prized for the sagacity of a firm, secular, and much-exercised understanding, and honoured in the market-place for his experience in the walks and ways of this world's business, has not so much as entered upon the beginning of wisdom, but is toiling away all his skill and all his energy on the frivolities of an idiot's dream.

3. CRUELTY TO ANIMALS.

Man is the direct agent of a wide and continual distress to the lower animals; and the question is, " Can any method be devised for its alleviation?" On this subject that Scriptural image is strikingly realized: "the whole inferior creation groaning and travailing together in pain" because of him. It signifies not to the substantive amount of the suffering, whether this be prompted by the hardness of his heart, or only permitted through the heedlessness of his mind. In either way it holds true, not only that the arch-devourer Man stands pre-eminent over the fiercest children of the wilderness as an animal of prey, but that for his lordly and luxurious appetite, as well as for his service or merest curiosity and amusement, Nature must be ransacked throughout all her elements. Rather than forego the veriest gratifications of vanity, he will wring them from the anguish of wretched and ill-fated creatures; and whether for the indulgence of his barbaric sensuality or barbaric splendour, can stalk paramount over the sufferings of that prostrate creation which has been placed beneath his feet. That beauteous domain, whereof he has been constituted the terrestrial sovereign, gives out so many blissful and benignant aspects; and whether we look to its peaceful lakes, or to its flowery landscapes, or its evening skies, or to all that soft attire which overspreads the hills and the valleys, lighted up by smiles of sweetest sunshine, and where animals disport themselves in all the exuberance of gaiety, this surely were a more befitting scene for the rule of clemency than for the iron rod of a murderous and remorseless tyrant. But the present is a mysterious world wherein we dwell. It still bears much upon its materialism of the impress of Paradise. But a breath from the air of Pandemonium has gone over its living generations; and so "the fear of man and the dread of man is now upon every beast of the earth, and upon every fowl of the air, and upon all that moveth upon the earth, and upon all the fishes of the sea; into man's hands are they delivered: every moving thing that liveth is meat for him; yea, even as the green herbs, there have been given to him all things." Such is the extent of his jurisdiction, and with most full and wanton license has he revelled among its privileges. The whole earth labours and is in violence because of his cruelties; and from the amphitheatre of sentient nature, there sounds in fancy's ear the bleat of one wide and universal suffering, a dreadful homage to the power of nature's constituted lord.

These sufferings are really felt. The beasts of the field are not so

many automata without sensation, and just so constructed as to give forth all the natural expressions of it. Nature hath not practised this universal deception upon our species. These poor animals just look, and tremble, and give forth the very indications of suffering that we do. Theirs is the distinct cry of pain. Theirs is the unequivocal physiognomy of pain. They put on the same aspect of terror on the demonstrations of a menaced blow. They exhibit the same distortions of agony after the infliction of it. The bruise, or the burn, or the fracture, or the deep incision, or the fierce encounter with one of equal or superior strength, just affects them similarly to ourselves. Their blood circulates as ours. They have pulsations in various parts of the body like ours. They sicken, and they grow feeble with age, and, finally, they die, just as we do. They possess the same feelings; and, what exposes them to like sufferings from another quarter, they possess the same instincts with our own species. The lioness robbed of her whelps causes the wilderness to ring aloud with the proclamation of her wrongs; or the bird whose little household has been stolen fills and saddens all the grove with melodies of deepest pathos. All this is palpable even to the general and unlearned eye; and when the physiologist lays open the recesses of their system, by means of that scalpel under whose operation they just shrink and are convulsed as any living subject of our own species, there stands forth to view the same sentient apparatus, and furnished with the same conductors for the transmission of feeling to every minutest pore upon the surface. Theirs is unmixed and unmitigated pain, the agonies of martyrdom without the alleviation of the hopes and the sentiments whereof they are incapable. When they lay them down to die, their only fellowship is with suffering; for in the prison-house of their beset and bounded faculties, there can no relief be afforded by communion with other interests or other things. The attention does not lighten their distress as it does that of man, by carrying off his spirit from that existing pungency and pressure which might else be overwhelming. There is but room in their mysterious economy for one inmate,-and that is, the absorbing sense of their own single and concentrated anguish. And so in that bed of torment whereon the wounded animal lingers and expires, there is an unexplored depth and intensity of suffering which the poor dumb animal itself cannot tell, and against which it can offer no remonstrance-an untold and unknown amount of wretchedness of which no articulate voice gives utterance.

XIII. LORD JEFFREY.

FRANCIS JEFFREY was born in Edinburgh in 1773, and after the usual classical education at the High School of his native town, repaired to Glasgow University, and from thence to Oxford. On the completion of his education he returned to the Scottish metropolis, and

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adopted the profession of the law. In 1802, in co-operation with Brougham and Sydney Smith, he began the "Edinburgh Review,” a publication which must ever be linked with the name of Jeffrey. At the same time he was assiduous in his professional avocations; and his ready eloquence, command of language, powers of persuasion, and clearness of intellect, soon made him conspicuous at the bar. At length, in 1829, he was elected Dean of the Faculty of Advocates; the next year, when the Reformed Ministry came into power, he was made Lord Advocate, and a few years later he was advanced to the Bench as one of the Lords of Session. He continued to discharge his duties with unabating energy, and to the satisfaction of all parties, till his death, 26th January 1850. His writings consist of his "Contributions to the Edinburgh Review," part of which have been published, and have met with a large amount of public favour. He may be considered as the founder of the modern school of criticism, and of the "Review" as it now exists. As a critic, Jeffrey is distinguished in general by strict impartiality, and an urbanity of manner unhappily not always characteristic of the critic. His language, without aspiring to eloquence, is neat, perspicuous, and varied,-in fact, possesses all the excellences which belong to the style of a literary critic. He is sometimes not explicit enough in his opinions, which he enounces boldly and then explains away by numerous qualifications; and he has been accused of having no sympathy with the profounder feelings which are said to exist in modern poetry; but on this he has been perhaps misunderstood, and perhaps, also, his opinions are not so wholly untenable as is sometimes imagined; at all events, he did good service to literature by beating down the pretensions of literary adventurers, and by constantly holding up to public admiration and imitation the glorious era of Shakspere, and Bacon, and Taylor.

1. MORTALITY OF THE IMMORTALS. (REVIEW OF CAMPBELL'S

SPECIMENS, MARCH 1819.)

Next to the impression of the vast fertility, compass, and beauty of our English poetry, the reflection that occurs most frequently and forcibly to us, in accompanying Mr Campbell through his wide survey, is that of the perishable nature of poetical fame, and the speedy oblivion that has overtaken so many of the promised heirs of immortality! Of near two hundred and fifty authors whose works are cited in these volumes, by far the greater part of whom were celebrated in their generation, there are not thirty that now enjoy anything that can be called popularity, whose works are to be found in the hands of ordinary readers, in the shops of ordinary booksellers, or in the press for republication. About fifty more may be tolerably familiar to men of taste or literature-the rest slumber on the shelves of collectors, and are partially known to a few antiquaries and scholars. Now the fame of a poet is popular, or nothing. He does not address himself, like the man of science, to the learned, or those who desire to learn, but to all mankind; and his purpose being to delight and be praised, necessarily extends to all who can receive pleasure or join in applause. It is strange, then,

and somewhat humiliating, to see how great a proportion of those who had once fought their way successfully to distinction, and surmounted the rivalry of contemporary envy, have again sunk into neglect. We have great deference for public opinion, and readily admit that nothing but what is good can be permanently popular. But though its vivat1 be generally oracular, its pereat appears to us to be often sufficiently capricious; and while we would foster all that it bids to live, we would willingly revive much that it leaves to die. The very multiplication of works of amusement necessarily withdraws many from notice that deserve to be kept in remembrance; for we should soon find it labour, and not amusement, if we were obliged to make use of them all, or even to take all upon trial. As the materials of enjoyment and instruction accumulate around us, more and more, we fear, must thus be daily rejected and left to waste. For while our tasks lengthen, our lives remain as short as ever; and the calls on our time multiply, while our time itself is flying swiftly away. This superfluity and abundance of our treasures, therefore, necessarily renders much of them worthless; and the veriest accidents may, in such a case, determine what part shall be preserved and what thrown away and neglected. When an army is decimated, the very bravest may fall; and many poets, worthy of eternal remembrance, have probably been forgotten, merely because there was not room in our memories for all.

By such a work as the present, however, this injustice of fortune may be partly redressed some small fragments of an immortal strain may still be rescued from oblivion-and a wreck of a name preserved which time appeared to have swallowed up for ever. There is something pious, we think, and endearing, in the office of thus gathering up the ashes of renown that has passed away; or rather, of calling back the departed life for a transitory glow, and enabling those great spirits which seemed to be laid for ever still to draw a tear of pity, or a throb of admiration, from the hearts of a forgetful generation. The body of their poetry probably can never be revived; but some sparks of its spirit may yet be preserved in a narrower and feebler frame.

When we look back upon the havoc which two hundred years have thus made in the ranks of our immortals, and, above all, when we refer their rapid disappearance to the quick succession of new competitors, and the accumulation of more good works than there is time to peruse,-we cannot help being dismayed at the prospect which lies before the writers of the present day. There never was an age so prolific of popular poetry as that in which we now live; and as wealth, population, and education extend, the produce is likely to go on increasing. The last ten years have produced, we think, an annual supply of about ten thousand lines of good staple poetry,-poetry from the very first hands that we can boast of, that runs quickly on to three or four large editions, and is as likely 1 i.e., Sentence of approbation; literally, "Let it live." 2 i.e., Sentence of condemnation; literally, "Let it perish."

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to be permanent as present success can make it. Now, if this goes on for a hundred years longer, what a task will await the poetical readers of 1919! Our living poets will then be nearly as old as Pope and Swift are at present; but there will stand between them and that generation nearly ten times as much fresh and fashionable poetry as is now interposed between us and those writers; and if Scott, and Byron, and Campbell, have already cast Pope and Swift a good deal into the shade, in what form and dimensions are they themselves likely to be presented to the eyes of our great-grandchildren? The thought, we own, is a little appalling; and we confess we see nothing better to imagine than that they may find a comfortable place in some new collection of specimens—the centenary of the present publication. There, if the future editor have anything like the indulgence and veneration for antiquity of his predecessor, there shall posterity still hang with rapture on the half of Campbell, and the fourth-part of Byron, and the sixth of Scott, and the scattered tithes of Crabbe, and the three per cent. of Southey; while some good-natured critic shall sit in our mouldering chair, and more than half prefer them to those by whom they have been superseded! It is an hyperbole of good-nature, however, we fear, to ascribe to them even those dimensions at the end of a century; after a lapse of 250 years, we are afraid to think of the space they may have shrunk into. We have no Shakspere, alas! to shed a never-setting light on his contemporaries; and if we continue to write and rhyme at the present rate for 200 years longer, there must be some new cut of short-hand reading invented, or all reading will be given up in despair.

2. RISE AND DECLINE OF THE STYLE OF QUEEN ANNE'S REIGN.

It was the ambition of the authors of Queen Anne's time to improve and perfect the new style introduced at the Restoration, rather than to return to the old one; and it cannot be denied that they did improve it. They corrected its gross indecency-increased its precision and correctness-made its pleasantry and sarcasm more polished and elegant and spread through the whole of its irony, its narration, and its reflection, a tone of clear and condensed good sense, which recommended itself to all who had, and all who had not, any relish for higher beauties. This is the praise of Queen Anne's wits, and to this praise they are justly entitled. This was left for them to do, and they did it well. They were invited to it by the circumstances of their situation, and do not seem to have been possessed of any such bold or vigorous spirit as either to neglect or to outgo the invitation. Coming into life immediately after the consummation of a bloodless revolution, effected much more by the cool sense than the angry passions of the nation, they seem to have felt that they were born in an age of reason, rather than of feeling or fancy; and that men's minds, though considerably divided and unsettled upon many points, were in a much better temper to relish