gretted publication called 'Liber Amoris.' The subject is a painful one, and admits of but one cheerful consolation—that my father's name and character was but momentarily dimmed by what, indeed, was but a momentary delusion.

A favorite little volume with the lovers of art, and the more intellectual class of artists, the 'Critical Account of the Principal Picture Galleries of England,' was published in the same year. Its author has found means to convey, in a few sentences sparkling with imagery, all the minute distinctions which made up the excellence of the works under his consideration.

In the same year also was published by Mr. Colburn, the first series of • Table-Talk,' in two volumes, consisting of a number of Essays on subjects of various interest, of which a few had previously appeared in the London Magazine;' a second series also, in two volumes, was published two years after under the title of the Plain Speaker.' The subjects touched upon in these Essays comprehend almost the whole wide range of literature and art. Not a few of them are upon questions of the most abstruse character; yet the author's views are conveyed in such smooth and easy languege, and are elucidated with such profuse and apt illustration, that the reader becomes by degrees himself no mean metaphysician.

In 1824 my father married Isabella, widow of Lieut. Col. Bridgewater, a lady of some property, with whom he and myself proceeded on a tour through France and Italy. The vivid Notes' of this journey appeared first in the columns of the Morning Chronicle,' and were afterwards published in one volume by Messrs Hunt and Clarke. In 1825 Mr. Colburn brought out my father's 'Spirit of the Age,' a series of criticisms upon the more prominent literary men then living. The characters are drawn with great power, but not in all cases with equal justice.

In 1826 appeared the 'Plain Speaker,' of which I have made mention, and another edition of the 'Table Talk.' I may state here, that both at this time, and for some years previous, my father was a frequent contributor to the Edinburgh Review,' the New Monthly,' 'Monthly,' and 'London' Magazines, and other periodicals, from which sources he derived a considerable portion of his income. His average receipts were somewhere about 600l. a year, but his want of method, rather than any actual extravagance, prevented him from ever being better off at the end of the year than he was at the beginning of it. In 1829 was published his 'Selections from the British Poets,' which has since gone through several editions; and in 1830 appeared his great work, the 'Life of Napoleon,' in four volumes. Upon this he had been long and arduously engaged, but the labor to him was light, for it was a labor of love. The Emperor was my father's great idol among men, as the grand disturber of the doctrine of the "Right divine of Kings," and in this work he strove to raise a noble monument to his glory. The 'Life of Titian,' also published this year, bears the name of Mr. Northcote on its title-page, but in point of fact, all Mr. Northcote's share in the work was a mass of extremely unconnected manuscript, of which it was almost impossible to find the beginning, middle, or end. When reduced into something like order, this portion of the material, with the addition of a great many notes, &c., by my father, extended but to a volume and a quarter of the work. The remainder consists of a translation of Ticozzi's celebrated life of the great Painter, by my father and myself. The very delightful book, 'Northcote's Conver

sations,' was also brought out this year, and was the last work which my father ever published. His mind had been considerably harrassed in the summer of this year by pecuniary circumstances arising out of a bill which he had taken in place of money, and which had been dishonored by the party indebted to him. This had involved him ia considerable personal annoyance. In August he was seized with a violent attack of a disorder -a species of cholera-which had often before assailed him, and which his debilitated frame was little capable of resisting. During his illness he was attended with the greatest assiduity by Dr. Darling, to whom as a physician celebrated for his treatment of this class of disorder, Mr. Basil Montague had mentioned my father's illness, and who at once proffered his friendly advice and assistance. Nor were my father's other friends backward upon this mournful occasion. All his wants were carefully studied and at the time of his death he was amply provided with every thing which could be required. My father died on the 18th of September, 1830. His death was easy and resigned, and he had the gratification of seeing around him Charles Lamb and others of his oldest and most beloved friends.

He was buried a week after in the church-yard of St. Anne's, Soho, and the following epitaph was inscribed on a tomb-stone raised over his grave by an old and warmly attached friend.

HERE RESTS

WILLIAM HAZLITT,

Born April 10th, 1778. Died 18th September 1830.
He lived to see his deepest wishes gratified,
as he has expressed them in his Essay

"On the Fear of Death.'

Viz.:

"To see the downfall of the Bourbons,
And some prospect of good to mankind:
(Charles X

was driven from France 29th July 1830.)
"To leave some sterling work to the world :"
(He lived to complete his Life of Napoleon.
His desire

That some friendly hand should consign
him to the grave, was accomplished to a
limited, but profound extent; on
these conditions he was ready to depart,
and to have inscribed on his tomb,
"Grateful and Contented."

He was

The first (unanswered) Metaphysician of the age.
A despiser of the merely Rich and Great:
A lover of the People, Poor or Oppressed;
A hater of the Pride and Power of the Few,
as opposed to the happiness of the Many;
A man of true moral courage,
Who sacrificed Profit and present Fame
To Principle,

And a yearning for the good of Human Nature.
Who was a burning wound to an Aristocracy,
That could not answer him before men,
And who may confront him before their Maker.
He lived and died

I cannot better conclude this paper than by extracting the following beautiful passage from a discourse preached upon the occasion of my father's death by Mr. Johns, the amiable and talented Minister of the Unitarian Chapel, Crediton.

"I should not, my brethren, have brought these recollections before you, had it not again become my unwelcome duty to say a few words over another leaf, that has fallen from the human life-tree, and rested upon the grave. A distinguished individual, a stranger but not an alien, will henceforth exist only as a distinguished name. One who has always been an object of attachment to the few,-and who by a strange involution of hostilities has been battling with the many, while he was contending for mankind, has been laid at length in the peaceful resting-place, where they shall not learn war any more.' Brief and sincere may the requiem be, which a stranger breathes over a stranger's grave:-He is gone to his rest, and let it not be broken.-In an age, when the general diffusion of knowledge has made it no easy matter for one man to rise greatly above the educated thousands around him, he has been one of those who have achieved the difficult undertaking, and whose thoughts have sparkled upon the topmost waves of the world. He felt it a proud distinction—perhaps he felt too proudly-to be the owner of a luminous and vigorous mind. He could not be reproached with suffering the ploughshare to rust in the generous soil. It was rather his glorious but disastrous error, to suffer that soil too rarely to lie fallow. There was a mean, which he did not, or would not discover; and Study may add his name to her long list of martyrs. But the name of Hazlitt is associated with far nobler recollections. Whatever might be his speculative, whatever his practical errors, he was the fearless, the eloquent, and disinterested advocate of the rights and liberties of man, in every cause and in every clime. His opinions were such as to make him one of a party, whom the brilliant and influential Administration, under which he commenced his career, honored with no small portion of political and personal hatred. And they did not want either means or instruments to make the effects of that hatred felt, even by those, who were too haughty to show any pain, when the sword had pierced through their souls.' As far as I am acquainted with his personal history, he escaped the harsher measures, which involved so many of his political allies. He was neither persecuted, fined nor incarcerated. But these were the lightest and briefest of the evils which they experienced, though to the common eye, they might apear the heaviest and the worst. The most active prosecution, which the Government could excite against them, was far less lastingly prejudicial and painful, than the cloud of silent obloquy, in which it found means to involve their opinions and their leaders, and from the effects of which no time or change could redeem them. A whisper went forth against them, which was, in its effects, more appal

ling than the thunder. Calumny (I cite the verses for the sake of the powerful contrast,) seeing the multitudes went up into a mountain, and when she was set, her disciples came unto her; and she opened her mouth, and taught them, saying,'-These men are the enemies of the peace and happiness of mankind. They speak of liberty; but they think of licence: they prat of the rights and wrongs of man, while they are undermining the foundations of social justice and order. They have no true regard for the prosperity of the people, for the sanctity of the altar, or the majesty of the throne. They are impatient of all restraints upon their turbulent aspirings; and would turn the world upside down,' in order to see how the pyramid would stand upon its head. Beware, therefore, how you join these friends of sedition and blasphemy, these enemies of peace and piety, wherever they are found. Listen not to the subtle voice of the serpent. Read not their writings, nor mix in their society; but rather unite with the true friends of your country, in banishing all such, by a silent ostracism, from the dwellings of the pious, the prudent, and the peaceful.

"These assertions and insinuations, enforced by the speaking-trumpet of an ascendant faction, made it once a dangerous and a daring thing for any man to avow himself the partizan of liberty and reform. Now, my brethren the case is widely altered. The hearts of nations have been touched their minds have been enlightened-their voices have been lifted and heard. But there was a time, when he, who dared to advocate those principles, was overwhelmed with a foaming deluge of obloquy and opprobrium. The step was of itself, almost enough to blast his public hopes, and his private fame. Detraction followed him-Derision went with him -and persecution lay in ambush before him. Let us, therefore, my brethren, look back with honor upon the few, who once lifted the sacred standard of Liberty, amid the 'fiery darts of the wicked' and of the world. Praise to their living names, and peace to their solemn graves! Whatever else they may have done, or left undone for this, at least, they deserve the gratitude of their kind. That gratitude, indeed, must soon be lost in oblivion. Those names, now bright as the sunset cloud, will grow darker and darker as the evening draws on, and be lost at length in the majesty of night. Posterity cannot remember the names of its benefactors; but that which is the misfortune of after ages, would be the crime of the present. It is ours, my brethren, our duty and our prerogative,―to hang a fading wreath, or to breathe a passing requiem, over them emories of those, who, in evil times, advocated a perilous but glorious cause; who bore the colors in the infant ranks of Freedom; and who, wherever they rest, should rest in our imaginations, with those colors wrapped around them, under which they fell."

SOME THOUGHTS

ON THE GENIUS OF WILLIAM HAZLITT.

THE present century has produced many men of poetical genius, and some of analytical acumen; but I doubt whether it has produced any one who has given to the world such signal proofs of the union of the two as the late WILLIAM HAZLITT. If I were asked his peculiar and predomi-nant distinction, I should say that, above all things, he was a CRITIC. He possessed the critical faculty in its noblest degree. He did not square and measure out his judgments by the pedantries of dry and lifeless propositions-his taste was not the creature of schools and canons, it was begotten of Enthusiasm by Thought. He felt intensely ;—he imbued—he saturated himself with the genius he examined; it became a part of him, and he reproduced it in science. He took in pieces the work he surveyed, and reconstructed the fabric in order to show the process by which it had been built. His criticisms are therefore eminently scientific; to use his own expression, his "art lifts the veil from nature." It was the wonderful subtilty with which he possessed himself of the intentions of the author, which enabled him not only to appreciate in his own person, but to make the world appreciate, the effects those intentions had produce. Thus especially in his Characters of Shakspeare's Plays,' he seizes at once upon the ruling principle of each, with an ease, a carelessness, a quiet and 'unstrained fidelity,' which proves how familiarly he had dwelt upon the secret he had mastered. He is, in these sketches, less eloquent and less refining than Schlegel, but it is because he has gazed away the first wonder that dazzles and inspires his rival. He has made himself household with Shakspeare, and his full and entire confidence that he understands the mysteries of the host in whose dwelling-place he has tarried, gives his elucidations, short and sketch-like as they are, the almost unconscious simplicity of a man explaining the true motives of the friend he has known. Thus, in the character of Hamlet' on which so many have been bewildered, and so many have been eloquent, he employs little or nothing of the lavish and exuberant diction, or the elaborate spirit of conjecture that he can command at will. He utters his dogmas as unpretendingly as if they were common-places, and it is scarcely till he brings the character of 'Hamlet,' as conceived by him, into sudden contrast with the delinieation of the two master actors of his time, that you perceive how new and irresistible are his conclusions:

"The character of Hamlet is itself a pure effusion of genius. It is not a character marked by strength of will or even passion, but by refinement