Indeed, the whole tenor of Blackwood is of a description which cannot be permanent. It offers no principle upon which the mind of an unprejudiced and independent man can dwell at the time, and as little to which any body can refer afterwards for the purpose of obtaining information. Personality, if bold, daring,--or, to use one of its own terms, _blackguard_ enough, is sure to make a noise at the time; but its interest is short in proportion to its intensity. For the philosophic discussion of any one subject, for the establishing of any one principle in science, in morals, or in politics, or for any one addition to the stock of human information, it is in vain to look back at the book; and though people talk about it (and they talk less and less about every successive number,) at the period of its appearance, it may be supposed to pass of necessity into the same speedy oblivion as the animosities or whims by which it was produced; and that future men will have no more desire to know how written slander was managed in the days of Blackwood, than they have at present to know in what terms the ladies of Billingsgate rated each other when the Tower of London was a seat of royalty. Some may indeed suppose, that as this species of writing is not kept back by any inflexibility of principle from bending round all the sinuosities, and accommodating itself to all the crooked paths of corruption, it will continue to find enough of support from the official men of the Athens, and their coadjutors and underlings throughout Scotland; this, however, is by no means the case. Those persons have no love for literature of any description: their deeds are such as will not bear any kind of light, and the whole of their hopes are centred in the one circumstance of the public’s being kept in ignorance of what they are doing. Like criminals under trial, their only chance is in an attempt to shake the credibility of the witnesses against them; and if they attempt a direct defence of themselves, it is sure to render their offences more palpable, and their condemnation more certain. So long as public opinion remains, and the whole appearances of the times give promise that it will continue to gather strength rather than to decay--it is a tribunal to which none but those who have a wish to stand well with the public will be disposed to appeal; and therefore, how much soever the official men of the Athens may have been gratified by the attempts which the writers in Blackwood have made to traduce their political opponents, and turn them into ridicule, there is nothing at which they would be so much alarmed, or indeed have so much cause to be alarmed, as an attempt at their own justification, even in the same pages. As long as such writers as those in Blackwood confine themselves to personal attacks in the offensive way, so long will they not be dreaded or disliked by that party of which they endeavour to hold themselves out as the champions; but the