my present state of wealth and influence, I might have saved, and reclaimed, and preserved him, even to the present day. He would not have been so old as my brother-judge, Lord Glenlee, or Lord Lynedoch, or a dozen others that one meets daily in society. And what a creature, not only in genius, but in nobleness of character, potentially at least, if right models had been put _gently_ before him!' The narrative of Lord Cockburn occupies only one volume, the other being filled with a selection from Lord Jeffrey's letters. It is a brief chronicle of the subject; many will feel it to be unsatisfactorily slight. The author seems to have been afraid of becoming tedious. It is, however, a manly and faithful narration, with the rare merit of going little, if at all, beyond bounds in its appreciation of the hero or his associates, or the importance of the circumstances in which he moved. The sketches of some of Jeffrey's contemporaries, as John Clerk, Sir Harry Moncreiff, and Henry Erskine, are vigorous pieces of painting, which will suggest to many a desire that the author should favour the public with a wider view of the men and things of Scotland in the age just past. With a natural partiality as a friend and as a biographer, he seems to us to set too high an estimate on Jeffrey when he ranks him as one of a quartett, including Dugald Stewart, Sir Walter Scott, and Dr Chalmers, 'each of whom in literature, philosophy, or policy, caused great changes,' and 'left upon his age the impression of the mind that produced them.' Few of his countrymen would claim this rank for either Jeffrey or Stewart. Jeffrey, no doubt, raised a department of our literature from a low to a high level; he was a Great Voice in his day. But he produced nothing which can permanently affect us; he gave no great turn to the sentiments or opinions of mankind. His only original effort of any mark, is his exposition of the association theory of beauty, which rests on a simple mistake of what is pleasing for what is beautiful, and is already nothing. We suspect that no man with his degree of timidity will ever be very great, either as a philosopher or as a man of deeds. He was a brilliant _writer_--the most brilliant, and, with one exception, the most versatile in his age; but to this we would limit his panegyric, apart from the glory of his long and consistent career as a politician, which we think can scarcely be overestimated. So many of the most remarkable passages of the work have been already hackneyed through the medium of the newspapers, that we feel somewhat at a loss to present any which may have a chance of being new to our readers. So early as his twentieth year, we find Mr Jeffrey thus sensibly expressing himself on an important subject:--