and by advert. Now, of these accusations, the last only we should consider a libel. If any man told us that we could neither read nor write, we should only laugh, for our moral character could not be injured even by that gross ignorance; if he charged us with being rogues, we should then begin to think, if it came from a quarter worth answering, and deal accordingly. It therefore gave us great satisfaction to find that the Jury acquitted us of libelling Professor Leslie on that point. It required, indeed, great special pleading to connect our general observations on the general ill name which formerly attached to the University of Edinburgh, with the character of a particular professor in it, and Mr Moncrieff of course laboured it against us, but in vain. As for the other charges, we deny that accusing a philosopher with laying claim to a discovery which is not his, is a libel. What discovery has been made which has not been exposed to such a charge? The safety-lamp, the steam-engine, the atomic theory, all, in short, have been subject of controversies, which will be settled, not by decision of law, but by the verdict of literary or scientific men. Who would not have felt ashamed for the honour of science, if Sir Isaac Newton and Leibnitz had appealed to the Courts to settle between them the right to their invention of fluxions? Still more unreasonable was the action in our case, as we had directly referred to an authority different from our own as the source of charge, which, after all, was made in a paragraph full of mere jest. And since that time, Dr Brewster has reiterated it, and similar charges, as appears to us, with undeniable justice, against Professor Leslie, unmolested. What, then, are we to think of the fairness of the proceedings against us? It was evidently not the libel, but the existence of the Magazine, that gave the principal offence.

As for the Hebrew part of the business, that was sheer nonsense. There was not a Hebrew scholar in the country who did not give it against Mr Leslie. He had, on ignorant and silly grounds, dared to call Hebrew a rude and poor dialect; and then set up, as a quirk, when he found his mistake, that when he spoke of the Hebrew dialect, he meant the Samaritan alphabet. As for his witnesses, it was painful for the honour of Scottish literature to see such an exhibition. The first witness called up to decide on the respective antiquities of the Hebrew and Samaritan tongues, did not know one Samaritan letter from another. Does any one VOL. XIX.

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think, then, that the verdict of fifteen Edinburgh citizens, allowing them to be, as we believe they were, strictly honest and conscientious men, under the direction of a Judge who could not read the three or four little Hebrew words which occurred in the alleged libel, and swayed by the testimonies of such witnesses, has altered the case?—Not a jot. We are as clearly convinced of Professor Leslie's ignorance of Hebrew this moment, as we were when the letter was written-nor does he now pretend to say that he understands one syllable of that language. But even supposing we had been as wrong as we were right—supposing that Professor Leslie was as full of Hebrew learning as the Archbishop of Cashel, and that we were as ignorant and impertinent in our charge, as the Edinburgh Reviewer of the Oxford Strabo --still we say that the action was not a thing honourable to a man of science and literature, and was, we believe, in that respect, unparalleled. It has proved nothing, but that the Magazine was hated.

Besides these libels, as they were called, on Professor Leslie, we were charged with being libellous in comparing him to a parrot for praising himself, and abusing others, in the Edinburgh Review-a weighty crime!-(This, by the by, some asses here called personality!)-It also was imputed to us as a very wrongful act, that we had ventured to express an opinion, that altering a title page, and tacking half a dozen pages at the back of an unsaleable book, did not make a new edition; and we were told in answer, that it was a trick of trade!-We wish any gentleman joy who thinks fit to make such a defence, to degrade from the philosopher into the tradesman, and to endeavour to obtain damages against an antagonist, by confessing himself privy to a trick. We are satisfied.

IV. We wished to get rid of the Edinburgh accusations against us, before we went across the Tweed. In England, the outcry against us has come principally from the Cockney-School. That we did smash that pestilent sect, we acknowledge with pleasure. A baser crew never was spewed over literature. Conceited, ignorant, insolent, disaffected, irreligious, and obscene, they had, by force of impudence, obtained a certain sway over the public mind. We held them up to contempt, and then dropped them into the river, never to rise from it any more. That we did our work

roughly, we acknowledge; they were not vermin to be crushed by a delicate finger. That we did our work personally, we deny; unless their own consciences applied to their persons what we said of their books. A man who writes a luscious poem, lauding a hero and heroine, whose only claim to notoriety, was their having committed incest, is an incestuous poet-it does not by any means follow that he is an incestuous man. Or, to descend to mere jocularities, when we say, that a rugged, uneven, foullyheated, scurfy style, is pimpled, our metaphor may not be a good one; but there is no reason that the writer of that style should take the epithet intended for his sentence, to his nose. We positively assert, that our hatred and disgust to these scribblers, was political and literary. How, in fact, could it be personal, against men whom we never saw, and who moved in such a sphere of life as to render it impossible for us to meet them.

The men are now very poor; and, for that reason only, we forbear ripping up their insolence. Everybody was pleased at their exposure, except themselves. The nickname we gave them, has become a regularly established word in our literature. Lord Byron, while patronizing the sect, called them by no other title than the Cockneys; and the other day, when a declining Magazine got into their hands, it was quite amusing to see the French papers announcing that it was to be edited by the "Cockneis." The thing, in fact, only required exposure to be destroyed for ever. They have since been abusing us with all the impotence of defeated malice; and in the bitterness of their woe, have declared, out of hatred to us, a harmless though disgusting war against Sir Walter Scott, and lately against the whole Scottish nation!-Poor blockheads!

V. We were involved in a quarrel with the London Magazine five years ago. We are extremely reluctant to dwell on this subject, for a very obvious reason; but, in justice to ourselves, we must say, that we were the attacked party-that we scarcely replied-and that before the attack had been made on us, we always had spoken with compliment and civility of the London Magazine. We must add, that Mr John Scott abused us, as a great many inferior Magazines before and since, from a mean desire of getting hisown Magazine into notice-that he had employed a fellow whom we had unwittingly, in the ignorance of our provincialism,

engaged to write London articles for us, to attack his Magazine in our pages, in order to fasten a quarrel upon us-and that we peremptorily refused to lend ourselves to what we thought was mere malice. As this fellow (all magazine-people will know who he is, and nobody else would care about hearing his name,) is in the habit of printing private letters, he can contradict us on this point, if he is able. When Mr John Scott found that he could not quarrel with us on his own account, he took up what he thought proper to call the public cause, and poured against us two or three tirades of abuse, which, for virulence, falsehood, and vulgarity, were never surpassed. With a recklessness of blackguardism, he, without knowing anything of our management, attributed articles right and left to anybody whom he thought it would least become to have written them. How well qualified he was to judge from internal evidence, is clear from his attributing the Ayrshire Legatees, with the most brazen assurance and insolent vituperation, to Sir Walter Scott, that he could have no assistance from external evidence, is needless to say. Yet he persisted in flinging the most coarse Billingsgate allusions on gentlemen, immeasurably his superiors in every respect, and bawling and brawling with as much fury on a jeu d'esprit, as if it were a murder. He did not stumble upon a true assertion in all this random firing. Coleridge, he assured the public, was quite indignant at our Magazine, at the very time that C. was corresponding with us by every post. Our conduct towards Hogg, he said, was infamous, and only submitted to by the Shepherd from fear of offending powerful patrons ;-before six months had elapsed, James had published his Life, claiming one of the most objectionable compositions in our Magazine, and avowing his connexion with it from the very beginning—a connexion, which we are happy to say, subsists unimpaired to this hour. The author of Peter's Letters was accused of writing some verses that gave offence to the Cockneys, which really were written by a man living 500 miles from Edinburgh. All this was mixed up with the grossest abuse, ruffian, pickpocket, poisoner, scoundrel, assassin, were the mildest words in his mouth. The substance of private conversations was pried into-domestic life of the most honourable and pure kind was ransacked for grounds of insult. At last, a gentleman, of the most splendid

abilities and noblest nature, who had been blackguarded by name, determined to put an end to the disgusting business-and he found, that the dog who barks will not always bite-that the bully is often the same person with the coward. He treated him accordingly; and the unhappy man, soon feeling the degradation of his own conduct, fastened upon a gentleman, with whom he had no legitimate ground of quarrel, and came to the ground. There he fell by the hand of an unwilling antagonist, and a ball never directed against him. Calumny and misrepresentation— too gross for belief by far-were yet at work. But the Gentlemen of England saw the affair in its true light, and in admiration of the temper, honour, and bravery of the living, thought with forgiveness of the misguided and infatuated dead.

But let us pass from such subjects, and offer some explanation touching the course which we have for some time pursued in our more serious political articles.

We are attached to the principles of Toryism, not because they were promulgated by this great name or that; not because they form the creed of one party or another—but because we conscientiously believe them to be truth and wisdom. Our belief rests on what we conceive to be decisive demonstration. These principles, in the last forty years, have been brought to every imaginable test; and if their truth be not matter of perfect and unassailable proof, such proof cannot exist in the world. We can arrive at no other conclusion, when we look at the tremendous dangers through which they carried us in the period we have named—at the evils and misery from which they delivered Europe—and at the height of prosperity, happiness, and greatness to which they have raised this empire ;-and moreover, when we remember that the opposite ones-the principles of modern Whiggism—have been tried in other States, and have only produced the most terrible evils. These principles form the basis and bulwark of our system ;-upon their preponderance, from the changes that have been made in Whiggism, depends the existence of the British Monarchy.

Upon these principles, the Ministry has long acted, and so long we have been its warm friends. It has, however, on some occasions, in the last two years, wandered far from them to adopt others, which have hitherto been regarded as the essence of