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abolished in all cases of dibel, and that the liberty of the press should be in the exclusive guardianship of a Judge appointed by the Crown. None but a Judge [he said] who has from his infancy been accustomed to determine intricate cases is equal to such a difficult task. If we even suppose the jury sufficiently enlightened to saravel those knotty points, yet there remains an insuperable objection. In state libels their passions are frequently so much engaged, that they may be justly considered as parties concerned against the Crown. No justion can therefore be expected from them in these cases." Pokemon 3.

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This welcome doctrine, this "tirade against trial by jury," proved so acceptable at court, that in a month the eloquence of Thurlow was rewarded by the office of Attorney-General. His intense hatred of the Americans, "the rebels," was probably sincere, and must have been peculiarly acceptable to his royal master, with whom he became a great favourite. Every question that canne under discussion was treated by him in the same spirit. He furiously abused the booksellers, when an abortive attempt was made to extend copyright beyond the short period of fourteen years. In the American rupture, of all the orators on the government side, Thurlow was ever the most fierce and exasperating. With him, it was war to the knife; and his violence might of itself have cut off all hope of conciliation. Probably for the sake of contradiction, he was disposed at this period not to crush an attempt to grant one small measure of relief to the Catholics.

One cannot help enjoying the ridicule which the Attorney-General drew upon himself, on one occasion, and which his extreme arrogance made doubly delightful and amusing to those who feared while they hated him. In the parliamentary session of 1777

"Mr. Fox having moved that there be laid before the House certain papers, relating to what had been done under the Act for cutting off the trade of the American Colonies, Thurlow rose and inveighed most bitterly against the motion, asserting that it could only proceed from a desire to countenance the rebels," and contending that it could not be granted with any regard to the dignity of the Crown or the safety of the State. While he was still on his legs, proceeding in this strain, news was brought that in the other House the very same motion having been made by the Duke of Grafton, the Government had acceded to it, and it had been carried una

Riously. The fact was soon known by all present; and Lord North, after showing some momentary symptoms of being disconcerted, joined in the titter. Thurlow pausng, the Secretary to the Treasury whispered in his car the intelligence of what had happened elsewhere," and the suppressed mirth broke out into a universal peal of laughter-from the phenomenon that, once in his life, ThurI appeared to be abashed. It was but for an instant. Quickly recovering himself, and looking sternly round at the Treasury Bench, he exclaimed, I quit the defence of administration. Let ministers do as they please in this any other House. As a member of Parliament, I Dever will give my vote for making public what, according to all the rules of policy, propriety, and decency, ought to be kept secret. However,' says the Parliamentary History, this did not stifle the laugh, which continued for some time." Lord North was frightened, and standing more in awe of his Attorney-General than of his colleagues in the other House, he thought it best still to oppose the motion, and it was rejected by a majofity of 178 to 80."

In the House of Commons, he had been baffled

in an attempt to bring Horne Tooke to the bar for a libel on Parliament; but as Attorney-General he obtained a verdict against "Parson Horne," and pressed that the libeller should be set in the pillory. Even the High-Tory Johnson, on this occasion, said I hope they did not set the dog in the pillory. He had too much literature for that." But Tooke and Thurlow were, in some respects, not uncongenial minds; and at the close of their lives they became a sort of friends the ex-Chancellor visiting the ex-libeller at Wimbledon.

Thurlow had now fairly earned the Great Seal of his royal master; and in the following year he obtained it. There was no doubt as to who would be Lord Bathurst's successor. Lord Campbell, we think, estimates him as a judge, an orator, and a statesman, with perfect justice, when he remarks:→→

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The new Chancellor did not disappoint public expectation, and as long as he enjoyed the prestige of office, he contrived to persuade mankind that he was a great judge, a great orator, and a great statesman-although I am afraid that in all these capacities he was considerably overrated, and that he owed his temporary reputation very much to his high pretensions and his awe-inspiring manners."

As an equity judge, he is considered inferior to many of his predecessors; and,

"Engrossed by politics, and spending a large portion of his time in convivial society, or in idle gossip with his old coffee-house friends, he was contented if he could only get through the business of his court without complaints being made against him by the suitors, or any very loud murmurs from the public. Permanent fame he disregarded or despised. He was above all taint or suspicion of corruption, and in his general rudeness he was very impar times dealt recklessly with the rights which he had to tial; but he was not patient and pains-taking; he somedetermine, and he did little in settling controverted questions, or establishing general principles. Having been at the head of the law of this country for near thirteen years, he never issued an order to correct any of the abuses of

his own court, and he never brought forward in parliament any measure to improve the administration of justice.

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He is said to have called in Hargrave, the very learned editor of Coke upon Littleton, to assist him in preparing his judgments, and some of them show labour and research; but he generally seems to have decided offhand without very great anxiety about former authorities. Frequently he employed Mr. Justice Buller, a very acute special pleader, and nisi prius lawyer, to sit for him in the Court of Chancery. On resuming his seat, he would highly eulogise the decisions of one whom he, in common with all the world, felt bound to respect and admire.' But being privately asked how Buller had acquired his knowledge of Equity?" Equity,' said he, he knows no more of it than a horse; but he disposes somehow of the cases, and I seldom hear more of them.'

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So fiercely did he spring on a luckless counsel or solicitor, that he generally went by the name of the Tiger,' and sometimes they would, out of compliment, call him the 'Lion;' adding that Hargrave was his 'pro

vider.'"

Lord Campbell enters professionally into the more remarkable of the judgments pronounced by Thurlow; and some of them appear wise and sound. Fairly in the House of Peers, he seems to have become more violent and more arrogant than ever, and more furious against the Americans. His manners, if not his principles, made him speedily unpopular in the House of Peers; but an ill-managed effort to shake off his yoke,

attempted, in the most paltry spirit of aristo-
cracy, by the Duke of Richmond, only gave
this indomitable spirit opportunity of establish
ing his despotism in the Upper House more firmly.
It must have been terror rather than love
which induced the Rockingham Administration
to submit to Thurlow remaining in office when
Lord North fell. But through him they might
imagine that they had a firmer hold of the
court; while he appears to have determined
beforehand that the Cabinet should, in all things,
submit to his pleasure. He went into the Govern-
ment for the purpose of destroying it. When the'
Rockingham ministry fell, both Thurlow and his
royal master would, of course, have wished the
Great Seal still to remain in the possession of this
“king's friend;” and Mr. Fox, not warned by expe-
rience, was, it is now understood, willing to accept
office with this dangerous colleague; but Thurlow
saw his way. He had connected himself with young

William Pitt, and, it is said, declined to act with Fox.
The story is, however, not very clear, either in the
Whig or the Tory edition of it; though Whig
writers deny that Fox would have held office with

Thurlow. It is certain that he ought not; that
the Great Scal was put in commission; and that
Thurlow set himself, with all his might, to over-
throw the Coalition Government, and was the
regular leader of the Opposition until the Fox
and North ministry was dissolved, and Pitt came
into office. About this time, "the bauble,"
coveted by so many great lawyers, chanced to
be stolen; and the Whigs were accused of the
sacrilegious felony, as it was fancied no public
business could be transacted without the mystical
agency of the Great Seal.

made. But I have received the following account of the discovery from a quarter entitled to the most implicit determine the course which Ministers should pursue, Thurlow had been there some time before any of his colleagues arrived. He was to be brought back to London by one of them, and the moment of departure being come, the Chancellor's hat was nowhere to be found. After a fruitless search in the apartment where the Council had been held, a page came with the hat in his hand, saying aloud, and with great naïveté, "My Lord, I found it in the closet of his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales ! The other Ministers were still in the Hall, and Thurlow's confusion corroborated the inference which they drew.'"

credit: When a Council was to be held at Windsor to

Between the King and the Prince, Thurlow. was still sadly perplexed. Dr. Willis said the King would get better; but was this certain, and might not the Prince be Regent; and was it to support his pretensions? Trying to keep fair not, therefore, most politic like, with the Whigs, with both parties, and not to commit himself to the meanwhile the King certainly got better either, Thurlow was suspected by both; but in every day, and the Chancellor became as affectionate, devoted, loyal, and lachrymose, as ever was John, Lord Eldon, and much more hypocritical; as this piece of humbug must have cost him a greater effort than such scenes did his pathetic.

successor;—

the House of Lords, the Duke of York having made a "The next time the subject was brought forward in very sensible speech, renouncing, in the name of his brother, any claim not derived from the will of the people, and lamenting the dreadful calamity which had fallen Chancellor left the woolsack, seemingly in a state of upon the royal family, and upon the nation-the Lord great emotion, and delivered a most pathetic address to the House. His voice, broken at first, recovered its clearness; but this was from the relief afforded to him by Another seal was a flood of tears. He declared his fixed and unalterable

made, and Thurlow clutched and held it, till out-resolution to stand by a Sovereign who, through a reign of twenty-seven years, had proved his sacred regard to witted by his own double-dealing and intriguing the principles which seated his family on the British between his "old master," and the "rising sun" throne. He at last worked himself up to this celebrated of Carlton House, during the first illness of the climax : A noble Viscount (Stormont) has, in an eloking, when the "Prince's friends" were likely to quent and energetic manner, expressed his feelings on the present melancholy situation of his Majesty-feelings rencome into power, and Pitt to go down. Lord dered more poignant from the noble Viscount's having Campbell, however, thinks that he is charged by been in habits of personally receiving marks of indulgence the Whigs with rather more craft and duplicity and kindness from his suffering Sovereign. My own than he actually practised. There is, however, sorrow, my Lords, is aggravated by the same cause. no doubt that, possessing the confidence of the which have been graciously conferred upon me by his debt of gratitude is, indeed, ample for the many favours Queen and Pitt, he was at this time frequently Majesty; AND WHEN I FORGET MY SOVEREIGN, MAY MY Gop closeted with the Prince, when the leaders of all parties repaired to Windsor Castle to examine into the state of the King's health, and hold councils, and circumvent each other. Mr. Pitt was at first duped, it is said; but the following theatrical incident stripped Thurlow of his mask :

"The exact circumstances of the discovery are variously related, although all accounts agree in stating that it took place at a meeting of the Ministers in Windsor Castle, and that it arose from a mistake that the Chancellor made respecting his hat. Some say that he entered the room, having under his arm the Prince's hat, which he had in the hurry carried off from the Prince's closet instead of his own; others, that he walked into the room without a hat, and that soon after one of the Prince's pages brought him his own hat, saying that his Lordship had left it behind when he took leave of his Royal Highness; and others, that entering without his hat, and being reminded of it, he immediately said, he supposed he must have left it in another part of the castle, where he had been paying a visit; whereupon the looks of those present immediately made him conscious of the disclosure he had

FORGET ME!""

My

Lord Campbell does not forget to add the sharp, certainly coarse, but perhaps not unjust, retort of Wilkes, who was at the time seated on the steps of the throne, and which, though necessarily spoken aside, immediately got into currency in political circles, and has been often quoted since.

After this, Thurlow's path became more clear; and when the Commons sent up the Regency Bill, he concluded his eloquent appeal by exclaiming

Is there a man who hears me-who possesses the sensibility common to every human breast, who does not sympathise with her Majesty?' [Here he began to be much affected.] I protest to God I do not believe there is a noble Lord in the House who wishes to reduce to such a forlorn condition a King labouring under a misfortune, equal to any misfortune that ever happened since misfortune was known in the world. To hesitate about giving the household to the Queen, would show a total extinction of pity for that royal sufferer, whose calamity

entitles him to the most unlimited compassion, and even to increased respect:

"Deserted in his utmost need

By those his former bounty fed."'"

Here the orator burst into tears, and he resumed his seat on the woolsack as if still unable to give vent by language to his tenderness.

These exhibitions were probably pretty justly appre ciated in the House of Lords where the actor was known,

and they must have caused a little internal tittering, although no noble Lord would venture openly to treat them with ridicule. But they made a prodigious impression on the publie.”

But the King was now pitied, and therefore popular with the nation; and his faithful Chancellor, the Kent to poor, old, mad Lear, shared in a popularity new to both of them. But what those at hand had all along clearly seen gradually became apparent to the public, though the eyes of the King were among the last opened to the deceitfulness of his conscience-keeper. Pitt now both distrusted and disliked Thurlow as much as he afterwards did Lord Eldon. There was secret discontent, if not open disunion, in the cabinet; and Thurlow finally fell, though more through his own ungovernable temper than any other cause. To the last he violently opposed every measure that savoured of improvement or liberality; and denounced the Jacobins of France as furiously as he had done the rebels of America; and finally, the King himself, when his Majesty had, at last, yielded to his dismissal.

*** His Majesty had no longer any occasion for his services. We are not informed of the channel through

which the dismissal was announced to the Chancellor, but

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the act was a dreadful surprise to him, and the manner of it deeply wounded his pride. I have no doubt,' writes the same person to whom Lord North had uttered his prophecy,that this conduct of the King was wholly unexpected by Lord Thurlow: it mortified him most severely. I recollect his saying to me, "No man has a right to treat another in the way in which the King has treated me: we cannot meet again in the same room.'

"Seeing his fate inevitable, instead of quietly submitting to it, he complained loudly of the ingratitude and

faithlessness of Princes."

His last efforts as Chancellor were directed against the rights of juries in cases of libel; and, when defeated, he erected, in a strong protest, a monument to his own illiberality and obstinacy. His parting advice to Sir John Scott, by this time made Attorney-General, is full of character.

"Stick by Pitt,' said the retiring Chancellor: 'he has tripped up my heels, and I would have tripped up his if I could. I confess I never thought the King would have parted with me so easily. My course is run; and for the fature I shall remain neutral. But you must on no account resign: I will not listen for a moment to such an idea. We should be looked on as a couple of fools! Your promotion is certain, and it should not be baulked by any such whimsical proceeding."

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"When he again entered the House of Lords, he was like a dethroned sovereign, and he could not bear his diminished consequence. Seen without his robes, without his great wig, sitting obscurely on a back bench instead of frowning over the assembly from the woolsack-the Peers were astonished to discover that he was an ordinary mortal, and were inclined to revenge themselves for his former arrogance by treating him with neglect. Finding his altered position so painful, he rarely took any part in the business of the House, and he might almost be considered as having retired from public life."

"When he showed himself in the House, he was observed to look sulky and discontented. He was even at a loss where to seat himself, for he hated equally the government and the opposition, and there was no precedent for an ex-Chancellor placing himself on a cross bench. He took no part in the important debates which arose on the French revolution, or on the origin of the war with the French Republic."

In a few years, by gradual and natural process, Thurlow, out of office, became liberal; a friend “of the Prince," and at last a patriot, warmly opposing the Treason and Sedition Bills which followed hard on the abortive State Trials, when Hardy, Horne Tooke, and the other victims, for whose blood the Government seemed to thirst, were triumphantly acquitted, and constitutional principles saved from the most daring outrage on civil liberty that had been attempted since the Revolution. Nay, Thurlow went farther: he became a parliamentary reformer. "Was it fitting," he asked in the House of Peers, "that

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when Attorney-General, he had prosecuted and sent to "His next effort was in favour of an old enemy whom, gaol, and struggled to place in the pillory; but with whom he was now living on terms of great personal intimacy. political character, some years deceased, gives an inteThe following extract from the diary of a distinguished resting account of their first meeting alter the convicted

parson had been marched off to Newgate:

Ealing, had by Lord Thurlow's desire (I believe), but at ***Lady Oxford, who then (1801) had a house at all events with his acquiescence, invited Horne Tooke to dinner to meet him-Lord Thurlow never having seen for a libel in 1778, and when the greatest bitterness was him since he had prosecuted him, when Attorney-General,

shown on both sides-so that this dinner was a meeting of great curiosity to us who were invited to it. Sheridan and Mrs. Sheridan were there, the late Lord Camelford, Sir Francis Burdett, Charles Warren, with several others, and as I had met him repeatedly, and considered his and myself. Tooke evidently came forward for a display, powers of conversation as surpassing those of any person I had ever seen (in point of skill and dexterity, and if at all necessary in lying), so I took for granted old grumbling Thurlow would be obliged to lower his top-sail to himbut it seemed as if the very look and voice of Thurlow scared him out of his senses from the first moment-and certainly nothing could be much more formidable. Tooke tried to recruit himself by wine, and, though not generally a drinker, was very drunk; but all would not Thurlow as constantly laughing at him.'"' do; he was perpetually trying to distinguish himself, and

So

Thurlow saw his reputation, like his power, pass before his mortal course was run.

The Keeper of the King's conscience was never married, but he lived openly with a mistress (Mrs. Hervey), and their children were, without any disguise about the matter, brought out into soeiety as if they had been legitimate children; and, at least, while their father held the Great Seal, were as such well received. But, in spite of all this

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This, no doubt, covered a multitude of sins. It is to his credit that he took pains to educate his offspring for the society into which he obtruded them. For the rest, Lord Campbell hopes that his end was a good one, though he can give no particulars of it; and thus he moralises at the death-bed of the Ex-Chancellor:

I trust that, conscious of the approaching change, having sincerely repented of his violence of temper, of the errors into which he had been led by worldly ambition, and of the irregularities of his private life, he had seen the worthlessness of the objects by which he had been allured; that having gained the frame of mind which his awful situation required, he received the consolations of religion; and that, in charity with mankind, he tenderly bade a long and last adieu to the relations and friends who surrounded him. He expired on the 12th of September, 1806, in the seventy-sixth year of his age,"

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of his own times. His opinion of his contemporaries, of his brother Peers, and those Bishops" and Ecclesiastics who paid court to Mrs. Hervey, to gain the favour of her "protection," would certainly have been edifying, as well as rich and rare; and not less so his confessions" connected with the Court and Carlton House, and the intrigues at the period of the attempted Regency, most instructive to fledgling statesmen, and partymen still unskilled in the intricacies of domestic or back-stairs diplomacy.'

From the freedom and good spirit with which Lord Campbell has spoken of the Tory Chancellors of past periods, we anticipate that he will come out with becoming vigour in commenting on the dark period, the "Reign of Terror," which followed the dismissal of Thurlow, and continued, with little abatement, until the death of Lord Castlereagh. As he approaches contemporary times, we may also look forward to a richer accu-" mulation of characteristic anecdote, and personal recollection, to enliven and diversify graver discussions, and revive the vital interest which pervaded the nobler records and more picturesque times of Wolsey, More, Bacon, and Clarendon.

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NOTES ON WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.

BY THOMAS DE QUINCEY.

I

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(Continued from page 23,), 1. mist 1 T dvuron la i.bas larity chiefly besetting the Jews. But how perverse a fancy! In the Jews, idolatry was a disease; in Pagan nations, it was the normal state. In a nation (if any such nation could exist) of crétins or of lepers, nobody would talk of cretinism or leprosy as of any morbid affection; that would be the regular and natural condition of man. But where either was spoken of with horror as a ruinous taint in human flesh, it would argue, that naturally (and, perhaps, by a large majority) the people were uninfected. Amongst Pagans, nobody talked of idolatry-no such idea existed-because that was the regular form of religious worship. To be named at all, idolatry must be viewed as, standing in opposition to some higher worship that is not idolatry. But, next, as we are all agreed that in idolatry there is something evil, and differ only as to the propriety of considering it a Jewish evil-in what does this evil lie? It lies, according to the profound Landorian Melanchthon, in this--that different idolaters figure the Deity under different forms: if they could all agree upon one and the same mode of figuring the invisible Being, there need be no quarrelling; and in this case, consequently, there would be no harm in idolatry-none whatever. But, unhappily, it seems each nation, or sometimes section of a nation, has a different fancy: they get to disputing; and from that they get to boxing, in which, it is argued, lies the true evil of idolatry. It is an extra cause of broken heads. One tribe of men represent the

MELANCHTHON AND CALVIN, ཕྱི་ན་༣《 ཐ་མ་ སྣུད་ Or Mr. Landor's notions in religion it would be useless, and without polemic arguments it would be arrogant, to say that they are false. It is sufficient to say that they are degrading. In the dialogue between Melanchthon and Calvin, it is clear that the former represents Mr. L. himself, and is not at all the Melanchthon whom we may gather from his writings. Mr. Landor has heard that he was gentle and timid in action; and he exhibits him as a mere development of that key-note; as a compromiser of all that is severe in doctrine; and as an effeminate picker and chooser in morals. God, in his conception of him, is not a father so much as a benign, but somewhat weak, old grandfather; and we, his grandchildren, being now and then rather naughty, are to be tickled with a rod made of feathers, but upon the whole, may rely upon an eternity of sugar-plums. For instance, take the puny idea ascribed to Melanchthon upon Idolatry; and consider for one moment how little it corresponds to the vast machinery reared up by God himself against this secret poison and dreadful temptation of human nature. Melanchthon cannot mean to question the truth or the importance of the Old Testament; and yet, if his view of idolatry (as reported by L.) be sound, the Bible must have been at the root of the worst mischief ever yet produced by idolatry. He begins by describing idolatry as Jewish;" insinuating that it was an irregu

66

* The Works of Savage Landor. 2 vols. London: Moxon. 1846.

of

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from created things, can and will condescend to the grossness of inferior human natures, by submitting to mirror itself in more and more carnal representative symbols, until finally the mixed element of resemblance to God is altogether, buried and lost. God, by this succession of imperfect interceptions, falls more and more under the taint and limitation of the alien elements: associated with all created things; and, for the ruin of all moral grandeur in man, every idola

round the idea of God into the idea of a powerful demon. Many things check and disturb this tendency for a time; but finally, and under that intense civilization to which man intellectually is always hurrying under the eternal evolution of physical knowledge, such a degradation of God's idea, ruinous to the moral capacities of man, would undoubtedly perfect itself, were it not for the kindling of a purer standard by revelation. Idolatry, therefore, is not merely an evil, and one utterly beyond the power of social institutions to redress, but, in fact, it is the fountain of all other evil that seriously menaces the destiny of tho human race.

PORSON AND SOUTHEY.

Deity as a beautiful young man, with a lyre and a golden bow; another as a snake; and a third -Egyptians, for instance, of old-as a beetle or an onion these last, according to Juvenal's remark, having the happy privilege of growing their own gods in their own kitchen-gardens. In all this there would be no harm, were it not for subsequent polemics and polemical assaults, Such, if we listen to Mr. L., is Melanchthon's profound theory of a false idolatrous religion. Were the police everywhere on an English foot-trous nation left to itself will gradually bring ing, and the magistrates as unlike as possible to Turkish Cadis, nothing could be less objectionable; but, as things are, the beetle-worshipper despises the onion-worshipper; which breeds ill blood; whence grows a cudgel; and from the cudgel a constable; and from the constable an unjust magistrate. Not so, Mr. Landor; thus did not Melanchthon speak: and if he did, and would defend it for a thousand times, then for a thousand times he would deserve to be trampled by posterity into that German mire which he sought to evade by his Grecian disguise. The true evil of idolatry is this; there is one sole idea God, which corresponds adequately and centrally to his total nature. Of this idea, two things may be affirmed: the first being-that it is at the root of all absolute grandeur, of all truth, and THE two dialogues between Southey and Porof all moral perfection; the second being that, son relate to Wordsworth; and they connect Mr. natural and easy as it seems when once unfolded,Landor with a body of groundless criticism, for it could only have been unfolded by a revelation; and, to all eternity he, that started with a false conception of God, could not, through any effort of his own, have exchanged it for a true one, All idolaters alike, though not all in equal degrees, by intercepting the idea of God through the prism some representative creature that partially resembles God, refract, splinter, and distort that idea. Even the idea of light, of the pure, solar light the old Persian symbol of God--has that depraving necessity. Light itself, besides being an imperfect symbol, is an incarnation for us. However, pure itself, or in its original divine manifestation, for us it is incarnated in forms and in matter that are not pure: it gravitates towards physical alliances, and therefore towards unspiritual pollutions. And all experience shows that the tendency for man, left to his own imagination, is downwards, The purest symbol, derived **Melanchthon's profound theory."-That the reader may not suppose me misrepresenting Mr. L., I subjoin his words, p. 224, vol. I, :—“The evil of idolatry is this rival nations bave raised up rival deities; war hath been denounced in the name of heaven; men have been murdered for the love of God; and such impiety hath darkened all the regions of the world, that the Lord of all things hath been mocked by all simultaneously as the Lord of Hosts." The evil of idolatry is, not that it disfigures the Deity, (in which, it seems, there might be no great harm) but that one man's disfiguration differs from another man's; which leads to quarreling, and that to fighting."

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"Grecian disguise"-The true German name of this learned reformer was Schwarzerd (black earth); but the homeliness and pun-provoking quality of such a designaon induced Melanchthon to masque it in Greek. By the way, I do not understand how Mr. Landor, the arch-purist in orthography, reconciles his spelling of the name to Greek orthodoxy: there is no Greek word that could be expressed by the English syllable "ethon." Such a word Melancthon would be a hybrid monster-neither fish, flesh, nor good red herring.

which vainly he will seek to evade his responsibility by pleading the caution posted up at the head of his Conversations, viz. Avoid a mistake in attributing to the writer any opinions in this book but what are spoken under his own name "If Porson, therefore, should happen to utter villanies that are indictable, that (you are to understand) is Porson's affair. Render unto Landor the eloquence of the dialogue, but render unto Porson any kicks which Porson may have merited by his atrocities against a man whom assuredly he never heard of, and probably never saw. Now, un-1 less Wordsworth ran into Porson in the streets of Cambridge on some dark night about the era of the French Revolution, and capsized him into the kennel-a thing which is exceedingly improbable, considering that Wordsworth was never tipsy ex-) cept once in his life, yet, on the other hand, is exceedingly probable, considering that Porson was very seldom otherwise-barring this one opening for a collision, there is no human possibility or contingency known to insurance offices, through which Porson ever could have been brought to trouble his head about Wordsworth. It would have taken three witches, and three broomsticks, clattering about his head, to have extorted from Porson any attention to a contemporary poet that did not give first-rate feeds. And a man that, besides his criminal conduct in respect of dinners, actually made it a principle to drink nothing but water, would have seemed so depraved a character in Porson's eyes that, out of regard to public decency, he would never have mentioned his name, had he even happened to know it. "Oh no! he never mentioned him." Be assured of that. As to Poetry, be it known that Porson read none

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