clearness till he has his opponent within reach, and then comes a blow as from a sledge-hammer. I do not know where I could put my hand upon a book containing so much sense and sound constitutional doctrine as this thin folio of Johnson's Works; and what party in this country would read SO severe a lecture in it as our modern Whigs!

A close reasoner and a good writer in general may be known by his pertinent use of connectives. Read that page of Johnson; you cannot alter one conjunction without spoiling the sense. It is a linked strain throughout. In your modern books, for the most part, the sentences in a page have the same connection with each other that marbles have in a bag; they touch without adhering.

Asgill evidently formed his style upon Johnson's, but he only imitates one part of it. Asgill never rises to Johnson's eloquence. The latter was a sort of Cobbett-Burke.

James the First thought that, because all power in the state seemed to proceed from the crown, all power therefore remained in the crown; as if, because the tree sprang from the seed, the stem, branches, leaves, and fruit were all contained in the seed. The constitutional doctrine as to the relation which the king bears to the other components of the state is in two words this: He is a representative of the whole of that, of which he is himself a part.

May 17. 1833.

SIR P. SIDNEY.-THINGS ARE FINDING THEIR LEVEL.

WHEN Sir Philip Sidney saw the enthusiasm which agitated every man, woman, and child in the Netherlands against Philip and D'Alva, he told Queen Elizabeth that it was the Spirit of God, and that it was invincible. What is the spirit which seems to move and unsettle every other man in

England and on the Continent at this time? Upon my conscience, and judging by St. John's rule, I think it is a special spirit of the devil — and a very vulgar devil too!

Your modern political economists say that it is a principle in their science—that all things find their level; - which I deny; and say, on the contrary, that the true principle is, that all things are finding their level—like water in a storm.

GERMAN is inferior to English in modifications of expression of the affections, but superior to it in modifications of expression of all objects of the senses.

Goethe's small lyrics are delightful. He showed good taste in not attempting to

imitate Shakspeare's Witches, which are threefold, Fates, Furies, and earthly Hags o' the caldron.

Man does not move in cycles, though nature does. Man's course is like that of an arrow; for the portion of the great cometary ellipse which he occupies is no more than a needle's length to a mile.

In natural history, God's freedom is shown in the law of necessity. In moral history, God's necessity or providence is shown in man's freedom.

June 8. 1833.

DOM MIGUEL AND DOM PEDRO.- WORK

ING TO BETTER ONE'S CONDITION.

NEGRO EMANCIPATION.

FOX AND

PITT. REVOLUTION.

THERE can be no doubt of the gross violations of strict neutrality by this government in the Portuguese affair; but I wish the

Tories had left the matter alone, and not given room to the people to associate them with that scoundrel Dom Miguel. You can never interest the common herd in the abstract question; with them, it is a mere quarrel between the men; and though Pedro is a very doubtful character, he is not so bad as his brother; and, besides, we are naturally interested for the girl.

It is very strange that men who make light of the direct doctrines of the Scriptures, and turn up their noses at the recommendation of a line of conduct suggested by religious truth, will nevertheless stake the tranquillity of an empire, the lives and properties of millions of men and women, on the faith of a maxim of modern political economy! And this, too, of a maxim true only, if at all, of England or a part of England, or some other country; — namely, that the desire of bettering their condition will induce men to labour even more abundantly and profitably than servile compulsion,