nce
was doomed, and the thought how small a share of the useless luxuries
in which we (such comparatively poor creatures) indulge, would have
sufficed to shed joy and cheerfulness in their dwellings, and perhaps
to have saved that glorious spirit from the trials and temptations
under which he fell so prematurely. Oh! my dear Empson, there must be
something _terribly_ wrong in the present arrangements of the
universe, when those things can happen, and be thought natural. I
could lie down in the dirt, and cry and grovel there, I think, for a
century, to save such a soul as Burns from the suffering, and the
contamination, and the _degradation_, which these same arrangements
imposed upon him; and I fancy that, if I could but have known him, in
my present state of wealth and influence, I might have saved, and
reclaimed, and preserved him, even to the present day. He would not
have been so old as my brother-judge, Lord Glenlee, or Lord Lynedoch,
or a dozen others that one meets daily in society. And what a
creature, not only in genius, but in nobleness of character,
potentially at least, if right models had been put _gently_ before
him!'

The narrative of Lord Cockburn occupies only one volume, the other
being filled with a selection from Lord Jeffrey's letters. It is a
brief chronicle of the subject; many will feel it to be
unsatisfactorily slight. The author seems to have been afraid of
becoming tedious. It is, however, a manly and faithful narration, with
the rare merit of going little, if at all, beyond bounds in its
appreciation of the hero or his associates, or the importance of the
circumstances in which he moved. The sketches of some of Jeffrey's
contemporaries, as John Clerk, Sir Harry Moncreiff, and Henry Erskine,
are vigorous pieces of painting, which will suggest to many a desire
that the author should favour the public with a wider view of the men
and things of Scotland in the age just past. With a natural partiality
as a friend and as a biographer, he seems to us to set too high an
estimate on Jeffrey when he ranks him as one of a quartett, including
Dugald Stewart, Sir Walter Scott, and Dr Chalmers, 'each of whom in
literature, philosophy, or policy, caused great changes,' and 'left
upon his age the impression of the mind that produced them.' Few of
his countrymen would claim this rank for either Jeffrey or Stewart.
Jeffrey, no doubt, raised a department of our literature from a low to
a high level; he was a