wildly, with shouts of savage glee and frolic, set Edinburgh at once by the ears. Through into the astonished world of literature, and the dim and much-evaporated fun of this celebrating her own new birth and freedom notable fable we discern darkly the publisher in a furious Bacchic dance of headstrong left with his magazine, courageous but deyouthfulness. After the calm respectability serted, aiming to make of it a rival to the of her previous appearance, it is not aston- great neighboring review, which was then ishing that the public should behold, with triumphant in the world of literature, but amaze, consternation, and excitement, the provided as yet with no material for his sudden bound upon the stage of this wild purpose save his own indomitable determiand fearless champion. No thought of the nation. Then, through the mist of unknown consequences troubled the minds of the names and persons whom he calls to his aid, young writers, all delighted to get utterance appears the Leopard "from the valley of for themselves, and a mode in which to de- the palm-trees, whose going forth was liver their dauntless assault upon the world comely as the greyhound, and his eyes like in general; nor of the young publisher, the lightning of fiery flame," and the“ Scorwho stood responsible for any mischief, but pion which delighteth to sting the faces of who had his full share of the ardor and pug- men "-emblematical portraits, each drawn, nacity which distinguished the band. They no doubt, by the hand of the other, of the seem to have leaped together by instinct in two brilliant young intelligences, Wilson the immense crisis; and certainly it would and Lockhart, to whom the call of the forbe difficult to find any two parties who had lorn and daring editor opened up a new more need of each other than had the young, world. Both of the young men seem to ambitious, enterprising, and practical ad- have started to the summons with a perministrator of literary affairs in Princes ception, if not that their own future lay in Street, who was not himself, in the first it, yet of its wonderful capabilities, and the instance, an author, though his judgment matchless frolic and delight of such an unin literary matters was notably swift, clear, dertaking. They met together in joyous and almost unerring; and the little party conclave when the first sound of the call to of wits then afloat and aimless upon Edin-arms came to their ears; and, assembled in burgh society, who abounded in the neces- a room in Queen Street in the house of sary power of utterance, but were wasting Wilson's mother, read over the first part of themselves in Parliament-House jokes and this Chaldee Manuscript, which had been convivial meetings, unaware what use to written by Hogg, and composed the remainmake of their talents. Great was the fer-der of the same in intermittent bursts of fun vor of the onslaught with which, when called and laughter. The ladies in the drawingtogether suddenly to support the falling banner, the young men rushed into the breach, and throwing prudence to the winds, charged forth in a wild sally upon the spectators, who, doubtless, had come to assist at the burial of the feeble periodical, whose recognized conductors had forsaken it. The sally was wild, furious, and sudden, almost beyond precedent, but it was irresistible. The banner that had been drooping was set up again with shouts, and the public became aware of a new, individual, and remarkable organ of opinion, about the sayings and sentiments of which it was impossible to be indifferent. The whole history of this singular literary phenomenon is interesting. The best account of it, perhaps, is to be gathered from the famous Chaldee Manuscript, which appeared in the first number under the new management, and which room above, Mrs. Gordon tells us, hearing the echoes of merriment below, sent to inquire into the joke, doubtless without getting much satisfaction. So thoroughly did the young writers enjoy their own wit, that—the same authority informs us-Sir William Hamilton, the future philosopher, who had the privilege of adding a strophe to this joyous performance, was so amused that he fell from his chair in a fit of laughter. The fun which was to convulse Edinburgh, convulsed with mirth, in the first place, its own perpetrators, who bore no man any malice, but were bent, with the natural instinct of youthful wits, upon a universal skrimmage with the world. Thus inspired, they rushed to the rescue. Number VII. of the Edinburgh Monthly Magazine blazed upon the firmament as that of BLACKWOOD; and startled Edinburgh fell into such a buzz of mingled rage, laughter, and interest, that the languid publication was quickened into immediate vigor, and the new era began. It was thus that Wilson discovered his true vocation in literature, and indeed in the world. He had amused himself up to this period to the top of his bent, and played out his holiday in wealth and poverty with the heartiest enjoyment of the same; but he had not yet found out what he was good for, or how he was to provide for his family and the necessities of life. Doubtless no such idea was in his mind when he rushed into the service of the new periodical. Its pay at first was doubtful, its very existence precarious-nobody knew what was to come of it. Instead of being the prop and pillar of his future life, and the means of his fame, the young poet of the Isle of Palms entered upon it in the spirit of a frolic, for present enjoyment more than eventual profit. It is easy enough to conceive how charming to the imagination of the two young, briefless barristers must have been this medium of revenging with lightning touches of ridicule and laughter their youthful wrongs upon the careless and indifferent world. But the new Blackwood was built on profounder purposes; and if the young writers were prescient at first of little but fun, a more serious hope moved their director, who stood behind in the quietness of his non-literary but governing character-a man who had in the mean time to bear all the brunt without the sweetness of the fame, and, steadfast in his own project, to go through the ordeal of all sorts of threats, with an energy and resolution of which none of his collaborateurs, however gifted, could have been capable. It was all sport to the gay young genius, who did not fear what he said, secure under the shadow of that" man in plain apparel, whose name was as it had been the color of ebony," and who betrayed no secrets, nor ever dreamt of shifting the responsibility from his own shoulders and purse to those of the real culprit; but it was a more serious matter for the responsible person himself, who had not only to supply all the necessary means for the campaign, but to keep in due order and restraint the fiery Pegasus which he had yoked into his war-chariot, taking heed, with wise discretion, that its extravagance and high blood went only so far as was necessary to give the required impetus, and not far enough to dash both vehicle and riders into swift destruction. Nowhere more fitly than in discussing the character and history of John Wilson in the pages of this magazine, which William Blackwood founded and wisely guided to the end of his career, could the tribute of justice be paid to the memory of that able and remarkable man. It was he who saw over the heads of his more brilliant associates, and, through all the commotion of their wit, philosophy, and fun, the serious capabilities of a great permanent organ of literary and political opinion such as this which he aimed at establishing: it was he who, through all the caprices of wit and inconstancies of genius, tried by many a harassment and vexation, worried by irregular exertions and intermittent support even on the part of men to whom the public gave much of his share of the praise, still held steadily on-had patience, and waited for the results on which he had calculated. The threats of prosecution and remonstrances of those who thought themselves aggrieved, were a small matter in comparison with the perpetual care and oversight demanded by the ever-recurring monthly publication, which had to be kept up and kept equal at all hazards-a doubly difficult task when the contributors were so few in number, and so utterly daring in style. Mr. Blackwood had the wisdom to see how far it was safe to go in that dashing career, and the weight of character and skill of management which enabled him to tighten his reins and draw up his panting steeds when that delicate point had been reached. The brilliant genius of Wilson would doubtless have found some expression for itself, some time or other in his life, more characteristic than volumes of verse, even if it had never attained the medium of the magazine-though nowhere else could it have gained such free, full, and congenial utterance. But it was not to his splendid and impatient hands that Maga owed either her origin or her steady progress. Among many mystifications, the favorite idea of a veiled editor-mysterious, unaccountable personage-pleased the fancy of the public, and perhaps soothed the ruffled feelings now and then of a man of letters, slow to yield to the sceptre of a mere layman and unprofessional person, however potential or wise were the hands that swayed it. But Christopher North himself did not fail to acknowledge the necessity of this re-fication with which they were intent upon straint exercised by the real manager of af- bewildering the public, and making their fairs an admission which we have some pride in making, as a proof that the children of Apollo have still discrimination enough to recognize the administrative and governing faculty wherever it appears, and as ourselves subject, within the bounds of reasonable loyalty, to a similar sway. own work feel as much like play as possible. Sometimes it is Wilson, sometimes it is Lockhart, who gleams across the darkened stage in half-recognizable personality; but anon we are lost in a host of imaginary contributors-German doctors and barons, Irish soldiers, English scholars, every kind of disguise which could be lightly glided off and on by the joyous masquers who took so thorough a delight in their work. Nor were those mischievous plotters content with raising up fictitious personages upon whom to lay the burden of their own exuberant tide of composition. A still more wicked wile remained. They signed respectable names of dull but well-known men to their own wild effusions, and conferred a sudden literary reputation upon worthy persons in Glasgow and elsewhere, to whom a pen was an incomprehensible weapon. Never was work treating of serious matters, and founded on substantial ground of payment and reward, conducted so much like a frolic; and the principal actors in this strange maze of wit and confusion found, as their work proceeded, a new interest and zest in life. It was thus that Blackwood's Magazine, of the influence and importance of which from that time to this it does not become us to speak, began its career; and thus, also, the youthful life of John Wilson, so long a merely ornamental romance and sport of existence, quickened into use and service. In a moment, with the rapidity of magic, the idle young advocates, who had been used to lounge out their days together without much notice from the world, found themselves in the novel and delightful position of successful revolutionists who had shaken that same world to its very foundations. Whiggism, which had been paramount in Edinburgh under the autocratic influence of the Edinburgh Review sustained a shock which was all the more severe because unexpected, the palm of literary pre-eminence having hitherto, without any controversy, been left in The history of John Wilson had now the hands of Jeffrey and his brethren. It reached to that moment of "tide in the is said that, after the publication of that as- affairs of men" which was decisive of his tounding No. VII., which is forever immor- entire life. The gay marauder on Highland tal in our records, the streets of Edinburgh stream and Westmoreland hillside, had at bore lively impress of the fray, and that an last, like others, settled to that inevitable intelligent observer might have read in the toil which is the lot of most men, but which countenances of the passengers the individ- he had hitherto eluded with wonderful inual politics of each-dismay and vexation genuity. The brilliant apprenticeship of the being written on all Whiggish features, magazine, bringing its immediate reward, while an unusual gleam of satisfaction as periodical writing has the advantage of beamed from the visages of the faithful. The young publication went on dauntlessly after this brilliant beginning. "There was hardly a number for many months which did not contain an attack upon somebody," says Mrs. Gordon, with not uncomplacent candor; yet the abuse was but the seasoning which gave piquancy to the more serious mass of brilliant criticism and lively com-Two years have not elapsed before we find mentary upon books and things. In this early and prehistoric age of Maga, it is difficult to distinguish among the mists the two figures which flit around her cradle, or to identify their distinct productions, united as they both were, not only in labor, but in those wild, almost boyish, pranks of mysti doing, was as easy and pleasant an entrance into the active labors of life as any man could desire; and, full as it was of exciting and exhilarating circumstances, wooed the young advocate by degrees into habits of work, and that consciousness of the necessities of ordinary existence which hitherto does not seem to have moved him very deeply. him making a distinct independent movement into his own house, and erecting again the household gods which, since the days of Elleray, had sunk into secondary deities in his mother's overflowing household. This new beginning was made in Anne Street, a quiet little suburban street, where, as Mrs. Gordon informs us, her father found "alated. Difficult enough, however, as it might pleasant little community that made resi- have been under any circumstances for these dence there far from distasteful." The fam- excellent functionaries to decide between ily had increased and multiplied, and there the rival claims of two candidates so diswere now five children to fill the little house. tinguished, yet so different, the prevailing In the poet's" ledger," where he put down spirit of the time at once complicated and stray verses and all kinds of literary mem- simplified the conflict, by importing into this, oranda, there is "a page taken up with an as into every other question, the ceaseless estimate of the cost of furniture for dining- clamor of politics. Hamilton was a Whig, room, sitting-room, nursery, servants' room, Wilson a Tory of the Tories, a fore-rank and kitchen; making up a total of £195, man in his party, and of no unknown might with the triumphant query at the end, in a in the din of battle. All the ancient strength bold hand, Could it be less?'" Thus once of the Whiggish capital gathered to the more established under his own roof, with combat, while on the other side "Mr. Wildue occupation for his talents and an agree- son was assured of all the support that Govable society round him, Wilson seems to ernment could give," and had at his back have composed his life into habits of a more all the forces of his political allies. To the domestic and less roving kind. He no longer present generation, which knows the author wanders abroad in search of adventure over of the Isle of Palms chiefly under his flood and fell, but is visible for a year or two long-established title as Professor Wilson, in his own place, finding apparently excite- it is strange to look back upon that furious ment enough in the warfare and knight- contest, and see how the shafts hurtle errantry of his new profession. He never through the darkening atmosphere, and how appears to have entertained any real intention of seeking his fortune at the bar; but having lightly fallen upon a trade, like a child of fortune as he was, which lured him on, by mingled pleasure and praise, into paths of severer duty and harder labor, soon came to think of a more steady and permanent occupation, when the chance of such opened before him. This was in the beginning of 1820, rather more than two years after his triumphant entry into literature, when the Chair of Moral Philosophy became vacant in the University of Edinburgh. Though his reputation hitherto had been that of a professor of the lighter arts of poetry and criticism, the attractions of divine philosophy seem always to have exercised a great power over Wilson, and he lost no time in announcing himself as a candidate for this chair. His principal opponent was Sir William Hamilton, one of his own inti- hubbub-threw back in the teeth of the cenmate friends and close associates, and upon sor of Blackwood the dire accusation of inthe surface a more likely pretender to such fidel and libertine. Judging by the recriman office than the brilliant writer whose oc- inations of the period, one is driven to cupations had been so discursive and varied, believe that the highest ambition of a good and whose claims upon that very society in political partisan in those days must have Edinburgh, which he had now to canvass for been to prove, not his adversary's position its favor and patronage, were those of a false, but his adversary's character vile, and satirist and reviewer, rather than of a phi- his life a heap of depravity. Though nothlosopher. The appointment was in the hands ing was to be said against the unquestionaof the Town Council, and its members had ble powers of the young philosopher, an to be individually approached and concili-effective diversion was yet possible in the the dust of the battle eddies about that peaceable Philosophy Chair, in which, when we first learned to know his name, he had been seated, as one could have imagined, for a lifetime. No election for a borough was ever more furiously contested, nor popular parliamentary candidate assailed more lustily. His testimonials and recommendations might indeed be all that could be desired, and nobody might be able to deny his genius; but more important matters lay behind, and the liberal and enlightened Whig party of 1820 could be puritanic when that served their purpose, and were not slow of retaliating upon the critic, who had not certainly spared them. Such a blessed opportunity of administering the Tu quoque was not to be lost. The supporters of his rival-whose private friendship with Wilson was undisturbed, it is pleasant to know, by all this shape of an assault on his morality. The con Paterson raised a protest against it at Scotsman, then, as now, one of the the next meeting of the Town Council, ablest and most influential of Scotch news- where he is said to have made his appearpapers, made a solemn and affecting appeal ance with " a bag full of charges," but was to its dear bailies in a voice which trembled summarily put down by the assembled digwith the conscious pathos of its own fine nitaries, who had elected the Tory candiadjurations. "We call upon those mem- date by a majority of twelve votes. Anbers of Council who are fathers of families; other still more shabby and paltry attempt who respect the oaths they have taken; who to disturb the new professor followed, when have some regard for religion, morals, and he delivered his first lecture. "There was decency," says this high-toned and virtuous a furious bitterness of feeling against him," journal; "we put it to them how they can says an eye-witness, quoted by Mrs. Gorjustify it to their conscience, their country, don, "among the classes, of which probaand their God, to select him as the man to bly most of his pupils would consist; and fill the Chair of Moral Philosophy, and to although I had no prospect of being among confide to him the taste, the morals, and the them, I went to his first lecture, prepared to characters of the rising generation." Such join in a cabal which, I understood, was an appeal could not be without a certain formed to put him down. The lectureeffect upon the tremulous municipal mind-room was crowded to the ceiling. The proand the result in the first place was, that fessor entered with a bold step amid proWilson naturally indignant at the false ac- found silence. Every one expected some cusations thus brought against him, was deprecatory or propitiatory introduction of driven to the strange and painful necessity of writing to his private friends to ask their testimony in respect to his character, and to request from them such an estimate of his household virtues as might be sufficient to place that perfectly unexceptionable aspect of his life in its true light. He wrote to the clergyman at Windermere who had officiated at his marriage, and to such a half-domestic, half-public authority as Mrs. Grant of Laggan, then one of the centres of society in Edinburgh, asking them to tell his assailants what they, a priest and a woman, thought of the husband of that" elegant and delicate young Englishwoman," who had not feared to wander over hill and dale with him who was now accused of neglecting and wronging her and her children. Of all points, indeed, at which he could have been assailed, this seems to have been the least vulnerable. Hard and mortifying as it must have been to his high and impatient spirit to ask for such commendations, he was now sufficiently bent upon attaining his end to submit to the necessity; his friends bore their testimony with effusive and indignant affectionateness; and having at last failed even to prove the favorite stigma of the time, that their brilliant opponent was an infidel, the Whig opposition succumbed, and Wilson won the day. The vexatious and ungenerous strife did not end with the election. A certain Dea himself and his subject, upon which the mass was to divide against him, reason or no reason; but he began in a voice of thunder right into the matter of the lecture, kept up unflinchingly and unhesitatingly without a pause. Not a word, not a murmur escaped his captivated, I ought to say his conquered, audience, and at the end they gave him a right-down unanimous burst of applause." When the legitimate hour which belonged to the new professor was exhausted, Anatomical Monro, austere and abstract, with no human sympathy in him for the first lecture and the special circumstances, stalked into the room, in which he himself was to succeed the present occupant, and, ruthlessly breaking in upon the address, pointed to his watch to show that his own hour had arrived. "My students are at the door, and you must conclude," said the inhuman anatomist; but was immediately silenced by the renewed applause of the students, amid which the new orator made a triumphant conclusion. It was thus that Wilson made his first entry into the chair which he was to fill so long, and in which he was to hold so genial a sway over generations of eager and enthusiastic hearts. His success, however, was immediate and unquestionable, to the conviction of both friends and foes; and even his newspaper assailants, Mrs. Gordon says, condescended to admit that, if he continued to do well, his |