a virtue, when it does exist, but too apt to cohabit with tameness and tediousness. Brougham inundates me with proofs of his new volume,1 which seems to me more carelessly written than any of the others, though generally candid, and sometimes very vigorous. The most remarkable things in it are, its studiously and even ostentatiously religious tone; and several metrical translations, by no means ill executed, of striking passages from the poetry of Voltaire. With all good wishes and prayers. Ever yours,

F. JEFFREY.

WILLIAM EMPSON.

London, April 11, 1845.

MY DEAR N.,-Miss Berry was earnest with Lord Jeffrey to write a life of Sydney Smith, and promised to collect letters, which I suspect are only few and short. He won't hear of it. By the way, Miss Berry is glorified in the last Quarterly. By whom, do you think? Answer: by the universal Brougham. His new biographies are lauded in the new ultra Quarterly (as he boasts) for their exemplary morality and piety! Rolfe met him and Melbourne at dinner at Lady Holland's about ten days ago,-the first time they had met in private since the rupture. My Lady said it was accidental, but it went off very well. They were very good-natured with each other. I saw Monteagle this morning. He says Peel will carry Maynooth-that many Whigs, however, will jib from fear of their constituents, or-what he seems to fear as more mischievous to Ireland-from a wish to pay the Roman Catholic Church out of the Anglican. If this last fear is reasonable, it only makes a Voluntary system for all Ireland one day or other the more certain. I have not yet read all the Review. What I have read, I have read with great pleasure, especially Oxford, and The Claims of Labour. Stephen suffers from having too many facts to tell for the room to tell them in. My Shakespearianism makes me delight in the special criticisms. W. E.

"Lives of Men of Letters and Science who flourished in the Time of George III."

LORD JEFFREY.

East India College, April 22, 1845. MY DEAR N.,-Your new Number [April 1845] is now so old, that I am afraid even you will think any estimate of it a matter of dull recollection, and as I certainly read it all within three days after I got it, it is nobody's fault but mine that you had not my opinion of it long ago. But, though I believe that you are nearly as old as I am, I fear you have had no such experience of the indolent indulgence and delightful fainéantise into which most good old people are seduced, as to make a proper allowance for the amiable way (of do-nothingness) in which I have been passing my vacation. Hildebrand is inferior to most, I would say, to any of Stephen's former articles, though less from any inferiority in graphic description and scenes of effect, than from the intractable nature of the subject, or rather the impossibility of now giving any intelligible or consistent account either of the characters or the transactions of that distant age. The whole proceedings, of which so bright and richly-coloured a summary is here attempted, are after all to me as entirely unaccountable, and indeed as utterly inconsistent and inconceivable as the legends of the Mahabarat or the worst of the Eddas: and in spite of many most audacious and unwarranted suppositions and implied theories, leave no impression on my mind but that of a brilliant confusion, and no more sense of truth or coherent reality than I should receive from an old painted window, with its strange groupings of kneeling bishops and helmeted kings, blazoned shields, and streaming labarums, angels, demons, virgins, and constellations. There is much striking writing however in it, and it will make many good people wonder and admire, though I suspect it will tire out the majority. The Shakespeare1 is much too long, though my idolatry for the subject made me read it not only with patience, but with pleasure and interest. The author, I think, is generally right, and often writes very well. But he is too much occupied with the mere material of his subject, and "Recent Editions of Shakespeare," by Professor Spalding.

1

might have said all he had to say in a far less compass. Ward and Oxford, I think, excellent, clear, concise, vigorous, and right, full of instruction, in short, and wisdom, and that enforced both gracefully and temperately; and yet it will do no good at least till after many days. The Jesuits and French University is too much loaded with details, and on the whole rather heavy and cumbrous, though sound and instructive. Prescott is too much of an abstract, and perhaps of an eulogy, though generally very well and pleasingly written, which after all is the great point in such matters. But I must protest against the author's extravagant and, in my mind, absurd and offensive defence of the cruelties and tyranny of Cortes. There are passages which are the mere wantonness of rhetorical immorality, and remind one of the encomium on Nero and fever! The Claims of Labour, I think, excellently written, the tone admirable, and the writing at once winning and weighty. I entirely agree with the doctrine, except that I am less sanguine as to the efficiency of the remedies which are suggested, or at all events more painfully impressed with the conviction that the best of them will come, if they come at all, far too late to prevent the tremendous evils which I have long seen gathering around us, and for which I see no remedy.-Ever yours, F. JEFFREY.

PROFESSOR SEDGWICK.

Norwich, January 27, 1845. MY DEAR SIR,-Your note appears to have remained a day or two at Cambridge, and reached me at this place. I could not reply immediately as I was confined to my bed when it arrived. This morning my doctor has permitted me to come to my study table, but his sudorifics have made my head so weak that I can hardly bear to look on the paper on which I am writing. I do assure you that I am flattered by your request, and that I would most willingly attempt the task you offer me had I better health and more leisure. But I

1 By Senior.

"The University and the Church in France," by Herman Merivale. 3" Prescott's Conquest of Mexico," by S. M. Phillipps.

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By Mill.

must return to Cambridge next week, to begin my Geological Lectures: I give them six days a week. During the Easter Vacation I shall be employed on our annual Scholarship Examination, which has so exhausted me for the last five years that I have been good for nothing for some weeks after it has been over. As for the two or three months that follow our Easter Vacation, if I may judge from the analogies of the last ten years, I shall have to pass them under all the oppressive miseries of rheumatic gout, which exhaust all my powers and make me good for nothing. I have seen the work you mention ["Vestiges of Creation"], but have not had time to study it. I mean, however, to do so on my return to Cambridge. I believe I should take the very view of it which you have done. It is an admirable subject for a Review; for, treading on the author's track, one might give a bold outline of what Geology is, and on several points one might improve and go beyond what the author has done. The second part-the discussion of his views respecting the development of successive races in the animal kingdom during the successive Geological periods, would, perhaps, be more difficult, but here I should not fear to break a lance with him. Progressive development I do believe in, or, in other words, successive adaptations of the animal kingdom to successive physical conditions of the earth. But the doctrine of a gradual transmutation of species I utterly abominate, and I only abominate it because I believe it to be utterly untrue. I wish with all my heart I could close with your flattering offer, but I am compelled to refuse.-Believe me, with great respect, your faithful servant, A. SEDGWICK.

Cambridge, April 10, 1845.

MY DEAR SIR,-I cannot help inquiring when your article on the "Vestiges of Creation" is to appear. When I wrote to you from Norwich, I had in reversion my annual course of lectures, and my fit of Spring gout, which, for the last eight years, has been the destruction of all my active powers. This Spring the fiend has treated me so tenderly that I have been, so far, capable of writing; and I assure you I have more than

once lamented my want of moral courage, and my refusal of your offer of a place in the pages of your Review. I now know the Vestiges well, and I detest the book for its shallowness, for the intense vulgarity of its philosophy, for its gross, unblushing materialism, for its silly credulity in catering out of every fool's dish, for its utter ignorance of what is meant by induction, for its gross (and I dare to say, filthy) views of physiology,-most ignorant and most false, and for its shameful shuffling of the facts of geology so as to make them play a rogue's game. I believe some woman is the author; partly from the fair dress and agreeable exterior of the Vestiges; and partly from the utter ignorance the book displays of all sound physical logic. A man who knew so much of the surface of Physics must, at least on some one point or other, have taken a deeper plunge; but all parts of the book are shallow. No man would, I should think, have given the old proportion of the Equatorial and Polar diameters, and not the more recent and improved numbers. And no man living, I should think, would have dared to say that the same materials and the same organic elements must be found on the condensed surfaces of all the planetary nebula. Again, do you think that any man would have built a system of animated nature on the back of Crosse's mote (Acarus Crossii), or hatched a rat out of a goose's egg? Assuredly not. Or, would any man, who had the germ of physical knowledge, have given a wolf's brain to a seven month's child? All this we must swallow, and all Gall's stupid organs, at one gulp, if we go with this most superficial, mischievous, and agreeable writer. The book tells astonishingly in England. I trust that the matrons and maids of the North have more knowledge, more ballast, and better sense than to accept so utterly degrading a system. I dare say the author hardly knows the mischief of her own views. They are the favourites of the ultra-infidel school of France. I need not tell you, for you know far better than I can tell you, how shallow are her metaphysics. With her, the bellowing of an ox and the bleating of a sheep are phenomena of the same order with the abstractions of language the creations of pure intellect from definitions