original inventive genius, he had a peculiar and inimitable breadth of humour and drollery of illustration that served as potent auxiliaries to his clear and logical argument. Shortly after Mr Smith's death, a paper was published, entitled A Fragment on the Irish Roman Catholic Church, which he had left in an incomplete state. A Memoir of his life, with a selection from his Letters, was given to the world in 1855, by his daughter, Lady Holland.

Wit the Flavour of the Mind.

When wit is combined with sense and information; when it is softened by benevolence and restrained by principle; when it is in the hands of a man who can use it and despise it-who can be witty and something more than witty-who loves honour, justice, decency, good-nature, morality, and religion ten thousand times better than wit-wit is then a beautiful and delightful part of our nature. Genuine and innocent wit like this is surely the flavour of the mind. Man could direct his ways by plain reason, and support his life by tasteless food; but God has given us wit, and flavour, and brightness, and laughter, and perfumes, to enliven the days of man's pilgrimage, and to charm his pained steps over the burning marl.

Difficulty of Governing a Nation.

It would seem that the science of government is an unappropriated region in the universe of knowledge. Those sciences with which the passions can never interfere, are considered to be attainable only by study and by reflection; while there are not many young men who doubt of their ability to make a constitution, or to govern a kingdom; at the same time there cannot, perhaps, be a more decided proof of a superficial understanding than the depreciation of those difficulties which are inseparable from the science of government. To know well the local and the natural man; to track the silent march of human affairs; to seize, with happy intuition, on those great laws which regulate the prosperity of empires; to reconcile principles to circumstances, and be no wiser than the times will permit; to anticipate the effects of every speculation upon the entangled relations and awkward complexity of real life; and to follow out the theorems of the senate to the daily comforts of the cottage, is a task which they will fear most who know it best-a task in which the great and the good have often failed, and which it is not only wise, but pious and just in common men to avoid.

Means of Acquiring Distinction.

It is natural to every man to wish for distinction; and the praise of those who can confer honour by their praise, in spite of all false philosophy, is sweet to every human heart; but as eminence can be but the lot of a few, patience of obscurity is a duty which we owe not more to our own happiness than to the quiet of the world at large. Give a loose, if you are young and ambitious, to that spirit which throbs within you; measure yourself with your equals; and learn, from frequent competition, the place which nature has allotted to you; make of it no mean battle, but strive hard; strengthen your soul to the search of truth, and follow that spectre of excellence which beckons you on beyond the walls of the world to something better than man has yet done. It may be you shall burst out into light and glory at the last; but if frequent failure convince you of that mediocrity of nature which is incompatible with great actions, submit wisely and cheerfully to your lot; let no mean spirit of revenge tempt you to throw off your loyalty to your country, and to prefer a vicious celebrity to obscurity crowned with piety and virtue.

If you can throw new light upon moral truth, or by any exertions multiply the comforts or confirm the happiness of mankind, this fame guides you to the true ends of your nature; but in the name of God, as you tremble at retributive justice, and in the name of mankind, if mankind be dear to you, seek not that easy and accursed fame which is gathered in the work of revolutions; and deem it better to be for ever unknown, than to found a momentary name upon the basis of anarchy and irreligion.

Locking in on Railways.

Railway travelling is a delightful improvement of human life. Man is become a bird; he can fly longer and quicker than a solan goose. The mamma rushes sixty miles in two hours to the aching finger of her conjugating and declining grammar-boy. The early Scotchman scratches himself in the morning mists of the north, and has his porridge in Piccadilly before the setting sun. The Puseyite priest, after a rush of a hundred miles, appears with his little volume of nonsense at the breakfast of his bookseller. Everything is near, everything is immediate-time, distance, and delay are abolished. But, though charming and fascinating as all this is, we must not shut our eyes to the price we shall pay for it. There will be every three or four years some dreadful massacre-whole trains will be hurled down a precipice, and two hundred or three hundred persons will be killed on the spot. There will be every now and then a great combustion of human bodies, as there has been at Paris; then all the newspapers up in arms-a thousand regulations, forgotten as soon as the directors dare-loud screams of the velocity whistle-monopoly locks and bolts as before.

The locking plea of directors is philanthropy; and I admit that to guard men from the commission of moral evil is as philanthropical as to prevent physical suffering. There is, I allow, a strong propensity in mankind to travel on railways without paying; and to lock mankind in till they have completed their share of the contract is benevolent, because it guards the species from degrading and immoral conduct; but to burn or crush a whole train, merely to prevent a few immoral insides from not paying, is, I hope, a little more than Ripon or Gladstone will permit.

We have been, up to this point, very careless of our railway regulations. The first person of rank who is killed will put everything in order, and produce a code of the most careful rules. I hope it will not be one of the bench of bishops; but should it be so destined, let the burnt bishop-the unwilling Latimer-remember that, however painful gradual concoction by fire may be, his death will produce unspeakable benefits to the public. From that moment the bad effects of the monopoly Even Sodor and Man will be better than nothing. are destroyed; no more fatal deference to the directors; no despotic incarceration, no barbarous inattention to the anatomy and physiology of the human body; no We shall then find it possible voyager libre sans mourir. commitment to locomotive prisons with warrant.

A Model Bishop.

A grave elderly man, full of Greek, with sound views of the middle voice and preterperfect tense, gentle and kind to his poor clergy, of powerful and commanding eloquence; in parliament, never to be put down when the great interests of mankind were concerned; leaning to the government when it was right, leaning to the people when they were right; feeling that, if the Spirit of God had called him to that high office, he was called for no mean purpose, but rather that, seeing clearly, and acting boldly, and intending purely, he might confer lasting benefits on mankind.

All Curates hope to draw Great Prizes.

I am surprised it does not strike the mountaineers how very much the great emoluments of the church are flung open to the lowest ranks of the community. Butchers, bakers, publicans, schoolmasters, are perpetually seeing their children elevated to the mitre. Let a respectable baker drive through the city from the west end of the town, and let him cast an eye on the battlements of Northumberland House; has his little muffin-faced son the smallest chance of getting in among the Percies, enjoying a share of their luxury and splendour, and of chasing the deer with hound and horn upon the Cheviot Hills? But let him drive his alum-steeped loaves a little further, till he reaches St Paul's Churchyard, and all his thoughts are changed when he sees that beautiful fabric; it is not impossible that his little penny-roll may be introduced into that splendid oven. Young Crumpet is sent to school-takes to his books-spends the best years of his life, as all eminent Englishmen do, in making Latin verses-knows that the crum in crumpet is long, and the pet shortgoes to the university-gets a prize for an Essay on the Dispersion of the Jews-takes orders becomes a bishop's chaplain-has a young nobleman for his pupil-publishes a useless classic, and a serious call to the unconverted-and then goes through the Elysian transitions of prebendary, dean, prelate, and the long train of purple, profit, and power.

FRANCIS JEFFREY.

FRANCIS JEFFREY, who exercised greater influence on the periodical literature and criticism of this century than any of his contemporaries, was a native of Edinburgh, born on the 23d of October 1773. His father was a depute-clerk in the Court of Session. After education at the High School of Edinburgh, two sessions at the university of Glasgow, and one session-from October to June 1791-92-at Queen's College, Oxford, Mr Jeffrey studied Scots law, and passed as an advocate in 1794. For many years his income did not exceed £100 per annum, but his admirable economy and independent spirit kept him free from debt, and he was indefatigable in the cultivation of his intellectual powers. He was already a Whig in politics. His literary ambition and political sentiment found scope in the Edinburgh Review, the first number of which appeared in October 1802. We have quoted Sydney Smith's account of the origin of this work; the following is a statement on the subject made by Jeffrey to Mr Robert Chambers in 1846:

I cannot say exactly where the project of the Edinburgh Review was first talked of among the projectors. But the first serious consultations about it and which led to our application to a publisher-were held in a small house, where I then lived, in Buccleuch Place (I forget the number). They were attended by S. Smith, F. Horner, Dr Thomas Brown, Lord Murray (John Archibald Murray, a Scottish advocate, and now one of the Scottish judges), and some of them also by Lord Webb Seymour, Dr John Thomson, and Thomas Thomson. The first three numbers were given to the publisher-he taking the risk and defraying the charges. There was then no individual editor, but as many of us as could be

This gentleman, distinguished for his liberality and munificence, died in Edinburgh, on the 7th of March 1859, aged

eighty-one.

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got to attend used to meet in a dingy room of Willison's printing-office, in Craig's Close, where the proofs of our own articles were read over and remarked upon, and attempts made also to sit in judgment on the few manuscripts which were then offered by strangers. But we had seldom patience to go through with this; and it was soon found necessary to have a responsible editor, and the office was pressed upon me. About the same time, Constable (the publisher) was told that he must allow ten guineas a sheet to the contributors, to which he at once assented; and not long after the minimum was raised to sixteen guineas, at which it remained during my reign. Two-thirds of the articles were paid much higher-averaging, I should think, from twenty to twenty-five guineas a sheet on the whole number. I had, I might say, an unlimited discretion in this respect, and must do the publishers the justice to say that they never made the slightest objection. Indeed, as we all knew that they had-for a long time, at least-a very great profit, they probably felt that they were at our mercy. Smith was by far the most timid of the confederacy, and believed that, unless our incognito was strictly maintained, we could not go on a day; and this was his object for making us hold our dark divans at Willison's office, to which he insisted on our repairing singly, and by back-approaches or different lanes. He had also so strong an impression of Brougham's indiscretion and rashness, that he would not let him be a member of our association, though wished for by all the rest. He was admitted, however, after the third number, and did more work for us than anybody. Brown took offence at some alterations Smith had made in a trifling article of his in the second number, and left us thus early; publishing at the same time, in a magazine, the fact of his secession-a step which we all deeply regretted, and thought scarcely justified by the provocation. Nothing of the kind occurred ever after.'

Jeffrey's memory had failed him as respects the first number of the Review, for Brougham wrote six of the articles in that number. In the Autobiography of the latter, it is stated that Jeffrey's salary as editor was for five or six years £300 a year, and afterwards £500. We have always understood that it was £50 each number from 1803 to 1809, and afterwards £200 each number. The youth of the Edinburgh reviewers was a fertile source of ridicule and contempt, but the fact was exaggerated. Smith, its projector, was thirty-one; Jeffrey, twenty-nine; Brougham, Horner, and Brown, twenty-four each-'excellent ages for such work,' as Henry Cockburn, the biographer of Jeffrey, has remarked. The world was all before the young adventurers! The only critical journal of any reputation was the Monthly Review, into which Mackintosh, Southey, and William Taylor of Norwich, occasionally threw a few pages of literary or political speculation, but without aiming at such lengthy disquisitions or severe critical analysis as those attempted by the new aspirants.

The chief merit and labour attaching to the continuance and the success of the Edinburgh Review fell on its accomplished editor. From 1803 to 1829 Mr Jeffrey had the sole management of the Review; and when we consider the distinguished ability which it has uniformly displayed,

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and the high moral character it has upheld, together with the independence and fearlessness with which from the first it has promulgated its canons of criticism on literature, science, and government, we must admit that few men have exercised such influence as Francis Jeffrey on the whole current of contemporary literature and public opinion. Besides his general superintendence, Mr Jeffrey was a large contributor to the Review. The departments of poetry and elegant literature seem to have been his chosen field; and he constantly endeavoured, as he says, 'to combine ethical precepts with literary criticism, and earnestly sought to impress his readers with a sense both of the close connection between sound intellectual attainments and the higher elements of duty and enjoyment, and of the just and ultimate subordination of the former to the latter.' This was a vocation of high mark and responsibility, and on the whole the critic discharged his duty with honour and success. As a moral writer he was unimpeachable. In poetical criticism he sometimes failed. This was conspicuously the case as regards Wordsworth and Coleridge, whose originality and rich imaginative genius he would not or could not appreciate. To Montgomery, Lamb, and other young authors he was harsh and unjust. Flushed with success and early ambition, Jeffrey and his coadjutors were more intent on finding fault than in discovering beauties, and were more piqued by occasional deviation from old established conventional rules than gratified by meeting with originality of thought or traces of true inventive genius. They improved in this respect as they grew older, and Jeffrey lived to express regret for the undue severity into which he was occasionally betrayed. Where no prejudice or prepossession intervened, he was an admirable critic. If he was not profound, he was interesting and graceful. His little dissertations on the style and works of Cowper, Crabbe, Byron, and Scott (always excepting the review of Marmion, which is a miserable piece of nibbling criticism), as well as his observations on moral science and the philosophy of life, are eloquent and discriminating, and conceived in a fine spirit of humanity. He seldom gave full scope to the expression of his feelings and sympathies, but they do occasionally break forth and kindle up the pages of his criticism. At times, indeed, his language is poetical in a high degree. The following glowing tribute to the universal genius of Shakspeare is worthy of the subject:

On the Genius of Shakspeare.

harmonising touches, the merit and the effect of which are equally imperceptible to vulgar eyes; and a thousand indications of the continual presence of that poetical spirit which can only be recognised by those who are in some measure under its influence, and have prepared themselves to receive it, by worshipping meekly at the shrines which it inhabits. In the exposition of these there is room enough for originality, and more room than Mr Hazlitt has yet filled. In many points, however, he has acquitted himself excellently; particularly in the development of the principal characters with which Shakspeare has peopled the fancies of all English readers-but principally, we think, in the delicate sensibility with which he has traced, and the natural eloquence with which he has pointed out, that familiarity with beautiful forms and images-that eternal recurrence to what is sweet or majestic in the simple aspects of nature that indestructible love of flowers and odours, and dews and clear waters-and soft airs and sounds, and bright skies, and woodland solitudes, and moonlight bowers, which are the material elements of poetry-and that fine sense of their undefinable relation to mental emotion, which is its essence and vivifying soul—and which, in the midst of Shakspeare's most busy and atrocious scenes, falls like gleams of sunshine on rocks and ruins-contrasting with all that is rugged and repulsive, and reminding us of the existence of purer and brighter elements-which he alone has poured out from the richness of his own mind without effort or restraint, and contrived to inter

mingle with the play of all the passions, and the vulgar instant the proper business of the scene, or appearing course of this world's affairs, without deserting for an to pause or digress from love of ornament or need of repose; he alone who, when the subject requires it, is always keen, and worldly, and practical, and who yet, without changing his hand, or stopping his course, scatters around him, as he goes, all sounds and shapes of sweetness, and conjures up landscapes of immortal fragrance and freshness, and peoples them with spirits of glorious aspect and attractive grace, and is a thousand times more full of imagery and splendour than those who, for the sake of such qualities, have shrunk back declined the discussion of human duties and cares. from the delineation of character or passion, and More full of wisdom, and ridicule, and sagacity, than all the moralists and satirists in existence, he is more wild, airy, and inventive, and more pathetic and fantastic, than all the poets of all regions and ages of the world; and has all those elements so happily mixed up in him, and bears his high faculties so temperately, that the most severe reader cannot complain of him for want of strength or of reason, nor the most sensitive for defect of ornament or ingenuity. Everything in him is in unmeasured abundance and unequalled perfection; but everything so balanced and kept in subordination as not to jostle or disturb or take the place of another. The most exquisite poetical conceptions, images, and descriptions are given with such brevity, and introduced with such skill, as merely to adorn without loading the sense they accompany. Although his sails are purple, and perfumed, and his prow of beaten gold, they waft him on his voyage, not less, but more rapidly and directly, than if they had been composed of baser materials. All his excellences, like those of Nature herself, are thrown out together; and instead of interfering with, support and recommend each other. His flowers are not tied up in garlands, nor his fruits crushed into baskets, but spring living from the soil, in all the dew and freshness of youth; while the graceful foliage in which they lurk, and the ample branches, the rough and vigorous stem, and the wide-spreading roots on which they depend, are present along with them, and share, in their places, the equal care of their creator.

Of the invention of the steam-engine, Jeffrey remarks, with a rich felicity of illustration: