vious to his performance of Hamlet), no wonder that we write, during the evening, many taking and spirit-stirring articles.

The volumes from which we shall now make a few extracts, appeared on our dissection-table on the 5th instant, and having drawn lots who should have them to read and to re

view, the longest slip of paper-(which was plainly discerned to be a shred of a not very old number of the Edinburgh Review-article-State of Parties)-was found in the fist of us, Mordecai Mullion. By the way, this method of writing by lot ought to be more generally practised. Nothing can be imagined more delightful.

"Custom cannot stale Its infinite variety."

It was one of the happy thoughts of that "Cherub tall," Odoherty the standard-bearer-and never shall we forget (we had almost fallen there into the first personal pronoun) the fillup it gave all our spirits, one dull November day, soon after the Chaldee Manuscript broke out. We ourselves had uniformly discharged the duties of the divinity department, or in other words, had filled the theological chair. And the gentle reader may judge of our surprise, when called upon to undertake, on a moment's warning, "Miss Spence and the Bagman." Signifer Dohertiades had always had the charge of the list of deaths and marriages an office which sat with a peculiar grace on him who had more than once paid his vows to the altar of Hymen, and whose death-deeds, yet fresh in the recollection of the public, had, after deciding, in conjunction with the Anglo-Spanish troops, the Peninsular war, turned, along with the timely advance of the Prussian army under his friend Blucher, the fortune of the day, yet doubtful, at Waterloo. Him the lot elevated, for one month, to the "Literary and Philosophical Intelligence;" a department whose arduous duties he discharged not only with his characteristic promptitude and despatch, but with a happy knack of selection, wonderful in one devoted from his very cradle to war. But it would be useless to tell all the metamorphoses that thus ensued throughout the members of our body corporate. The happiest effects were soon found to result from this judici

ous invention of the adjutant's genius. Nothing can now come amiss to any of us. A poem of Byron or Moore or a System of Political Economy, by James Grahame, Esq, (the AntiMalthusian)-a New System of Religion and Philosophy, by Francis Maximus Macnab, Esq.- -or a Report of the Dilettanti Society of Edinburgh, from their hall, No 209, HighStreet-a plan for a new Academical Institution-or a Letter to the Conductors of the dying Edinburgh Review-Verses on a late melancholy event, by Peter Picken, cobbler in Falkirk-or, Observations on the Scope and Tendency of the Writings of Lord Bacon, by Macvey Napier, Esquire-for one and all of these, and others like to these, if other such there be, are one and all of us now and henceforth prepared. Each man boldly pulls out his slip from an old military cap, worn by the standard-bearer at the battles of Talavera, Albuera, Salamanca, Fuentes d'Honore, Vittoria, and Waterloo-and instantly addresses himself to the task enjoined-be it politics or poetry-history, sacred or profanemiscellaneous literature-or the abstract and severer sciences.

Being friends to a free trade, we have scorned to solicit for a patentand (better late than never) most cheerfully recommend the adoption of Odoherty's plan, to the Editor of the Supplement. Had it been sooner adopted in the conduct of that illustrious work, what strange varieties might the world have seen-and no less sweet than strange. How excellent had it been to have perused the article "Chivalry," by that perfect gentleman J. R. Macculloch, Esq., while, on the corn laws, Walter Scott would in turn have written like a masterbaker!-The article "Dancing" would then have been entrusted to Professor Leslie, while the learned Editor himself would, on the same principle, have undertaken " Conveyancing." But we can go no farther, verbum sapienti.

Dr Morris (for he is the author) has adopted a somewhat ambitious title to his letters-yet we must not rob Peter to pay Paul-and confess honestly, that the Doctor has given to the world two very amusing volumes. He performed his journey from Aberystwith, where, we understand, he is in very extensive practice as a medical

man, in a shandry-dan of his own invention, of which, by the bye, we hear the rather too much-it being evidently the Doctor's hobby. He arrived in Edinburgh about the middle of last winter --and past a month there-regularly attending the Parliament House, the theatre, routes, balls, churches, and all other places of public amusement -so that nothing seems to have escaped him. He then ran his shandry-dan into Glasgow under the six hours, beating the Telegraph by eleven minutes, and during a fortnight's residence in that city, put up, nominally, at the Buck's Head-tor Mrs Jardine seems to have had but little of his company, invitations having poured in upon him from all quarters. He found time, however, in the midst of all his racketing, to write long letters to his kinsfolk in Wales and tells us that a sudden thought struck him to have them printed-and no sooner said than done. The manuscript was instantly sent to a Mr Recce, who is the very Ballantyne of Aberystwith, and in one month it was transformed into a most beautiful piece of Welsh typography. The great object of the work before us seems to be to give a philosophical estimate of the legal and mercantile character of Scotland-and this. our author tries to accomplish, by delineating the society of Edinburgh and of Glasgow. We shall enable our readers to judge, from pretty copious extracts, how far Dr Morris has succeeded in his attempt. He speaks thus cavalierly of the whigs of Edinburgh.

The Whigs are still lords of public opinion in Edinburgh to an extent of which, before visiting Scotland, I could scarcely have formed any adequate notion. The Tories have all the political power, and have long had it, but from whatever cause (and I profess myself incapable of assigning any rational one,) their power does not appear to have given them command of much sway over the general opinions, even of those that think with them regarding political matters. I confess that I, born and bred a good Tory, and accustomed, in my part of the country, to see the principles I reverence supported by at least an equal share of talent, was not a little mortified by certain indications of faintheartedness and absurd diffidence of themselves among the Scottish Tories, which met my eye ere had been long in Edinburgh.

"I am inclined, upon the whole, to attribute a good deal of this to the influence of the Edinburgh Review. That work was set on foot and conducted for some years

with an astonishing degree of spirit; and although it never did any thing to entitle it to much respect either from English scho tians, I can easily see how much such a lars, or English patriots, or English Chriswork written by Scotchmen, and filled with all the national prejudices of Scotchmen, should have exerted a wonderful authority over the intellect of the city in which it was published. Very many of its faults (I mean these of the less serious kind-such as its faults in regard to literature and taste), were all adapted for the meridian of Scotland; and for a time certainly the whole country was inclined to take a pride in its success. The Prestige of the Edinburgh Review has now most undoubtedly vanished even there; but there still remains a shadow of it sufficient to invest its old conductors with a kind of authority over the minds of those who once were disposed to consider them as infallible judges, de omnibus rebus et quivusdam aliis; And then the high eminence of some of these gentlemen in their profession of the law, gives them another kind of hold upon the great body of persons following that profession-which is every thing in Edinburgh, because the influence of those who follow it is not neutralized to any considerable extent by the presence of any great aristocracy, or of any great intellectual cultivation out of themselves. The Scotch are a people of talkers; and among such a people it is wonderful how far the influence of any one person may be carried around and below him, by mere second-third-and fourth hand babbling, all derived from one trivial source. I am not, however, of opinion that this kind of work will go on much longer. Jeffrey has evidently got sick of the Review-or rather, he has evidently written himself out (and indeed my only quirements as his should not have written wonder is, that a person of such limited achimself out much sooner in such a department);-Brougham has enough to do in Parliament-that is to say, he gives himself enough to do; and even there you well know what a Charlatan kind of reputation he has. Horner is dead. Walter Scott has long since left them.-The Review is now a very sensible, plain sort of book-in its best parts, certainly not rising above the British Review-and in its inferior parts there is often a display of calm drivelling, much beyond what the British Review itself would admit. And then there is no point-no wit-no joke -no spirit, nothing of the glee of young existence about it. It is a very dull book, more proper to be read between sleeping and waking, among old, sober, cautious tradesmen, than to give any spring to the fancy or reason of the young, the active, and the intelligent. The secret will out ere long-viz. that the Edinburgh Reviewers have not been able to get any effectual recruits among the young people about them. There is no infusion of fresh blood into the veins of the Review. When one visits Edinburgh, where one cannot stir a step

without stumbling over troops of confident, comfortable, glib, smart young Whigs, one is at a loss to understand the meaning of this dearth. One would suppose that every ball-room and tavern overflowed with gay Edinburgh reviewers. One hears a perpetual buzz about Jeffrey, Brougham, the Review, &c. &c. and would never doubt that prime articles were undergoing the process of concoction in every corner. But, alas! the fact is, that the young Edinburgh Whigs are a set of very stupid fellows, and the Review must wait long enough if it is never to be resuscitated but by them.

"They are really a very disagreeble set of pretenders I mean those of them that do make any pretensions at all to literary character. They are very ill educated in general; they have no classical learning; few of them can construe two lines of any Latin poet; and as for Greek, they scarcely know which end of the book should be held to their noses. They have never studied any philosophy of any kind-unless attending a course of lectures on metaphysics. delivered by a man far too ingenious to be comprehended for above five sentences at a time, by persons of their acquirements and capacity can be called studying philosophy. They know sometimes a little about chemistry and geology to be sure, but these are studies in which the proficiency of mere amateurs can never be any great matter. They know a very little of English history and politics-enough to enable them to spin out a few half-hours of blarney in their debating societies. But, upon the whole, it may safely be asserted, that all they know worthy of being known upon any subjects of general literature, politics, or philosophy, is derived from the Edinburgh Review itself; and as they cannot do the Review any great service by giving it back its own materials, I conceive that this work is just in the act of falling a sacrifice to habits of superficial acquirement, and contented ignorance, which it was shortsighted enough to encourage, if not to create, in order to serve its own temporary purposes among the rising generation in Scotland.

"One would imagine, however, that these young whigs might have begun, long ere this time, to suspect somewhat of their own situation. They must be quite aware, that they have never written a single page in the Edinburgh Review, or that, if they have done so, their pages were universally looked upon as the mere lumber of the book: contrasting, too, their own unproductive petulance with the laborious and fruitful early years of those whom they worship, and in whose walk they would fain be supposed to be following-it is difficult to understand how they happen to keep themselves so free from the qualms of conscious imbecility. Perhaps, after all, they are au fond less conceited than they appear to be; but certainly to judge from externals, there never was a more self-satisfied crew of young ignoramuses. After being let a little into their real character and attainments, I canVOL. IV.

not say but that I derived a considérable degree of amusement from the contemplation of their manners. As for their talk, it is such utter drivelling, the moment they leave their text-books, (the moment they give over quoting,) that I must own I found no great entertainment in it. It is a pity to see a fine country like Scotland, a country so rich in recollections of glorious antiquity, so rich in the monuments of genius, at this moment adorned with not a few fullgrown living trees of immortal fruit-it is a pity to see such a country so devoid of promise for her future harvests. It is a pity to see her soil wasting on the nurture of this unproductive pestilential underwood, juices which, under better direction, might give breadth to the oak, and elevation to the pine," &c.-Vol. I. pp. 106—12.

"The respectable elder whigs must, of a surety, feel very sore upon all this; for it is not to be supposed, that they can be quite so easily satisfied with these young gregarii, as the young gregarii are with themselves. I understand, accordingly, that nothing gives them so much visible delight as the appearance of any thing like a revival of talent among their troops. When a young whig makes a tolerable speech at the bar, or writes a tolerable law-paper, or adventures to confess himself author of a tolerable paragraph in a party print-in short, when he manifests any symptom of possessing better parts than the confessedly dull fellows around him, there is much rejoicing in the high places, a most remarkable crowing and clapping of wings in honour of the rising luminary. The young genius is fed and fattened for a season with puffs and praises; and, in consequence of that kind of dominion or prestige to which I have already alluded, the very tories begin to contemplate him with a little awe and reverence, as a future formidable antagonist, with whom it may be as well to be upon some tolerable terms in private. Well-a year or two goes over his head, and the genius has not visibly improved in any thing except conceit. He is now an established young whig genius. If any situation becomes empty, which it would be convenient for him to fill, and if, notwithstanding of this, he is not promoted to it by those, whom, on every occasion, he makes the objects of his ignorant abuse this neglect of him is talked of by himself and his friends, as if it were virtually a neglect of genius in the abstract ;-with so much readiness do these good people enter into the spirit of a personification. A Dutch painter could not typify ideal beauty under a more clumsy and heavy shape, than they sometimes do genius; nor are the languishing, coy, and conscious airs of some Venus over a lust-house at Schedam, a whit more exquisite in their way, than the fat indignant fatuity of some of these neglected geniuses of Scotland.

"So many of these geniuses, however, 4 I

have now been puffed up and pushed up to a little temporary reputation, and then sunk under their own weight into their own mud, that one should suppose the elevators must now be a little weary of exerting their mechanical powers in that way. Their situation is, indeed, almost as discouraging as that of Sisyphus, doomed for ever to struggle in vain against the obstinate, or as Homer calls it, the "impudent" stone's alacrity in sinking.

ἀντις έπειτα πεδονδε κυλινδετο λκας αναίδης.” Ibid, p. 119. Peter then devotes two long letters to the state of education in Edinburgh; and though we have detected some errors in his account of the course of study pursued in our university, and can by no means concur with him in some of his very severe strictures on not a few of the professors, yet it is wonderful with what acuteness he has penetrated into the spirit of the system. We propose, on a future occasion, to take up the cudgels in behalf of our Alma Mater, and to defend her against the attacks of this Oxonian, in whose mind, liberal as it is, we think that we can discern some slight symptoms of prejudices fostered among the groves of Rhedicina; but, for the present, we content ourselves with quoting a passage, distinguished, as we think, for candour and liberality, and which shews that Peter's heart is of the right

stuff

"The ideas entertained in England respecting the state of religion in Scotland, are just as absurd as those which used to be in fashion about the external appearance of that country. I positively believe, that if the bench of bishops were requested, at this moment, to draw up, with the assistance of the Oxford and Cambridge heads of houses and regius professors, a short account of its spiritual condition, they would talk as if it had as few men of rational piety in it, as the Cockney wits used to think it had trees. According to these received prejudices, the Scottish peasants are universally imbued with the most savage and covenanting fanaticism-a fault for which ample atonement is made by the equally universal freethinking and impiety of the higher orders of their countrymen. Every Scotsman is a bigot to one or other of those equally abominable heresies-Atheism or Calvinism. They would represent the faith of this country as a strange creature somewhat after the fashion of old Janus, dressed on one side in a solemn suit of customary blue, and on the other in the rainbow frippery of a Parisian fille-de-joie-giving with her right hand the grasp of fellowship to John Knox, and leering and leaning to the left on a more fashionable beau, David Hume."

"The principal mouth-piece of this southern bigotry is, I am very sorry to say, a work for which I have, in almost every other respect, the greatest esteem-the Quarterly Review. It is a pity that that work, which exerts over the public mind of England so salutary an influence, as the guardian of her character-her true character, both political and religious-it is a very great pity that this admirable work should in any way tend to keep up improper prejudices against the Scottish among the majority of its readers. No doubt there is this excuse for them, that they view the mind of Scotland as represented in some measure in the Edinburgh Review. But I, who am certainly no admirer of the religion of the Edinburgh Review, think it extremely unfair to represent it as being either the oracle or symbol of the spirit of the country wherein it is produced. Why, although the Edinburgh reviewers sit at times in the chair of the scoffer, should the English be taught to think with disrespect of the religious condition of a country which not long ago possessed a Blair and an Erskine, and which at this moment can boast of Moncrieff, Alison, and Chalmers? The truth is, that I believe no country in Europe is less tainted with the spirit of infidelity than Scotland. The faith of their devout ancestors has come down to them entire; it is preached throughout this country by a body of clergymen who, if they cannot pretend to so much lish divines, are in general far better intheological erudition as some of our Engformed upon matters of actual life than they are far more fitted to be the friends and instructors of their parishioners-far more humble in their desires, and, I may add, far more unexceptionably exemplary in their life and conversation.

"The appearance of a single Sunday in Scotland, is of itself sufficient to shew the absurdity of the late sarcasms in the Quarterly; the churches are thronged, not with the peasantry and mechanics alone, but with every order and condition of men and women who are capable of reading the Bible, or listening to a sermon. The Scotch have indeed got rid of a great many of those useless prejudices with which their forefathers were infected, and which still seem to linger in the bosoms of some of our own countrymen; but the trunk has been strengthened, not weakened, by the lopping off of its rotten branches and excrescencies; and although the tree of their neighbours may cast a broader shade, I have my doubts whether it be productive of better fruit.

"The most remarkable change which has occurred in the religious thinking of the Scotch, is that which may be observed in regard to their mode of treating those who profess a persuasion different from their own. Half a century ago, a Papist, or even an Episcopalian, appeared very little removed from the condition of a Heathen in the eyes of a good Scots Presbyterian: