In this year, 1824, not only did Murray lose the services and the friendship of his best client, Lord Byron, who died at Missolonghi on the 19th of April, but Gifford, the able editor of the _Quarterly_, was incapacitated for further work, and resigned his post. Mr. John Coleridge, then a young barrister, succeeded, but though accomplished, clever, and able, he was “scarcely strong enough for the place;” Southey found out his incapacity for saying “no,” and under his auspicious reign began to make the _Review_ a quarterly issue of his own miscellaneous works. Strangely enough in the mourning coach that followed Gifford to his grave Murray drove with the man who was destined as an editor to rival the powers of the upbuilder of the _Quarterly’s_ reputation--this of course was John Gibson Lockhart, a young Edinburgh advocate, the son-in-law of Scott, and more than that, the author of “Peter’s Letters,” of “Valerius,” of “Reginald Dalton,” the translator of “Frederick Schlegel,” and the “Ancient Spanish Ballads,” and the noted contributor to _Blackwood_. Moore first heard of the arrangement down at Abbotsford, when Scott, after dinner, hopeful of his daughter’s interests, and proud, may be, of his son-in-law, grew confidential. “Lockhart was about to undertake the _Quarterly_, has agreed for five years; salary £1200 a year, and if he writes a certain number of articles it will be £1500 a year.” In this year, though the prospects of the _Quarterly_ were ably secured, Murray met with the only really adverse turn of fortune, to which through a long career, and a bold one, he was ever subject. The terrible commercial crisis which had been so long overhanging, burst at last into a deluge of ruin--Constable’s house was swept away, the Ballantynes were for the moment overthrown, and Scott had to give up his lordly estates of Abbotsford, and generously work his life out to redeem a name on which he deemed a commercial slur had been cast. Murray, though he suffered by the panic, as all must suffer in the time of a general epidemic, was not severely hurt. Still, looking back now with the wisdom of wiseacres, who think we could have prophesied easily the actual events that did occur, the time does seem a strange one in which to start a new venture. This was nothing less than the establishment of a new Conservative journal, which was to rival the _Times_ as the _Quarterly_ rivalled the _Edinburgh_. According to the current rumour, it was young Disraeli (now the wily and veteran leader of the Conservative party) who first proposed the scheme; and, according to current rumour still, it was under his editorship, and with Dr. Maginn as chief foreign correspondent, that the _Representative_ (price sevenpence daily) was started on the 26th of January, 1826. The journal was able, well-informed, and well-written, but the _Times_ had a monopoly, and the Conservative party were not strong enough to support a first-rate organ of their own, and after