Vlll PREFACE. 



make the best use of their faculties and accomplishments. 

 On the contrary, the attraction and remuneration of Re- 

 views largely increase and encourage the productions of 

 authors, and open new markets for books. A Reviewer tests 

 his own powers, and perfects them in a leading Periodical ; 

 and Time, aided by the accumulation and reprint of 

 his contributions, gives him a permanent celebrity and 

 the widest sphere of influence. It is scarcely necessary 

 to cite the increasing number of such Essayist collections 

 in our own days, not excluding " Essays from the Times!" 

 Such authors become instructors of Posterity. Thus the 

 brilliant names, in our own generation, of Walter Scott, 

 Southey, Jeffrey, Hazlitt, Mackintosh, Sydney Smith, 

 Arago, Brougham, Guizot, Thiers, the two Mills, McCul- 

 loch, Senior, G. C. Lewis, Macaulay, Croker, Wilson, 

 James Stephen, Lord Mahon, and Albany Fonblanque, 

 become fixed stars in the firmament of literature. 



The liberality of the Proprietor of the Quarterly Review 

 permits the present publication. The political opinions of 

 Mr. GISBORNE, it is well known, were not in accordance 

 with the principles on which that able Periodical is 

 habitually conducted. Nevertheless, the sagacity of its 

 Editor discovered in Mr. GTSBORNE, and produced on 

 neutral ground, a highly-gifted Contributor, whose mental 

 labours might otherwise have never been brought to light. 

 These mutual relations constitute real liberality; may they 

 be everlasting ! 



The entire Agricultural and Political Essays and Speeches 

 of Mr. GISBORNE, in Parliament and " out of doors," with 

 a brief memoir of their author, are in the press, and will 

 be early published. In the meantime this portion, con- 

 sisting exclusively of Essays on Agriculture, cannot be 

 unacceptable to the Land Owners and Tenant Farmers of 

 Great Britain and Ireland. The proprietors and tillers 

 of the soil must now depend solely on themselves. Con- 

 tests between " Protectionists " and "Free Traders " are 

 exhausted discussions. Agriculturists can henceforth only 



