creditable to him in one way, if not in another"-and because, lastly, "their advancement, bringing less envy upon themselves, will reflect less odium upon their patron." It is painful to contemplate the possibility of any portion of political power falling into the hands of a human being base and mean enough to be operated upon by motives so superlatively narrow and contemptible.

Mr. Taylor has given directions with regard to the best mode of retaining the adherents which a statesman may have made. It appears that few promises ought to be made. A frank refusal may sometimes be hazarded. "Excess of profession evinces weakness, and therefore never conciliates political adhesion." A leader should appear to be "willing to befriend an adherent, but prepared to do without him; and this appearance," we are told, for reality is out of the question, "this appearance is best maintained by a light cordiality of demeanor towards him, and a more careful and effective attention to his interests than he has been led by that demeanor to anticipate." Light cordiality is an admirable expression. It exactly paints the manner which we have observed in all that numerous class of persons, whether swindlers, sharpers, blacklegs, or political adventurers, who speculate on turning the confidence they may be able to excite to profitable account, and for which we never could find before a brief, terse, and graphic description. Like the numerous impostors whom he resembles in manner, the statesman only allows one of his adherents occasionally to win, for the sake of assisting him in cajoling others; for, says our author, if you "give one example of expectation exceeded, of performance outrunning profession, hope and confidence will live upon little for the future." We have no doubt but there exists a multitude of persons with whom all this artifice and trickery may succeed. Men, who are blinded by their own lust of advancement, may become the easy and willing dupes of the statesman's light cordiality; but most assuredly the wise and good will never be among the number. Those, whom it is the object of all this humbug to attach, will never be taken in by it. To secure the wise and good as his adherents, the statesman must be himself possessed of wisdom and of goodness. The really virtuous are the last persons on whom false appearances ever make

the desired impression. Whenever the manner or language of the individual they have to do with is less true than their own, they feel an awkward embarrassment in his presence, and an unaccountable revulsion from his society, which convince them that they are not constituted to coalesce harmoniously, and that, if they would retain their feelings of charity towards him, they must have as little communication with him as possible. Mr. Taylor has, we are sure, read Coleridge a good deal, for he has borrowed from him very often; and he may, perhaps, remember,

"That to be innocent is nature's wisdom.

The fledge-dove knows the prowlers of the air,
Feared soon as seen, and flutters back to shelter;
And the young steed recoils upon his haunches,
The never-yet-seen adder's hiss first heard.
Oh, surer than suspicion's hundred eyes
Is that fine sense, which to the pure in heart,
By mere
oppugnancy of their own goodness,

Reveals the approach of evil."*

In the chapter on "Manners," the author lays down the different methods of flattery and address by which different classes of men may be imposed upon, and which may be practised with best advantage by the statesman. But we cannot continue our contemplation of this disgusting subject. If the political world really affords instances of characters animated by such principles, and directed by such views, as those which Mr. Taylor has represented, the career of ambition must be far more demoralizing than we had hitherto even supposed it to be; and if such execrable tricks and impositions are necessary to rise and thrive, then no man who has a regard for his reputation in this world, and his salvation in the next, should dare venture to engage in it. Thank Heaven, this class of political intriguers and charlatans, though they follow each other in constant succession, do not individually trouble the world for any great length of time. Like other venomous insects, they are short-lived. They buzz and sting while they live; but they are ephemeral. "Few effective statesmen have lived their threescore years and ten." The death of which they seem to stand most in peril, is worthy the ignominious character of their lives:

*Zapolya, act iv. sc. 1.

"they generally die of over-eating themselves." Such, according to Mr. Taylor's observation and experience, is the life and death of the statesman. It must not be forgotten, that his acquaintance with ministers and cabinets has been entirely confined to these latter days of Whig ascendency. We most confidently believe that, in the old Tory times, all was not so thoroughly base, and hollow, and unprincipled, as these official personages appear to be with whom our author is now unhappily conversant; and we may hope that the return of the Conservatives to power will bring back the old English virtues of truth, and honesty, and sincerity, and put to flight the smooth, glossy, fair-seeming, and fair-speaking vices, that have usurped their place in the cabinet and the public offices. Mr. Taylor states expressly that what he writes is from " practical observation;" and his excuse for writing the sort of book which has formed the subject of this article is, that, had he applied himself to any other kind of work, "he must necessarily have written more from speculative meditation, and less from knowledge." It has amused us a good deal, in the course of our perusal of his volume, to trace back his general theoretical observations on what the conduct of a statesman ought to be, to their source in those acts of particular members of the present cabinet which might have suggested them. Our author, for instance, must have had the union that subsists between Lord Melbourne and O'Connell in his eye when he wrote, "If it be indispensable to a statesman to accept services, which no very high-minded or creditable adherent could render, still he should be careful not to admit to personal intimacy those whom he thus employs."

Again, in writing the following passage on the inexpediency of granting many interviews, he must have been thinking of the embarrassment into which Mr. S. Rice had been betrayed by his incautious facility.

"On such occasions," says Mr. Taylor, "statements are made which must unavoidably, though perhaps insensibly, produce impressions, and to which, nevertheless, the party making them is not deliberately and responsibly committed. Further, no statesman, be he as discreet as he may, will escape having ascribed to him, as the result of interviews, promises and understandings which it was not his purpose to convey: and yet, in a short time,

he will be unable to recollect what was said with sufficient distinctness to enable him to give a confident contradiction."

Again, Mr. Taylor must have had his eye fixed on the trial of Norton v. Melbourne, when the lines below received their impress from his pen:

"A statesman, while unmarried, will be liable, in whatever conjuncture of affairs or exigency of business, to some amorous seizure, some accident of misplaced or ill-timed love, by which his mind will be taken away from his duties. Against these casualties, which may happen to a statesman howsoever devoted to political life, marriage will be the least imperfect protection; for business does but lay waste the approaches to the heart, while marriage garrisons the fortress."

But we have given to this book as much space as it deserves, and must bring our observations to a close. For Mr. Taylor's reputation sake, we are heartily sorry that it has been published. The perusal of it can do no man any good; and the protracted labor of composing it could not have been undergone without pernicious influences to the moral sense of the author. Its style, though occasionally a little formal and antiquated, is for the most part admirable. For pages together, the language is so apt and transparent a vehicle of the workings of the author's mind, that we forget we are deriving the knowledge of them from a book: we seem to receive his thoughts by intuition, and lose all recollection of their being conveyed to us by any material method of communication. In this respect Mr. Taylor has really evinced himself the worthy disciple of his great and unrivalled master, Robert Southey. But here the resemblance stops. No trace, we regret to say, of the friendship with which that great and good man honors him, is discernible in the principles and sentiments contained in his work. It is all of the world worldly, from beginning to end. There are, indeed, some very sage maxims and shrewd remarks scattered over its pages; but they are all so chilled by the icy atmosphere of the public office, that it makes one's teeth chatter to read them.

* The title of the chapter in which this passage is found is thus quaintly worded: "Concerning the Age at which a Statesman should Marry, and what manner of Woman he should take to Wife."

CHARACTER OF HAMLET.

"So Ecstacy,

Fantastic Dotage, Madness, Frenzy, Rapture
Of mere Imagination, differ partly

From MELANCHOLY, which is briefly thus:
A mere commotion of the Mind—overcharged
With Fear and Sorrow, first began i' th' brain,
The seat of Reason; and from thence derived
As suddenly into the heart, the seat

Of our affections."- FORD's Lovers.

SHAKESPEARE has written plays, and these plays were acted; and they succeeded; and by their popularity the author achieved a competency, on which he was enabled to retire from the turmoils of a theatrical life to the enjoyment of a friendly society and his own thoughts. Yet am I well convinced, it is impossible that any one of Shakespeare's dramatic works- -and especially of his tragedies, touching one of which I mean to speak-ever could be satisfactorily represented upon the stage. Laying aside all other reasons, it would be, in the first place, necessary to have a company such as was never yet assembled and no money could at any time bave procured—a company, namely, in which every actor should be a man of mind and feeling: for in these dramas every part is a character, fashioned by the touch of Genius; and, therefore, every part is important. But of no play is this more strictly true than it is of that strange, and subtle, and weird work, Hamlet. "The heartache,

And the thousand natural ills the flesh is heir to ;"

human infirmities, human afflictions, and supernatural agency, are so blended questions and considerations of Melancholy, of Pathology, Metaphysics, and Demonology, are so intertangled-the