only one string to their bow, but it is a strong one, and far better than your double skeins of pack-thread. They have not to serve two masters. They have chosen their part, and they stick to it.

This lifts them prodigiously above your elevation, Mr Jeffrey. They write in a straight-forward, swinging style, which sorely discountenances your ingenious double entendres. They do not scrape with a chisel behind their backs, as you did, but they hold the axe above their shoulders, and they tell all the world, that they will drive it in thunders on the tree, if they

can.

Your set appear in a puny light beside these people. "Faint heart never won fair lady," is the tune the standers-by treat you with. You would and you would not-your if was your only peace-maker, and there is no virtue in it-You were the Probert-the Westminster is the Thurtel, and we prefer him.

These people waited, too, just till proper time for their most effectual appearance. They waited until you had edged on, bit by bit, as near to their own view of things as (they well knew) you ever by possibility durst come. They waited until the Whigs had completely committed themselves -they waited until you, among others, had even toasted REFORM at a public meeting-nay, they waited until you had, at another public meeting, toasted the President of the United States, in a speech which all but said, that a republican government was, in your opinion, the best government.

They got you into this cloven stick only for the purpose of leaving you there. If these are your real sentiments, say they, why, then, have you and all your party been hoaxing us, in and out of parliament, for these twenty years? If these be your real sentiments, why did you always shrink from the rope, when we called for a long pull, a strong pull, and a pull all together? If you be Radicals, why have you called yourselves, why do you still call yourselves, Whigs?— Henceforth, such is their language, we shall put up with no more of these half measures. He that is not with us, to the backbone, henceforth shall be against us-or, at least, we shall be against him. I applaud their logic. It is in itself sound, good, sincere, and it ruins you. The Radicals will no

longer stand behind you, and swell your ranks, or, at least, have the semblance of swelling them. Without this aid, you well know that you have for many years been weak as bulrushes. Your pitiful remnant must now be exposed in all its feebleness and nakedness. To us you cannot come→ to them you may not go-you must stand, such as you are, alone, and so standing, YOU ARE RUINED.

There are but three ways you can try. First of all, you may say,-Well, there is no help for us-we must do something. We have gone too far to retreat-we must e'en make common cause—we must e'en go thoroughstitch -let us be Radicals! Jacta est alea! If the Edinburgh Reviewers choose this line of proceeding, or if the violent Whig Radical leaders in the House of Commons choose a similar line of proceeding, they, the Jeffreys, the Broughams, whoever they may be, are cut by the great aristocratical Whigs. For,mark you well,-the Westminster Review has spoken no half words—its words are not like yours, that they might be eaten again upon occasion. The lordly Whigs, the gentlemanly Whigs, the Lansdownes, the Hollands, all alike, must hate the language of this Westminster Review, or be fools, drivellers, mere idiots. They must, and they do hate it, and unless you swear that you hate it also, they turn their backs on you for ever. Wellbut you make up your minds and you join the Radicals, and you play the second fiddle to the Westminster. And what do you call this?

The second plan you may essay is that of drawing up your chin, as if your breast-pin were suddenly bewitched into some petrified essence of assafoetida, and saying-through a sixpenny speaking trumpet, if eonvenient

We have been deceived-we have been rash-we have been blame-worthy-we spoke some civil things to these fellows, under the notion that the better sort of them would be flattered into Whiggery, in which case we need care nothing about their mere rabble. But behold! the vermin do really stick together. Ye gods! the Radical gentry despise us-Ye gods! they have set up a Review of their own-they are to criticise books and write dissertations and libels, all upon their own bottom! The impudent knaves! Behold, they even re

view the Edinburgh Reviewers! This unheard-of insolence is a little too much-Don't you think so, Lord Archy? don't you think So, Lord Rosslynn? don't you think so, indeed, dear Lord Holland?-Well, there is nothing for it but to make the best of a bad cause. Let us be done with this ragamuffin regiment for once and for ever! Here goes, once more, the glorious aristocratical old Whiggery of England! The Edinburgh Review for ever!

"Down with the whitybrown,
Up with the blue !"

If this plan be adopted-if, declaring war against the Radicals, the Whigs do, nevertheless, resolve to maintain themselves as a party against the Tories-they will, as a party, and you will, more especially as reviewers, labour under great, weighty, and hitherto unexperienced difficulties and embarrassments. Your line of prophecy, &c., touching the late war, has pretty well settled you as foreign politicians. You will now, at your very outset, have at least as magnificent an array of blunders, touching our internal affairs, to acknowledge. Having done so, you will come into Parliament, and make Whig speeches; and you will write Whig reviews also, with much gracefulness and imposing dignity of air. In a word, you will, as a party, or as a review, be altogether unworthy of the trouble of a single kick. Conceive of George Canning answering you in Parliament, or Timothy Tickler answering you out of Parliament, after these gulps!-Well, I have been told I am a singular old boy, and it may be so; but were I in your place, my braw man, I should call this also ruin.

The third and last, and only feasible plan, is for you to come over at once to the ministry. Do not be utterly amazed by the notion of the magnitude of this change: you have done the like already. Henry Brougham concluded an article in the Edinburgh Review with these words, " I, decus, i, nostrum" and these words were part of an address to Mr Pitt; and this is the same Mr Henry Brougham, who, on a late occasion, said he wished his tombstone to be inscribed, "Here lies the enemy of Pitt." You yourself do not require to be reminded about your own changes of tone, touching Madame de Stael, &c. &c. &c. &c. &c. &c. &c. -Why, your late toasting of REFORM

is of itself quite enough for my argument. And then consider the advantage of the thing. We are the only true Christians, we Tories; we are the only people that really love our enemies, and kiss those that despitefully entreat us. Compared with you, our own friends are hateful to us. We are never weary, as things stand now, of doing you all the good that it is possible for us to do to you. We are never weary of flattering and fawning upon you. We think no sacrifice too great for you. If there is any honour to be given by us, we are in a hurry, lest you should run the least risk of missing it. And whenever we can, we thrust some lucrative honour also upon some of this incomparable, invaluable, adorable, divine body of enemies. Now only think-if we do all this for you while you are against us-what would we not do for you if you were for us? Why, you are all mad if you do not jump at this. You, in particular, have you ever sufficiently considered what a nice-looking little fellow you would be in a silk gown and lace band -a smooth glossy pair of black silk stockings-shoes bright as the morning star, and buckles of a neat pattern? Or what do you think of purple damask, and gold frogs rustling up the steps that lead to the landing place that leads to the anti-chamber that leads to the presence-chamber of CarltonHouse? Or if you think quiet things more suitable to a literary character of the first class, what say you to a Commissaryship-a snug thing, and capital fun too?-or a seat on the Exchequer Bench? Don't you think you would look well between a David Hume and a Sir Samuel Shepherd ? The brightest bench Scotland has ever seen would then indeed be a galaxy!

Your eye laughs-you darling-you are won-you are ours-here, rush into my arms, that I may embrace thee ere I die! What! you draw back? you will not? you are resolved to have nothing to do with us? In the name of common prudence, in the name of Scotland, in the name of Aberdeen, relent! Can you see me thus stooping in the dust before you unmoved? Is thy heart a piece of Caucasus's hardest stratum? Was the tigress's milk that you were nursed upon, sour milk?

A sudden gleam of light strikes upon my old eye-balls. You are in the right yet, after all. We would give up

pettling you altogether, if you were one of ourselves. Certainly it is most probable we should. You remain, therefore, where you are, from the most prudential, as well as the most patriotic of motives. I cannot offer any sufficient objection to the argument which I see dancing in your cunning eyes. For once you are right, Frank, and I was wrong.

As yet I have been speaking of the effects which will be produced upon you, your work, and your fellowworkers, by the general tone of principle avowed in this new book; but these are far from being the only effects you must look for. Not contented with destroying and nullifying the talent which you may still have it in your power to retain, by the exhibition of equal talent, exerted in a more straight-forward and uncompromising style, and for a more distinct, and intelligible, and broader set of purposes -not contented with this, the Westminster work is likely to rob you of a great many of your own best hands. Your friends, disciples, and coadjutors, are the very people with whom you are now to contend. Two of your own cleverest hands are visible in this first Number, and it is obvious that many more will leave you when they find that there is a review in which it is not necessary to preach radical doctrines under the disguise of whiggery. This you feel; and it is indeed so obvious, that I need not say more about it. If these gentry condescend to give you any further assistance, they will never do it in any other view than that of putting a little money into their pockets. They will write for you; but they will keep their best wits for the work where they can speak their heart right out. Your work will in this way degenerate wofully. It will sink into a sort of thing like the New Misses' Magazine of Colburn, Campbell, and Co.-a book where nobody says anything at all, which might not just as well be said in any other book under heaven. Distinctive character intellectual vis—the impress of individual earnestness, will be all of them found wanting. You will dwindle rapidly into a sofa-book-a book to lie beside the young ladies' guitar-a book to read one's self gently asleepover —a sweet, harmless, insignificant olio of puns, prosings, and prettinesses. VOL. XV.

This is your fate, so far as these old allies can influence it, and you see it.

So much for you-what will be the effect of this work upon the country at large? Most salutary-most beneficial-most blessed, is my unhesitating answer. Your work was a dangerous one, sir, simply because it was a dishonest one. This is an honest one, and I can see no peril that is like to flow out of it. You mixed up your poison in small doses, and administered it in gravy, porridge, plumcake. These lads set it forth in its native shape, and in a labelled vial, and those that taste it will know whom to thank for their treat.

All

This a broad-bottomed Review with a vengeance. It reduces everything at once to an intelligible standard. Universal suffrage is the inborn and inalienable right of man. England has at present neither laws that are worthy of the name, nor any representation whatever, nor any justice whatever, nor any government but what is directly, and in every the least and the greatest of its doings, an usurpation, a tyranny, a plague, and a curse. priesthood is priestcraft; all nobility, all gentry, is cruel, insulting, bloody quackery; the very name of monarchy is a thing to make a man sick, but to hear of. Tumble all this fabric down; blot out the whole of your history; and BEGIN to be a free, a happy, a rational nation! This is the burden, the chorus of the strain-this is the whole pith and essence of the Westminster Review.

These people do not take the trouble to argue us into a belief of our universal misery and degradation-they assume it as a primary and incontrovertible truth-something, to which nobody, but an idiot, can for one single moment hesitate about giving his full, hearty, and irrevocable assent. The House of Commons exists solely by and for two hundred families; all the rest of the twenty millions are slaves, and have nothing to do at present, but to clank their chains, and sweat for their lords' behoof.

The matter being put upon this decided foot, there can be no great difficulty in grappling with it surely. Every man that has had his eye about him in the world is of course perfectly qualified to judge, whether this broad statement be or be not true and

U

just; and that is the only thing he has to do; because if he once makes up his mind that it is not, there is not one word in this book which is not as false as Euclid would be, if a triangle were the same thing with a circleand if he makes up his mind that it is, why then the path of his duty lies very clear before him. If he believes this book to be founded in truth, and is not ready to enter heart and hand into the work of an English revolution, a total and radical revolutiona war of total demolition, exterminating fury, revenge, blood, fire and fury, TO-MORROW-there cannot by possibility be any reason for this shrinking, but a hempen one.

The ground which they take is no doubt high, and the attitude imposing. Perhaps, notwithstanding, a little more condescension to the babes and suck lings of the world might have been consistent with wisdom. Ferhaps, for example, it might have been well to give a few specimens of actual injustice done to us Englishmen by our English judges and juries, before calling upon us to give the whole of the present system its coup-de-grace, and boldly instal old Jeremy Bentham as our Solon. Perhaps it might have been not amiss to point out one law, the object of which is, evidently to please 200 families, and to injure all the rest of this nation. The residence of a clergyman in a parish is, they tell us, of necessity an evil; perhaps, in the present imperfect state of the human mind, it might have been adviseable to give, instead of only promising, a demonstration of this fact. I might, if it were worth while, run up a tolerably lengthy catalogue of trivial little objections of this cut-but I shall be contented with only one more proof of my esprit borné. It is this; I and the other simple ones would have liked to see it explained, why it is laid down as a thing not disputable, that England ought to be revolutionized immediately, because the immense majority of the nation want a revolution-while it is also laid down as a self-evident truth, that the late Spanish Constitution ought to have been maintained, because it was hated by the immense majority of the Spaniards. But I confess, I am almost ashamed of myself.

If it be true, as these gentlemen benevolently inform us, that" no POET can REASON"-in other words, that

those faculties which are not absolutely necessary for enabling us to see that two and two make four, are an unhappy impertinence and clog upon us, and that Joseph Hume is a greater man than Milton, Shakespeare, and Plato put together:-if it be true, that he who invents a new spinning-jenny is, of necessity, a wiser and a better man than he who makes a new Iliad:-if it be true that Mr Carlile is a noble martyr, at this hour suffering in the cause of English INTELLECT:—if all these things be true, it certainly must be true also, that we ought to lay aside many things with which we at present absurdly and childishly amuse ourselves. York Minster should undoubtedly be made into a cotton-mill, absque mora: Instead of taking advantage of the passions and aspirations of humanity, by an imposing and venerable array of ancient, dignified, and awful institutions, we should, no doubt at all of the thing, build a neat congress room, and see if nobody will do now, what Tom Paine used to be so generous as to say he would do, that is, discharge the whole duties of king and executive among us for a matter of L.300 per annum. In other words, if whatever is now, or ever has been, in England-be wrong, whatever is written in the Westminster Review is right. The system wants only one thing to be complete, and, perhaps, it may soon acquire even that too, I mean Turnipology.

I consider this Book, then, as not only likely to be the ruin of literary Whiggery, and the Edinburgh Review in particular, but as likely to operate as a reductio ad absurdum upon the whole doctrine and discipline of the Radicals themselves. The more talent the affair is conducted with the better, since they have fairly set out in this honest and open tone; and most heartily do I hope that the good men of the land will be too wise to throw any stumbling-block in the path of their most promising career. On let them goand the faster the better, since they not only feel, but confess, that it is the devil who drives them.

The politics of this Book are, as yet, the only thing noticeable about it. In general, it is written well, with distinctness and vigour almost throughout, and occasionally with very considerable power and eloquence. The threshold is Cockney, but that stain is

not visible through far the greater part of the affair. There is something pleasantly waggish in having a print of Westminster Hall and Westminster Abbey in the title page of such a book. I give them credit for that archness. The article on Vocal Mu sic, Dr Kitchener, &c. contains a great deal of excellent sense, and that on Moore's Fables for the Holy Alliance is quite equal to any piece of sarcasm that either you or Brougham ever manufactured in the days of your glory. As for the small print at the end, that department has either been given up bodily to some inferior hand, or been done for the present with a shameful carelessness and slovenliness. pleased, however, on the whole, with the notice of "The Stranger's Grave," though, no doubt, the author of that work must have been taught long ere now, that talents such as his were not meant for such themes.

I was

The character of this work, as a review of literature, properly so called, remains as yet to be made-perhaps it never will have any existence. Your work has long ceased to have any existence of that kind, that is worth speaking of. The Quarterly is almost in the same predicament, in so far as the literature of our age is concerned. Long ago you were a pretty hand at that sort of thing yourself.-Perhaps,

now that you see your political career quite done up, you may take back to it again. I wish you would-I should hate to hear of you being a mere nonentity.

Meantime, be not overmuch cast down. I am five-and-twenty years your senior, and yet see how cheerily I carry things still. This is but a poor world after all, to fret one's self much about. My way is to take matters easy. Nothing like dividing our time properly. I devote two hours before breakfast to my oriental books. I eat two eggs every morning. I still have my cup of chocolate at two. I never ride less than eight miles, dine on more than one dish, drink less than a bottle, touch a potatoe, or read a newspaper by candle-light. I play a tune on my fiddle every night ere I go to my bed-five good Tories (sometimes fewer, never more,) dine with me every Saturday. We often remember you kindly, overlook all your foibles, and drink your health in a bumper. Your speech about America t'other day was really a clever thing; it does you cre→ dit. Don't be down in the mouth over much, my dear :-If any of these Radicals treat you uncivilly, come to me at once, and I will do for them. Yours always, TIMOTHY TICKLER.

SOUTHSIDE, Feb. 10.

r

SIR,

I am, Sir,

LONDON, Feb. 7, 1824.

C. N.