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ART. VIII.-Memorials of his Time. By HENRY COCKBURN. Fourth Thousand. Edinburgh: 1856.

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HIS posthumous volume requires no introduction to the public at our hands. It has already made its way, with quiet but sure success, to those recesses into which living authors most wish their works to penetrate. Valuable as a contribution to the history of one part of the kingdom during a portion of the last, and of the present, century, sketched by a contemporaneous pen of great acuteness, felicity, and humour, it has also taken its place as one of the pleasantest fireside volumes which has been published of late years. The most exclusively English reader cannot fail to be attracted by the vivid description and quaint colouring of a state of society, of men, of manners, and of politics, as strange to him as if they

had been found in another part of the globe. To ourselves it has an interest of a still deeper kind. It is a legacy left to this generation in Scotland by one of the strong and earnest spirits of the lasta memorial written expressly to teach to later times what courage, honesty, and patriotism have done, and what they may still do, in the cause of truth and right, - an illuminated catalogue of past abuses too preposterous to be believed if they had not been almost too inveterate to be conquered.

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The author was one of a circle of enterprising and able men, who assembling in corners of the Parliament House, and frequenting unpretending lodgings, in Edinburgh, conceived, and in thirty years executed, the idea of emancipating Scotland from a thraldom more intolerant, and a servility more despicable than ever enslaved a country calling itself free. What the pages of this journal may have done for the cause of liberty and intelligence in the empire and the world, it is not for us to say. But through them, the first bold designers of the Edinburgh Review regenerated Scotland. They found her politically debased, the name of liberty almost proscribed within her bounds, and the reality banished from her borders. After living to see its cause triumphant, and to reap themselves the rewards of its triumph, they left her at their death as free, in politics and in intellect, in enterprise and in thought, as any nation on the globe.

How all this was effected-how the first aspirations were prompted how chill and cold, and dispiriting the atmosphere -how dreary the prospect-how those buoyant spirits gradually rose upward beneath the leaden hand which pressed them down - how the Dagon of jobbers, and time-servers, and bigots was assailed, then tottered, and at last fell for ever, this autobiography of Henry Cockburn will tell posterity.

No one was better able, or better entitled, to be the historian of those times than he. He was intimate with all the foremost men of both parties in Scotland, he was in the heat and toil of the battle, and one of the most resolute, and in some respects one of the ablest, of the band. After the first twenty years of conflict were over, and when the glow of dawning victory was already seen on the horizon, he appears to have paused and taken breath for a while. He began, he says, ' to recollect and to inquire,' and the result was that he prepared, during the remainder of his life, memorials of his times, and some description of the prominent men with whom he had acted or to whom he had been opposed. On the death of Jeffrey in 1850, he wove a portion of this record into the biography of his distinguished friend. From the remainder of

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his papers his executors have selected the volume before us. They have performed their task with remarkable taste and ability. A work of this nature, in which a writer with great powers of description traces living characters around him, must have contained many passages too pungent for publication so recently after the events recorded; and the volume before us presents obvious indications of skilful and judicious selection. But the Editors have preserved the faithfulness and continuity of the narrative admirably. The picture gallery has only one omission: it is without one figure which was always prominent in the group, that of Cockburn himself. With a feebler pencil we shall try to supply an outline of those lineaments which were so familiar to his countrymen.

Henry Cockburn was rather below the middle height, firm, wiry, and muscular, inured to active exercise of all kinds, a good swimmer, an accomplished skater, and an intense lover of the fresh breezes of heaven. His face was handsome and intellectual; a capacious brow, which his baldness made still more remarkable, large, lustrous, and in repose rather melancholy eyes, which, however, when roused by energy or wit, sparkled like a hawk's, and a well-formed nose, were the principal characteristics of a very striking physiognomy. His manner and address were, among his friends and intimates, singularly winning and attractive. He was the model of a high-bred Scotch gentleman of the last distinctive school which his country possessed. He spoke with a Doric breadth of accent, such as was used by the higher classes in Scotland towards the end of the last century, untinged alike by mere provincialism, or vulgar affectation of the language of the South. In temperament, while he could assume any mood, and sympathise with all, and was master alike of the stern and the pathetic, he was naturally of an easy and careless hilarity. His flow of good humour was never failing, and neither care, nor anxiety, nor time could quench it. He had high thoughts, noble ambition, deep reflection on men and things, but they never weighed heavily enough upon him to repress the elasticity of a spirit which bore him up through all the vicissitudes of an active life, and burned as brightly at the age of threescore and ten, as it did during the period of his vigorous manhood recounted in these volumes.

Cockburn was one of the most popular men north of the Tweed. His was not the popularity of a great name, like that of Scott, or Jeffrey, or Wilson, or Chalmers. It was good, honest, personal liking. From the Highland chairmen, who stood and still stand at the corners of the streets of Edinburgh, to the Moderator of the General Assembly-from the smallest

'laddie' at the Edinburgh Academy to the old lady of ninety in Trinity Hospital, all knew and delighted in the sunshine of his smile and the cheerful, kindly humour of his address. He had a word and a good deed for all: a skating holiday for the schoolboy-a half-hour's gossip, spiced perhaps with ancient scandal, for the nonogenarian-old-school flirtation for the girls — and exhaustless stores of unrivalled wit and anecdote for his younger associates, all as ready, genial, and heart-springing as his daily intercourse with his contemporaries. Nor was this popularity confined to Edinburgh. He was known to all classes all over Scotland; and from Aberdeen to Wigtown no assemblage of Scotsmen, young or old, could be gathered, in which his lineaments were not known and recognised, or in which his approach was not the signal for a vociferous welcome.

A dash of eccentricity mingled with the originality of his character. Attired with the scrupulous precision of a wellbred man, he set the graces of fashionable dress at defiance. His hat was always the worst, and his shoes, constructed after a cherished pattern of his own, the clumsiest in Edinburgh-so uniformly and characteristically that they became identified with the springing step and picturesque figure of the man. He despised great-coats and umbrellas, and down to the last year of his life constantly wandered forth at midnight, in defiance of rheumatism or lumbago, to enjoy a solitary hour's meditation, or a chatting stroll with any companion, of any age, who might be fortunate and weatherproof enough to accompany him. His junior friends of the schoolboy class always had the impression that he was on their side against despotic authority-an impression not diminished by seeing the eminent barrister-and even the grave judge-careering along the street slides, in defiance of policemen, and giving as much sly countenance to a snowball bicker' as a well-disposed citizen might decently do. In fact, he loved freedom and nature: he detested all that was finical and prudish; and it did one's heart good to witness the energy with which, on breaking up for the holidays, he would incite the liberated urchins to shouts which might wake the seven sleepers.

Popular as he was with all, he was not intimate with many. In mixed company he was silent, reserved, and sensitive; and those who had heard of his proverbial humour and his conversational power, were often disappointed with his quiet unbending gravity. In the society of London (which he rarely visited) he lost that homely animation which gave so great a charm to his conversation within the Scotch border. This

peculiarity, half fastidiousness, half timidity, probably dated as far back as those High School days of which he tells us in the Memorials, when he was led to believe himself hopelessly dull, and when the consciousness of power gradually dawned on his own mind, although unrecognised then by his teachers, or even by his companions. But to see Cockburn as he really was, he should have been found among that congenial circle in Edinburgh of which Sydney Smith says,-Never shall I for'get the happy days spent there, amidst odious smells, barbarous 'sounds, bad suppers, excellent hearts, and most enlightened and 'cultivated understandings.' (Memoirs, vol. i. p. 16.)

As prosperity increased, the suppers probably improved. But the men and their mutual friendship survived, with the charms of conversation, and the power of intellect, to instruct and inspire another generation; and foremost in all topics - wit, merriment, literature, politics, was the voice of Henry Cockburn. After they fairly settled down in their ultimate pursuits, this fraternity of Edinburgh wits remained unbroken for nearly half a century. Many indeed left them early. Sydney Smith was a wayfarer. Brougham and Horner ascended to a higher crag of Olympus. John Richardson, Charles Bell, Thomas Campbell, John Allen, and Leyden, were scd by the attractions of the South. But, from almost the beginning of the century until Jeffrey's death in 1850, the rest of the band remained unbroken; and the men who had been wont to sup in his three story attic in 1801 were still his chosen companions, growing old together in every thing but heart, and the delight and wonder of all who knew them. They had begun their career with little to encourage them, excepting the consciousness of intellectual power, the sunshine of youth and cheerfulness, and the sympathy of friendship. They struggled, conquered, and prospered in company; and during that long period scarcely an evening passed without their meeting, nor did they ever meet without high and noble interchange of thought, and many a brilliant passage of the foils. Who that was ever admitted within that circle of vigorous and kindly spirits will ever forget its charm? Jeffrey, all brilliancy, fancy and animation, mellowed in his later years with the wise philosophy of experience. Thomas Thomson, whose great conversational powers were drawn from stores of the profoundest learning, and the most refined and cultivated taste. Fullerton, with his good-humoured gaiety, which not gout itself could vanquish, his courtly breeding, and pleasant wit. Moncreiff, relaxing for an hour his intellectual energy from a profession of which he was the acknowledged master. Murray, genial,

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