It is a circumstance that redeems the age, that when despotism was making its most hardy attempts in England, when too many of our literary men were disposed to flatter and follow in its train, and when such a man as Southey was the loudest to hymn the follies and crimes of the despots, Lord Byron, the very man who was accused of corrupting the public morals, should still have been the man to denounce, with all the powers of poetry, wit, and withering sarcasm, the nefarious attempt. What a fall was that of Southey, from the poet of liberty to the laudator of crime, tyranny, and carnage! What a position in which to see him stand, crying for a continuance of religious slavery, for the slavery of the press, and advancing beyond all former example of fanatic bigotry, assuming the office of the Deity himself, and dooming those who differed in opinion from him to perdition in the next world! If Robert Southey, as he wrote the epitaph to Algernon Sidney, or the sonnet to Mary Wollstoncraft, could have been shown himself, writing his Vision of Judgment, representing Junius as afraid to speak in his own defense, and George IV. lauded as good, and wise, and "treading in the steps of his father," with what horror would he have regarded himself. With what shame would he have seen Lord Byron, like his avenger, ever ready at hand to turn his solemn adulation to ridicule, and to lash him with a merciless scourge of immortal indignation. It is with deepest sorrow that I view Southey in this light; but the lesson to future poets should never be withheld. Truth is of eternal interest to mankind, and it can never be too often impressed on youth, that no temporary favor or emolument can make a millionth part of amends for the loss of the glorious reputation of the patriot. Allowing that Southey became sincerely convinced that he was right in his adopted political creed, his own private opinion can not alter the eternal nature of things, and the fact is not the less a fact that his change was a mischievous and an unworthy one. If, while he lived in dread of public opinion, as evinced in his Colloquies, "First the Sword governs; then the Laws; next in succession is the government of Public Opinion. To this we are coming. Already its claims are openly and boldly advanced ... timidly, and therefore feebly resisted!" (vol. ii. p. 114) he could have seen to what a pitch this government of public opinion has now arrived, and how peacefully and beneficially all advances under it, with what regret must he have looked back on his own acts and counsels. How much he must have deplored the terms of factionists, seditionists, schismatics, and "lying slanderers," which he had heaped on all who dared to utter an independent opinion. See, especially, his Vision of Judgment. And that the laureate's feelings were very keen, circumstances always showed; for though he declares in his Colloquies that his enemies might as well shoot their arrows at a