withheld from us-only to render its attainment more certain and more precious!

To the other solid grounds of an indefinite prolongation of this war, religious, moral, political, commercial, constitutional, continental, Jacobinical, Revolutionary, Corsican, foreign or domestic our apologist, in the true spirit of the French petit maitre in Roderic Random, has now added a ground of his own, of equal efficacy and validity with the former, viz. that we are to carry it on in the character of gentlemen and men of honour. We are to fight for the restoration of the Bourbons, say The Times, "that we may have gentlemen and men of honour to fight with." There is some prudence in this resolution; it goes on the old principle, that we are not to fight except with our match. Don Quixote, after he had been soundly drubbed by the Yanguesian carriers, recollected that he ought not to have engaged with plebeians. The writer whom we have here quoted, told us, some time ago, from a greater authority certainly than that of The Times, the true grounds of war, or " that we might spill our blood for our country, for our liberty, for our friends, for our kind; " but we do not remember, among these legitimate sources of the waste of human blood, that we were to shed it for a punctilio. If war were to be decided by the breaking of white and black sticks among gentlemen-ushers, or even by the effusion of courtly phrases in The Courier and The Times, we should have no objection to this fastidious refinement; but we cannot consent to shed the best blood of Europe, nor that of " the meanest peasant in this our native land," in order that the delicate honour of the Carlton House Minority may not be stained, nor the purity of their moral taste perverted, by an intercourse with any but gentlemen and men of honour. And thou, Carl John, what hast thou to say to this new plea of the old school?-Or why, not being clad with the inherent right to "monarchize, be feared, and kill with looks,"-dost thou insult over the King of Denmark, menace Holstein, and seize upon Norway, and yet tellest thy little son, that the time is coming, when conquerors shall be no

more?-The Times' editor scornfully rejects our practical opinion on the probability of restoring the Bourbons, because it seems we always reject every proposition that makes the continuance of war necessary. Be it so. But do not these persons also attach the highest degree of probability, or, when they are so inclined, moral certainty, to every thing that tends to make peace unattainable? It is true we did not, as they say, anticipate the reverses of the French Emperor before they happened. If we did not anticipate them before, it was because we had nothing in past experience to guide us to such a conclusion, except, indeed, the constant unverified predictions of The Times and The Courier. If these inspired writers had the slightest intimation of them one moment before they happened, we are willing to bow down to them, and they shall be our Gods. But of this we are sure, from all experience, that the way to render the fruits of those reverses uncertain, or to defeat them altogether, is the very mode of proceeding recommended by the ceaseless partizans of interminable hostilities. If the French are a nation of men-if they have the common faculties of memory, of understanding, and foresight; if they are, as they have been pronounced by one no ways favourable to them," the most civilized, and with one exception, the most enlightened people in Europe," surely, if any thing can kindle in their minds" the flame of sacred vehemence, and move the very stones to mutiny," it is the letting loose upon them the mohawks of Europe, the Cossacks, with General Blucher's manifesto in their hands. It is restoring to Bonaparte the very weapon which we had wrested from him, the mighty plea of the independence of nations; it is reclothing his power with those adamantine scales" which fear no discipline of human hands," the hearts and wills of a whole people, threatened with emasculation of their moral and physical powers, by half a dozen libellers of the human species, and a horde of barbarians scarcely human. Even the writer in The Times acknowledges that the Cossacks entering France as a sort of masters of the ceremonies to the Bourbons, is only better, and less likely to excite horror and dis

may, than their entering it in their own rights and persons. It may be so. The bear bringing in the monkey on his back may be more inviting than the bear alone. But we should think that either portent must be fatal, that neither hieroglyphic will be favourably interpreted.

ILLUSTRATIONS OF VETUS.

"Those nauseous harlequins in farce may pass,

"But there goes more to a substantial ass;

"Our modern wits such monstrous fools have shewn,

"They seem not of Heaven's making but their own.”—Dryden.

Dec. 2, 1813.

THERE is a degree of shameless effrontery which disarms and baffles contempt by the shock which it gives to every feeling of moral rectitude or common decency; as there is a daring extravagance in absurdity which almost challenges our assent by confounding and setting at defiance every principle of human reasoning. The ribald paragraphs, which fill the columns of our daily papers, and disgrace the English language, afford too many examples of the former assertion; the Letters of Vetus are a striking instance of the latter.

It would have been some satisfaction to us, in the ungrateful task which we have imposed upon ourselves, if, in combating the conclusions of Vetus, we could have done justice to the ingenuity of his arguments, or the force of his illustrations. But his extreme dogmatism is as destitute of proofs, as it is violent in itself. His profound axioms are in general flat contradictions; and he scarcely makes a single statement in support of any proposition which does not subvert it. In the Parliamentary phrase, he constantly stultifies himself. The glaring and almost deliberate incongruity of his conclusions is such as to imply a morbid defect of comprehension, a warped or overstrained understanding. Ab

sorbed in an inveterate purpose, bent on expanding some vapid sophism into a cumbrous system, he is insensible to the most obvious consequences of things; and his reason is made the blind pander to his prejudices.

We are not converts to this author's style, any more than to his reasoning. Indeed the defects of the one very much assist those of the other, and both have the same character. There is a perpetual effort to make something out of nothing, and to elevate a common-place into sublimity. The style of Vetus is not very different from that of Don Adriano de Armado; every word is as who should say, "I am Sir Oracle." Like the hero of Cervantes, haranguing the shepherds, he assaults the very vault of Heaven with the arrogance of his tone, and the loudness of his pretensions. Nothing can exceed the pompous quaintness, and laborious foolery of many of his letters. He unfolds the book of fate, assumes the prophet or historian, by virtue of alliteration and antithesis ;-sustains the balance of power by well-poised periods, or crushes a people under a ponderous epithet. The set style of Vetus does not conform easily to the march of human affairs; and he is often forced to torture the sense to "hitch it" in a metaphor. While he is marshalling his words, he neglects his arguments, which require all his attention to connect them together; and in his eagerness to give additional significance to his sentences, he loses his own meaning.

We shall proceed to the task we at first proposed, viz. that of supplying marginal notes to the voluminous effusions of Vetus, and shall continue our comments as often as he furnishes us with the text.

We agree with the sentiment with which he commences his last Letter, that it is "particularly desirable to follow up the question of peace" at the present crisis, but not with the reason which he assigns for his extreme anxiety to enter upon the question," because this is just the moment to dread the entertainment of a pacific overture." We can readily believe that at no other moment than when he dreads its approach, would Vetus

ever breathe a syllable on the subject of peace, and then only to avert it. Whenever " a spurious and mawkish beneficence" gives an alarm of peace, the dogs of war stand ready on the slip to hunt it down.

"I have stated to you" (To the Editor of the Times)" as the only legitimate basis of a treaty, if not on the part of the continental Allies, at least for England herself, that she should conquer all she can, and keep all she conquers. This is not by way of retaliation, however just, upon so obdurate and rapacious an enemy-but as an indispensable condition of her own safety and existence."

That which is here said to be the only legitimate basis of a treaty is one, which if admitted and acted upon, would make it impossible that any treaty should ever be formed. It is a basis, not of lasting peace, but of endless war. To call that the basis of a treaty which precludes the possibility of any concession or compensation, of every consideration either of the right or power of each party to retain its actual acquisitions, is one of those misnomers which the gravity of Vetus's manner makes his readers overlook. After the imposing and guarded exordium which ushers in the definition of our only legitimate basis of a treaty, we are not prepared to expect Vetus's burlesque solution of the difficulty" that we are not to treat at all." The human mind is naturally credulous of sounding professions, and reluctantly admits the existence of what is very common, and common for that reason-pompous nonsense. It seems, however, that this basis of a treaty is to apply only to one of the contracting powers, namely, England, it is equivocal as to the Allies, and with respect to France, it is, we suppose, meant to be altogether null. For in a former letter, after asking, "Who are to be the judges of his (Bonaparte's) rights?" he answers emphatically, "We and our Allies!" Bobadil did not come up to this exquisite pacificator of the world! To make common sense of Vetus's axiom with reference to any state whatever," that it should keep all it conquers," it seems necessary to add this trifling condition, "if it