seize upon the more important, the more pregnant portions, and to render more acute our perception, and more exalted our estimate, of the comprehensive meaning they are intended to convey.

That the work of the Oxford graduate has for its especial aim the promotion of Landscape Nature as a great moral means, and the elevation of the artist as the expounder of its mysteries, is sufficient to demand for its author the highest respect of the ordinary observer on the one hand, and the professional aspirant on the other. For our own parts, we are grateful to him, not more for stimulating our regard for Art, than for teaching us how to cultivate a thriving love for Nature. We have, since the perusal of his treatise, gained many an additional insight into the riches of landscape; and we thank him cordially for having opened to us those sources of enjoyment which lie, like ever-gushing fountains, in the mountains, the valleys, the fields, and the woods; and for having awakened our fuller apprehension of those sublimities which distinguish the phenomena of ocean, and of" the brave o'erhanging firmament."

The graduate's volume is, in short, a work which prompts us to leave the conventional for the true; and, quitting the cant of gallery connoisseurship, to find

graduate's volume, without referring to the singular eloquence and graphic power displayed in very many of its passages. It is evidently not the work of a critic only, but of a painter and poet. The sterling common

sense and the acute observation, shewn in its more practical details, are not more remarkable than the reverential feeling he entertains towards Art, and the enthusiasm of his love for Nature. We only regret, for the sake of his cause, that he should so openly have proclaimed himself the champion of Turner in particular. He might have kept Turner in his eye, without such unqualified personal worship. The Turneric might have been advocated, without such an especial idolatry of the artist himself. The pre-eminent genius of Turner might have been asserted, and sufficiently proved, by reference to certain particular merits, even in such of his works as are, in their general character, deemed most extravagant; but when such works are alluded to as illustrating the graduate's theory of landscape perfection, readers, less docile than ourselves, will visit, upon the very principles of his book, the doubts which should only attach to the justice of some of his examples. With these few qualifying remarks we take leave of the graduate, hoping that the "word of promise" which he has left with us, in respect to the continuation of his subject, will be speedily redeemed. Well and wisely hath he charmed us so far, and, in the words of Jaques, we earnestly exclaim,—

"More, more; I pr'y thee, more!"

Our readers, we think, will do us the justice to acknowledge, that we have not rushed into any hasty conclusions concerning the wisdom of the financial policy of the minister, being yet undeclared, or the effect which it bids fair to produce upon the general condition, social as well as commercial, of the country. It is indeed possible that to the more earnest among them we may seem to have exercised an excess of caution in this respect, for earnest men are not always reasonable men; and reason, though it be our safest guide in politics as in most other things, seldom keeps its ground when assailed by prejudice or passion. But we cannot help this. We have never written a line on any of the great questions of the day, which at this present moment we would wish to retract. We have done nothing in the matter of the last move in the Conservative cabinet, which we could at this moment desire to be undone. As long as it was possible to keep the judgment in suspense we wholly suspended ours; and took the precaution, even after Sir Robert Peel had made the first announcement of his purposes, to postpone to a future occasion the remarks which we might feel it our duty to make upon them. There is an end, however, now, to all farther hesitation. The secret is fully out, -the great plan is developed; the ways and means by which it has been brought so far towards its accomplishment are patent to the whole world: and to affect neutrality any longer would be ridiculous. It has become our duty to deliver our opinion on the premises before us, and we shall endeavour to go through with it as becomes us.

And first let us guard ourselves against appearing to write in a spirit of bitterness about Sir Robert Peel. We have no railing accusation whatever to bring against him. As a man, we believe him to be as honest now as he ever was as a statesman, we cannot doubt that the motives by which he is actuated are pure. What indeed has he to gain, either personally or in reputation, by the course which he has considered it expedient to

adopt? He sacrifices old friendships, old associations, old opinions, old connexions, every thing which men most esteem, and which go the farthest to smooth for them the path of life and for what? To effect a change in the financial policy of the greatest empire in the world, over the destinies of which he has been called upon to preside; and to run the risk, while doing so, of making shipwreck of his own influence. For should he fail to carry his measure after all, there is but a choice of evils before him: he must either retire at once from public life, or throw in his lot with a party with which he has no sympathy in common. And even if he succeed, wherein can he expect to be benefited? Will future parliaments prove more manageable because this, which was elected on protection principles, has stultified itself and established the principle of free trade? Will the House of Lords, like the beaten spaniel, cringe or obey the premier more cheerfully in consequence of the discipline which it has undergone? Positively we see nothing for Sir Robert Peel in the future but mortification, annoyance, and an ultimate retreat to Drayton Manor. For, whether the country thrive or not under the new system which he has devised for it, in him no human being can hereafter repose confidence; inasmuch as, though acting always upon principle and a desire to do right, there is no fixedness of opinion about him. And we defy any set of rational beings, whether they be banded together in arms or collected into deliberative assemblies, to follow as their leader a man whom they cannot trust, not because they esteem him intentionally dishonest, but because he claims for himself the privilege of changing his opinions whenever he chooses, and insists that others shall change theirs in like manner.

Sir Robert Peel has become a freetrader, in the most extended sense of the term, suddenly, and after a long public life spent in the maintenance of a system of protection to agriculture and domestic industry. He

assures us that the change is the result of a settled conviction, not arrived at in a moment but cautiously, and in reluctance pressed upon him by the events of the last three years. Now we cannot give the lie to a man of honour, let him make what assertion he may; and we quite believe that Sir Robert Peel is sincere, as far as any man in his position can be sincere, when he makes this statement. But if it be true that the minds of most men are apt to be read imperfectly even by themselves, then must we claim the right of suspecting that Sir Robert deceives himself. He tells us that the working of the tariff of 1842 led him to consider the whole question of free trade in a new light, and that the result has been his conversion. But why was this experiment of the new tariff tried? Were there no leanings in 1842 towards free trade which the champion of Protection hesitated to gratify, but which he plucked up heart of grace to try, in their fitness, by the very measures which are now described as giving rise to the free-trade opinion? We suspect that there were, and in sincerity and truth we hope that there were. For the experience of three such years as have just run their courseyears of unexampled prosperity and bustle of railroads and the press, and of business connected with them-of abundant labour, good harvests, and high wages, was certainly not the sort of experience which would induce any reasonable man to conclude that the policy which led the way to them was a bad policy. For his own sake, therefore, for the sake of his consistency and common sense, we hope, and indeed believe, that Sir Robert Peel imagined, long before 1845, that the system of protection had reached its extreme limits; and that the time was come for returning again to that order of things which is at once the best in the abstract, and would in practice be the best also, were all civilised nations to fall in with it. But even then, where are we? The measure may be as good as Sir Robert and Mr. Cobden declare it to be--it may lead to all the results, contradictory as they are, for which they both hope, but of the occurrence of which neither has given us the smallest proof by anticipation; yet the question still reverts upon us,

Was Sir Robert Peel the man to bring forward this measure, and has he dealt rightly by the country, by his party, and by himself, in his manner of bringing it forward? We will endeavour to answer these questions with the candour and the calmness which the subject deserves, and our readers will perhaps save us the trouble of drawing any inferences from the argument, at all events, in detail.

We are not going to argue at length about the comparative wisdom or folly of the restrictive and the free-trade systems, as applied to a country like this. A great deal is to be said for both, and a great deal against both. In favour of the restrictive system it may be fairly urged, that with it, and therefore by means of it, the country rose to the pitch of prosperity and greatness at which we find it. In favour of a free trade the argument unquestionably lies, that there are periods in the history of all nations when the system of policy which reared ceases to be applicable to their maintenance; exactly as in the individual man, the moral and even physical culture which most avails in youth becomes injurious in the vigour of our days, and kills if it be persevered in to old age. No fact, for instance, can be more perfectly established, than that the customs and excise, and other sources of revenue arising out of the system of protection, were stretched by the Whigs, in 1839, beyond their just limits; that they imposed upon both dealers and consumers inconveniences innumerable, and had ceased to be profitable. In like manner the old assertion that the agriculturalist is the manufacturer's best customer, will not bear a moment's inspection. That the home market is more to the manufacturer than all the foreign markets into which he makes his way, we quite believe; but the error is to suppose, that the only buyer in this market is the agriculturalist. Consider what the articles are which the manufacturer produces. He gives us cotton-piece goods for our shirting and our sheeting, for the gowns of our wives and daughters; he gives us broad cloths and narrow, and woollen fabrics of other sorts for our coats, trousers, waistcoats, blankets, and such like; he supplies us with

stockings, shoes, hats, cravats. Every article that is used in the furnishing of our houses,-our window-curtains, bed-curtains, carpets, chair-covers, are the produce ofhis loom. Now, who are they that consume these different articles chiefly? Does the country gentleman, with his rental of five thousand a-year, expend half as much upon the clothing of his own person as a spruce clerk in the Admiralty, or a shopman in Howell and James's? And when you look to the farmer, what is his every-day costume? A shooting-jacket, which lasts him on an average five years-a pair of corduroy breeches-leather gaiters and highlows-to work his way through which will take him three years at the least. It is only on market-days and Sunday that he arrays himself in his green coat and yellows: and these are carefully pulled off and folded and laid away again as soon as the occasion ceases. Nor is the case different if we compare the style of dress that prevails among the operatives, and that which suits the tastes and purses of the agricultural labourers. We venture to say, that more money is spent upon wearing apparel in any one thriving street in Manchester, than in half the purely agricultural villages of Lancashire put together. And as to the sums expended in furniture, compare the parlours and bed-rooms of our shopkeepers and dealers with those of the tenant-farmers in any county of England, and you will find that it is the former class which goes most frequently, and to the largest amount, into the market by tenfold. repeat, then, that though the home market be unquestionably more to the manufacturer than all the foreign markets into which he now makes his way, it is a fallacy to contend that, therefore, the agriculturalist must be his best customer. The fact is, that each particular manufacturer, with his operatives, and the tradesmen who purchase his goods, and the shop boys who sell them, is the best customer to another manufacturer, who fabricates goods of a different description; and that merchants, lawyers, medical men, clerks -the vast number of persons, in short, who have no connexion with the soil whatever, do more, or, at least, as much, for the whole of the

We

manufacturing classes, as all the landlords, tenants, and peasants in the kingdom.

not

Assuming, then, that the present policy of Sir Robert Peel is the sound policy,-putting out of view the colonies, and forgetting the miserable way in which they have heretofore been mismanaged,-shutting your eyes to the fact that, if you want corn, Canada alone will supply you, and that Canada, if you deal fairly by her, will take more of your manufactured goods than all the continent of Europe put together, setting all these considerations aside, and very many more, into which, because we are contrasting system with system, but thinking of matters to the full as momentous, it were out of place to enter, we return to the questions which we have undertaken to answer, namely, Was Sir Robert Peel the man to bring forward the measure that is now before parliament? and, Has he dealt fairly by the country, by his party, and by himself, in his manner of bringing it forward? Our reply in both cases is, and must be, a decided negative. Sir Robert is not the man by whom the free-trade system ought to have been proposed to the country for adoption. Sir Robert Peel has dealt most unfairly by the country, by his party, and by himself, in his manner of forcing his new-fangled notions to a point. Let us explain ourselves.

We give Sir Robert Peel full credit for a conscientious change of opinion on the great question which is now under discussion in the legislature. But for such change, indeed, his conduct would be quite inexplicable. He has become a free trader because he believed that free trade would benefit the country; if he had not believed this, he would have continued what he was, or was supposed to be, when the Conservative or Protectionist party brought him into power. But Sir Robert overestimated the extent of his rights when he assumed that, because he was at liberty to alter his own mind, and even to support a new policy as an individual member of parliament, he was, therefore, equally at liberty to jump Jim Crow, claiming all the while to be treated as the head of the Conservative party.

With his responsibilities as minister of the crown, be it observed, we have no concern. The sovereign, not the people, must consider that; for the letter of the constitution, and, in all hands except his own, its spirit likewise, gives to the sovereign the undoubted right of choosing her responsible ministers. But the responsibility even of a queen's minister to the party which he brought together, which he reared up, and was or appeared to be so proud of, and which he has used to accomplished his own ends,that is our concern and the concern of more than us, of the people of England, and indeed of all thinking men throughout the world. We think, therefore, that Sir Robert Peel's resignation of office, however becoming it might be in the divided state of his cabinet, and taking into account his own admitted place in that cabinet, as the chief of a very small minority, was no concession at all to public opinion, no compliment to the Conservative party, no proof that in order to benefit the country he was prepared, in obedience to the dictates of conscience, to sacrifice himself, For see to what the arrangement tended. Either Sir Robert was honest in his resignation of office, or he was not. If honest, he desired and expected that power would pass into other hands; and previous communications with his colleagues having convinced him that among them there was not an individual prepared to undertake the formation of a government, it could not but be clear to him that he was making way for strange events. He could not be ignorant that his retirement from the queen's service must lead to the calling in of the heads of the party to which his own was opposed; in other words, into the surrender by the general of that position of strength to the enemy which the steadiness and good conduct of his troops, not his own individual valour, had won. Or if on the other hand he were not sincere, if he anticipated that Lord John Russell would fail as he did in his attempt to form a government, was not the whole proceeding from first to last a farce? And is it not selfevident that the chief actor therein sought only to throw dust in the eyes of the simple, for more than

the simple were not to be blinded by it? Now, what we contend for is this, that in either of these cases Sir Robert Peel has taken nothing by his motion. His resignation, whether it were real or pretended, has not saved, and could not save, his political honour. On the contrary, his treason to his party, and, let us add, to himself, has been aggravated by the proceeding; and each new fact that comes to light sinks him lower and lower in the estimation of the world.

On the night of Monday, the 9th of February last, Sir Robert Peel made a long speech in defence of himself and of his policy. With the soundness of his argument—as it bore upon the question of free trade -we must decline for the present to meddle; neither shall we pause to examine the taste, good, bad, or indifferent, wherewith he demolished some of the speakers on his own side of the house. But of the letter which he read to the house, as, it appeared to us, with an air of consummate triumph and satisfaction, we must say one word. If any thing had been wanting to complete the wreck of the minister's public character, he himself, by making public his letter to the queen, supplied it. What does he think that gentlemen are made of, if he expects that they on either side can ever again repose the smallest confidence in such as he? Was it not enough to leave his party in the lurch? that party, be it observed, which represented the majority of the constituencies, and therefore spake, as is assumed by the constitution, the voice of the people; but he must needs volunteer his assistance to the leader of the opposite party, in any attack which he might make upon arrangements to which parliament had consented, with extreme reluctance, only a few years ago, because its chosen leader, not then supposed to be a renegade, had suggested them? Positively we marvel while we think of all this. What! not only make a boast of deserting your principles and your friends,-of taking from them, as well as from yourself, the prestige of office,-but stand up in the house and read, as if it had been the production of a great mind, a document, wherein you declare yourself ready to betray your