naturally exhibited some of the results of the change.

Much allowance must be made for the altered spirit of the times. A
generation or two ago, there was everywhere far more of rancor and less
of decorum in the treatment of politics and criticism than would now be
tolerated. All the world permitted and expected strong partisanship,
bitter personality, and downright abuse. They would have called our
more sober reticence by the name of feebleness: their truculence we
stigmatize as slander and Billingsgate. Wilson was an extremist in
everything; yet he strained but a point or two beyond his fellows. When
the tide of party began gradually to subside, he fell with it. Mrs.
Gordon has given a very correct picture of the state of things in those
days:--

"It is impossible for us, at this time, to realize fully the state of
feeling that prevailed in the literature and politics of the years
between 1810 and 1830. We can hardly imagine why men who at heart
respected and liked each other should have found it necessary to hold no
communion, but, on the contrary, to wage bitter war, because the one
was an admirer of the Prince Regent and Lord Castlereagh, the other a
supporter of Queen Caroline and Mr. Brougham. We cannot conceive why a
poet should be stigmatized as a base and detestable character, merely
because he was a Cockney and a Radical; nor can we comprehend how
gentlemen, aggrieved by articles in newspapers and magazines, should
have thought it necessary to the vindication of their honor to horsewhip
or shoot the printers or editors of the publications. Yet in 1817 and
the following years such was the state of things in the capital of
Scotland.... You were either a Tory and a good man, or a Whig and a
rascal, and _vice versa_. If you were a Tory and wanted a place, it was
the duty of all good Tories to stand by you; if you were a Whig, your
chance was small; but its feebleness was all the more a reason why
you should be proclaimed a martyr, and all your opponents profligate
mercenaries." But parties changed, and men changed with them. It was
a Whig ministry which gave Wilson, in 1852, a pension of two hundred
pounds.

Mrs. Gordon has praised her father as "the beau-ideal of what a critic
should be, whose judgments will live as _parts_ of literature, and not
merely _talk_ about it." That these so-called judgments are worthy to
live, and will live, we fully believe; yet we could never think him a
model critic, or even a