as they were impetuous, checked and softened the impulses of a fiery temper and vehement will, and infused a pathetic and relenting spirit into strains of invective that were deviating into harshness. That he should have been without warm dislikings, as well as warm attachments, would imply an impossibility. But from everything petty or rancorous he was absolutely free. Most justly was entitled to say of himself, that he never knew envy except as he had studied it in others. His opposition, if it was uncompromising, was always open and manly: to the great or good qualities of his opponent he generally did justice from the first—always in the end; and not a few of those who in early life had regarded him merely as the headlong leader of a partisan warfare, both in literature and politics, came to learn their mistake, to reverence in him the high-toned and impartial critic, and to esteem the warm-hearted and generous man. His conversation and his public speaking had in them a charm to which no other term is applicable but that of fascination, and which, in the zenith of his powers, we never met with any one able to resist. While his glittering eye held the spectators captive, and the music of the ever-varying voice, modulating up and down with the changing character of the theme, fell on the ear, and a flood of imagery invested the subject with every conceivable attribute of the touching, the playful, or the picturesque, the effect was electric, indescribable: it imprisoned the minds of the auditors; they seemed to fear that the sound would cease—they held their breath as if under the influence of a spell. Thus accomplished by nature and education, did Professor Wilson apply himself to his self-imposed task in this Magazine—that of imparting to periodical literature in general, and to literary criticism in particular, a new body and a new life; of pulling down the old conventional walls within which they had been confined, and of investing criticism itself with something of the creative and poetic character of the great works of imagination to which it was to be applied.