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On the Periodical Criticism of England.
[March

well knows, neither he nor they have ever taken the trouble to understand. Is it worthy of one who aspires to the name of an English philosopher and patriot, to be thus perpetually offending a weary world with the crumbe recoctâ of revolutionary Deism? It is true, that the fault more frequently consists in what he omits to say, than in what he says. What treachery is this to the confidence of the public ear! Does any one imagine, that he who undertakes to be the regular instructor of his countrymen in science, in ethics, in politics, in poetry, can avoid being either the friend or the foe of their religion? The intellect of man is one mighty whole; and his energies cannot be directed aright, unless they be directed in unison. The would-be philosophers of the French school attempted, indeed, to reduce every thing to their own level, and were satisfied with the wisdom of the senses, because they felt themselves to be unworthy of a revelation from heaven. But Condillac has not been able to maintain his place among the great and guiding intellects; far less need such a triumph be hoped for by those who inherit those degrading dogmas, which they have neither the genius to invent, nor the courage openly to defend. I accused Mr Gifford and the Quarterly Review of bigotry. It is true, that in that journal the high church of England is represented as too exclusively the church of Christ. A Catholic Christian cannot easily forgive the many cold-blooded and ignorant dissertations with which it has endeavoured to blacken the reputation of us and our much misrepresented faith. But although the Edinburgh Reviewers have always advocated the cause of the Catholics, I confess that I approve still less of their friendship than I do of the hostility of their opponents. The others are indeed the enemies of some parts of our creed, and they would punish too severely the crime of differing from themselves. But this journal is the enemy of all our faith; it befriends Catholicism only because it despises Christianity. It is not upon the strength of such aid as this, that I wish to see the civil condition of British Catholics amended. He that would reconcile the Catholic and the Protestant must not tell us that we are falling out about the small items of a fiction, but that the points upon which we are at variance are trifling, both in number and importance, when compared with those upon which we are agreed. He must win us to unanimity or mutual forbearance, not by breathing upon us the chill air of indifference, but by fanning the pure flame of Christian charity and love.

I have spoken of Mr Jeffray as if he were the sole conductor and animating spirit of this Review. Of late he has, as I understand, become more exclusively so than before, in consequence of the death of some of his original coadjutors—particularly the member of parliament, Horner. But I suspect that although the fault of the conceptions is generally his, the details of execution are not unfrequently intrusted by him into the hands of those, who, if they should write without being anonymous, could not for a moment be listened to without contempt. It should convince Jeffray that he has sadly misdirected a genius so powerful as his, when he perceives that these assistants, whom he despises, can nevertheless imitate the style of writing which he has brought into vogue with so much success, that the public are often much at a loss to discover which papers are his, and which theirs. There is a reaction in the case more unfortunate for him than for them; for as they have approached to him in one way, he has found himself obliged to approach to them in another; and as they have borrowed much of his apparent cleverness, so he has too often satisfied himself with not a little of their real dulness. It is a thousand pities that such a mind as his should have consented to wear an impress which can so easily be counterfeited. When high genius is well applied, its productions can never fail to be inimitable.

The writers of the Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews, could they be persuaded to publish only one journal, and to unite their talents, might easily produce a work very far superior to either of those which now exist. Mr Gifford could bring with him an abundance of information, and even erudition, in which Mr Jeffray and his friends are altogether defective; and Mr Jeffray, on the other hand, possesses that knowledge of the world,