was brought us, in the moment of our deepest affliction, that the French emperor, moved by a desire to erect in North America a buttress for imperialism, would transform the republic of Mexico into a secundo-geniture for the house of Hapsburg." That the French emperor should have chosen the moment of our deepest affliction to do such a thing was very unkind. After some additional observations to the same effect, our orator forms a climax as follows: "So that the imperial system of Mexico, which was forced at once to recognize the wisdom of the policy of the republic by adopting it, could prove only an unremunerative drain on the French treasury for the support of an Austrian adventurer." If there be any truth in the precept of Quintilian, that the first principle of art is to observe decorum, what must we think of this?

After France and Austria are thus disposed of, the Pope's turn comes next; but we think his Holiness ought to feel very thankful for being let off so easily, for he is only reminded that this is not the sixteenth century, but the nineteenth :

"It was the condition of affairs in Mexico that involved the Pope of Rome in our difficulties so far that he alone among temporal sovereigns recognized the chief of the Confederate States as a president, and his supporters as a people; and in letters to two great prelates of the Catholic Church in the United States, gave counsels for peace at a time when peace meant the victory of secession. Yet events inove as they are ordered. The blessings of the Pope at Rome on the head of Duke Maximilian could not revive in the nineteenth century the ecclesiastical policy of the sixteenth; and the result is only a new proof that there can be no prosperity in the state without religious freedom.".

It was, no doubt, a grave error on the part of the Pope to recognize, as a people," the "supporters" of Jefferson Davis; he should only have recognized them as a tribe; and, of course, should not have counselled peace, since to do so was unchristian. He should have addressed the prelates in some such terms as the following: "Venerable Brethren-Say not a word about peace to either of the belligerents, but rather slap each on the back, and advise them to fight it out!"

It seems it was not patriotism, or love for the Union, that induced our people to fight so well after all, but universal philanthropy:

"When it came home to the consciousness of the Americans that the war which they were waging was a war for the liberty of all the nations

#44 Caput artis est decere" Instit, de Or. lib., if., cap. i.

of the world, for freedom itself, they thanked God for the severity of the trial to which he put their sincerity, and nerved themselves for their duty with an inexorable will."

Generals Grant, Sherman, and Sheridan must have been as much uneasy about the liberties and rights of the Russians, Turks, Hottentots, and Caffres, &c., &c., as they were about the people of New York, Pennsylvania, or Massachusetts; but, judging from the following paragraph, they must have thought particularly of the free and happy subjects of the Czar, as well as of those of his Celestial Majesty :

66 Then, too, was called forth the new power that comes from the simultaneous diffusion of thought and feeling among the nations of mankind. The mysterious sympathy of the millions throughout the world was given spontaneously. The best writers of Europe waked the conscience of the thoughtful, till the intelligent moral sentiment of the Old World was drawn to the side of the unlettered statesman of the West. Russia, whose emperor had just accomplished one of the grandest acts in the course of time by raising twenty millions of bondinen into freeholders, and thus assuring the growth and culture of a Russian people, remained our unwavering friend. From the oldest abode of civilization, which gave the first example of an imperial government with equality among the people, Prince Kung, the secretary of state for foreign affairs, remembered the saying of Confucius, that we should not do to others what we would not that others should do to us, and in the name of the emperor of China closed its ports against the war ships and privateers of the seditious.'''

We have occupied much more space with Mr. Bancroft's oration than we had intended. But for this we have two excuses to offer: one is, that, notwithstanding its lugubrious tone throughout, we have seldom been more amused by a comedy; the other is, that we should not act in accordance with the motto on our title-page did we permit such a document to go forth to the world without denying most emphatically that the gross violations of decorum and good taste which we have pointed out are to be regarded as in any manner expressive of the enlightened sentiment of this country. We can assure our European readers that it would be a great injustice to the intelligent portion of the American people to think that they would approve of such Corinthian rudeness; and that two-thirds, even of the senators and representatives before whom the oration was delivered did not feel the less mortified because they did not oppose a pro forma vote of thanks to the orator. most charitable construction we can put upon the whole affair, as far as the orator is concerned, is, that his desire to get into office once more has got the better of his judgment, and induced him to pander to the prejudices of the class who regard all who wear crowns, or even coronets, as their natural enemies.

The

ART. IV.-1. Miscellaneous Works of the Reverend SYDNEY SMITH, London: 1860.

2.

A Memoir of the Reverend Sydney Smith. By his daughter, Lady HOLLAND. With a selection from his letters, edited by Mrs. AUSTIN. Two volumes. London: Longman & Co., 1855. Ar the commencement of the present century, Edinburgh, the metropolis of Scotland, was much resorted to by persons of the aristocratic order in England, who desired to obtain more particular knowledge of ethics and natural philosophy than was thent obe picked up at the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. Robertson, the historian, had departed to the world of shadows not long before. Adam Ferguson, the annalist of Rome, had also been removed, his place as professor of moral philosophy being worthily occupied by Dugald Stewart. Robert Henry, most laborious of literary workmen, who wrote a history of England, in six quarto volumes, scrupulously correct but immeasurably dull, also was no more. Perhaps it was his treatise on arts, manners, and literature, separate from the narrative, that suggested to Macaulay that splendid and comprehensive third chapter in his history, which so powerfully contrasts the manners, customs, society, arts, and letters of the seventeenth with those of the nineteenth century. Hugh Blair, whose lectures and sermons had made him famous in his time, had very lately shuffled off this mortal coil; and, a few years earlier, Thomas Blacklock, divine and poet, who, though physically blind, was the very first, among the leading Scottish literati, to acknowledge the rising genius of Robert Burus; in which recognition he was followed by Mackenzie, in a generous critique published in the Lounger. But, though great men had departed, men of mark remained, and the future was full of promise. There, Jupiter Carlyle, the bold and shrewd minister of Inveresk, still lingered, though past the age of fourscore, devoting his few remaining hours to the completion of that autobiography (first published in 1860) which, though he was unable to bring it down later than 1770, gives the best view of men and manners, in England as well as in Scotland, during the whole reign of the second and the first ten years of the third George. There, too, was Henry Mackenzie, author of "The Man of Feeling" and "Julia de Roubigné," gradually gliding into his sixth decade, yet whose vitality preserved him for thirty more years of honorable leisure, in which he could remember that he had written "No line which, dying, he would wish to blot."

37

There, too, was James Gregory, the ornament of Edinburgh University, and one of "a line of kings," all of his blood and name, whose sceptre had power in the realms of learning and science. There was Fraser Tytler (afterwards a Scottish judge, with the courtesy title of Lord Woodhous ee), whose "Outlines of Universal History" continue valuable and valued in our day-his father and his son also winning reputation as Scottish historians-who was then in his prime, as well as Henry Erskine, brother of the future Lord Chancellor (who had lately won his spurs by successful advocacy of the great rights of " trial by jury"), believed, by the Scottish bar at least, to be a far better lawyer, and acknowledged to be the smartest man at the Scottish bar. Twinkling amid these planets was the feeble and flickering light of the elder brother of these Erskines, the Earl of Buchan, who had no nobility, save of mere title, and whose pertinacious egotism would have been ludicrous if it were not still more annoying. Adam Ferguson, historian of the Roman republic, and highly esteemed for his writings on moral philosophy, still graced the scene, though he had passed the allotted "threescore years and ten" of human life. And, still in his prime, there was Malcolm Laing, who had found time, amid his labors at the bar, and the claims of society upon one of the most genial of men, to complete the unfinished volume of Dr. Henry's "History of England," and produce a new edition of thePoems of Ossian." The Dii Majores of literature, law, science, and philosophy may be said to have then abounded in Edinburgh, and the generous hospitality of the people, the place, and the time was freely extended to all strangers who, avowedly visiting the city for the purpose of acquiring or extending knowledge, had any passable introduction, conducted themselves with propriety, and paid their way with exact punctuality.

At that time, when the present century had just opened, a new set of men were arriving in Edinburgh. As Lord Cockburn said: "The old suns were setting when the band of great thinkers and great writers, who afterwards concocted the Edinburgh Review, were rising into celebrity." Most of the new men, too, were sensible enough to entertain liberal opinions, and bold enough to avow them; neither prudent nor wise, perhaps, when the previous tone of their seniors had been much the reverse, and the whole patronage of the government was distributed among those only who ostentatiously proclaimed their adhesion to toryism. Whoever did

not acknowledge William Pitt as "the pilot who weathered the storm," was a marked man, to be frowned down in his profession, to be coldly treated in ordinary society, to be accounted a Jacobin and a leveller, whose condition of mind was utterly hopeless, whose present was cloudy, and whose future must be obscure.

In the summer of 1802, a few young men, who then resided in Edinburgh, were in the habit of meeting in each other's rooms, upon odd evenings, and, their exchequer being low, the cost of material enjoyment was also limited. Where oysters were sold for sixpence a hundred-six score going to the hundred-in these remote days, and whiskey was proportionately cheap, these primitive suppers were procurable without any very heavy draft upon the purse. These gentlemen, thoroughly liberal in their politics, were hopeful and enthusiastic. They eagerly resolved to give utterance to their opinions. The proposal of one of them, that a periodical, critical and political, should be established, was at once adopted. This little band consisted of John Allen, an Edinburgh doctor, who became an author because he had no patients; Thomas Brown, who also had graduated in medicine, but did not practice it; Sydney Smith, a clergyman of the Church of England, but then stationed in Edinburgh as bear-leader to the son of a Wiltshire squire; Francis Jeffrey, an advocate or lawyer, with small practice at the bar; and Francis Horner and Henry Brougham, advocates and knowledge-seekers, with limited ambition.

They were not very young men; Allen being thirty-two in 1802, Smith thirty-one, Jeffrey twenty-nine, Brown and Horner twenty-four, and Brougham twenty-three. Neither were they unused to writing for the press. Allen had already entered into the lists against Dr. Gregory in defence of Hume's speculations on liberty and necessity, and had actually published, in 1801, a book entitled "An Introduction to the Study of the Animal Economy," which he had translated from Cuvier. Sydney Smith already was a popu lar preacher, delivering written sermons. Jeffrey had translated some of the old Greek poets, six years before, for his own amusement, and had written several articles for the Monthly Review, the London periodical in which, forty-five years before, poor Oliver Goldsmith had executed much melancholy task-work, while wearing the livery of "Shallow Griffiths and his Wife," who owned and conducted it. Brown had published a refutation of Darwin's "Zoonomia,"