his narration-which has besides the advantage of the clearest and most beautiful style in the language-flows like the stream of time itself—whose calmest course, or most erring irregularities, seem always controlled by a presiding intelligence. The faults of Hume were those into which an ordinary mind could not fall. He was often too refined in his reasoning upon motives, and carried too much into matters of fact the love of original discovery, which distinguished his discourses on abstract subjects. He forgot that it is frequently an obvious and vulgar circumstance which leads to the most important political results, and even accelerates or averts a crisis in the history of an empire. Thus we often admire his arguments and his profound reflections, when we are not satisfied with the exposition which they afford us; and though nothing can be finer than his mode of analysis, for keenness of thought, for fertility of invention, for the weighing of conflicting opinions, and the lucid arrangement of ideas,-yet we unavoidably feel that it is sometimes misplaced, and often seems to arise from a mind too proud to adopt an obvious course, when its sagacity could be exercised in the search of a more remote one; and therefore truth, which is sometimes near the surface, is overlooked in the solicitude for discovery. Hume was also too sceptical in all his opinions to sympathize with any of the feelings connected with the history of human action. His passions, indeed, were on that account less likely to interfere with the impartial and clear execution of his duty; but his sentiments were also colder than the more liberal attachment to truth might have inspired; yet he invested his subject with great moral dignity, and though some of his principles appear to be not so much the result of matured reflection as of early bias, yet so dispassionately amiable is his manner of unfolding them, that we feel them to be the errors of a superior understanding, whose very weaknesses are intellectual. There is not in Robertson the sagacity and scrutinizing power of Hume; but he had that political good sense, which frequently comes nearer the truth than the most profound philosophy, in accounting for the actions of men. His style is more diffuse than that of Hume, and less transparent the medium of ideas; but his views were capacious, and his sight to a certain

extent powerful,-so that he could never be a confused writer, though his style were inferior to what it is. There are times when he is, however, in mere description, exceedingly beautiful -and when his language seems the most happy that could have been adapted to his subject. He had the rare power of being able to trace with fidelity and well-sustained interest the intrigues -the policy-the diplomatic contention of cabinets; and to give to romantic History its richness of circumstance, its poetic sentiment, and picturesque effect. His description of the person, the fortunes, and the fate of MARY Queen of Scots, is a specimen of the latter; as his Maurice, Prince of Saxony, is a master-piece of the former. He was more identified with humanity than Hume, but less perhaps than Gibbon; who formed the most perfect union of glowing sentiment-of imagi native illustration-of authentic intelligence-and fidelity of detail, that ever was attempted in the whole range of Historic Literature. He united Livy's power of clear, interesting and living narration, to the moral discrimination of Tacitus ; and he came prepared to his task with acquired resources superior to those of either. With him the most elaborate acquisition did not interfere with the original energy of the intellect, nor abate any thing of the vigour of a temperament susceptible of animating impressions. To a power of moral investigation which has seldom been equalled, he united a poetic ardour of thought that brightened truth with the lustre of imagination. And his discriminating faculty never failed to be exercised, while he was influenced by the emotions. which generous minds receive from great incidents and actions of sublime interest. His subject was one most happily suited to the display of his peculiar genius. The decline and fall of the Roman Empire had all that grand and melancholy variety of action and feeling, which the commixture of civilization and barbarism-of virtue and vice, in their fierce extremes-of revolution, irruption, depravity, and heroism could produce. The power of his mind would have been too high-toned for a more circumscribed or regulated theme. Had Hume and he interchanged subjects, both would have failed. Our islandpolitics would have been too narrow and familiar for the lofty

genius of Gibbon. He would have had but occasional opportunities of showing the force and splendour of his moral delineation among a people, in all their habits essentially mercantile and calculating; while Hume could hardly have risen to the adequate representation of events which required more than the most faithful and severe elucidation of a cold intelligence. There is no Historian who gives with more power than Gibbon, the beauty of virtue and the odiousness of vice. The generous praise which he bestows on the one, and the moral indignation with which he records the illustrious guilt of the other, make his pages inspire the most useful emotion that History can excite; and if he had given to religion the aid which he has afforded to morality, his work would have been complete. He has been accused of redundancy of style: never was there a charge against a great writer more unfounded; his style rises with his subject, and partakes of the grandeur with which it is invested. His epithets are all characteristic; they are the happy touches of a clear mind and a masterly hand; not one of them in any great passage could be obliterated, but to the manifest injury of the description—at least, to the diminution of its peculiar force. We cannot enter into particulars here, but we could prove by examples from every part of his work, the accuracy of what we assert. On the whole, he brought a Roman spirit and more than Roman intelligence, to illustrate the last days of the greatest empire that the world ever saw.

On the intended Alteration of the Poor Laws.-March 4, 1834.

We have already stated and commented on the alterations which the Commissioners of Poor Laws have proposed, as to parish settlements and relief: we shall now see what it is they propose as a new constitution for their more judicious and effective administration. * * *

It will be seen from what we have said that, as to the administration of the poor laws, not merely a reform, but a revolution is meditated; a revolution which will transfer the rod of popular power into the hands of the Minister of the Crown. We con

fess the system of "centralisation," carried to the extent which is now attempted in this country, alarms us. We have borrowed the "new police" system from France, a country where the genius of enlightened and rational civil liberty has never yet raised its standard; a country ever oscillating between despotic power and revolution:-yet there the system of "centralisation" is carried to perfection. The system of local and popular government, which was the foundation of the well-regulated liberty of England, has no existence in the land over which the Russianised "KING of the Barricades" extends his iron sceptre. There the whole firmament of Magistracy, from the Judge of the Superior Courts to the Prefect of the Rural Commune, are the submissive satellites revolving round the great orb of central despotism at the Tuileries. Hence the people have so little to do with the creation or control of the powers that govern them, that there is no mutual confidence; nothing but distrust, jealousy, and dissension between the people and the Throne. England was in the manhood of her national liberty when France was in her infancy, out of which she has never yet grown; yet we are, of late years, adopting our notions of government from the realm of the Bourbons. Our rulers are for extinguishing local and popular government wherever it is possible, and introducing the French system of centralisation of all power in the Crown, or rather in the Ministers of the Crown.

Our idea of a sweeping change in the system of the poor laws does not include a transfer, of all local authority connected with their management, to the Crown. A use might be made of it hereafter to political ends, incompatible with the liberties of the country. We acquit the Commissioners of intending by their project to infringe upon public liberty. Still the evil will be the same when it comes into operation, if it ever does, as if they had foreseen its consequences. only add that by whatever authorities the new system of poor laws is to be administered, let them be amenable to parliament, or to some power of a popular nature, and not to one of his Majesty's Principal Secretaries of State.

We will

A Statutable Provision necessary for the Poor, in Ireland.— July 6, 1835.

THE law of England, in recognising the right of the poor to relief, and incorporating among its positive enactments the great principle that no human being ought to be allowed to perish of hunger, only adopted and enforced what the law of Christianity had previously enjoined. The extension of that right to, or rather the legislative acknowledgment of that right for all parts of the British empire, we have ever advocated— regardless of either the opposition or support of those politicians whose views of social improvement are governed by the dictates of a temporizing expediency, or trimmed and altered in accordance with the shifting opinions of party. But years have passed away, and we have not yet succeeded in inducing the Christian Legislature of this great country to extend to Ireland -the most wretched portion of the British dominions-the beneficent principle of the law of England and of Christianity; a principle not more sanctified by beneficence than wisdom, which says that none shall be allowed to die of hunger--that "the poor shall not perish out of the land."

While sordid "patriots"-the self-styled friends of the people are squabbling for party objects, wasting the public time in degrading personal conflicts, or intensely watching every opportunity to advance their own interests, the great master evil of Ireland, prolific as it is of misery and suffering that surpass all ordinary bounds of human wretchedness, remains unredressed, and, we add, untouched. The State physicians, who pretend to infallible nostrums for every disease of the body politic, can, with cold indifference, year after year, see Ireland suffering under a distemper that covers her with "wounds and bruises and putrefying sores," and which ever communicates a large portion of similar suffering and debasement to England, by the infection of her wretchedness.

The cries of a population in the agonies of famine that reach this country from the north-west of Ireland,-are they heard by our Legislature, and are immediate measures taken to alleviate human suffering for the present, and prevent the recurrence of