1824.] 
happy to echo the words of the critic : 
“Jt is the production of a sensible, 
acute, and right-headed man;: and if 
sailors and soldiers can write such books 
as these, we must reverse the motto, and 
make it—Cedant armis toge.” 
Article III. The-review of Quin’s 
Visit to Spain, another book of Consta- 
ble’s publishing, has a good deal of cant 
unworthy the Edinburgh, and exhibits a 
half-tragic halfcomic countenance, as 
the critics were divided between the op- 
posite inclinations of desiring to serve 
and desiring to condemn. “ Mr. Quin’s 
object was, apparently, to communicate 
information to a respectable newspa- 
per,” says the reviewer, “ we know not 
which; but, from the opinions of Mr. 
Quin, we should presume to a ministe- 
rial paper.” Lucky guess! Now, the 
writer, we doubt not, knows as well 
as we and the whole world, that it 
was for the Morning Herald, which is 
not a ministerial paper, but which cer- 
tainly did great harm to the Spanish 
constitutional cause, not so much by the 
bias against it which Mr. Quin’s letters 
might and certainly did give, but by the 
singular and absurd resolution of send- 
ing another reporter to Spain at the 
same time, whose opinions were oppo- 
site in colour to Mr. Quin’s.. The two 
letters of these equi-ponderating gemini, 
often appeared in the same paper toge- 
ther, and the effect was the most equi- 
vocal, vacillating, and apparently trea- 
cherous that could well be imagined. This 
pretended ignorance in the critic, who is 
not improbably, from his eulogy upon 
reporters, a reporter himself, might suit 
the diplomatic trickery of cabinets very 
well, but is as absurd and misplaced here 
as the pretended ignorance of the House 
of Commons of the report of its debates. 
The paper concludes with some spirited 
remarks on that new power in Europe, 
** the Newspaper Press,” and very justly 
notes, as a circumstance greatly tobe 
rejoiced at, the education and superior 
attainments of the class of persons in 
whom so great a power is placed. 
The next article, on Mr. Lander’s 
Imaginary Conversations, contains some 
truth and powerful writing, mixed up 
with a more than due degree of seve- 
rity and bitterness. The secret of this 
business is, we apprehend, Mr. Lander’s 
entire and independent freedom from 
party shackles, and the having pursued 
the following alliteration further than a 
professed Whig would be willing to ad- 
mit. He trusts “that posterity will not 
confound him with the Coxes and 
Edinburgh Review, ; 
119 
Foxes of the age.” This is egotistical 
enough; but, notwithstanding, we can- 
not help thinking that there is a large 
and growing liberal majority of the En- 
glish people who, like Mr. Lander, are 
resolved to think independently for 
themselves, and who are therefore dis- 
posed to value the two ambitious aris- 
tocrat leaders of the Whigs and Tories, 
Fox and Pitt, who, during twenty years, 
kept John Bull’s head in a state of con- 
stant turmoil and fever with their noisy 
and declamatory. rivalry, at a rate con- 
siderably beneath the interested or pre- 
judiced estimation of their respective 
partizans. If, indeed, Mr. Lander out- 
steps the bounds of decorum in this and 
other occasions, so in fact does the 
critic himself, whose allusion to King 
Henry the Eighth (whose gross and pam- 
pered selfishness has but one parallel in 
the British annals) is'a very intelligible 
inuendo, which certainly exhibits any 
thing but courage, propriety, or good 
taste. Mr. Lander, with all his faults, is 
a scholar and a gentleman ; a man of ex- 
tensive acquirements and original think- 
ing. He is besides a sound and unde- 
bauched friend of liberty ; even his in- 
consistency is a test that he loves the 
truth, and fearlessly speaks it: such 
men are wanted in the present over- 
luxurious and over-excited and relaxed 
state of political and social morals. Mr. 
Lander is justly accused of egotism ; 
but the critics sentimental record ‘of 
meeting the blue and yellow in the hands 
of a Highland shepherd during a shower 
‘of rain, and the language in which this 
flimsy piece of critical and bibliographi- 
cal egotism is conveyed, is certainly as 
trashy a combination of mawkishness 
and slip-slop as ever was justly barked 
im the pages of the blue and yellow. 
-Article V. is an acute and searching 
commentary on Brodie’s “ History of 
the British Empire, from the Accession 
of Charles the First,” in which the author 
examines and exposes’ David Hume’s 
partial and contradictory statements re- 
lative to the character of the English 
Government. It is extremely fair and 
liberal to Mr. Hume in the midst of some 
truths, and we ‘think ‘the critic both in= 
genuous and accurate in the nature of 
the key he furnishes to Mr. Hume’s ma- 
nifold inconsistencies; namely, that they 
proceeded partly from a reluctant defe- 
rence to the principles of liberty esta- 
blished by the Revolution, and partly 
from change of purpose. in his original 
design ; what was at first merely intend- 
ed as an apology having worked itself 
up 
