29 DECEMBER 1832, Page 13

• THE QUARTER LY REVIEW FOR DECEMBER 183 2.

THIS is a very fair average number of the Quarterly. The litera- 'tire is industrious and active : the politics are of course obsolete ; and We 'reckon all such papers as that on Reform, as the mere 'grumbling and complaining of a defeated party, which it would -allow very little charity tube angry at, and very little judgment to attend to.

A chief merit of the Quarterly is the manner in which it per- t:inn§ the police of the republic of letters. There are in the pre- sent Number some striking examples of this sort of writing; for which the Quarterly is well adapted, by its snarling, captious tem- per, inherited from the ancient Crispin of the establishment ; as also by its industry, and above all, by its access to sources of public information,—by public, mearfingthat which belongs to the public, but which is more strictly private than any other, being only in the power of a few Government clerks. The Government has in- deed changed, but the subordinates are not ; and it is they who .both-betray their chiefs, and use all the opportunities in the reach of those who poSsess the seat of Government. The present Govern- ment has nowhere so bitter an enemy as the Quarterly Review. It acquired its influence by official connexions; and maintains it, perhaps, in greater force than ever. The fact is, the mere art of government was understood and cultivated by the Tories—it is despised by the Whigs; who, if they were not supported by the mass, which Is little affected by dexterity of management, would soon be. undermined, by the continued activity of all those organs .which their predecessors knew so well how to value. Instances of the clumsy and ungrateful, if not the corrupt use of Ministerial patronage and protection, occur everywhere; and none more re- markable than the one alluded to in a note upon the passage '.(page 571) in praise of the Lord Chancellor—that "bright ex- ample of. the only intellectually distinguished member of the pre- sent Ministry."

• 4. The present Chancellor of England has placed the patronage of all his livings, below the value of 2001. per annum, at the disposal of the Bishops in their re- • speCtive dioceses. When one of the richest pieces of preferment in his gift, a Prebendal stall at Bristol, worth perhaps 500/. per annum, became vacant, he sought out a humble, learned, pious man, without birth or interest—a man whom all other Ministers and Chancellors had overlooked, and permitted to re- -main in obscurity and indigence—a man, nevertheless, whom all Europe had long delighted to honour(Professor Lee), and on him he bestowed it. Nor is this a solitary instance of his care to discover and reward distinguished merit. Mr. Croly, so emine'nt among his multifarious accomplishments for profound theological learning, has received, in, we are told, the fiftieth year of his age, his first benefice at the same hand ; and we could easily give more examples.

The Bishops were all Tories : this the Chancellor knew; and he also knew that Toryism was a sine qua non in the distribution of

• their patronage. Every man in the Chinch who has cultivated liberal sentiments, and sympathized with the People, during the last fifty years at least, has been excluded from preferment, unless he happened to possess some private source of patronage. What, then, was the duty of a Liberal Chancellor, now coming into power after an enormously long persecution of Liberal opinions ? Surely, to seek out those who had 'suffered by sharing in his sen- thaents, and by forwarding the caiise of the People—the cause he himself seemed to espouse with so Much ardour. But no! the power Of rewarding and • fostering such. opinions—at least up to .20Q1.. per annum—he immediately makes over. to: the very per-

sonages who had lived and thriven by the Opposite system: and all this for the sake of some paltry applause in certain circles— for the sake even of ' some such mention as this in the Quarterly Review. u t if up to 2001. per annum, why not beyond :it ? if the Bishops were the most discriminating patrons of clerical merit, why not give all up into their hands ? Ohno I that would have

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been too expensive- a piece of acting. The praise, of the Tory Bishops might be balancedagainst, the merit and thegiatitUde of poor curates ; but,the real henefices,,the,povver of conferring place on friends and associates, and -on other great men's 'friends and associates, was not to be alienated for the world: That would have been paying too dear for one's whistle. As for the two luculent examples of Church prefernient selected by the Review, they are only such as could have been praised hy the Quarterly, Against Professor LEE we will .say nothing, save that there were hundreds in the Church more deserving, awl those of very. superior real learning—a greater pretender was cer- tainly not to be found. • They who have attended' to the history of the Missionary Translations, will understand what is meant. With regard to Mr. CROLY, the virulent writer in Tory Sunday Newspapers, no one can misunderstand the motives under which he has been preferred. The ranks of the enemy were thinned: and with those who simply look to the applause of an able actor upon the world's stage, the extinction of a professional hisser is a point gained in glory. True, the judicious grieve; but it is hoped they will make no. noise, that not being their wont. We arc not surprised to find that the Lord Chancellor is praised for these things; though he must, we think, feel a little awkward at re- ceiving praise from such a quarter. The papers for which this Number will be chiefly remarked— for they are complete in their Way—are the one on the Memoirs of Louis the Eighteenth, and that on Sir Edward Seawards Nar- rative. They are both triumphant detection's of forgery,—the first:a mischievous one, the last of' the white or innocent kind. In our no- tices of both these hooks, when they first appeared, we expressed Our own conviction, or at least the persuasion we had of the truth ; but it is impossible in a weekly review to go into any elaborate inquitly into such subjects ; they demand a quarter—and here it Ins been taken, with success. For the article on Sir Edward Sea- ward's Narrative, both the records of the Admiralty and the ac- counts of the South Sea House, as also, many other documents and registers, have been officially searched, besides the bringing to bear much acquired knowledge and considerable critical acumen. The article is by what is technically called "an old hand:" it is only such, indeed, that are permitted to avail themselves of the ad- vantages of office—laughing heartily in their sleeves at the heads of office, the nominal superiors.

In the concluding paragraph of the article on Sir Edward Sea-

ward, it may be perceived that the Spectator receives honourable mention—as a "clever, Radical Weekly Newspaper, modestly called 'The Spectator.'" To be "clever," in . the mouth of the Quarterly, we fear only means that occasionally we may have been wanting to our cause. " Radical" is an epithet implying simply that we belong to the victorious party. As to the modesty of our title, we confess we never presumed to imagine that we should be confounded for a moment with a classical work now never seen but in volumes, published some hundred years ago. There was indeed no reason in the paragraph for our being mentioned at That we are called " clever, implies something insidious in tile intention of the writer: that he calls us " Radical," insinuates compliment which we are, after all, modest enough to appropriate. .None called more strenuously for Radical Reform : we got it : so that the sentence of the Quarterly must be interpreted thus--that clever and triumphant Weekly Newspaper, adopting the classical title of Spectator, not with my idea of imitating a work published a hundred years ago, of a wholly different nature, but altogether with reference to the meaning of the word, which implies that we have our-eyes about us.

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We should net close our notice of the Quarterly Without refer- ring to NIMROD'S article on "The Road ;" a sort of No. II. in the series commenced with" Melton Misibray" a few, numbers ego. It is-distinguished by all NIMROD'S excellencies: it Sets before us pleasantly the exact state of a peculiar and important 'pursuit formerly "deemed unworthy or unsuited to the purposes of publieti, tion. It confers literary honours on a branch of oecupatiOn Which was not long ago voted as unfit for mention in decent society. The statistical facts connected with coach-travelling are as well stated and introduced, as the portion of mere manners is agreeably and strikingly depicted. The. introduction of such articles is alto- gether contrary to the stayed system of this Review; but their admission is a- sign of regeneration. If they had substituted -an- other such for the "How will it Work ?" they would have pleased large numbers and excited the contempt of none.