and 'mob wickedness,' thoroughly realize that history to his own mind, and then let him ask himself whether the successors of such kings and such courtiers could expect aught else than a fiery purgation.

As we continue our survey, the autocratic kings and the crapulous courtiers disappear, and scenes of turbulent strife succeed; soon, a consummate warrior and a military hierarchy occupy the places of the kings and courtiers of the bygone century, and when these, forgetting the origin and the tenure of their power, begin to tread too closely in the footsteps of their predecessors, they also vanish in their turn. A few oblivious politicians, who, having slept through a generation or two, fancy the Revolution a sort of nightmare, to be shaken off on waking, vainly attempt to bring back the old order of things; and then we see a new race of wily diplomatists and cunning masters of state-craft who think that, by systematizing corruption and bringing it to every man's door, they will surely make themselves secure, and escape the perils of their forerunners. These also quit the stage, having roused a spirit too mighty to be quelled. Trickery and corruption, dogged resistance and constraint, are found alike to lead to triumphant insurrection.

At a time when events so crowd on each other that the prediction of yesterday is the mockery of to-day, it were rash indeed to hazard many speculations on the future. But it may safely be affirmed that, if there be much existent evil, there are manifestly the indications and germs of far greater good.

It would seem as if France were destined to serve as a sort of laboratory for Europe; as if by that inquisitive, impulsive, restless, energetic people, every predominant passion that can sway multitudes, every form of government, every theory of social polity were to be essayed and experimented on in turn. Assuredly, such experiments, carried on at such cost, cannot, in a God-governed world, lead to mean or insignificant results. Even the most Utopian 'world-betterers,' like the alchemists of old, will make real discoveries by the way, while searching for chimeras.

We look indeed for no fools' Paradise, as conceived by a St. Simon or an Owen, whence suffering is to be banished, in which work is to be turned into pastime, in which every propensity is to be freely indulged, and every man to do what seemeth right in the eyes of his 'Phalanstery,* but for a world which, after all bettering, will still be the scene of habitual

*Phalanstère (paλay) is the designation given by the disciples of Ch. Fourier to the communities into which, by and by, all Europe is to be parcelled out in equal subdivisions. The term corresponds with the parallelogram of Mr. Owen.

sacrifice, of constant toil, and of life-long probation. That every man, however, may by patient exertion be enabled to earn honest bread, to cultivate the faculties within him, both for this life and for the life to come, and to acquire some direct and legitimate influence upon that legislation which affects his interests the more powerfully, the poorer and humbler may be his sphere of labour; that all authority shall be limited and responsible, and that in king or magistrate, as in peasant or servant, it shall be everywhere made visible that 'what a man soweth, that shall he also reap;' these are anticipations which Reason and Revelation combine to warrant. And, neither wanton excesses on the one hand, nor bombardments, secret murders, and military executions on the other, will prevent their ultimate realization.

Recent French history proclaims, as with trumpet tongue, that the mistakes and crimes of the people or of their leaders do far more to delay freedom than the worst enormities of their oppressors. But it also proves that a fearful amount of bloodguiltiness lies at the door of the men who by narrowing, packing, and corrupting legislative bodies, force political conflict from the senate into the street, and shut up all men of liberal opinions to the single alternative of becoming revolutionists, or ceasing to be reformers.*

That' conservatism'-or what is so miscalled-should seek excuses and justifications in passing events for a stubborn resistance to righteous demands-because some men urge them foolishly, some violently, and because others urge demands which are not righteous at all,-might well excite surprise, if there were not so many instances of similar infatuation in the past. There have ever been statesmen-or men current for such-to teach that reforms should not be effected when the people are peaceful and quiescent, because that would be creating an excitement; and should never be conceded when the people are aroused and agitated, because that would be yielding to clamour. To such reasoners we would commend the wise counsel of Lord Bacon:-Neither let any prince or 'state be secure concerning discontentments, because they have

Ah! s'ils ont fait verser tant de larmes amères,
S'ils ont livré la France au fer des légionnaires,
C'est que bien avant eux l'intrigue et le hasard
Avaient mis au pouvoir des Guizot, des Collard,
Des Perrier, des D'Argout, des Dupin, des Decazes,
Héros de cabinet, aux doucereuses phrases,
Qui, desséchant les cœurs, sous des systèmes froids,
Préparaient l'esclavage, et la ligue des rois.'

BARTHELEMY, Douze Journées de la Révolution.

'been often, or have been long, and yet no peril hath ensued: 'for, as it is true that every vapour, or fume, doth not turn into a storm, so it is nevertheless true that storms, though they 'blow over divers times, yet may fall at last; and as the 'Spanish proverb noteth well,-The cord breaketh at the last by the weakest pull.''*

ART. VIII. A Man Made of Money. By DOUGLAS JERROLD. With Twelve Illustrations on Steel by John Leech. London, 1849.

WERE any person, tolerably familiar with the great metropolis, asked who is the wittiest man in it, he would infallibly answer, 'Douglas Jerrold.' There may be men reputed his equals or superiors in general conversation; but in that one quality called wit, in the power of sharp and instant repartee, and, above all, in the knack of demolishing an opponent by some resistless pun upon his meaning, Douglas Jerrold is, among London literary men, unrivalled. On paper there are some who may come near him; but in witty talk among his friends he is facile princeps. His eager vehement face, as he presides at a wit-combat anywhere within a four miles' circuit of Temple-Bar, is a sight worth seeing. If he is telling a story, all present are attentive; if he and some luckless antagonist become hooked in a twohanded encounter, the rest pleasantly look on, expecting the result; or, if somebody else is speaking, he will sit apart, quietly and even sympathetically listen, but in the end detect his opening, and ruin all with his pitiless flash. No second part would he have played even in the famous wit-combats of the Mermaid Tavern in Friday-street, where, more than two hundred years ago, Rocky Ben and his companions used to drink their canary; and, had he sat beside poor Goldy at the meetings of the Literary Club of last century, ponderous Samuel himself, we are inclined to think, would have kept an uneasy eye upon that end of the table. It is thus that Douglas Jerrold is known in literary circles in London; and there is no harm in saying so.

Abroad over the country, on the other hand, Mr. Jerrold is more vaguely known as the author of numerous favourite theatrical pieces, including two standard comedies; as one of the principal contributors to Punch, in whose pages he has brought out successively The Story of a Feather,'' Punch's

Essay XV. Of Seditions and Troubles.'

Letters to his Son,' the 'Caudle Lectures,' and other miscellanies of the same nature; as the writer of various tales and essays that have appeared elsewhere; as recently the proprietor and editor of a weekly newspaper, devoted to the advocacy of liberal opinions, and especially earnest in its denunciations of the practice of Capital punishments; and, finally, as the author of a serial work of fiction, in six parts, entitled, 'A Man made of Money,' less successful, it is said, than the similar publications of Dickens and Thackeray, but still by no means a failure.

It certainly cannot be said, therefore, that Mr. Jerrold, as one of our present staff of literary functionaries, is either unknown or unappreciated. Nevertheless, we have a kind of suspicion that, neither in the opinion of his private friends, nor in that of the public at large, is full justice done to his merits as a writer.

Believing, as we do, that the truest criticism is that which, from the writings of a man, of whatever kind they are, collects most shrewdly and clearly his exact personal characteristics, we are, of course, prepared to admit that it may be an advantage for a critic to have some previous personal knowledge of the author whose performances he undertakes to estimate, and, consequently, that Mr. Jerrold's friends are, in so far, better qualified than strangers to see what is in his books. But the majority of Mr. Jerrold's friends, we fear, bring to the perusal of his writings too vivid a preconception of the merely witty side of his character. They think of his jests, of his flashes of merriment; and what they ask from his books is but jesting more abundant, and sarcasm more keenly fanged. But Mr. Jerrold is no mere man of wit: he is something higher and better; he is a man of clear thought; of no mean amount of knowledge; and of most keen and strong feelings. This his friends ought to know. How often, throwing aside among them all jesting humour, does he appear in his deeper moods, startling them by some earnest or even mournful saying; anon, relapsing into a calmer strain still serious; and again all but demoniac in his expression of scorn. We should even say that this was the more real and characteristic side of his nature. Forgetting this, however, or not having remarked it, his friends will have nothing from his writings but the wit they have learnt so well to relish. Hence, pregnant with wit as these writings are, such readers are sometimes disappointed. The wit that will please in books must be something more fine and finished than that which may do in talk, where the voice helps and the laugh is but too willing; and it is, of course, possible that Mr. Jerrold's friends, passing from himself to his books, do not always find

NO. XIX.

this necessary increase. It may have been partly from this reason, though other causes must have assisted, that certain persons with whom we have conversed, were unable to take such pleasure as they had expected in the Man made of Money.' That this should be the case at all, whether for the reason just stated, or for any other, is a little surprising to us; but of this at least we are sure, that if such friendly readers were first to correct their misconception of Mr. Jerrold as a man whose sole or even chief endowment is wit, they would find both this and all his other writings to possess a merit higher and more essential than that of being pleasant to read-the merit, we mean, of being amply and closely representative of their author.

Turning to the public at large, they too, we find, are unfair to Mr. Jerrold, by regarding him too exclusively in one or other of his literary phases. One portion of them, allured by exactly that side of his character, manifested to them of course through his writings, which we have spoken of as beguiling his private friends, think of him merely as the comic writer, the creator of 'Mrs. Caudle,' the contributor to Punch.' Enjoying heartily his pungent humour, and, mayhap, if they are married, deriving some little domestic benefit from it, they are troubled with no comparisons between Mr. Jerrold the speaker, and Mr. Jerrold the writer, but take thankfully what they get, grumbling a little when, as occasionally happens, the wit grows weak. But, enjoying the humour, they skip the earnestness. Of the 'Story of a Feather,' or the Chronicles of Clovernook,' they have no recollection. Mr. Jerrold is to them chiefly the describer of shrewish wives, meek husbands, buxom widows, and superfluous mothers-in-law. And thus, even while admiring him, they lower his literary level; all the more easily perhaps that, though the author, amid his multifarious writings, of many powerful and pathetic things, he has yet made no such decided hit in the higher style of literature as his Caudle Lectures' have proved in the lower; has placed on the shelf no one permanent book of deeper import, capable of protecting his comic ephemera from too much notice.

Another portion of the public, again, having formed their acquaintance with Mr. Jerrold chiefly through his newspaper, or through such of his miscellaneous papers as most resemble newspaper articles, have been led to think of him less as the comic writer and wit, than as the political Radical; the satirist of aristocratic distinctions and ecclesiastical abuses; the enemy of our military system; and the advocate of prison reform, extended suffrage, popular education, and the abolition of capital punishments. Persons who themselves lean to that side of