LITERATURE. BLACKWOOD^ MAGAZINE. 195 



drift of the politics of the Edinburgh Review is felt by the nation 

 to have on the whole a good tendency. If you and your friend per- 

 sist in writing in Blackwood's Magazine, I exhort you strenuously 

 to make that Magazine what you are capable of making it ; to take 

 the hint which has been given you ; to take warning from the awk- 

 ward perplexities in which it has involved you, and from which it 

 would be idle to attempt to extricate yourselves entirely, and hence- 

 forth to avoid unhandsome personalities. I do not say, spare the 

 Edinburgh Review ; on the contrary, where you find in it any sen- 

 timent that you think militating either against the Constitution or 

 Christianity, by all means expose it ; but do not impute motives to 

 the writers which you cannot think exist. Your readers will go 

 more thoroughly along with you if you are temperate, and give 

 that Review the credit which it deserves, and speak of its authors 

 rather as men who do not see the whole truth, than as men who 

 are wittingly blind. If you cannot get the regulation of that Mag- 

 azine into your own hands, but must have your writings coupled 

 with party politics and personalities, which you yourselves disap- 

 prove of, I really think, for your own credit, you should have 

 nothing to do with it ; for there is not a piece of abomination in 

 the Magazine which will not be fathered upon one or other of you ; 

 and neither Christianity nor Toryism is at present in so low a state 

 that there is any necessity to sutler martyrdom." 



The following letter from my father about the same time appears 

 to have been addressed to Mr. Morehead, in reference to a suspicion 

 of Mr. Macvey Napier having been the author of the pamphlet. 

 It betrays the keenness of his feelings on the subject : — 



" 53 Queen Street, 

 Half-past Tea, Wednesday, 1S17. 



" My dear Sir : — Your message to me from Mr. Napier would 

 have been perfectly satisfactory, even had I had any suspicion that 

 he was the author of the pamphlet. But knowing Mr. Napier to 

 be a geutleman and a man of education, I could not have suspected 

 him to be a blackguard and a villain. Had public rumor forced me 

 at any time to ask him if he was the author of that pamphlet, the 

 question would have been accompanied with an ample apology for 

 putting it, for, without that, the question would itself have been 



