of such matter, neither taste nor common sense would suffer from the moderation. The "Neighbours of the Old Irish Boy," please us less than "The West Country Chronicles," partly, because a series of narratives, in one unvarying tissue of provincial phraseology and slang blunts vivacity of perception, and palls upon the understanding. There is a considerable portion of wild humour, however, in this division, especially in the individual character, as distinguished from the incidents. "My Cousin's Clients" relate to persons and adventures supposed to have been mixed up with the professional experience of a veteran lawyer. One of the hits called "The Mathematician" is very lively and ingenious; "The Dessert" consists of comparative trifies not without merit, but scarcely affording materials for quotation, since it would not be easy to bring to our pages the charming relief which the graver of George Cruikshank has supplied. It would appear from the preface that the designs of the wood-cuts which embellish this merry trifle are the author's own, and have only received their heightening and finish from Mr. Cruikshank. Those which are the most airy, sketchy, and allusive are preferable to such as formally depict the incidents described. The archness and covert humour of many of the former are often very piquant, and display, most characteristically, Cruikshank's magic touch. One of the most simple of these in which, without the least liberty taken with actual resemblance, a couple of pumps are made to enact a brace of grave personages in close conversation, supplies a remarkable specimen of the lightsome facility with which this gifted artist can elicit humorous and extraordinary effect. This amusing volume is got up very handsomely, which appears to be an affair, of course, with its publishers (Messrs. Vizetelly and Branston), whose "Young Lady's Book," for beauty of illustration and embellishment, is a very remarkable production. What it is right to do at all, cannot be too well done, setting aside the more direct utility of chaste and accurate delineation. This encouragement of fine execution is at once favourable to art and to a due estimation of it. Even the decorated annuals effect a considerable portion of good in this way, and the extension of the benefit in aid of practical instruction for the acquirement of elegant accomplishment, even the utilitarian reviewers need feel no disposition to decry. i ART. XI.-1. History of the Rebellion in England, and l'iew of Affairs in Ireland. By the Right Hon. Edward Earl of Clarendon, &c. Collated with the original MSS; with the suppressed Passages, and the Notes of Bishop Warburton. 8 vols. 8vo. Oxford. 1826. 2. Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon, Lord High Chancellor of England; in which is included a continuation of his History of the Grand Rebellion. Written by himself. 3 vols. 8vo, Oxford. 1827. 3. Essays, Moral and Entertaining, on the various Faculties and Passions of the Mind. By the Right Hon. Edward Earl of Clarendon. 2 vols. 12mo. London. 1815. THE HE character of Clarendon, as of most public men who have been deified or defamed for party purposes, has, perhaps, been even less unfairly dealt with by the statements, than by the omissions of conflicting pleaders and witnesses; and a more complete collection of the facts on both sides offers means for a more equitable balance betwixt them. However, the adjustment of that balance first of all demands the removal of those numerous false weights which have been heaped into the scale in his favour; and which have principally owed their present bulk (though they have recently sustained diminution),* to the still-surviving interests which he served in his life-time, to the unequalled skill and industry exerted by himself in vindication of his public conduct, and lastly, to a fortunate concurrence of circumstances, which have placed him in the view of after-ages under singularly favourable lights. His virtues, through his whole history, stand out in striking contrast from amidst the opposite vices of his colleagues and associates. Throughout his life, especially in his own delineation of it, the strife of passion, prejudice and interest around him seems to be waged as if to set off with most advantage his own calm superiority. He is found at the outset of his public career, engaged in active opposition to the inroads of the court upon the legal rights and franchises of Englishmen. On his secession to the royal camp, his single voice is audible in bitter complaint against the selfish animosities of his comrades, and in animated pleadings for the monarch's prerogative. Follow him into exile, he is nobly employed in recording for all time' the great events of his own. In the restored court, he dares to reprove the vices of the king, while he disdains to buy the smiles of the mistress. Finally, he sinks beneath an infamous cabal, whose very enmity bore witness to the merits of its object, and whose subsequent * See Mr. Agar Ellis's Historical Enquiries' and Hallam's Constitutional History, and especially Mr. Hallam's notes. proceedings would have thrown into shade the worst mistakes or crimes of almost any precursor. In seconding the attempts which have lately been made to replace within the bounds of sober justice a reputation thus auspiciously established, candour requires acknowledgment of the facilities which have been given to the task by the late beautiful editions of the "History" and "Life" of our subject, the titles of which appear at the head of the present observations. It had been matter of suspicion, as it now is of certainty, that the editors of the original Oxford edition had most unwarrantably tampered with the text of lord Clarendon, wherever it was scandalous to High Church and Toryism. The present edition restores the author's MS. to its rightful honours, and replaces, in the shape of appendix to several of its volumes, long passages excluded by the zeal of Sprat and Aldrich, the first editors, with the sanction (Mr. Hallam supposes) of lords Clarendon and Rochester, the sons of the historian. It also makes the notes of bishop Warburton public, which, though not without complexional asperities, occasionally reinforced by clerical corporation-spirit, yet, for shrewd remark and just reflection, certainly may be ranked with the polemical distinctions of that prelate, and in the mode of their introduction to the world reflect honour on the progressive liberality of Oxford. Before coming to the earliest point of prominence in our subject-namely, Hyde's concern in and secession from the meetings of the Long Parliament-we must rapidly run over some occurrences in the years which preceded his abandonment of legal for political toils. He had started into notice at the bar with a celerity which astonished his rivals, who knew little, for the most part, of the systematic ardour with which he courted all connexions that could aid his success, whether in his profession or in general society. He had laid it down as a rule, as he informs us in his "Life," always to be found in the best company, and to aim at intimacy with the persons most considerable for their fortune, rank, or personal endowments. Ben Jonson, Selden, May, sir Kenelm Digby, bore witness to the judgment of his youthful selection; and the attachment of his riper years to the church might have been augured at an early date from the friendships he had formed with Sheldon, Morley, Earles, and Hales. Chillingworth the sceptical and subtle, Edmund Waller, known as an orator before he dawned as a poet, and sir Lucius Carey, afterwards lord Falkland, adorned his memorable list of early intimacies. Opportunities, well managed, introduced Hyde to the mar quis of Hamilton, "who had at that time the most credit of any man about the court;" and by an occurrence yet more fortunate he was enabled to acquire the then omnipotent patronage of archbishop Laud. These advantages speedily attracted the regards of judges, clients and counsellors in Westminster Hall, "so that he grew every day in practice, of which he had as much as he desired;" and his only care was so to distribute his time as to rescue of it some portion for the pleasures of society. The hour of dinner, then at twelve or one, was set apart for social conversation, while the morning and afternoon were swallowed up by professional duties; either in attendance on the courts, or in taking instructions and in giving opinions. His vacations were enjoyed in domesticity and study, broken in upon occasionally by epicurean orgies, in which he seems to have been no contemptible adept, in company with the earl of Dorset, lord Conway, and lord Lumley, "men who excelled in gratifying their appetites.' "In that very time," says Hyde, (we still quote his Life) "when fortune seemed to smile and to intend well towards him, and often afterwards, he was wont to say, that when he reflected upon himself, and his past actions, even from the time of his first coming to the Middle Temple, he had much more cause to be terrified upon the reflection, than the man had, who viewed Rochester Bridge in the morning that it was broken, and which he had gallopped over in the night; that he had passed over more precipices than the other had done, for many nights and days and some years together, from which nothing but the immediate hand of God could have preserved him.' He alludes to the loose habits, and especially that of intemperance, contracted during his residence at Oxford, and improved at the Temple in society with the young officers who filled the town on the breaking out of war with Spain and France--when, however, as he informs us, his uncle's death awakened graver thoughts; and "in order to call home all straggling and wandering appetites he inclined to a proposition of marriage which, having no other passion in it than an appetite to a convenient estate, succeeded not, yet produced new acquaintance, and continued the same inclinations. In the first session of the Long Parliament, we find Hyde by no means in a posture such as his former haunts in high places might possibly have suggested, but active in exposing the court system-a line of conduct into which many were forced at this crisis by the popular current, who were afterwards, as before, devoted courtiers -and in denouncing the illegal acts, as president of the northern council, of that very apostate favourite, whom he was after 2 That wards to succeed in the confidence of his ill-fated master. We will not therefore mingle the fair augury afforded by his entrance on the scene with gratuitous misgivings of the part he is to play there; or single him out for censure from that enlightened and virtuous fellowship, in which he now sought political cooperation, as he had previously resorted to it for lettered companionship. Assuredly, so far as intellectual attainments went, he did no dishonor to his company; though in research of ancient authors, it is probable that he cannot claim equality with Falkland, and in mental strength and compass he must stand on an immeasurably lower level than Chillingworth. noble band, which seems to have been formed out of the élite of whatever was most tolerant and enlightened in the church or the laity, perhaps only failed in the faculty of realizing their speculative conquests in action. Their inquiries had been followed without hindrance even beneath the jealous tyranny of Laud; and their habits of abstraction had but little in common with the fiery zeal of more forward innovators. What Erasmus was to the fierce polemics of Switzerland or Saxony-what Walsingham and Grindal were to the early English Puritans-were Falkland, Hales and Chillingworth, to the popular religious and political partisans of 1640. The bigotted grasp by narrower and less cultivated spirits of merely outward types as well as of public principle, their own habitual attachment to those institutions, which had, however, proved themselves inadequate to defence against the inroads of the royal prerogative, alienated the friends of Hyde at a very early period from the measures of the popular party, and rallied them round the legal rights and dignities of the crown. The free though loyal principles advanced by this party were those which alone enabled Charles to oppose legitimate pretexts, as well as powerful means, of hostility to the large and popular classes which he had outraged. They were such indeed as must have influence in a country where allusion is so frequently made to its chartered and prescriptive liberties, as presenting a fair abstract of old English national feeling, and maintaining the inviolate supremacy of the monarch, while they vindicated legal and traditionary franchises. Whatever may be excepted against in the political scruples by which the holders of such principles were severed from the popular cause, it is impossible to confound their probable motives for a moment with such as induced the profligate apostacy of Strafford. Nor can Hyde be fairly accused, to the extent he has often been, of political tergiversation in his parliamentary conduct, for first asserting legal rights as a lawyer, and afterwards withstanding ecclesiastical changes, as a |