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Rh to the lowest; while the deeper colouring of passion is terrible from its truth. The scattered observations are as valuable for their justice as they are remarkable for their acuteness. Take the following admirable remark for an instance:—"Showy theories are always more seductive to the young and clever than suasive examples, and the vanity of the youthful makes them better pleased by being convinced of a thing than by being enticed to it." One personage we must not omit—Peter Mac Grawler, critic, editor, thief, cook, hangman. We doubt whether "the last" of that man was "worse than the first." We are reforming all abuses so much, that, perhaps, in a few years, the redoubtable Peter will be an historical memento of a base and cowardly school of criticism, which may then have left "but the name" "of its faults and its sorrows behind." The personal attacks; the virulent sneers; the coarse and false statements; the foolish opinions of a set whose incognito is indeed their existence—for who would or could care for the abuse of an individual whose own character was below contempt, or who would not despise the judgment of one whose only right to pronounce such judgment lay in his own previous failure in some similar attempt to that which he denounces? Who shall deny that the great body of critics are made up of unsuccessful writers?—the inferior magazines and journals are truly the refuge for the literary destitute. Men who are anonymous are usually abusive, and want of principle and want of responsibility are only too synonymous. Nothing can be perfect in this world, but two rules would greatly conduce to the perfectibility of criticism:—the first to speak, not of the author, but of his works; his pages, not himself, are amenable to your remarks: secondly, to do away with the present anonymous system; this would have a double advantage; it would force the critic to be just, if not generous, for his own sake—for men weigh opinions for which they are to be instantly answerable; and also, when the critic is known, the public would be able to judge, from previous knowledge of what he had himself done, how far he was competent to decide on the labours of others; but our present literary bush-fighting is as deteriorating as it is disgraceful. There are some excellent remarks, and written in the best spirit of criticism, in the dedicatory epistle to "Paul Clifford."

Many of the dramatis personæ in this work are lightly-sketched caricatures, woodcuts à la Cruikshank of individuals in that high rank to which our meaner ambitions direct themselves, "like the sparks which fly upward," and, we must add, to end in smoke. They are curious and bitter illustrations of "the might and magic of a name." One would think that the wrong and the despicable must be immutable terms; not so—much depends on position, whether we look down or up. Bachelor Bill being exclusive in Fish-lane, and giving a "hop and a feed," seems a ridiculous and vulgar person—the Duke of Devonshire giving a fête to "the fashionable world," with all its nice distinctions, is "quite another thing."

The Spartans had made no small advance in practical philosophy when, in order to show their children the shame of inebriety, they made their slaves drunk. It is not enough to denounce a vice—you will do more by disgracing it. We have heard some pseudo-genteel readers object to the hero's being only "a highwayman!" Besides the obvious answer, that human nature is human nature all the world over,