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organs of this powerful, wealthy, and intelligent party (which, however, is generally deficient in activity, and acts mainly by its weight-its vis inertia) are, among the reviews, 'The Quarterly,' and, among the magazines, Black wood's' and Fraser's.' The first-mentioned work is undoubtedly one of great influence and importance; the contributions are admirably written, and are generally by the most distinguished men of the day. This journal was established at the very agitated period of 1809, to counteract the danger of those liberal opinions which were at that time almost menacing the integrity of the Constitution; and it was for a long time conducted by William Gifford, the translator of Juvenal, and the author of the Baviad' and 'Mæviad,' two of the most bitter, powerful, and resistless literary satires which modern days have produced. Gifford was a self-taught man, who raised himself, by dint of almost superhuman exertions and admirable integrity, to a high place among the literary men of his age. Distinguished as a satirist, as a translator of satires, and as the editor of several of the illustrious but somewhat neglected dramatists of the Elizabethan age, his writings, admirable for sincerity, good sense, and learning, were also strongly tinged with bitterness and personality. Many other distinguished supporters of Conservative doctrines were contributors to The Quarterly,'-Croker; the witty, brilliant, sarcastic Canning; and, more recently, Southey. This journal is at present conducted by Lockhart, Walter Scott's son-in-law and literary executor.

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Advocating the same doctrines, though in language less solemn and dictatorial, Blackwood's Magazine' must be considered as having played, and as long likely to play, a very prominent part. It is exceedingly miscellaneous in its contents; and in its pages some of the most distinguished writers of poetry and fiction have made their débuts. Blackwood' must be held to have done good service to pure taste by the publication of a rich and masterly series of translations (chiefly by Hay, Merivale, &c.) of the Greek epigrams a very peculiar and exquisite class of productions. It was in Blackwood,' too, that Warren made his first appearance before the public, as the anonymous author of the 'Passages from the Diary of a late Physician' and the novel of Ten Thousand a-Year.' The sketches of sea-life and West-Indian scenery, mentioned by us in a preceding chapter with very high commendation, first appeared in this periodical under the titles of Tom Cringle's Log' and 'The Cruize of the Midge.' It would be tedious were we to attempt to enumerate all the powerful, splendid, or humorous narratives, all the genial and eloquent political biographies (such as those of Pitt and Burke), or all the penetrating and animated reviews of books and systems, which have appeared in 'Blackwood' since its establishment in 1814. We will only ad

vert to a series of contributions so truly original in form, and so happy in execution, that they may be considered as constituting an absolute and peculiar species. We allude to the exquisitely humorous and eloquent 'Noctes Ambrosianæ,' a collection of imaginary conversations between the supposed editor and contributors (real persons under fictitious and exaggerated masks), in which all the topics of the day are passed in review with a singular union of profound speculation, fervid eloquence, and the broadest and most extravagant gaiety. These are supposed to be chiefly the composition of John Wilson, long the editor of the journal, a man of almost universal accomplishments, and celebrated as a moral philosopher, as a poet, a critic, a publicist, a humorist, and a sportsman. In his Isle of Palms,' and 'City of the Plague,' Wilson shows himself to be a poet of no mean order, following the peculiar school of Wordsworth in his Margaret Lyndsay,' and 'Lights and Shadows of Scottish Life,' he has given a beautiful and eloquent picture of the peasant existence of his native country; and under his character of "Christopher North" (his pseudonym as editor of 'Blackwood') he has performed the same office for the scenery of Scotland, as in the prose tales, just mentioned, he had done for the joys and woes, the virtues and sufferings, of its inhabitants.

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The second great subdivision of public opinion, or what may be called the Constitutional Liberal party, is represented by The Edinburgh Review,' established in 1802 by a small party of young men, obscure at that time, but ambitious and enterprising, who were all destined to attain a high degree of distinction. The Edinburgh' founded its claim to success upon the boldness and vivacity of its tone, its total rejection of all precedent and authority, and the audacity with which it discussed questions previously held to be "hedged in" with the "divinity" of prescription. The Edinburgh' was an absolute literary Fronde; and its founders-Brougham, Jeffrey, Sidney Smith, Hallam, &c.—were soon convinced that they had not erred in calculating upon an extraordinary degree of success. The criticisms (many of which were retrospective, that is, discussing the merits of past eras in the history and literature of England and other countries) were marked by a singular boldness and pungency; and in contemporary and local subjects the 'Review' exhibited a power and extent of view which made its appearance, in some sense, an era in journalism. The critical articles are supposed to have been chiefly contributed by Jeffrey, many by Scott (though the total variance of his political sentiments with those advocated in the work may make us more surprised that he should have contributed at all than that he should have confined his labours to mere literary subjects), whilst Smith and Brougham, and more recently Macaulay,

have united history, politics, and literature. The latter has produced many noble articles on these subjects (for example, those on Machiavelli, on Cromwell, &e.), and Smith treated political questions with a richness of comic humour, and irresistible dry sarcasm, employed generally in exhaustive reasoning-in the reductio ad absurdum-which is not only exquisitely amusing, but is full of solid truth as well as pleasantry.

With reference to the Liberal party, 'The New Monthly Magazine' occupied at one time a similar position to that which Blackwood' does in relation to the Tory opinions. This journal (the continuation of one of the earliest of English periodicals) is exceedingly inferior in general literary talent to any of those which we have mentioned: it is pitched altogether in a lower key, both as regards politics and belles-lettres; but at the same time it cannot be accused of gross partiality and misrepresentation; a charge from which none of the journals above described can be said to have been always free. Its strength consists in the novels which have from time to time appeared, in its pages, in the manner of the feuilleton, and in the gay pleasantry which is generally to be found in its articles. It has been conducted by a succession of distinguished humorists and novel-writers-Theodore Hook, Thomas Campbell, Capt. Marryat, and Thomas Hood-and contains a large mass of excellent fiction.

The two great parties of Tory and Whig, monarchical and popular, which we have been speaking of, are strictly constitutional. The remaining one, the youngest in point of origin, but which is rapidly gaining strength and consistency, by no means scruples to advocate what are called organic changes in our form of government. This party, the ultra-liberal, the democratic, the Radical, as it has been nicknamed-is possessed rather of intelligence, restlessness, and ambition, than, as yet at least, of influence and weight; but it has its organ like its great rivals. This is The Westminster Review,' a journal sustained with very considerable power and energy: but it is rather in certain departments of antiquarian and artistic literature that 'The Westminster' has created itself a section of admirers: the educated classes in England sympathise too little with the doctrines advocated in this journal for it to obtain a very general circulation. The Quarterly,'' Edinburgh,' and Westminster' (like the generality of reviews) appear every three months: the magazines, in almost all cases, are monthly.

Besides these, there are of course innumerable publications of a local or special kind, devoted to the furtherance of some particular interest or of some science or art. Thus theology, law, history, medicine, physics and their separate branches, commerce, colonies, agriculture, manufactures, and even the most apparently

limited sciences, geology, palæontology, numismatology, even railroads, mines, and the art of galvano-metallurgy, have each their separate journal or journals. Each art, each pursuit, each whim or amusement is represented by some periodical, generally of merit and possessing a considerable circulation.

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But we have, also, a large and increasing mass of information given to us in a variety of other periodical works, many of which are sold at a price inconceivably small, if we consider the ordinary costliness of books in England; such, for example, as the publications by Constable and Chambers in Scotland, and the prolific brood of Family Libraries,' Cabinet Cyclopædias,' and penny journals. These works, by which a great extent of useful, if not very profound knowledge is placed at the disposal of the labouring classes, have in most cases been exceedingly successful, and are calculated to give a foreigner a high idea of the intellectual activity and enterprise of the English people ;-an impression which will become still stronger when he finds the contents of these collections to be, in almost every case, well selected, well arranged, decorous and moral, written always with respectable, and often with extraordinary ability.

CHAPTER XXI.

WORDSWORTH, COLERIDGE, AND THE NEW POETRY.

Wordsworth, and the Lake School - Philosophical and Poetical Theories-The Lyrical Ballads-The Excursion-Sonnets-Coleridge--Poems and Criticisms -Conversational Eloquence-Charles Lamb-The Essays of Elia-Leigh Hunt-Keats-The living Poets-Conclusion.

THE throne of English poetry, left vacant by the early death of Byron, is now unquestionably filled by Wordsworth. It was a species of revolution which seated the author of Childe Harold' upon that throne: it is a counter-revolution which has deposed "the grand Napoleon of the realms of rhyme." The English Bards' was Byron's 18th Fructidor; the publication of 'The Excursion' was his Waterloo. But in the fluctuation of popular taste, in the setting of that current, which, flowing from the old classicisms, has carried us insensibly, but irresistibly, first through Romanticism, and has now brought us to a species of metaphysical quietism, there have been many temporary changes of direction; nay, some apparent stoppages. Despite the effort and impulsion of the Byronian poetry-the poetry of passion-there were

writers who not only retained many characteristics of the forms that had to appearance been exploded, but even something of the old tone of sentiment; modified, of course, by the aesthetic principles which were afterwards to be completely embodied in such a cycle of great works as constitutes a school of literature. Thus Crabbe, with his singular versification (a kind of mezzo-termine between the smart antithetic manner of Pope and the somewhat languid melody of Goldsmith), combined a gloomy analysis of crime and weakness with pictures of common life delineated with a Flemish minuteness of detail; and the traditions of the purely classic school survived in the diction of Rogers and the exquisite finish of Campbell. These poets are the connecting links between the two systems so opposite and apparently so incompatible; and it is not surprising that these writers, both of whom have deservedly become classics in our language, should exhibit, in the difference of feeling and treatment perceptible when we compare their first works with their last, a perfect image of the gradual transition of public taste from the one style of writing to the other. They both began, the former in The Pleasures of Memory,' and the latter in The Pleasures of Hope,' as imitators of Akenside (himself an imitator of Milton) and of Goldsmith; while in their later works we trace a gradually increasing tendency towards the more passionate and lyric tone of modern poetry. In Rogers' exquisite poem of 'Human Life,' in his Italy,' in his charming songs and fugitive pieces, we find him gradually receding farther and farther from his first models: and in examining the works of Thomas Campbell we perceive a still stronger proof of the same transition. The Pleasures of Hope,' published at the very early age of twenty-four, was absolutely a reproduction of the tone and feeling of The Traveller;' but if we follow Campbell through his tender and pathetic narrative poem of 'Gertrude of Wyoming,' and his admirable lyrics-national and patriotic, and among the finest in any language-we shall see that in him, as in the general state of literary feeling reflected in his works, a complete and vast change had taken place. In literature nothing can ever be perfectly destroyed or obliterated, nothing can exist without producing an influence on remote times; and poetry therefore will ever bear something of an eclectic character.

It is the philosophy of Wordsworth-his theory, religious, social, and moral-that has most deeply coloured the poetry of the present day in England. He has exercised upon the literature of his country an influence far more permanent and powerful than that which was communicated to the mind of Europe by the splendid innovations of Byron, although it was not so intense and rapid in its first development. The Lake School (so called because its founders resided chiefly among the picturesque scenery