The whole country had not
begun to be absorbed in the ocean of London. There were still little
great places--places with attractions quite sufficient to retain men
of talent or learning in their comfortable and respectable provincial
positions, and which were dignified by the tastes and institutions
which learning and talent naturally rear. The operation of the
commercial principle which tempts all superiority to try its fortune
in the greatest accessible market, is perhaps irresistible; but
anything is surely to be lamented which annihilates local intellect,
and degrades the provincial spheres which intellect and its
consequences can alone adorn. According to the modern rate of
travelling, the capitals of Scotland and of England were then about
2400 miles asunder. Edinburgh was still more distant in its style and
habits. It had then its own independent tastes, and ideas, and
pursuits. Enough of the generation that was retiring survived to cast
an antiquarian air over the city, and the generation that was
advancing was still a Scotch production. Its character may be
estimated by the names I have mentioned, and by the fact, that the
genius of Scott and of Jeffrey had made it the seat at once of the
most popular poetry and the most brilliant criticism that then
existed. This city has advantages, including its being the capital of
Scotland, its old reputation, and its external beauties, which have
enabled it, in a certain degree, to resist the centralising tendency,
and have hitherto always supplied it with a succession of eminent men.
But now that London is at our door, how precarious is our hold of
them, and how many have we lost!'

We would just add one remark which occurs to us after reviewing the
career of this eminent patriot and writer, and it may be of service to
young men now entering upon the various paths of ambition. It is the
fortune of many to be led by whim, prejudice, and other reasons, into
certain tracks of opinion, which, as they do not lead to the public
good, so neither do they conduce to any ultimate benefit for those
treading them. How striking the contrast between the retrospect of a
literary man, who has spent, perhaps, brilliant abilities in
supporting every bad cause and every condemned error of his time, and
necessarily found all barren at last, and the reflections of one like
Francis Jeffrey, who, having embraced just views at first, continued
temperately to advocate them until he saw them ad