it is poetically just and eloquent, even were it not inspired-in the sacred writings, where the Elders had joined themselves in a plot which had appeared to have succeeded; for that,' as the Book says, "they had hardened their hearts, and had turned away their eyes, that they might not look at Heaven, and that they might do the purposes of unjust judgments.' But they, though giving a clear, consistent, uncontradicted story, were disappointed, and their victim was rescued from their gripe by the trifling circumstance of a contradiction about a tamarisk tree. Let not men call these contradictions or those falsehoods which false witnesses swear to from needless and heedless falsehood, not going to the main body of the case, but to the main body of the credit of the witnesses-let not men rashly and blindly call these things accidents. They are just rather than merciful dispensations of that Providence which wills not that the guilty should triumph, and which favourably protects the innocent.

Such, my Lords, is the case now before you! Such is the evidence in support of the measure-evidence inadequate to prove a debt-impotent to deprive of a civil right-ridiculous to convict of the lowest offence monstrous to ruin the honour, to blast the name of an English queen! What shall I say, then, if this is the proof by which an act of judicial legislation, a parliamentary sentence, an ex post facto law, is sought to be passed against this defenceless woman? My Lords, I pray you to pause. I do earnestly beseech you to take heed! You are standing upon the brink of a precipice; then beware! It will go forth your judgment, if sentence shall go against the queen. But it will be the only judgment you ever pronounced, which, instead of reaching its object, will return and bound back upon those who gave it. Save the country, my Lords, from the horrors of this catastrophe-save yourselves from this peril; rescue that country of which you are the ornaments, but in which you can flourish no longer, when severed from the people, than the blossom when cut off from the roots and the stem of the tree. Save that country, that you may continue to adorn it; save the Crown, which is in jeopardy; the Aristocracy, which is shaken; save the Altar, which must stagger with the blow that rends its kindred Throne. You have said, my Lords, you have willed-the Church and the King have willed-that the queen should be deprived of its solemn service. She has, instead of that solemnity, the heartfelt prayers of the people. She wants no prayers of mine. But I do here pour forth my humble supplications at the throne of mercy, that that mercy may be poured down upon the people in a larger measure than the merits of their rulers may deserve, and that your hearts may be turned to justice!

run.

Law Reform.

From Speech in the House of Commons, Feb. 7, 1828.

The course is clear before us; the race is glorious to You have the power of sending your name down through all times, illustrated by deeds of higher fame, and more useful import, than ever were done within these walls. You saw the greatest warrior of the ageconqueror of Italy-humbler of Germany-terror of the North-saw him account all his matchless victories poor, compared with the triumph you are now in a condition to win-saw him contemn the fickleness of Fortune, while, in despite of her, he could pronounce his memorable boast: I shall go down to posterity with the Code in my hand.' You have vanquished him in the field; strive now to rival him in the sacred arts of peace! Outstrip him as a lawgiver, whom in arms you overcame! The lustre of the Regency will be eclipsed by the more solid and enduring splendour of the Reign. The praise which false courtiers feigned for our Edwards and Harrys, the Justinians of their day, will be the just tribute of the wise and the good to that monarch under

whose sway so mighty an undertaking shall be accomplished. Of a truth, the holders of sceptres are most chiefly to be envied for that they bestow the power of thus conquering, and ruling. It was the boast of Augustus-it formed part of the glare in which the perfidies of his earlier years were lost-that he found Rome of brick and left it of marble; a praise not unworthy a great prince, and to which the present also has its claims. But how much nobler will be the sovereign's boast, when he shall have it to say, that he found law dear and left it cheap; found it a sealed book, left it a living letter; found it the patrimony of the rich, left it the inheritance of the poor; found it the two-edged sword of craft and oppression, left it the staff of honesty and the shield of innocence!

ISAAC D'ISRAELI.

A taste for literary history and anecdote was diffused by MR ISAAC D'ISRAELI (1766-1848), author of the Curiosities of Literature, and a long series of kindred works and compilations. After some abortive poetical efforts, Mr D'Israeli in 1791 published the first volume of his Curiosities of Literature; a second was added in 1792, and a third in 1817. A second series in three volumes was published in 1823. During the progress of this magnum opus of the author, he issued essays on Anecdotes, on the Manners and Genius of the Literary Character, a volume of Miscellanies or Literary Recreations, and several volumes of novels and romances long since forgotten. At length, in 1812, he struck into his natural vein with Calamities of Authors, Quarrels of Authors, 1814; the Literary and Political Character of James I., 1816; Commentaries on the Life and Reign of Charles I., 1828-31; Eliot, Hampden,and Pym, 1832 ; &c. Though labouring under partial blindness, Mr D'Israeli in 1841 issued three volumes entitled The Amenities of Literature, consisting, like the Curiosities and Miscellanies, of detached papers and dissertations on literary and historical subjects, written in a pleasant philosophical style, which presents the fruits of antiquarian research and study-not, however, always well digested or accurately stated

without their dryness and general want of connection. Few authors have traversed so many fields of literature, and gleaned such a variety of curious and interesting particulars. After a long life spent in literary research and composition, Mr D'Israeli died at his seat of Brandenham House, Bucks, in 1848, aged eighty-two. In the following year, a new edition-the fourteenth-of the Curiosities of Literature was published, accompanied with a memoir from the pen of his son, the Right Hon. Benjamin Disraeli, who has since published a collected edition of his father's works in seven handsome portable volumes. The family of D'Israeli settled in England in 1748. The father of Isaac was an Italian descendant of one of the Hebrew families whom the Inquisition forced to emigrate from the Spanish peninsula at the end of the fifteenth century, and who found a refuge in the Venetian republic. His ancestors,' says Mr Benjamin Disraeli, had dropped their Gothic surname on their settlement in the Terra Firma, and, grateful to the God of Jacob who had sustained them through unprecedented trials, and guarded them through unheard-of perils, they assumed the name of Disraeli [more correctly D'Israeli, for so it was written down to the time

of its present political owner], a name never borne before or since by any other family, in order that their race might be for ever recognised.' This seems a poetical genealogy. Benjamin D'Israeli, the first English settler of the race, entered into business in London, made a fortune while still in middle life, and retired to Enfield, where he died in 1817, at the age of ninety. Isaac, his son, was wholly devoted to literature. His parents considered him moon-struck, but after various efforts to make him a man of business, they acquiesced in his determination to become a man of letters. He wrote a poem against Wolcot, a satire On the Abuse of Satire, and then entered on that course of antiquarian literary research which has made his name known to the world. His fortune was sufficient for his wants, his literary reputation was considerable, and he possessed a happy equanimity of character. 'His feelings,' says his son, "though always amiable, were not painfully deep, and amid joy or sorrow, the philosophic vein was ever evident.' His thoughts all centred in his library! The Curiosities of Literature still maintain their place. Some errors-chiefly in boasted discoveries and second-hand quotations have been pointed out by Mr Bolton Corney, in his amusing and sarcastic volume of Illustrations (1838), but the labours of D'Israeli are not likely to be soon superseded. He was not the first in the field. Among my earliest literary friends,' he says, two distinguished themselves by their anecdotical literature; James Petit Andrews, by his Anecdotes Ancient and Modern, and William Seward, by his Anecdotes of Distinguished Persons. These volumes were favourably received, and to such a degree, that a wit of that day, and who is still (1839) a wit as well as a poet, considered that we were far gone in our anecdotage." " D'Israeli's work, The Literary Character, or the History of Men of Genius drawn from their own Feelings and Confessions, is his ablest production. It was a favourite with Byron-' often a consolation, and always a pleasure."

REV. CALEB C. COLTON.

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An excellent collection of apophthegms and moral reflections was published in 1820, under the title of Lacon, or Many Things in Few Words; addressed to those who Think. Six editions of the work were disposed of within a twelvemonth, and the author in 1822 added a second volume to the collection. The history of the author of Lacon conveys a moral more striking than any of his maxims. The REV. CALEB C. COLTON was vicar of Kew and Petersham; gambling and extravagance forced him to leave England, and he resided some time in America and in Paris. In the French capital he is said to have been so successful as a gamester that in two years he realised £25,000. He committed suicide at Fontainebleau in 1832. We subjoin a few of the reflections from Lacon.

* Those works are now rarely met with. The Anecdotes of JAMES PETIT ANDREWS (1737-1797) were published in 1789-90. He wrote also a Continuation of Henry's History of England, and other historical and antiquarian works.-WILLIAM SEWARD (1747-1799) published his Anecdotes of some Distinguished Persons, in two volumes, in 1794. He added three more volumes, and afterwards another work of the same kind, Biographiana, two volumes, 1799. Mr Seward was the son of a wealthy brewer, partner in the firm of Calvert & Co. Notices of him will be found in Boswell's Life of Johnson.

True Genius always united to Reason. The great examples of Bacon, of Milton, of Newton, of Locke, and of others, happen to be directly against the popular inference, that a certain wildness of eccentricity and thoughtlessness of conduct are the necessary accompaniments of talent, and the sure indications of genius. Because some have united these extravagances with great demonstrations of talent, as a Rousseau, a Chatterton, a Savage, a Burns, or a Byron, others, finding it less difficult to be eccentric than to be brilliant, world would give them credit for the other. But the have therefore adopted the one, in the hope that the greatest genius is never so great as when it is chastised and subdued by the highest reason; it is from such a combination, like that of Bucephalus reined in by Alexander, that the most powerful efforts have been produced. And be it remembered, that minds of the very highest order, who have given an unrestrained course to their caprice, or to their passions, would have been so much higher, by subduing them; and that, so far from presuming that the world would give them credit for talent, on the score of their aberrations and their extravagances, all that they dared hope or expect has been, that the world would pardon and overlook manifold proofs they were constantly exhibiting of those extravagances, on account of the various and superior acquirement and inspiration. We might also add, that the good effects of talent are universal, the evil of its blemishes confined. The light and heat of the sun benefit all, and are by all enjoyed; the spots on his surface are discoverable only to the few. But the lower order of aspirers to fame and talent have pursued a very different course; instead of exhibiting talent in the hope that the world would forgive their eccentricities, they have exhibited only their eccentricities in the hope that the world would give them

credit for talent.

Error only to be Combated by Argument.

We should justly ridicule a general, who, just before an action, should suddenly disarm his men, and putting into the hands of all of them a Bible, should order them, thus equipped, to march against the enemy. Here we plainly see the folly of calling in the Bible to support the sword; but is it not as great a folly to call in the sword to support the Bible? Our Saviour divided force from reason, and let no man presume to join what God hath put asunder. When we combat error with any other weapon than argument, we err more than those

whom we attack.

Mystery and Intrigue.

There are minds so habituated to intrigue and mystery in themselves, and so prone to expect it from others, that they will never accept of a plain reason for a plain fact, if it be possible to devise not worth the carriage. Like the miser of Berkshire, causes for it that are obscure, far-fetched, and usually who would ruin a good horse to escape a turnpike, so these gentlemen ride their high-bred theories to death, in order to come at truth, through by-paths, lanes, and alleys; while she herself is jogging quietly along, upon the high and beaten road of common-sense. The consequence is, that those who take this mode of arriving at truth, are sometimes before her, and sometimes behind her, but very seldom with her. Thus the great statesman who relates the conspiracy against Doria, pauses to deliberate upon, and minutely to scrutinise into divers and sundry errors committed, and opportunities neglected, whereby he would wish to account for the total failure of that spirited enterprise. But the plain fact was, that the scheme had been so well planned and digested, that it was victorious in every point of its operation, both on the sea

and on the shore, in the harbour of Genoa no less than in the city, until that most unlucky accident befell the Count de Fiesque, who was the very life and soul of the conspiracy. In stepping from one galley to another, the plank on which he stood upset, and he fell into the sea. His armour happened to be very heavy-the night to be very dark-the water to be very deep-and the bottom to be very muddy. And it is another plain fact, that water, in all such cases, happens to make no distinction whatever between a conqueror and a cat.

Magnanimity in Humble Life.

In the obscurity of retirement, amid the squalid poverty and revolting privations of a cottage, it has often been my lot to witness scenes of magnanimity and self-denial, as much beyond the belief as the practice of the great; a heroism borrowing no support either from the gaze of the many or the admiration of the few, yet flourishing amidst ruins, and on the confines of the grave; a spectacle as stupendous in the moral world as the falls of the Missouri in the natural; and, like that mighty cataract, doomed to display its grandeur only where there are no eyes to appreciate its magnificence.

Avarice..

Avarice begets more vices than Priam did children, and, like Priam, survives them all. It starves its keeper to surfeit those who wish him dead; and makes him submit to more mortifications to lose heaven than the martyr undergoes to gain it. Avarice is a passion full of paradox, a madness full of method; for although the miser is the most mercenary of all beings, yet he serves the worst master more faithfully than some Christians do the best, and will take nothing for it. He falls down and worships the god of this world, but will have neither its pomps, its vanities, nor its pleasures for his trouble. He begins to accumulate treasure as a mean to happiness, and by a common but morbid association, he continues to accumulate it as an end. He lives poor, to die rich, and is the mere jailer of his house, and the turnkey of his wealth. Impoverished by his gold, he slaves harder to imprison it in his chest, than his brother-slave to liberate it from the mine. The avarice of the miser may be termed the grand sepulchre of all his other passions, as they successively decay. But, unlike other tombs, it is enlarged by repletion, and strengthened by age. This latter paradox, so peculiar to this passion, must be ascribed to that love of power so inseparable from the human mind. There are three kinds of power-wealth, strength, and talent; but as old age always weakens, often destroys the two latter, the aged are induced to cling with the greater avidity to the former. And the attachment of the aged to wealth must be a growing and a progressive attachment, since such are not slow in discovering that those same ruthless years which detract so sensibly from the strength of their bodies and of their minds, serve only to augment and to consolidate the strength of their purse.

JOHN NICHOLS-ARTHUR YOUNG. One of the most industrious of literary collectors and editors was JOHN NICHOLS (1745-1826), who for nearly half a century conducted the Gentleman's Magazine. Mr Nichols was early put apprentice to WILLIAM BOWYER, an eminent London printer (1699-1778), who, with scholarship that reflected honour on himself and his craft, edited an edition of the New Testament, with notes, and was author of several philological tracts. On the death of Bowyer, Mr Nichols carried on the printing business-in which he had previously been a partner-and became associated

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with David Henry, the brother-in-law of Cave, the original proprietor of the Gentleman's Magazine. Henry died in 1792, and the whole labours of the magazine and business devolved on Mr Nichols, whose industry was never relaxed. The most important of his numerous labours are his Anec dotes, Literary and Biographical, of William Bowyer, 1782; The History and Antiquities of Leicester, 1795-1811; Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century, eight volumes, 1812-14; and Illustrations of the Literature of the Eighteenth Century-supplementary to the Anecdotes-three volumes octavo. Additions have from time to

time been made to these works by Mr Nichols's son and successor, so that the Anecdotes form nine large volumes, and the Illustrations eight volumes, the seventeenth-completing the series-having been issued in 1859. Mr Nichols edited the correspondence of Atterbury and Steele, Fuller's Worthies, Swift's works, &c., and compiled accounts of the Royal Progresses and Processions of Queen Elizabeth and James I., each in three volumes quarto.

ARTHUR YOUNG (1741-1820) was eminent for his writings and services in the promotion of agriculture. He was one of the first who succeeded in elevating this great national interest to the dignity of a science, and rendering it popular among the higher classes of the country. He was for many years an unsuccessful theorist and experimenter on a small paternal estate in Suffolk to which he succeeded, but the knowledge thus acquired he turned to good account. In 1770 he commenced a periodical, entitled The Farmer's Calendar; and he afterwards edited another periodical, The Annals of Agriculture, to which King George III. was an occasional contributor. A list of his published letters, pamphlets, &c. on subjects of rural economy, would fill one of our pages; but the most important of Young's works are a Tour in Ireland, 1776-79, and Travels in France, 1787-89. These journeys were undertaken by the recommendation and assistance of government, with a view of ascertaining the cultivation, wealth, resources, and prosperity of Ireland and France. He was author also of surveys of the counties of Suffolk, Norfolk, Lincoln, Hertford, Essex, and Oxford; with reports on waste lands, inclosures, &c. The French Revolution alarmed Young with respect to its probable effects on the English lower classes, and he wrote several warning treatises and political tracts. Sir John Sinclair-another devoted and patriotic agriculturist-having prevailed on Pitt to establish a Board of Agriculture, Arthur Young was appointed its secretary, with a salary of £400 per annum, and he was indefatigable in his exertions to carry out the views of the association. To the end of his long life, even after he was afflicted with blindness, the attention of Mr Young was devoted to pursuits of practical utility. Some of his theories as to the system of large farms-for which he was a strenuous advocate-and other branches of agricultural labour, may be questioned; but he was a valuable pioneer, who cleared the way for many improvements since accomplished.

SIR JOHN CARR.

A series of light descriptive and gossiping tours, by SIR JOHN CARR (1772-1832), made con

geographical dissertations and works on natural history. His imagination could lighten up the driest details; but it was often too excursive and unbridled. His works were also hastily produced, 'to provide for the day that was passing over him; but, considering these disadvantages, his intellectual energy and acquirements were wonderful.

TRAVELLERS
MACARTNEY-STAUNTON-BRUCE-MUNGO
PARK.

The growing importance of our trade with China suggested a mission to the imperial court, in order to obtain some extension of the limits within which the traffic was confined. In 1792 an embassy was formed on a liberal scale, LORD MACARTNEY (17371806) being placed at its head, and SIR GEORGE L. STAUNTON (1737-1801) being secretary of legation or envoy-extraordinary. These two able diplomatists and travellers had served together in India, Macartney as governor of Madras, and Staunton as his secretary. The latter negotiated the peace with Tippoo Sahib in 1784, for which he was elevated to the baronetcy, and received from the East India Company a pension of £500 a year. The mission to China did not result in securing the commercial advantages anticipated, but the Journal published by Lord Macartney, and the Authentic Account of the Embassy by Sir George Staunton, added greatly to our knowledge of the empire and people of China. Sir George's work was in two volumes quarto, and formed one of the most interesting and novel books of travels in the language. It was read with great avidity, and translated into French and German.

One of the most romantic and persevering of our travellers was JAMES BRUCE of Kinnaird, a Scottish gentleman of ancient family and property, who devoted several years to a journey into Abyssinia to discover the sources of the river Nile. The fountains of celebrated rivers have led to some of our most interesting exploratory expeditions. Superstition has hallowed the sources of the Nile and the Ganges, and the mysterious Niger long wooed our adventurous travellers into the sultry plains of Africa. The inhabitants of mountainous countries still look with veneration on their principal streams, and as they roll on before them, connect them in imagination with the ancient glories or traditional legends of their native land. Bruce partook largely of this feeling, and was a man of an ardent enthusiastic temperament. He was born at Kinnaird House, in the county of Stirling, on the 14th of December 1730, and was intended for the legal profession. He was averse, however, to the study of the law, and entered into business as a wine-merchant in London. Being led to visit Spain and Portugal, he was struck with the architectural ruins and chivalrous tales of the Moorish dominion, and applied himself diligently to the study of Eastern antiquities and languages. On his return to England he became known to the government, and it was proposed that he should make a journey to Barbary, which had been partially explored by Dr Shaw. At the same time, the consulship of Algiers became vacant, and Bruce was appointed to the office. He left England, and arrived at Algiers in 1762.

Above six years were spent by our traveller at Algiers and in various travels during which he surveyed and sketched the ruins of Palmyra and Baalbec-and it was not till June 1768 that he reached Alexandria. Thence he proceeded to Cairo, and embarked on the Nile. He arrived at Gondar, the capital of Abyssinia, and after some stay there, he set out for the sources of Bahr-el-Azrek, under an impression that this was the principal branch of the Nile. The spot was at length pointed out by his guide-a hillock of green sod in the middle of a watery plain. The guide counselled him to pull off his shoes, as the people were all pagans, and prayed to the river as if it were God.

First View of the Supposed Source of the Nile.

loss of my sash, and throwing off my shoes, I ran down 'Half-undressed as I was,' continues Bruce, 'by the the hill towards the hillock of green sod, which was about two hundred yards distant; the whole side of the hill was thick grown with flowers, the large bulbous roots of which appearing above the surface of the ground, and their skins coming off on my treading upon them, occasioned me two very severe falls before I reached the brink of the marsh. I after this came to the altar of green turf, which was apparently the work of art, and I stood in rapture above the principal fountain, which rises in the middle of it. It is easier to guess than to describe the situation of my mind at that genius, industry, and inquiry of both ancients and moment-standing in that spot which had baffled the moderns for the course of near three thousand years. Kings had attempted this discovery at the head of armies, and each expedition was distinguished from the last only by the difference of numbers which had perished, and agreed alone in the disappointment which had uniformly, and without exception, followed them all. Fame, riches, and honour had been held out for a series of ages to every individual of those myriads these princes commanded, without having produced one man capable of gratifying the curiosity of his sovereign, or wiping off this stain upon the enterprise and abilities of mankind, or adding this desideratum for the encouragetriumphed here, in my own mind, over kings and their ment of geography. Though a mere private Briton, I armies! and every comparison was leading nearer and nearer to presumption, when the place itself where I stood, the object of my vainglory, suggested what depressed my short-lived triumph. I was but a few minutes arrived at the sources of the Nile, through numberless dangers and sufferings, the least of which would have overwhelmed me, but for the continual goodness and protection of Providence: I was, however, but then half through my journey, and all those dangers through which I had already passed awaited me on my return; I found a despondency gaining ground fast, and woven for myself.'

blasting the crown of laurels which I had too rashly

After several adventures in Abyssinia, in the course of which he received high personal distinctions from the king, Bruce obtained leave to depart. He returned through the great deserts of Nubia into Egypt, encountering the severest hardships and dangers from the sand-floods and simoom of the desert, and his own physical sufferings and exhaustion.

It was not until seventeen years after his return that Bruce published his Travels. Parts had been made public, and were much ridiculed. Even Johnson doubted whether he had ever been in Abyssinia! The work appeared in 1790, in five large quarto volumes, with another volume of