proof of his being in a whole skin, and his uneasiness to repel every attack as a proof of his being invulnerable. In a word, he mistakes an excess of spleen and irritability for the consciousness of innocence, and sets up his own egotism, vanity, ill-humour, and intolerance, as an answer in full to all the objections which have been brought against him of vanity, egotism, malignity, and intolerance. His ‘Letter’ is a concentrated essence of a want of self-knowledge. It is the picture of the author’s mind in little. In this respect, it is ‘a psychological curiosity’; a study of human infirmity. As some persons bequeath their bodies to the surgeons to be dissected after their death, Mr. Southey publicly exposes his mind to be anatomized while he is living. He lays open his character to the scalping-knife, guides the philosophic hand in its painful researches, and on the bald crown of our _petit tondu_, in vain concealed under withered bay-leaves and a few contemptible grey hairs, you see the organ of vanity triumphant—sleek, smooth, round, perfect, polished, horned, and shining, as it were in a transparency. This is the handle of his intellect, the index of his mind; ‘the guide, the anchor of his purest thoughts, and soul of all his moral being’; the clue to the labyrinth of all his tergiversations and contradictions; the _medius terminus_ of his political logic. —— ——‘The ruling passion once express’d, Wharton is plain, and Chartres stands confess’d.’ Once admit that Mr. Southey is always in the right, and every one else in the wrong, and all the rest follows. This at once reconciles ‘Wat Tyler’ and the ‘Quarterly Review,’ which Mr. William Smith took down to the House, in two different pockets for fear of a breach of the peace; identifies the poet of the ‘Joan of Arc’ and of the ‘Annual Anthology’ with the poet-laureate; and _jumps_ the stripling into the man, whenever the latter has a mind to jump into a place or pension. Till you can deprive him of his personal identity, he will always be the same infallible person—in his own opinion. He is both judge and jury in his own cause; the sole standard of right and wrong. To differ with him is inexcusable; for ‘there is but one perfect, even himself.’ He is the central point of all moral and intellectual excellence; the way, the truth, and the life. There is no salvation out of his pale; and yet he makes the terms of communion so strict, that there is no hope that way. The crime of Mr. William Smith and others, against whom this high-priest of impertinence levels his anathemas, is _in not being_ Mr. Southey. What is right in him, is wrong in them; what is the height of folly or wickedness in them, is, ‘as fortune and the flesh shall serve,’ the height of wisdom and virtue in him; for there is no medium in his reprobation of others and approbation of himself. Whatever he does, is proper: whatever he thinks, is true and profound: ‘I, Robert Shallow,