of this luminary, and Peter the Great, mute in astonishment, stands "_erectis auribus_" to catch the oracles of government which flow from the godlike man. The scene changes--whither doth he go? He seizes the reins of government, he retrieves the affairs of a mighty empire by way of recreating a mind exhausted with the play of its mighty passions, and then wearied with the amusement, he turns in quest of other pursuits. The rule of an empire and the affairs of this world are objects too petty for the employment of his mind; he looks for some higher subject, and finds it in himself--the only subject in creation vast enough to fill the capacity of his spirit. He communes with the stars--he talks to the "TOEN," and the "TOEN" replies to him, and finally, big with his mighty purpose he achieves the task of writing "his confessions." And as my lord Peter concocted a dish containing the essence of all things good to eat, so this book is full of something that is exquisite from every department of thought. Such are the books which have displaced the writings of the masters of antiquity and the old household books of the English tongue. You may not take up a review or periodical now-a-days, but it shall teach you the folly of bestowing your time upon the study of the ancients, now that their writings afford so much that is more worthy of attention. Alas! that such should be the priesthood who administer the rites in the temple of English literature--the money changer has indeed entered the temple, when those who write for money come in to expel all who have written for fame. How often does it happen now-a-days that the writer of a bawdy novel, derives reputation enough from that circumstance, to assume the chair of criticism, and exposing a front of hardened libertinism to the scorn of the good and the contempt of the wise, avails himself of his situation to frown down every attempt to resuscitate our decaying literature, by the introduction of better models, and to restore health to the public taste, which this very censor has contributed to deprave? There is no more common occupation with such a man than the correction of the errors of the most illustrious statesmen and philosophers in magazine articles of some six or eight pages; the French revolution is the {223} favorite theme of his lofty speculations, and Napoleon's the only character which he will exert himself to draw. With how much of the lofty contempt of a superior spirit does he speak of the labors of a Bentley, a Porson, a Parr, or an Elmsley; of a Gessner, a Brunck, a Heyne, a Schweihauser or a Wolffe. The anxious labors, for years, of such men as those go for nothing with him--they serve only to excite his scorn, or else afford him the favorite subjects of his ridicule. With the ingratitude of a malignant spirit, or the coarseness of ignorance, he reviles the self-denying students who may be truly said to have renounced the