the majestic bearing with which a minister of the Scottish church invokes the blessing of God in dismissing his congregation.

Brougham had only just reached his majority when Washington died, and was but twenty-four years of age when he became one of the founders of the Edinburgh Review. Lord Jeffrey was twenty-nine, with literary tastes that had hitherto interfered sadly with his progress in the profession

of an advocate. Rev. Sydney Smith, one of the wittiest talkers and political writers of his generation, was the oldest of the three, and yet only thirty-one when the Review was projected. Francis Horner, whose contributions added a great deal of sober intellectual strength to the opening number of the new periodical, and commanded marked public attention, was born the same year as Brougham-thus only twenty-four at

the time. It was veritably a group of young men who tried the novel experiment of establishing a critical journal, the success of which is well known to the world.

Lord Brougham says, in his autobiography: "I shall never forget Buccleuch Place, for it was there, one stormy night in March, 1802, that Sydney Smith first announced to me his idea of establishing a critical periodical or review of works of literature and science. I believe he had already mentioned this to Jeffrey and Horner; but that night the project was for the first time seriously discussed by Smith, Jeffrey, and me. I at first entered warmly into Smith's scheme. Jeffrey, by nature always rather timid, was full of doubts and fears. It required all Smith's overpowering vivacity to argue and laugh Jeffrey out of his difficulties. There would be, he (Smith) said, no lack of contributors. There was himself, ready to write any number of articles, and to edit the whole; there was Jeffrey, facile princeps in all kinds of literature; there was myself, full of mathematics, and everything relating to the colonies; there was Horner for political economy, Murray for general subjects; besides, might we not, from our great and never-to-be-doubted success, fairly hope to receive help from such leviathans as Playfair, Dugald Stewart, Robison, Thomas Brown, Thomson, and others? All this was irresistible, and Jeffrey could not deny that he had already been the author of many important papers in existing periodicals. The Review was thus fairly begun. Yet Jeffrey's inconceivable timidity not only retarded the publication of the first number (which, although projected in March, was not published till October), but he kept prophecying failure in the most disheartening way, and seemed only anxious to be freed from the engagement he and the rest of us had entered into with Constable, to guarantee him four numbers as an experiment. Various other minor obstacles (such as Horner's absence in London and Allen's in Paris) arose, which for a time almost threatened the abandonment of the undertaking; but at length a sufficient number of articles were prepared, to be revised by Smith, and the first number came out early in October. Its success was so great that Jeffrey was utterly dumbfounded, for he had predicted for our journal the fate of the original Edinburgh Review, which, born in 1755, died in 1756, having produced two numbers! The truth is, the most sanguine amongst us, even Smith himself, could not have foreseen the greatness of the first triumph any more than we could have imagined the long and successful career the Review was to run, or the vast reforms and improvements in all our institutions, social as well as political, it was destined to effect."

The accounts of Lord Jeffrey and Sydney Smith differ somewhat from

the above, but coincide in the essential points. Lord Jeffrey always, acknowledged that Sydney Smith was the first to suggest the bold idea of the Edinburgh Review; and they all agreed that it was a tempestuous evening when the original discussion took place, and they had no little merriment over the greater storm they were brewing. After the work began in earnest

the literary conspirators believed it necessary to conceal their identity, hence they secured a modest place of meeting, to which they repaired singly and by back approaches, or by different lanes. One evening, when a messenger from the printer, with a sealed package of proof, knocked at the door of a small lodging-house, the landlady asked him if he could tell her any

thing about the lodgers she had got. Her reason for asking, she explained, was, that "they were all decent, well-behaved, sober men; but, although they didn't sleep there, they keepit awfu' unseasonable hours'!"

The bright, energetic, decisive little Jeffrey was precisely the right man for the editor's chair. He possessed great breadth of knowledge, unlimited tact, and, although inclined to fits of depression, had an instinctive perception of character which enabled him to handle with ease all sorts of contributors, from the irascible and erratic Brougham to the austere and uncompromising Carlyle. He soon acquired a calm confidence in his own literary and social judgments, which shielded him from many an anxious hour; also the happy art in his own personal writings of brevity without being obscure. He liked explicit statements, and was inclined to resentment when called upon to deal with vague aspirations; with poetry in any form he had no sympathy. Few men knew better than he how to present the pith of an elaborate or bulky book within the narrow limits prescribed by the patience of an indolent reader. During the first seven of the twenty-seven years of his editorship he contributed, on an average, three or four articles to each number of the Review, and proved himself an adroit and polished author as well as one of the most able and fearless of critics.

It should be remembered that at the beginning of this century it was generally considered derogatory to a gentleman to write for the press-at least, where payment was expected. Thus, when Jeffrey was offered a salary, he felt that he accepted it at the risk of "general degradation." A few men of genius had long recognized the influence and value of journalism, and bent their energies to its service in defiance of the public opinion of their times. But writers for the press were in a sense despised, had no acknowledged position in society, and their social claims were contemptuously rejected. More than a quarter of a century after the establishment of the Edinburgh Review a Lord Chancellor gave offense to his friends by asking the editor of the Times to dinner. The complete change that has since taken place in public sentiment can thus be observed, even in Old England, for now the highest personage may offer hospitality to a journalist without involving hostile criticism. Much credit is due to Jeffrey and his associates for this alteration in the condition of things.

The effect of a new journal, so full of public life, suddenly springing into existence in a remote part of the kingdom was electrical. Its spirit, its movements, its strength, and its independence were watched with excited surprise. The writings of Sydney Smith were weighted with wisdom and winged with wit. He attacked abuses of all kinds, and managed to reveal them to the public eye in what he esteemed their true colors. His

vivacity and his humor ran like a golden thread through all his articles, and his style was so clear and crisp, and his illustrations so felicitous, that the reading world was captured, as it were, by storm. He was a man of prejudices, and his judgment was by no means infallible, but he labored in the common cause of liberty and truth in his own peculiar fashion, and often revealed to the multitude about the subject in hand, on one magical page, as much as a regiment of scholars could have explained in a week. His mischievous sallies of wit lighted up, in the most unexpected manner, topics of the driest kind and arguments of the most recondite description. George Ticknor relates that, at a little breakfast party at Sydney Smith's, near the close of his life, he said he never became a contributor to the Review on the common business footing. After an article of his had been published he would inclose a bill to Jeffrey, something like this: "Francis Jeffrey, Esq., to Rev. Sydney Smith: To a very wise and witty article," naming the subject, number of sheets, etc, " at forty-five guineas a sheet," and the money always came.

Horner left in his private journal this paragraph: "Jeffrey is the person who will derive most honor from this publication, as his articles are generally known and are incomparably the best." But among all the early writers for the Review Brougham was the most ready, the most satirical. He wrote on every imaginable theme-science, politics, America, colonial policy, literature, poetry, surgery, mathematics, and the fine arts-but while he dashed off his contributions with almost unheard-of celerity he was not always sure, sometimes deplorably inexact, nearly driving the overworked editor into the realms of despair. He was so swift with his pen, and accomplished so much, however, that he was supposed to "have time for everything." "Take it to that fellow Brougham!" exclaimed Sir Samuel Romilly on one occasion, when solicited to edit a forthcoming book. Lord Holland once assured Brougham that he believed if a new language was discovered in the morning he would be able to talk it before night; and Lord Campbell was accustomed to declare that if Brougham was locked up in the Tower for a year without a single book, the twelve months would not roll past ere he had written an encyclopedia.

In a letter from Edinburgh Lord Brougham wrote to Viscount Howick in October, 1807, saying: "On my arrival here I found Jeffrey very anxious to insert in the next Review proper discussions of the American and other neutral questions, and I should be glad to have any suggestions that may occur to you upon these subjects, in addition to those which you have already mentioned in the course of conversation." On the 7th of November Brougham wrote again to the same correspondent, "I drew up