should he be so inclined: no other considerations but those of conscience operate then to influence his pen. But the case is quite different when he is writing about a king scarcely yet cold in the grave, when a species of popular infatuation commands that grave to be strewn with flowers, when it is necessary, as it were, to sail with the stream or sink; and when the brother of the deceased monarch has just ascended the throne, and, for the sake of appearances, may deem himself called upon to consider every thing said concerning his predecessor as touching himself. How many motives combine here to warp the judgment and the conscience, and convert sober history into funeral panegyric! Thus, if Mr. Croly had undertaken the task of delineating the moral features of Richard the III., or of James the II.--we adduce James the II., because our author seems to regard Catholicity as so monstrous a crime that this prince would, we are sure, not be drawn by him in the most flattering colours--he would have found, to use his own words, that there are no faults which generate a more vindictive spirit of virtue, than those of princes in the grave; but in depicting George the IVth., he has proved the reverse of this to be the fact. It is amusing, although at the same time melancholy, to contrast the virtuous indignation with which he pours out his anathemas against those who committed the tremendous crime of advocating and effecting the emancipation of the Catholics, with the gentle terms in which he comments upon the wanderings of the Prince of Wales from the proper path, and the glosses with which he softens their obliquity. One might be induced to suppose that his creed holds religious liberality as the crime of deadly dye, and dissipation of the lowest kind as a vice merely venial in its character. "Without justice," he continues "history is but a more solemn libel, and no justice can be done to the memory of any public personage, without considering the peculiar circumstances of his time." This remark is true with regard to those public personages whom he has so severely taken to task for their conduct respecting the Catholic question; had not his mind's eye been covered with a film, he would have perceived that the "peculiar circumstances of the time" fully warranted that change in the course pursued by Mr. Peel, the Duke of Wellington, and others, with reference to that important question, which has drawn from him such expressions of horror; but it is far from being equally admissible where he has applied it. That less tenderness should be extended towards the vices of princes than to those of subjects is, we think, undeniable, when the weightier (secular) reasons they have for keeping a strict control over their passions, are considered,--reasons which should completely counterbalance any greater temptations they may be obliged to undergo.