202 LETTER XLV. TO THE SAME. MY DEAR DAVID WILLIAMS, I TAKE no offence whatever with anything you have said, nor do I think it at all likely that I shall ever take any serious offence from anything you can say. The truth is, that you are looking upon all these matters in far too serious a point of view. I care nothing about this book, of which you have taken up so evil a report; but I insist upon it, that you spend one or two evenings in looking over the copy I send you, before you give me any more of your solemn advices and expostulations. When I have given you time to do this, I shall write to you at greater length, and tell you my own mind all about the matter. Ever your's, P. M. 203 LETTER XLVI. TO THE SAME. I PRESUME you have now done as I requested; and if so, I have no doubt you are prepared to listen to what I have to say with a more philosophic temper. The prejudices you had taken up without seeing the book, have, I make no question, made unto themselves wings and passed away-at least the most serious of them,-and you are probably quite as capable of taking a calm and impartial view of the affair as I myself for as to my allowing any partiality for seriously to warp my judgment concerning a literary Journal, in which he sometimes writes this is, I assure you, a most absurd suspicion of your's-but transeat cum aliis. W The history of Blackwood's Magazine is very singular in itself, and I think must long conti nue to form an important epoch in the literary history of Scotland-above all, of Edinburgh. The time of its first appearance was happily chosen, just when the decline of that intense and overmastering interest, formerly attracted to the Edinburgh Review, had fairly begun to be not only felt, but acknowledged on every hand; and had it not appeared at that particular time, it is probable that something, not widely different in spirit and purpose, must have ere long come forth; for there had already been formed in Scotland a considerable body of rebels to the long undisputed tyrannical sway of Mr Jeffrey and his friends; and it was necessary that the sentiments of this class should find some vehicle of convenient expression. In short, the diet of levity and sarcastic indifference, which had so long formed the stable nourishment of Scottish intellect, had by repetition lost, to not a few palates, the charming poignancy of its original flavour; and besides, the total failure of all the political prophecies of the Whig wits, and, indeed, the triumphant practical refutation given by the great events of the preceding years to all their enunciations of political principles, had, without doubt, tended very powerfully to throw discredit upon their opinions in regard to other matters. The Whigs themselves, indeed, were by no means inclined to acknowledge that the sceptre of their rulers had lost any portion of its power; but the continuance of their own firm allegiance was by no means sufficient to prevent this from being actually the case; for, in preceding times, the authority of the critical sceptre had been acknowledged by Scottish Tories, no less humbly than by Scottish Whigs; and it was too natural for these last to suspect, at this alarming crisis, that the former would now think themselves in possession of a favourable opportunity for throwing off a sway, which had always with them rested much more on the potency of fear than on that of love. The subjection of the antecedent period had, indeed, been as melancholy and profound, as anything ever exemplified within the leaden circle of an eastern despot's domination. There was, for a long time, no more thought among the Scottish reading public of questioning the divine right, by which Mr Jeffrey and his associates ruled over the whole realms of criticism, than there is in China of pulling down the cousin-german of the Moon, and all his bowing court of Mandarins. In many respects, there is no doubt the Scotch had been infinitely indebted to this government-it had done much to refine and polish their ideas and manners—it had given them an air of intelligence and breeding, to which they had been strangers before its erection among them. But these advantages were not of so deep a nature, as to fix themselves with any very lasting sway in the souls of the wiser and better part of the people. They were counterbalanced in the eyes of the simpler and less meditative classes, by many circumstances of obvious character and obvious importance too, (after these had once been able to fix attention ;)-and those who were accustomed or able to reflect in a more serious and profound manner upon the condition of their country, could not, I suppose, be blind to another circumstance equally true, and far more generally and enduringly important than any other-namely, that the influence acquired by the Edinburgh Reviewers over the associations of the great majority of Scottish minds, was not an influence accompanied with any views of philosophy calculated to ennoble human nature, or with any genial or productive spirit of thought likely to draw out the genius and intellect of |