the necessity of such interference by the Legislature as was here attempted. But still we hail it as a token for good, and as an encouragement to all who would regulate their political conduct by regard for the wellbeing of the community at large, that the first division carried against the present Ministry, and that, too, in a House of Commons in which their party strength is so large, and which was elected to so great an extent through the influence of corruption, should have taken place in the cause, however as yet misunderstood, of overwrought, oppressed poverty.

We have left ourselves no space to advert to the publications, the titles of which we have prefixed to the preceding remarks. The first of these contains a faithful picture of the sufferings and sad condition, physically and morally, of large masses of the working population-and though marked with considerable errors, and an over-confidence, as we think, in the capacity of the Church of England to aid materially in the improvement of their condition, it breathes an admirable spirit, and cannot be perused without advantage. The other consists of extracts from the works of some of the most eminent continental writers, exhibiting their views of the causes of the present condition of Britain, and of the means of improving it, and of avoiding the dangers with which we are threatened. The opinions of such men must, under any circumstances, be entitled to the most attentive consideration; and should it prove that the recent extension of the franchise has not, in reality, transferred the substantial power of the State from the great aristocracy to the body of the nation, the social changes suggested by these writers will become the subject of deep and universal interest. Whether, after trying and proving the insufficiency of the economical remedies which now engross men's minds, as has been done in regard to the political remedy lately tried, the day of this empire shall be so prolonged as to admit of the trial of the social remedy recommended by these writers, is hid in the book of Providence; but, without depreciating the value of such remedies for subsisting evils, as most important collateral aids towards that which alone can be thoroughly effectual, we would look to them chiefly as schoolmasters to lead the nation to that change without which all others will be vain-a religious and moral change-extending to the rich as well as to the poor-teaching them their mutual duties to each other, and binding them in the only sure bonds— the ties of Christian brotherhood.

ART. X.-Contributions to the Edinburgh Review. By FRANCIS JEFFREY, now one of the Judges of the Court of Session in Scotland. 4 vols. London. 1844.

THE name prefixed to these volumes would, at any time within the last forty years, have ensured for them the attention and interest of the public. The author's early celebrity and long-sustained reputation, must have rendered any effort from his pen an event in the republic of letters which a faithful historian would hasten to record. To us, who are just commencing our career of criticism, the present work comes laden with peculiar lessons and recollections; and on these we may be allowed to dwell shortly without apology to our readers. It is a service of honour and duty, as well as of gratification, to introduce our efforts in the cause of sound literature by some notice of this remarkable collection, and to consider what instruction we may derive in our self-imposed labours from the writings of the greatest living master of our art.

Other eminent writers in the Edinburgh Review have already published separately the most celebrated of their contributions. A comparison of those now before us with the essays of contemporary critics, naturally suggests itself as the most appropriate test we could use, for estimating accurately their peculiar merits in the school of composition to which they belong. But however high we may be disposed to rate them in such a contrast, it occurs to us, that it is not in that way, or under a process of discrimination so conducted, that their qualities—their best and highest qualities can be rightly appreciated. They were not written for publication in such a shape; neither were they intended as popular writings, simply suited to catch the taste or excite the enthusiasm of the day. They were all parts of a great and gradually matured system of criticism; and the object aimed at in by far the greater proportion of the essays before us, was not so much to produce a pleasing, or attractive, or interesting piece of writing, as to enforce great principles of thought-to Scourge error, and bigotry, and dulness-to instil into the public mind a just sense of the essential requisites of taste and truth in literature and to disperse and wear away, by constant energy, that crust of false sentiment which obscured and nearly extinguished the genius of this country, at the commencement of the present century.

None of these Reviewers, certainly, wrote for separate publication; but perhaps it is only of Jeffrey that any such systematic plan can be predicated. Not only had the occasional contributors to the Review the advantage, for the most part, of choosing their own subject, and their own time, which an editor could not enjoy; but, in general, their writings partake much more of the nature of fugitive essays than of disquisitions connected by any common object, or tending tending collectively to any specific result. Macaulay's Reviews, for instance, are not criticisms, and might often more appropriately have had men than books for their subject. They are philosophical discourses-gorgeous descriptions-picturesque reflections on history and literature; but they have seldom any claim to a place in the pages of a Review beyond the use of it as the vehicle of their communication to the public. With Jeffrey's criticisms it is altogether different. They are occupied much more with the work immediately in hand, and treat it as a subject for analysis more than as a mere text for discourse. The dissertations which occur in them are always brought directly to bear upon the peculiar task of the Reviewer. No man, indeed, who reads these volumes can fail to admire the vast range of subject which this selection embraces, and the wonderful versatility which has so successfully compassed so wide a circuit of literature and philosophy. But these are not their greatest triumphs. They are to be regarded not merely as the types or indications, but as, in a great measure, the instruments of a great intellectual progress of a change which, for its extent, might almost be called a revolution-in the tone of thought prevalent in this country both in politics and letters.

At no time in our history, perhaps, had originality or manliness of thought sunk so low as at the end of last century. On all subjects, independence of action or opinion seems to have been renounced by the great mass of the people. Men had ceased to think for themselves, either on matters of public policy, or on the lighter subjects of literature and taste. Terrified by the horrors of the French Revolution, the great majority of the nation abandoned all concern about their liberty, and trusted blindly to their rulers for freedom and safety; and the universal feeling which absorbed nearly all the enthusiasm of the age, was dread and detestation of revolutionary principles. It is difficult, indeed, to look back without a smile to the childish panic which appears to have possessed the country, of which more than one indication may be found, even in the calm and philosophical pages now before us. In the crisis of the imaginary danger, everything venerable and sacred to British liberty was forgotten. Even its first principles became suspected, if a Jacobin taint could be discovered in them; and all were laid, with the confi

dence of infatuation, at the foot of the Crown, or the Minister of the day.

It cannot be denied, that however unenlightened these sentiments may now appear, they entirely occupied the minds, not merely of the majority of the Houses of Parliament, and of the aristocracy, but the great body of the people. On the other hand, there was another, an infinitely smaller class, whose opinions, though very different, were hardly more conducive to the health or vigour of public feeling. These were the disciples of the French Revolution-men who, looking to that great event as the harbinger of a renovated state of society, regarded the name of antiquity as equivalent to tyranny-seeing nothing august or wise in any established institution, and searching for the foundation of liberty in the dispersion of all acknowledged axioms of religion or government. There was a foppery about these men and their opinions, which, even if they had not been distracted by the turmoil of the times, and the danger to which the minority in which they stood exposed them, was as fatal to the freedom of thought, or the generous action of the mind, as the blind zeal of their opponents. Between these two sections there stood, indeed, a middle party, which, with all its faults, kept alive the flame which has since burnt so brightly, under a leader, who may well be regarded as the impersonation of broad, manly intellect. But, great in talent, it was a band of little weight with the country. The stain of the Coalition, and the personal enmity of the Sovereign, had left Fox, during the remainder of his political career, without the means of public influence-a star too far removed from the political orbit, to warm by its beams, even while it dazzled by its brilliancy. It was one, and not the least of the calamities of the time, that England's greatest statesman was excluded from her service, and his vast endowments of mind, exercised for half a century in his country's service, produced no result so great, as has that legacy he left her, in the lessons of masculine philosophy, and the burning love of freedom, which breathe through the disjected remains of his eloquence, and will last while the constitution endures.

That such a state of public sentiment should have chilled and repressed all independent efforts of genius, is not wonderful. But the poverty of the land in literature, at the time we speak of, can hardly be traced to any cause so recent. Indeed, speculations on the causes which lead to that constant ebb and flow of literary talent, which may be observed in the history of all countries, are at the best unsatisfactory. The contingencies from which they spring are generally too intricate, and their causes too remote, to admit of accurate deduction on the subject. We might theorize long and learnedly enough on the dreary interval

between Pope and Cowper, without discovering any satisfactory solution of it in the state of the community, public or social, during the latter half of the eighteenth century. Looking at it in the mass, from whatever causes the result may be supposed to arise, no similar period of British history, since the age of Elizabeth, was so little respectable in learning or in fancy. The earlier portion of it, no doubt, produced Hume, Gibbon, and Robertson-names as great in their own sphere, as any of which our country can boast. Bolingbroke, their superior in power as in acquirement, was a giant of a former age. Burke, his pupil, belonged rather to politics than literature; and his writings, ardent and enthusiastic as they were, rather served to scathe and wither up independence of spirit in the nation. The great historians, on the contrary, alike in the florid delineations of the English and the classic accuracy of the Scottish authors, are marked by an artificial coldness and indifference, which was one of the features of the time. No natural passion, no heart-born enthusiasm or forgetfulness of art, find place in their great and elaborate works. In poetry, the retrospect is still more barren. To a few, indeed, who flourished during the commencement of the period, it is impossible to deny a respectable place among British authors. Goldsmith, Gray, and Collins, were all, individually, poets of no mean order; and although none of them entitled to rank in the first, may be considered as high in the second class. But whatever their individual power or merits may be, and these cannot be denied or undervalued, they not only did not rise to the highest walks of the art, but they eminently failed in producing effect on the public taste, or stamping their genius on the character of the times. The fetters which Pope had worn so gracefully, remained as an heirloom to his poetical descendants, till all the fancy and elegance of the first master had disappeared, and nothing remained but a certain smooth and empty monotony, without music or strength, and full of exolete tropes, and insipid extravagance. This slavish adherence to the artificial rules of a school which it required all the genius of its author to reconcile with vigour or energy, completely degraded the poetry of the age. The whimsical humours of the Rolliad, or Peter Pindar, or the Anti-Jacobin, do infinitely more credit to its originality, than many volumes of what, in those days, passed for the inspired efforts of a more ambitious muse. The hermit-voice of Cowper, speaking from his solitude, in rough and nervous English, and the impassioned strains of Burns, couched in a language all but foreign to ordinary readers, were among the first examples of emancipation from this ancient thraldom, and the assertion of the genuine power of vigorous and unfettered fancy. But they were no