IT is now twenty years ago that the innovation of the Edinburgh Review attracted the attention of the public, and weaned the general attachment from the then standard works of criticism (the Monthly and Critical Reviews), which had been hallowed by time, and exalted in the estimation of the republic of letters by the contributions of Johnson, of Smollet, and of the members of the literary phalanx of that distinguish ed era.

The plan upon which the Edinburgh Review was first given to the public was, at least in one respect, admirably calculated to benefit the community, and seemed indeed to have been rendered absolutely necessary by the improved spirit of the times, and by the great accessions to knowledge which had been made by all classes of the public within the preceding half century. At the period when the Monthly and Critical Reviews were at their zenith, the line of demarcation between the literary world, and the public in general, was by far more distinctly marked than it is at present. Literary men in England were then extremely numerous, but there was no gradation from what was then called literary people to an exceedingly low degree of knowledge with which the middle classes of English society were then satisfied, but which would now scarcely satisfy people of a very inferior rank. At that period science and literature, as well as philosophy, were confined to professional persons, or to those whose wealth or rank rendered the cultivation of the mind a matter of ordinary routine of necessity, or to those whose individual superiority of intellect rendered it an object of desire; the rest of the community were satisfied with the degree of education necessary for the common purposes of life, or for gratifying the vacuities of leisure

with works of fiction or of other light amusement. Reviews at that period were therefore addressed to the literary part of the community, and related, generally speaking, to works of consequence; whilst the great body of the people were left to seek their amusement in the current works of the day, which the reviewers hardly condescended to notice, or noticed briefly in a sort of Appendix. But from the dawn of the American Revolution our countrymen began to press forward into another rank in the scale of social existence. What had hitherto been considered as the lower ranks of society now began to aspire to that education, which had previously been considered as the almost prescriptive right of the higher circles; the public mind became no longer satisfied with the ephemeral novels of a circulating library, but a demand arose for analytical works of criticism at once sound and adapted to well educated, rather than to learned people. The middle, and even many of the lower orders of society began to feel an unusual interest in public affairs, and a periodical work which in an erudite, but yet popular manner, should discuss the most material subjects of the day, and enter upon the yet untrodden field of statistical politics, was sure to meet with a considerable degree of public attention and support. The Edinburgh Review, in its plan of adapting its critiques to the taste of the day, did not renounce the design of giving occasional critiques upon abstruce subjects; and many of its articles evinced the most profound erudition as well as a high degree of natural talents; and its numbers were rendered yet more valuable by its constant discussion of subjects of national importance. But unfortunately these latter subjects were always discussed in a spirit of party, rather than in a tone of philosophy;

and although that party might em brace the most enlarged and enlightened views, although its feelings and sentiments were in unison with the principles of the constitution and with the most ennobling principles of our nature, yet the union of literature and party politics was in itself injudicious, and people of sagacity did not scruple to anticipate from it the most disastrous consequences to the cause of science and of letters. As if to verify these forebodings, the example of the Edinburgh was, in 1809, followed by the Quarterly Review, launched completely upon the principles of a party work. From the first appear ance of the latter to the present day, every subject it has embraced, whether of science, of literature, or of philosophy, has been viewed through the medium of party feelings; and what was once the cool, sequestered walks of the academy have been lately assimilated to the agitated area of the forum. This spirit of the Quarterly Review has produced its natural consequences; the diffusion of more of party feeling throughout the pages of its rival; philosophy is obliged to yield not to patriotism, but to her more ignoble adversary, party; every subject is distorted to answer the purposes of a sect; facts are often mistated; the first and simple principles of ratiocination are obscured, and the mind of the reader is led astray either by ingenious sophistry or by unintentional prejudices.

Participating with the community in these sentiments, and impressed with the truth that a real service is done to the public by rescuing both books and authors from uncandid criticism, and by exposing the errors of works which have an influence upon the sentiments and opinions of the country, we purpose occasionally to analyse and examine, the articles which appear in the Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews, without any bias in favour of either work, and influenced solely, we trust, by a spirit of truth, and abstracted from all feelings of party or of politics whatsoever.

Our design is to begin with the last number (the 56th) of the Quarterly Review.

The leading article of this number is upon Mons. Ch. Lacretelle's History of the Constituent Assembly of France. The article is of great length, consisting of forty-two pages, and yet we scarcely learn from it more of Mons. Lacretelle's work than we should from reading a chapter in Hume's History of England. The fact is, that, wishing to decry the principles of the actors in the French Revolution, an essay was written for that object; and, by way of introducing the essay into the review, the name of M. Lacretelle's work is prefixed to it; but there are a score of works upon the French Revolution to which the critique in question would be as applicable as it is to the Histoire de l'Assemblée Constituante de France. Par. M. Ch. Lacretelle. We do not know that we ever read forty-two pages so replete with bad reasoning and distorted facts.

The first error of the reviewer is an assertion that what are called the leading patriots, such as Rabaud St. Etienne, and Ch. Lacretelle, Burke, Plunkett, and others, moderate their zeal for liberty from the wisdom of age. The diminution of fervour and zeal incidental to age by no means implies any alteration in principle, and in the change to which the reviewer alludes there is generally a very suspicious coincidence between the change and some lucrative employment. The Whigs, with a trifling exception, have been out of place for forty years, and in that losing period there have not been four eminent proselytes from Toryism, whilst changes, such as the reviewer alludes to, have been innumerable.

The reviewer next replies to the generally received opinion upon the Continent, that the commotions in France at the beginning of the Revolution were partly stimulated, or at least encouraged, by Mr. Pitt. The reviewer's argument is, that Mr. Pitt never inserted in his, budget an article of the sums alledged to be paid to stimulate French hands to commit French crimes;" and that the British Parliament is always jealous on the point of expenses. The charge against Mr. Pitt may surely be met

by something better than the babyisin of, that Mr. Pitt did not blazon his own crime in his public accounts. The minister's command of the Droits of Admiralty, of the 4 per cent. fund, of the secret service money, &c. &c. would have afforded him the most ample means for such conduct, if his moral character had not been a bar to such nefarious measures.

The reviewer next asserts that the French, before the Revolution, were the happiest people on earth. All respectable authorities, both Whig and Tory, foreign and English, concur in representing the old French regime as a mass of abuses, which had reduced all, except the privileged orders, to a state of the most squalid misery. Then the reviewer speaks of "the persecutions, ter times repeated during thirty years, of all who owned the existence of a God." Now the national religion of France (Catholicism) was not suppressed even eleven years, and, during its suppression, Atheists were decried and guillotined by Robespierre and others; and the avowed religion of all the demagogues, with but very few exceptions, was that of Deism and philanthropy. The first article in the creed of the national religion of the revolutionary period was, " Adore God; love your fellow-creatures; be useful to your country."

But the reviewer, with a more than infantile simplicity, would trace the French Revolution to partial abuses of government, to the disordered state of the finances, and forsooth, to the intrigues of the Duke d' Orleans, and to the goodness of Louis XVI., as if such secondary causes ever have in history produced, or as if in the nature of things they could produce, such a terrific enthusiasm as that with which every class of the French community was so thoroughly electrified. Abuses of a court, disordered finances, and the intrigues of noblemen, produce, says Buonaparte, only secondary results; to electrify a whole nation with enthusiasm requires far different causes. In France, every rank and class, the most licentious capital and the most sequestered hamlet, were alike in

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flamed with the revolutionary mania. The clergy of France were of the most superstitious and bigoted upon earth, all their worldly possessions; and all their preconceived notions of religion, were diametrically opposed to the principles of the revolution; yet, when the clergy met in the Etats Generaux, and the tiers etat wished them to abandon all their privileges and coalesce with the popular representatives, the majority went over to the people48 arch-bishops and bishops, and 245 priests of other denominations joined the Constituent Assembly. The aristocracy of France was the most imperious, the most prejudiced, and the most amply endowed with honorary distinctions and with pe cuniary advantages of any in Earope, and yet, in the Etats Generaux, the majority left the court and went over to the tiers etat, or popular branch of the Assembly. One prince of the blood and 269 nobles joined the Constituent Assembly. country in ancient or modern history ever possessed an army so proverbially devoted to the sovereign and court as that of France, yet every species of French force, local and general, from one extreme of the country to the other, enthusiastically joined the people against the government, and the same spirit rapidly animated the whole fleet. All this the reviewer allows; and yet this unexampled abandonment of every early prejudice; this sudden renunciation of all the habits of early life, and of every custom and notion consecrated by time, as well as this general sacrifice of privilege and immunities in the upper classes, he traces to the intrigues of the Duke d'Orleans, to disordered finances, and to the goodness of Louis XVI. The first innovations in the state were not commenced by mobs or by demagogues, but by the most illustrious of the privileged orders. The Viscomte de Noailles, the Duc d'Aiquillon, the Duc de Châtelet, the Duc de la Rochefoucault, the Marquis de Fourcault, the Marquis de la Fayette, and other wealthy and distinguished noblemen, were the first that urged the government and the clergy to reform their crimes and monstrous abuses, and to abolish

the iniquitous privileges of the feudal system of the papal tyranny. What were the causes of this sudden enthusiasm pervading all classes of the nation? And what were the causes of the consequent revolution being at tended with such countless cruelties? To the first question we answer, the political and religious government of France were founded in the grossest ignorance, and for the object of supporting a few privileged classes in the exercise of the most selfish passions of our nature: the system, which had commenced in fraud and tyranny, had long been supported by every possible perversion of justice, and by every conceivable violation of humanity; it had diffused the most appalling misery throughout the lower orders of the people, and it had insulted the pride and irritated the passions of that numerous class which had, by the improvement of society, been able to acquire wealth and intelligence, but which was kept in a state of political and moral degradation; excluded from honours, and contemned by the court; trampled upon by the nobility, and yet ground by taxes to support the luxury and insolence of those who thus oppressed and insulted them. Every person, therefore, who was not depraved in principle, who was not devoid of intellect, and whose heart was not callous to human suffering, was anxious for a reform of the polity of their country. The Viscomte de Noailles, of the most illustrious house in France, declared that "unless the government itself operated a total reform with moderation and justice, the blind fury of the people would accomplish one more dreadful."The great Lord Chatham had uttered the same admonition with respect to England; but may heaven avert from us the consequences which ensued to France from such excellent advice being resisted by the court. But the French government refused all reform; and the revolution was nothing more at its commencement than the natural resistance of virtue and intellect against oppression and ignorance. But from what cause did a revolution, which began in virtue and in wisdom, terminate in a scene of greater cruelty than ever attended

the revolutions of the most barbarous ages? The causes are obvious. The religion of France had been artfully intruded into the inmost recesses of domestic life, from the family of the king to that of the most humble peasant; it was a religion of dogmas, to the exclusion of morals; and its practice had ever been to excite the fiercest passions against every hostile sect. That this is no exaggerated statement is evident from the history of the numerous religious wars of France; wars which fully equalled in ferocity the worst scenes of the revolution. What scenes of the revolution can equal, or can all its atrocities equal, the massacre of St. Bartholomew; the Sicilian vespers; the Jacquerie and Dragonades; or can the most atrocious monster of the revolution be worse than the Marechals de Montluc and L'Isle Adam or than Harcourt, Fosseuse, Luxembourgh, and Philip le Bon. Thus, the religion of France had corrupted life at its fountain of good-its domestic privacy; and every peasant and mechanic, unless his better nature had overcome the tendency of his religion, was a fit instrument of those fiendish actions they have always perpetrated in times of public commotion. In the revolution, the passions of the people were further stimulated by famine and by every physical want; by the memory of sufferings and its consequent spirit of revenge; and, finally, by the criminal resistance made to their just demands by the government; to the attempt of that government to suppress their demands by military violence, and to the yet more culpable efforts of the king to effect that object by the introduction of a foreign force. The nobility and gentry of France, moreover, basely deserted their duty to their country when the struggle began; they fled and left both the general and local administration of justice to a class of people unused to power, made ignorant by the false policy of the old regime, and, as we have already shewn, made worse than ignorant by the yet more criminal policy of their priesthood. These are the primary causes both of the revolution and of the atrocities with which it was disgraced; and it is worse than babyish