Great, however, as was the talent displayed in the Review, and wide and wonderful as was the sensation which it produced upon its very first appearance, the Athens had little merit in it, except the mere name. The publisher, though he subsequently rose as high in that trade as any English publisher of the time, was then but a young man, not much known, and not much recognised or esteemed by the Athenians; the editor was also a young man, recently returned from England; and the most spirited contributors to the very early numbers, had by no means had their minds formed upon the Athenian model. The effect which the Review produced was also not perhaps so great in the Athens as in London; and it was only when it had taken its place in the literary world, and the acknowledgment of it was an honour, that the Athenians began to identify it with themselves, and at no time was the identification general,--nor could the whole talent of the Athens, even when in its best days, have supported the Review for a single year. Besides, though the real ability of the Edinburgh Review was great, the vast popularity which it so speedily obtained, and the brilliant course which it ran, were unquestionably more owing to the novelty of its plan, and the fact of its advocating those political principles which were agreeable to the majority of people at the time, than to its merits. One cause of the rise of the Edinburgh Review, and perhaps also one cause of its comparative fall, is the uniformity with which it has all along followed the Whig party. Before that party got into office, and when, in consequence of their boldness and lofty pretensions as oppositionists, the opinions of the Edinburgh Review,--at least, its political opinions,--which were all along the ones upon which the greater part of its celebrity rested,--were by many received as the infallible oracles of truth; and when the trial which the country had had of that party shook them a little in public estimation, though the Review received a shock along with them, it still retained a considerable portion of its influence. But, as the opinions of men became a little more liberal, and the frequency of disappointment made them more and more suspicious of all parties, some Jesuitical articles in the Review, on the subjects of representation and reform, shook the confidence of the people in it; while, much about the same time, or, at least, not long afterwards, the failure of its prophecies with regard to the ultimate success of Buonaparte, laid it open to the attacks of the Tories. For the first of these suspicions, there appeared to be but too much foundation; and though the latter was more Jesuitical than just, still it was the interest of the parties to press it to extremity. When the Edinburgh Review predicted the ultimate triumph of Napoleon, it did not, of course, anticipate, that he would, with the example of Charles XII. before him, undertake so hazardous