such as his articles on Swift, Warburton, Burns, Franklin, Alfieri, Mackintosh, Curran, Richardson, and Cowper. The impeachment of Swift of high crimes and misdemeanors, before the bar of history, is a masterpiece of its kind, and has obtained deserved celebrity. The vices of his character are exposed with tremendous force, and, considered as an argument drawn simply from the actions of the man, the article is conclusive. But even in this able and powerful paper the deficiencies of Jeffrey are still apparent. In delineating character, he did it from the "skin inwards, and not from the heart outwards.” His own character was the test he ever applied. He had not imagination enough to identify himself with another, and look at things from his point of view. Thus, all the palliations which bad or questionable actions might receive from original temperament or mental disease were not taken into consideration; but the individual was judged from an antagonist position, according to the very letter which killeth. This is the mode of the advocate, rather than of the critic. In the case of Swift, the feeling that the article excites against the man is one of unmitigated detestation. A more profound knowledge of his internal character might have modified the harshness of this feeling with one of commiseration. A similar remark is applicable to the judgment expressed of Burns. As regards Warburton, however, we think Jeffrey was essentially right. Nothing can be finer than the castigation he gives the insolent and vindictive bishop, at the same time that he acknowledges his talents and erudition.

Jeffrey's political articles are very spirited compositions, full of information and ability, displaying an admirable practical intellect and talent for affairs, and

great command over the weapons both of logic and sarcasm. The course of the Edinburgh Review, in opposing with courage and skill the numerous political crimes and corruptions of the day, and the vigor with which it scourged tyranny and its apologists, though too often alloyed by wilful injustice to authors who happened to be classed with the tory party, will always be remembered in its favor. The part which the editor took in the political warfare of the time was honorable to his talents and his integrity. Though the extreme practical view he takes of government and freedom is not always to our taste, and though we could have wished that he possessed a deeper faith in human nature, and principles deeper grounded in right and less modified by expediency, it would be unjust to deny his claim to be considered among the most prominent of those who, in small minor-. ities and with the whole influence of the government against them, warred for years, with inflexible zeal, to overthrow great abuses, and remove pestilent prejudices. The critical and historical essays contributed to the Edinburgh Review by THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY have obtained a wide celebrity. Compared with Jeffrey, he may be said to have more earnestness, industry, learning, energy of feeling, more intellectual and moral hardihood, and a wider range of argumentation, but less grace, ease, subtilty, and sweetness. There are few contemporary writers more purely masculine, more free from all feminine fastidiousness of taste and sentiment, more richly endowed with the qualities of a hard and robust manhood, than Macaulay. His diction and style of thinking indicate physical as well as mental strength, and a contemptuous impatience of all weak emotions. He never commits himself on any subject until he has

fully mastered it, and then he writes like a person who neither expects nor gives quarter,—who shows no mercy for the errors of others, because he cares not to have any shown to his own. Though a good analyst, his chief strength lies in generalization. He would hardly condescend, like Jeffrey, to pause and play with the details of a subject, or fritter away his acuteness in petty refinements; but he always aims to grasp general principles. He has one power that Jeffrey lacks, the capacity to learn from other minds. Accustomed to look before and after, to view a literary or a political revolution in its connection with general history, his taste and judgment are comprehensive in the sense of not being fettered by conventional rules. He has considerable rectitude of intellect, and a desire to ascertain the truth of things. His literary criticism refers to the great elements or the prominent characteristic of an author's mind, not to the minutiae of his rhetoric or his superficial beauties and faults. With Jeffrey, the reverse is often true. His wit and acuteness are so continually exercised in detecting and caricaturing small defects, that the result of his representation is to magnify the faults of his author into characteristics, and to consider his excellences as exceptions to the general rule. Macaulay, by taking a higher point of view, by his willingness to receive instruction as well as to administer advice, contrives to give more effect to his censures of faults, by keeping them in strict subordination to his warm acknowledgment of merits. The skill with which he does this entitles him to high praise as an artist. He has attempted to delineate a large number of eminent men of action and speculation, many of whose characters present a seemingly tangled web of virtues and vices; and he has been almost always successful in preserving

the keeping of character, and the relation which different qualities bear to each other. He places himself in the position of the man whose character and actions he judges, seizes upon his leading traits of mind and disposition, and ascertains the relation borne to them by his other powers and feelings. As his object is to represent his subject pictorially to the imagination, as well as analytically to the understanding, and at all events to stamp a correct portrait on the mind of the reader, he sometimes epigrammatically exaggerates leading traits, in order that the complexity of the character may not prevent the perception of its individuality. This epigrammatic manner has often been censured as a fault, in some instances justly censured; but we think that his use of it often evinces as much wisdom as wit; for his object is to convey the truth more vividly, by suggesting it through the medium of a brilliant exaggeration. No person is so simple as to give the epigram a literal interpretation; and all must acknowledge, that at times it is an arrow of light, sent directly into the heart of the matter under discussion.

There is probably no writer living who can hold up a great criminal to infamy with such terrible force of invective and sarcasm as Macaulay. Scattered over his essays, we find references to men and events that have become immortal through their criminality; and he has allowed few such occasions to pass without a flash of scorn or an outbreak of fiery indignation. All instances of bigotry, meanness, selfishness, and cruelty, especially if they are overlaid with sophistical defences, he opposes with a force of reason and energy of passion which render them as ridiculous as they are infamous. He is especially severe against those panders to tyranny who

attempt to reason base actions into respectability, and to give guilt the character of wisdom. He crushes all such opponents with a kind of merciless strength. Even when his view of a person is on the whole favorable, he never defends any crime he commits. This is the case in the most difficult and delicate task he ever undertook,

the character and actions of Warren Hastings. No one can be more severe than he on Mr. Gleig, the biographer and apologist of Hastings. Every instance of oppression and cruelty which comes under his notice he condemns with the utmost indignation; but in summing up the character, he balances great crimes against great difficulties and strong temptations. The reader is at liberty to take an opposite view, and, indeed, is supplied with the materials of an impartial moral judgment. Macaulay's admiration for great intellectual powers and talent for administration is preserved amid all the detestation he feels for the crimes by which they may be accompanied. This is the amount of his toleration for Warren Hastings. In the case of Barère, however, he had to do with a man as mean in intellect as he was fiendlike in disposition; and his delineation of him is masterly. The skill with which the essential littleness of the man is kept in view amid all the greatness of his crimes, the mingled contempt and horror which his actions inspire, and the felicity with which his cruelty is always associated with his cowardice and baseness, are in Macaulay's finest manner.

We have introduced this notice of Macaulay rather to illustrate the objection to Jeffrey, than from any hope or intention to give his various writings a strict review; and we accordingly pass to another eminent essayist and critic, SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH. His miscellaneous com