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Mæviad." That production possesses certainly some merit; it is well written and pungent, and reminds us more than any other English poem of this age, of some of the best features of the school of Pope. But its principal characteristic is the keenness of its abuse; one not much acquainted with the later English literature, would never doubt that the indignation of the author had been kindled against some new and monstrous heresy, supported by powerful genius, and likely to produce some serious or fatal change in the literary tenets of the English. Must we not be astonished to learn, that all this wrath has overflowed upon the foolish frail whim of a few newspaper and magazine poetasters—a silliness too contemptible ever to have been regarded, except with a transitory contempt, by any man capable of appreciating the true character of authors? How can one, who thinks the Lauras and Della Cruscas matters of so great moment, form any rational opinion concerning such men as Scott, Wordsworth, Byron, or Goëthe? You can never discover the motions of distant worlds by means of the same instrument which enables you to detect a mighty population in a rotten leaf.

Mr Gifford is a mighty bigot, both in religion and politics. I fear that this is almost necessary in one who is brought up in the midst of a country so rent and tortured by the spirit of sect as England. We Germans have no idea of the extreme to which these freemen carry their animosities. They are, after all, agreed upon most matters of any serious moment, so that the whole of their contentions turn on things which we should consider as quite unworthy of much attention. The Quarterly Review is a work of high talent, and the political opinions of its conductors are, I think, in general such as you and I approve. But every thing is strained to a point of bigotry, which has a mighty tendency "to make the bet or appear the worser reason." They deserve well of their country, and of Europe, for the tone of decided opposition which they always maintained towards the ambitious schemes of the common enemy of Christendom. But surely the effect of their truly English speculations in regard to him and his projects, would not have been at all lessened, had they learned to treat his personal character with a little more candour. Napoleon was a wicked and unprincipled monarch; but who is so blind as not to see that mere wickedness, and extraordinary luck, could never possibly have elevated the son of an obscure gentleman of Ajaccio to the elevation which this prince of adventurers attained in the centre of civilized Europe? Nations yet to come will look back to his history, as to some grand and supernatural romance. The fiery energy of his youthful career, and the magnificent progress of his irresistible ambition, have invested his character with the mysterious grandeur of some heavenly apparition; and when all the lesser tumults, and lesser men of our age, shall have passed away into the darkness of oblivion, history will still inscribe one mighty era with the majestic name of Napoleon. It is very likely that some of the clever and sarcastic wits of Athens thought and spoke of Alexander as a madman and a fool. So perhaps might the loungers of the Roman porticos think and speak of Julius in Gaul. But the world has grown wiser since those days, and it is an insult upon common understanding to tell London, in the nineteenth century, that Bonaparte is an ordinary man. Now, above all things, that the danger is gone by, is it not extremely offensive to hear Englishmen railing against a fallen enemy, insulting one who seems to have been raised up by the finger of Providence, to stand for ever in the very frontispiece of fame, as the symbol of fallen ambition and ill-directed genius? We have suffered more from Napoleon than ever Englishmen did; we have seen our plains fattened with the blood of our heroes; we have seen our monarchs insulted, and our sanctuaries outraged; but scarcely, even in the very moment of our most hostile fury, did we ever speak of our enemy in such terms of exaggerated and insulting rancour, as this grave Journal perpetually pours forth upon the captive of St Helena. There is something dignified and sacred in human genius, even although it be misapplied. The reverence which we feel for it is an instinct of nature, and cannot be laid aside without a sin. He who is insensible to its influence, has committed