and senti. 1843. Familiar with German literature, and admirment. Hamlet is as little of the hero as a man can ing its authors, Mr Carlyle has had great influence in well be; but he is a young and princely novice, full rendering the works of Goëthe, Richter, &c. known in of high enthusiasm and quick sensibility—the sport this country. He has added to our stock of original of circumstances, questioning with fortune, and refin- ideas, and helped to foster a more liberal and peneing on his own feelings, and forced from the natural trative style of criticism amongst us. His philosobias of his disposition by the strangeness of his situa- phical theory has been condemned for its resemblance tion. He seems incapable of deliberate action, and to the Pantheistic system, or idol-worship, Goëthe is only hurried into extremities on the spur of the oc- being the special object of his veneration. It is too casion, when he has no time to reflectmas in the scene fanciful and unreal to be of general practical utility, where he kills Polonius ; and, again, where he alters or to serve as a refuge from the actual cares and the letters which Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are storms of life. It is an intellectual theory, and to taking with them to England, purporting his death. intellectual men may be valuable—for the opinions At other times, when he is most bound to act, he re- and writings of Carlyle tend to enlarge our synpamains puzzled, undecided, and sceptical ; dallies with thies and feelings--to stir the heart with benevolence his purposes till the occasion is lost, and finds out and affection—to unite man to man--and to build some pretence to relapse into indolence and thought- upon this love of our fellow-beings a system of mental fulness again. For this reason he refuses to kill the energy and purity far removed from the operations king when he is at his prayers ; and, by a refinement of sense, and pregnant with high hopes and aspira. in malice, which is in truth only an excuse for his own tions. He is an original and subtle thinker, and want of resolution, defers his revenge to a more fatal combines with his powers of analysis and reasoning opportunity.

a vivid and brilliant imagination. His work on the

French Revolution is a series of paintings-grand, The moral perfection of this character has been terrific, and ghastly. The peculiar style and diction called in question, we think, by those who did not un- of Mr Carlyle have with some retarded, and with derstand it. It is more interesting than according to others advanced his popularity. It is more German rules; amiable, though not faultless. The ethical than English, full of conceits and personifications, delineations of that noble and liberal casuist' (as of high and low things, familiar and recondite, mixed Shakspeare has been well called) do not exhibit the up together without any regard to order or natural drab-coloured quakerism of morality. His plays are connexion. He has no chaste simplicity, no · linked not copied either from The Whole Duty of Man, or sweetness,' or polished uniformity; all is angular, from The Academy of Compliments! We confess objective, and unidiomatic; at times, however, highly we are a little shocked at the want of refinement in graphic, and swelling out into periods of fine imagery those who are shocked at the want of refinement in and eloquence. Even common thoughts, dressed up Hamlet. The neglect of punctilious exactness in his in Mr Carlyle's peculiar costume of words, possess behaviour either partakes of the license of the time,' an air of originality. The style is, on the whole, a or else belongs to the very excess of intellectual re- vicious and affected one (though it may now have finement in the character, which makes the common become natural to its possessor), but is made strikrules of life, as well as his own purposes, sit loose upon ing by the force and genius of which it is the reprehim. He may be said to be amenable only to the

sentative. tribunal of his own thoughts, and is too much taken up with the airy world of contemplation, to lay as much stress as he ought on the practical consequences

[The Succession of Races of Men.] of things. His habitual principles of action are un- Generation after generation takes to itself the form hinged and out of joint with the time. His conduct of a body, and forth issuing from Cimmerian night on to Ophelia is quite natural in his circumstances. It heaven's missions appears. What force and fire is in is that of assumed severity only. It is the effect of each he expends; one grinding in the mill of indus. disappointed hope, of bitter regrets, of affection sus- try; one, hunter-like, climbing the giddy Alpine pended, not obliterated, by the distractions of the heights of science; one madly dashed in pieces on scene around him! Amidst the natural and preter the rocks of strife, in war with his fellow; and then natural horrors of his situation, he might be excused the heaven-sent is recalled; his earthly vesture falls in delicacy from carrying on a regular courtship. away, and soon even to sense becomes a vanished When his father's spirit was in arms, it was not a shadow. Thus, like some wild-flaming, wild-thundertime for the son to make love in. He could neither ing train of heaven's artillery, does this mysterious marry Ophelia, nor wound her mind by explaining the mankind thunder and flame, in long-drawn, quick

6

a

:

succeeding grandeur, through the unknown deep. say, on the roof of the guard-room, some on bayonets Thus, like a God-created, fire-breathing spirit-host, stuck into joints of the wall,' Louis Tournay smites, we emerge from the inane; haste stormfully across brave Aubin Bonnemère (also an old soldier) secondthe astonished earth, then plunge again into the ing him: the chain yields, breaks; the huge drawinane. Earth's mountains are levelled and her seas bridge slams down, thundering (avec fracas). Glofilled up in our passage. Can the earth, which is but rious ; and yet, alas! it is still but the outworks. dead and a vision, resist spirits which have reality The eight grim towers with their Invalides' musketry, and are alive? On the hardest adamant some foot- their paving-stones and cannon-mouths still soar aloft print of us is stamped in; the last rear of the host intact; ditch yawning impassable, stone-faced ; the will read traces of the earliest van. But whence? inner drawbridge with its back towards us: the BasOh heaven! whither? Sense knows not; faith knows tille is still to take! not; only that it is through mystery to mystery, from

Mr Carlyle is a native of the village of EccleGod and to God.

fechan, in Dumfriesshire, the child of parents whose [Attack upon the Bastille.]

personal character seems to have been considerably

more exalted than their circumstances. He was [From the work on the French Revolution.] reared for the Scottish church, but stopped short at All morning, since nine, there has been a cry laborious business of teaching, devoted himself to a

the threshold, and, after some years spent in the everywhere, 'To the Bastille!' Repeated 'deputations of citizens' have been here, passionate for arms;

literary life. whom De Launay has got dismissed by soft speeches through port-holes. Towards noon Elector Thuriot REV. SIDNEY SMITH-LORD JEFFREYde la Rosière gains admittance; finds De Launay

MR T. B. MACAULAY. indisposed for surrender; nay, disposed for blowing up the place rather. Thuriot mounts with him to lection and republication of their contributions to

These three eminent men have lately, by the colthe battlements : heaps of paving-stones, old iron, the Edinburgh Review, taken their place avowedly and missiles lie piled: cannon ali duly levelled; in every embrasure a cannon--only drawn back a little! among the miscellaneous writers of the present cenBut outwards, behold, O Thuriot, how the multitude tury. MR SMITH had, about thirty years previous, flows on, welling through every street; tocsin furiously entitled Letters on the Subject of the Catholics, to my

issued a highly amusing and powerful political tract, pealing, all drums beating the générale : the suburb Brother Abraham, who lives in the Country, by Peter Sainte-Antoine rolling hitherward wholly as one man! Plymley. These letters, after going through twentySuch vision (spectral, yet real) thou, O Thuriot ! as from thy Mount of Vision, beholdest in this moment: He has also included a tract on the Ballot (first pub

one editions, are now included in the author's works. prophetic of other phantasmagories, and loud-gibber- lished in 1839), some speeches on the Catholic

Claims ing spectral realities which thou yet beholdest not, and Reform Bill, Letters on certain proposed Reforms but shalt. Que voulez-vous ? said De Launay, in the Church of England, and a few Sermons. turning pale at the sight, with an air of reproach, Sidney Smith is one of the wittiest and ablest men almost of menace. 'Monsieur,' said Thuriot, rising into the moral sublime, 'what mean you ? . Consider of his age. His powers have always been exercised if I could not precipitate both of us from this height on practical subjects, to correct what he deemed

-say only a hundred feet, exclusive of the walled errors or abuses, to enforce religious toleration, exditch ! •Whereupon De Launay fell silent.

pose cant and hypocrisy, and to inculcate timely Wo to thee, De Launay, in such an hour, if thou reformation. No politician was ever more fearless canst not, taking some one firm decision, 'rule cir- or effective. He has the wit and energy of Swift, cumstances ! Soft speeches will not serve; hard without his coarseness or cynicism, and a peculiar grape-shot is questionable ; but hovering between the breadth of humour and drollery of illustration, that two is un-questionable. Ever wilder swells the tide are potent auxiliaries to his clear and logical arguof men; their infinite hum waxing ever louder into ment. Thus, in ridiculing the idea prevalent among imprecations, perhaps into crackle of stray musketry, many timid though excellent persons at the time of which latter, on walls nine feet thick, cannot do the publication of Plymley's Letters, that a conexecution. The outer drawbridge has been lowered spiracy had been formed against the Protestant refor Thuriot; new deputation of citizens (it is the ligion, headed by the pope, Mr Smith places the third and noisiest of all), penetrates that way into subject in a light highly ludicrous and amusing :the outer court: soft speeches producing no clearance

The pope has not landed-nor are there any of these, De Launay gives fire ; pulls up his draw- curates sent out after him-nor has he been hid at bridge. A slight sputter ; which has kindled the too St Albans by the Dowager Lady Spencer-nor dined combustible chaos; made it a roaring fire-chaos! privately at Holland House—nor been seen near Bursts forth insurrection, at sight of its own blood Dropmore. If these fears exist (which I do not be(for there were deaths by that sputter of fire), into lieve), they exist only in the mind of the chancellor endless rolling explosion of musketry, distraction, of the exchequer [the late Mr Spencer Perceval); execration; and overhead, from the fortress, let one they emanate from his zeal for the Protestant ingreat gun, with its grape-shot, go booming, to show terest; and though they reflect the highest honour what we could do. The Bastille is besieged! upon the delicate irritability of his faith, must cer

On, then, all Frenchmen that have hearts in their tainly be considered as more ambiguous proofs of the bodies ! Roar with all your throats of cartilage and sanity and vigour of his understanding. By this metal, ye sons of liberty ; stir spasmodically what-time, however, the best-informed clergy in the neighsoever of utmost faculty is in you, soul, body, or bourhood of the metropolis are convinced that the spirit; for it is the hour! Smite, thou Louis Tour- rumour is without foundation : and though the pope nay, cartwright of the Marais, old soldier of the is probably hovering about our coast in a fishingRegiment Dauphiné; smite at that outer drawbridge smack, it is most likely he will fall a prey to the chain, though the fiery hail whistles round thee! vigilance of the cruisers : and it is certain he has Never, over nave or felloe did thy axe strike such a not yet polluted the Protestantism of our soil. Exstroke. Down with it, man; down with it to Orcus : actly in the same manner the story of the wooden let the whole accursed edifice sink thither, and gods seized at Charing Cross, by an order from the tyranny be swallowed up for ever! Mounted, some Foreign Office, turns out to be without the shadow