hall. Some awkward persons, who did not know the usage of the place, and who had carried with them the mean notions which they learned among the highways and hedges, scrupled to receive these shining robes, and asked what price they must pay for them; and one individual was observed to come in with rather better attire than the most, and when offered a robe of the king's providing, he politely declined it, and stepped forward into the state apartments. He was no sooner there than he rued his vanity, for his faded tinsel contrasted fearfully with the clothing of wrought gold in which the other guests were arrayed. However, instead of going back to get it changed, he awaited the issue. All things were now ready-the folding-doors opened, and, from chambers all-radiant with purest light, and redolent of sweetest odours, amidst a joyful train, the king stepped in to see the guests. A frown for a moment darkened his majestic brow as he espied the presumptuous guest-but the intruder that instant vanished, and, with a benignity which awakened in every soul such a joy as it had never felt before-with a look which conferred nobility wherever it alighted, and a smile that awakened immortality in every bosom-he bade them welcome to the ivory palace, and told them to forget their father's house and their poor original, for he meant to make them princes every one, and, as there were many mansions in the house, they should there abide for ever. You will observe that a welcome from the King depends entirely on having on what the Gospel calls, a wedding-robe.'-Dr James Hamilton. EGYPTIAN AND GREEK MYTHOLOGIES. 6 it had come to this. The young emperor, Charles V., with all the princes of Germany, papal nuncios, dignitaries spiritual and temporal, are assembled there: Luther is to appear and answer for himself, whether he will recant or not. The world's pomp and power sits there on this hand; on that, stands up for God's truth, one man, Friends had rethe poor miner, Hans Luther's son. minded him of Huss, advised him not to go; he would not be advised. A large company of friends rode out to meet him, with still more earnest warnings; he answered, 'Were there as many devils in Worms as there are rooftiles, I would on.' The people, on the morrow, as he went to the Hall of the Diet, crowded the windows and housetops, some of them calling out to him, in solemn words, not to recant: "Whosoever denieth me before men!' they cried to him, as in a kind of solemn petition and adjuration. Was it not in reality our petition, too, the petition of the whole world, lying in dark bondage of soul, lying under a black spectral nightmare and triple-hatted chimera, calling itself Father in God, and what not: Free us; it rests with thee; desert us not!' Luther did not desert us. His speech, of two hours, distinguished itself by its respectful, wise, and honest tone; submissive to whatsoever could lawfully claim submission, not submissive to any more than that. His writings, he said. were partly his own, partly derived from the Word of God. As to what was his own, human infirmity entered into it; unguarded anger, blindness, many things doubtless which it were a blessing for him could he abolish altogether. But as to what stood on sound truth and the Word of God, he could not recant it. How could he? 'Confute me,' he concluded, by proofs of Scripture, or To understand the difference between the Egyptian For it is neither safe nor prudent to do aught against conelse by plain just arguments: I cannot recant otherwise. and the Greek faith, it is not necessary to study a great science. Here stand I; I can do no other: God assist many volumes, or to visit different lands: our own British Museum will bring the contrast before ns in all dern history of men. me!' It is, as we say, the greatest moment in the moEnglish puritanism, England, and its strength. If we pass from the hall of Egyptian anti-its parliaments, Americas, and vast work these two cenquities into the room which contains the Elgin marbles, turies; French Revolution, Europe and its work everywe feel at once that we are in another world. The op- where at present the germ of it all lay there. Had Luther pression of huge animal forms, the perplexity of grotesque in that moment done other, it had all been otherwise! devices, has passed away. You are in the midst of The European world was asking him, Am I to sink ever human forms, each individual natural and graceful, linked lower into falsehood, stagnant putrescence, loathsome actogether in harmonious groups; expressing perfect ani- cursed death; or, with whatever paroxysm, to cast the mal beauty, yet still more the dominion of human intelli- falsehoods out of me, and be cured and live?—Carlyle's gence over the animal. You perceive that the Greek is Heroes and Hero-worship. not mainly occupied with spelling out a meaning in the forms of nature: their symmetry and harmony present themselves to him as delightful and satisfying. It is not trying to find out the natural characters in which he shall utter his thoughts: he feels that he is able to write them in a character devised by themselves upon nature. He can take the forms of the world and mould them into expressions of the spirit that is working in himself. The Brahm or Buddha of the East, the God of Intelligence, is with him. At Delphi, the centre of the world, he utters his oracles of wisdom, by which states and men are to rule themselves. But he is no mere formal, abstract divinity he is all light like the Persian divinity; you may see him in the sun; but he himself is a beautiful human being, with his quiver and bow, destroying the creatures that offend the earth, or punishing human wrongs; with the lyre, at the sound of which cities spring up, and men are brought into order and harmony. Apollo seems to be the central figure in Greek mythology, that around which the others have disposed themselves. The idea of light and wisdom, which is concentrated in him, is diffused in different forms, male and female, through the rest of the mythology, each having some particular locality, and presenting some different aspect to the Greek mind-Maurice's Religions of this World. : LUTHER AT WORMS. The Diet of Worms, Luther's appearance there on the 17th of April, 1521, may be considered as the greatest scene in modern European history; the point, indeed, from which the whole subsequent history of civilisation takes its rise. After multiplied negotiations, disputations, THE SUBLIMITY OF THE ILIAD. Of the various circumstances which unite to make up the sublimity of the Iliad, one of the most effective is the vicinity of the scene of action to the sea. In no case has the poet turned this advantage to happier account, than in the connection established between that grandest of natural objects, and the grandest of his own creations. Achilles, after his altercation with Atrides, retiring to nurse his indignation in solitude, sits alone on the beach. looking across the dark blue sea.' The sea-shore is the scene of his touching interview with the shade of his friend, when, after wandering restless the night long, mourning his bereavement, he lies down oppressed with fatigue, and slumbers on the beach. In the ensuing solemn dedication to Patroclus of the lochs formerly destined for his native river Spercheus, he utters his vow, 'looking across the dark blue ocean.' .' Again, when, after his revenge is satiated, grief and remorse once more predominate in his breast, starting from his troubled sleep, he wanders disconsolate on the shore. His summons to the winds to hasten across the Thracian sea, and fan the sluggish flame of the funeral pile of his friend, while he watches the midnight progress of the consuming element, is another su blime trait of mythological imagery.-Mure's History of Greek Literature. HOW TO BE KIND. A man is kind, not in what he gives, but in what he suggests. He who works for me trains me to imbecility: he who shows me my own resources trains me to self-reli ance, and enables me to work for myself. THE INSECTS OF THE MONTHS.-JUNE. BY H. G. ADAMS. 'Flowers of all hue are struggling into glow Where winds the lone path through the pastures green, From The Walk,' by Schiller. THE above lines are admirably descriptive of a hot day in June, when all nature seems reposing, sung to sleep by the insect lullaby, the buzz and murmur, blended into one drowsy monotone, of myriads of those 'Musical hounds of the fairy king That hunt for the golden dew,' as a poet has fancifully called the Bees, which are too intent upon collecting the sweet store for their waxen cells to lose a single hour of the sunshiny weather, although even they, when the sun is in the meridian, and The silent hills and forest tops seem reeling in the heat,' are obliged at times to rest awhile in those silken pavilions of every bright and varied hue, into which they penetrate in search of honey and bee-bread, the former of which they obtain from the nectaries of the flowers, in the form of a thick viscid fluid, and carry home in their honey-bags or first stomachs, from whence it is poured into the hexagonal cells, which form what is called the honeycomb the latter is made of the fine dust, or farina, called pollen, found on the anthers of flowers, and this seems to be the principal food of the Bees, both old and young, an adequate supply of it being indispensable for their proper sustenance during the winter months, : When chilling frost and nipping wind And how wonderful is the internal economy of a bee-hive! how admirable all its architectural, social, and legislative arrangements, so to speak! The activity, the industry, the skill of its little inhabitants, and the order with which all their arrangements are conducted, might well put to shame many a commonwealth of beings calling themselves, par excellence, reasonable. Well might the elder Heber devote a lifetime to an investigation of the habits of this insect alone, and well might philosophers, and historians, and poets, refer to it as an example of industry, and ingenuity, and perseverance, and orderly management of affairs. Numerous as are these references made by the poets especially, there is not one we think which so pleases alike the ear and the imagination, and at the same time approaches sufficiently near to the truth, as Shakspere's : 'So work the Honey-bces; Who, busied in his majesty, surveys The civil citizens kneading up the honey; The poor mechanic porters crowding in Their heavy burdens at his narrow gate; The sad-eyed justice, with his surly hum, Delivering o'er to executors pale The lazy, yawning drone.' Divest this picture of but little of its poetic colouring, and alter the sex of the monarch (for the head of the state is always a female), and it might well be quoted as the result of close observation by a naturalist of our own day; and everywhere in the works of our great bard do such 381 proofs of astonishing accuracy of observation abound. In his time it was but little known, although it is now established past a doubt, that a community of Bees is divided into classes, approaching in character and occupation very nearly to, if not quite identical with, those above described. Thus every hive is provided with a sovereign, whose subjects have certain tasks assigned to them, for which they are best fitted by nature and conformation: there are the drones, whose office seems to be that of the propagation of the species, and who, when their part of the duty is performed, and they become useless to the community, are put to death, or, as the poet has it, are 'Deliver'd o'er to executors pale.' However, as the history of that particular branch or family of the order Hymenoptera called Becs, has already been treated of in the INSTRUCTOR, it is unnecessary to enter more fully into the particulars of their peculiar and most interesting economy. The nature of the present series of papers requires rather that we should direct our attention to the scenes and aspects of the months in which they to the picturesque effects which they exhibit, in relation principally appear, and in no month do the human senses of sight and hearing become so cognisant of their presence as in this leafy month of June.' Oh, month of many blossoms! thou dost come Of flowers expanding now on ev'ry side, On mossy bank, wild heath, and woodland dale.' Thus singeth Agnes Strickland, giving to the Bees the appropriate task of greeting with their hum of welcome the advent of the flowery June, when The fields are green, the skies are bright, And 'mong the sweet flowers of the thyme The partiality of the Bee for the blossoms of the Wild Thyme (Thymus serpyllum) is a fact to which frequent reference is made by the poets, both ancient and modern, and it has been observed that, where this plant abounds, the honey stored by them has possessed a peculiarly delicious aromatic flavour. The thoughts of the classical reader will at once revert to the grassy slopes of Hybla and Hymettus, and his memory will furnish him with many passages in illustration of this remark, like that, for instance, in Virgil's Pastorals, where Melaneus-a name of honey sweetness-declares his constancy in affection by such natural emblems as these While fishes love the streams and briny deep, We need not, however, wander away from our own fair island, beneath the sunny skies of Italy, nor seek those Isles of Greece, 'Where humm'd the Bees of old through Tempe's vale, Spreading their drowsy murmur far and wide, And while the beds of thyme perfumed the gale, Hasten'd their yellow-banded forms to hide.' This term 'yellow banded,' so applicable to the common Honey Bee (Apis mellifica) reminds us of Tennyson's poetical fancy. Addressing Eleanore, he says with the hum of these emblems of industry, which, like creatures intoxicated with delight, are rolling themselves over and over, and sweeping up, with the stiff bristly hairs with which they are beset, the mealy pollen of the flowers. Look at that excessively busy lady now (your working Bees are all females) passing quickly from one to another of the clustered blossoms with a soft low hum, expressive, as it seems, of the pleasure which she feels in her task, although some naturalists tell us that this sound is made by the air in its escape from the openings in the sides of the Bee, which form the outlets to its organs of respiration. Huber, we believe, was of this opinion. What a rush of air must there be then from the small spirules of this droning Humble Bee, that comes buzzing and blundering here and there, as if he could not make up his mind to which of the floral beauties around to attach himself; and what a splendid fellow he is, with his coat of glossy brown, delicately marked, embroidered, as it were, with orange and white, and a little crimson, just to give it a greater warmth and richness. Modern naturalists have placed the Humble Bees in a genus by themselves, and applied to them the distinctive appellation of Bombus, which very much resembles that by which they are known to most country people, as Clare will tell us. 'Overtaken in the shower, Bumble Bees I wander'd by, this journal with poetical quotations only, all having re- And sport and flutter in the fields of air,' We have ourselves seen them in this helpless condition, fairly stupified, as it would seem, at the damage done to their gauzy wings and resplendent coats. A little sunshine, however, will soon set them all to rights, and make them as gay and lively as ever. There are said to be no less than forty distinct species of Humble Bees found in Britain, but, as age and other circumstances effect great If you happen to walk during this and the succeeding changes in the colours of these bees, and as the females, month over any of the chalky downs of Kent or Sussex, males, and workers, into which they, like those of the com- especially if it be those which border upon the coast, you panion genus called Apathus, are divided, are often very the genus Colias, as naturalists have termed the Clouded will be pretty sure to see one or other of the members of dissimilar, it may well be questioned whether individuals Yellow Butterflies, of which there are three distinct speof the same species have not been sometimes wrongly cies included in the British fauna; viz., the Common classed. The nests of the Humble Bees are much more rudely constructed than are those of the Honey Bee, Clouded Yellow (C. Edusa), the Pale Clouded Yellow although many of them display great patience and inge- (C. Hyale), and the Scarce Clouded Yellow (C. Euronuity in the preparation of the structure, which is gene- pome). Considerable uniformity prevails in the tints on rally the work of the solitary female, who is to be the the wings of these insects; a pale yellow, sometimes mother of the little colony; the Moss, or Carder Bee, deepening to orange, or light brown, or fading into white, known in Scotland as the Foggie, belongs to this interest. being the most usual colour. In one species-the firsting family, whose loud hum is almost a distinguishing cha-named-the lower wings of the female are frequently of a racteristic. In this sound, there is, according to George Gilfillan, a mixture of the gay and the sad. Speaking of the poems of Emerson, this critic says 'His fun, when he attempts to be humorous, is dull and feeble. It is the drone of the Humble Bee, which is quite as melancholy as it is mirthful.' Hogg, in his 'Pilgrims of the Sun,' speaks of pale green, and the upper ones edged with the same, while both the upper and lower wings of the male have an edging of dark brown. The markings on the wings of this species are somewhat blurred and indistinct, but those of the other kinds are beautifully clear and regular. None of these Butterflies exceed the medium size; they are elegant in shape, the primary wings being triangular, and the secondary ones gracefully rounded. Of the second of the above-named, which keeps so close to the sea-shore that it may almost be called a maritime fly, specimens of a variety nearly of a pure white in both sexes have occurred, chiefly in the neighbourhood of Dover. Several fresh members of the genus Polyommatus also now appear. These are mostly like those described last month -small in size, and of a blue or brown colour. One of them, the P. Artaxerxes, has yet been found only in two or three localities in Scotland. From Arthur Seat, near Edinburgh, most of the specimens in both the English insect, however, so closely resembles the Durham Argus and foreign collector's cabinets have been procured. This (P. Salmacis), that some doubt is entertained whether it be not a variety of the same species; the caterpillars of both are unknown. The Black-veined, White, or Hawthorn Butterfly (Pieris cratagi), may now be seen hovering about the maybushes and orchards, in which, in its larva state, it is said to do much mischief; its white, semi-transparent wings, with their branching nervures distinctly marked in black, render it a remarkable fly. It is by no means generally And thus we might go on till we had filled many a page of distributed through England, and in Scotland appears to be wholly unknown. Two of the plainest members of the splendid genus Vanessa are now also abroad; these are the Comma Butterfly (Vanessa C. album) and the small Tortoise-shell Butterfly (V. urtica)-the first a somewhat rare insect in this country, remarkable for the curious shape of the wings, the outlines of which present a succession of curves like the tail of a comma-hence its name; the se. cond is common all over Great Britain. In the south of Scotland, it is known by the name of the Devil's, or the Witches' Butterfly, but with what popular superstition it may be associated we have yet to learn. In the south of Europe, we are told that this fly continues on the wing during the whole of the winter. Swammerdam describes it under the name of the Common Day Dutch Butterfly. The extensive genus Hipparchia contributes at least five species of gay flutterers to enliven the scenery of this month. These are the Marbled White (H. Galathea), the Meadow Brown (II. Janira), the Common Ringlet (II. Hyperanthus), the Marsh (II. Polydama), and the Small Heath (H. Pamphilus) Butterflies. These are for the most part small and sober-coloured flies, such as haunt principally our woods and grassy lanes, as though they were unwilling to be brought into competition with those more gorgeously-attired favourites of the sun That flash like meteors through the shady bowers, Truly, we wonder not that the ancient Greeks should have ⚫ And the summer sun shone in the sky, O'er the lithe grass-stem and the blossom's head; A gem with the hues of an Indian stone, But scarce had her touch its captive prest But in the search, not in the success.'' THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF WILLIAM JERDAN. SOME books, we all know, are to be tasted; and, in the present day, it becomes really a valuable faculty to be able to carry away, by a summary process of tasting, what is really valuable in a book. Never, we should suppose, were so many books written which it is necessary only to taste. Light books are emphatically the order of the day. Gossipping recollections of literary life, chatting tales of travel, racy, picturesque essays, and novels of all sorts, abound now to an altogether unprecedented extent. One must either read books by some wonderful process allied to the electric telegraph or the steam loom; or must acquire the art of extracting, by some delicate and speedy operation, the one grain of honey which lies deep in the spreading, pretentious flowerage of modern literature; or, lastly, must get out of the stream of the present entirely, and read no modern books at all. We are glad to have Bacon's authority for tasting, and, for our own part, hope, by some adroit and delicate mental chemistry, to acquire the extractive power of which we have spoken, and which is well emblemed by the tireless little wanderer, which, in bright summer days, combines amusement with profit, fun with honey, over the fragrant clover-field. This autobiography of William Jerdan, which might as well be called Incidents and Occupations, mainly literary, during the last half century, grouped round the outlined history of William Jerdan,' is one of the books which we unhesitat ingly class in Bacon's category of those to be tasted. We are not to find fault with it. As books are, it is clearly passable, and will, doubtless, help well enough to chase the hours in the book clubs. It is simply an ordinary modern book: light, sketchy, entertaining; all idea of profundity being out of the question. We shall endeavour to give our readers a satisfactory condensation of what we have found in it. Mr Jerdan, whom, from the book, we would take to be a very agreeable, communicative, kind-hearted person, with a dash of sagacity and a knowledge of the world, but, on the whole, with by no means extraordinary talents, undertook his autobiography under the impression that, as the public knew but little of him, it probably cared less, and would pay no attention to a detailed account of his various mental states, and the aspects of his domestic circumstances. He therefore resolved to render its interest dependent upon the incidents of his literary life, and upon the occasional glimpses at certain important public personages which that life afforded him. The literary man is an important personage in the present time, and his importance is ever becoming greater. Towards literature, as a sole means of support, the eyes of many a young and aspiring soul are now turned; it gathers its recruits from all ranks, and from all the regularly organised professions; and the day seems to be not far distant, when it will itself become an established, recognised profession. Its votaries are counted by the thousand, and the powers which it wields have rendered it a serious question, whether it is not now an agency of mightier influence than the pulpit or the platform. In such circumstances, the experience of a literary man who has passed his life in harness, must be of interest to all; and to the reflective though ardent youthful mind, conscious of impulses and desires which lead it to look wistfully towards literature as the business of life, it must be fraught with valuable instruction. Mr Jerdan's full deliverance on the point is as follows:-My life has been one of much vicissitude, of infinite struggle, and latterly of very grave misfortune. On looking back from the harassed, would it were the calm untroubled goal of threescore and ten years, I can trace with a faithful pencil much that has been owing to mistakes, to errors, to faults, and to improvidence on my own side; and more to misconceptions, injustice, wrongs, and persecutions, unprovoked by any act of mine, on the part of others. I believe that the retrospect may be very serviceable to my fellow-creatures, and most signally so to those who have embarked, or are disposed to embark, in the pursuits of literature as a provision for the wants of life. Of all the multitude I have known who leant upon this crutch as a sole support, I could not specify one who ever attained anything like a desirable status either in fortune or society.' Coleridge, in terms as unmeasured as these, decided against the adoption of literature as a profession, and other authorities might be cited in support of the same opinion. But, while we do not here give expression to a different decision, we must remark that there was enough in the character of Coleridge, and in the circumstances and education of Jerdan, to make their opinion by no means of conclusive importance. Coleridge, from the ethereal grandeur of his genius, the irrepressible wildness and loftiness of his imagination, and the want of sustained energy in his character, was ill adapted to adhere to any definite and continued mode of exertion; while, in the case of Jerdan, we can scarcely say that the literary profession was adopted at all, since it was entered upon without any adequate education being undergone with a view to its adoption, and since, as far as we can gather, the mental equipment with which its duties were undertaken was extremely defective. We say not that literature is a desirable profession, we point not the minds or the steps of youth to its portals, but we do say that, if it is to be undertaken, it must be with a profound sense of its importance and its difficulties, with a conscientious and calm devotion of the whole mental powers to its duties, and after an education in its range and accuracy far surpassing that of any other profession. The model literary man of the age, we regard as neither Jerdan nor Coleridge, but Southey, Jerdan was born at Kelso, on the 16th of April, 1782. He was a smart boy, sufficiently clever, but in no way astonishing. He attained such a knowledge of Latin and Greek as may be attained at an ordinary school; of mathematics he learned very little; and we know of no period of his life when he extended his youthful acquirements, or studied the great mental productions of modern times. This, however, in the usual superficial way, he may have done. At Edinburgh, he 'studied law and pleasure for about three years,' between the age of twenty and that of twenty-three. The study of law, which was a very secondary affair, was carried on under the auspices of Mr Cornelius Elliot. The study of pleasure proceeded with far greater animation, and was carried on by his admission to the society of some clever and hospitable families, where he passed his hours amid jovialty and bonmots; having his wits sharpened, not in the most valuable way, and the likelihood of his settling to a profession lessened. Previously to this, he had gone to London, and had remained there for about two years. Among his London acquaintances were two who developed into lord mayors, and three others, of whom the first died Sir David, and Chief Justice of Bombay; the second is Sir Frederick, and Lord Chief Baron of her Majesty's Court of Exchequer; and the third, Lord Truro, was the other day Lord High Chancellor of England.' The two first of these, whose surname was Pollock, and the last, named Thomas Wilde, were associated with Jerdan in conducting a small literary club or debating society. Here, if we mistake not, a very great part of the training which enabled Jerdan to become afterwards the successful newspaper editor and literary man, was undergone; and the warm eulogium which he bestows upon such juvenile confederations strengthens the belief. We shall not follow Jerdan through the various small vicissitudes of his lot until he became connected with the London press. Vicissitudes he had in abundance, and, In among other things, served for a time in the navy. the beginning of 1806, he was discharged, and, soon after, his strictly literary life seems to have begun. He had finally abandoned law some considerable time previously, his study having been irregular and intermittent, and his attention having been continually distracted by more congenial pursuits. He had, in fact, a peculiarly agreeable time of it in Edinburgh. He says himself, I almost realised a wish I had entertained in my early school-days, on seeing a fountain: Oh, happy fountain,' I whispered to myself, would I were like you, and had nothing to do but to play!" But this had been found clearly impracticable. This world, he had discovered, was not one of play; and, after much hard toiling, and a sufficiency of abortive literary effort, to have the early conceit well shaken out of him, he had attained the post of reporter to a London paper, which started amid a great flourish of trumpets, and under the auspicious name of Aurora.' Of the state of his purse during this engagement, we know nothing; but he certainly had abundance of work, and hard work it was. 'The labours of reporting,' he informs us, were incomparably more onerous than the greatest exertions ever called for now in the organisation of the great journals.' The reporters, it appears, had none of the furtherances and accommodations now afforded them; they had to force their way into Parliament amid the crowd at noon, secure the best place which could be had, and maintain it until twelve o'clock at night. Fluency of expression, abundance of the sort of knowledge of men and things which is peculiarly serviceable in conducting a newspaper, and habits of steady action and endeavour, were the advantages resulting from this mode of life. The glance which he gives us of the editor of the light-spreading Aurora' is rather good:- Our editor was originally intended for the kirk, and was a well-informed person; but to see him at or after midnight in his official chair, a-writing his leader,' was a treat for a philosopher. With the slips of paper before him, a pot of porter close at hand, and a pipe of tobacco in his mouth, or casually laid down, he proceeded secundum artem. The head hung with the chin on his collar-bone, as in deep thought-a whiff-another-a tug at the beer -and a line and a half, or two lines, committed to the blotted paper. By this process, repeated with singular regularity, he would contrive, between the hours of twelve and three, to produce as decent a newspaper column as the ignorant public required.' Thus did this product of the modern era, through the fumes of tobacco, and with his intellectual lightnings brightened by porter, dispense enlightenment to the land; he was, doubtless, the type of a class, and a numerous one. Jerdan's apprenticeship to journalism, in the shape of reporting, extended in all over a space of about seven years. In 1813 he became editor of the Sun' newspaper. He had a tenth part of the property, and a salary of £500 per annum, which, at the age of thirty-one, we take the liberty to call extremely good, and calculated, one might expect, to temper the acerbidity of his denunciations of literature as a profession. The Sun' was an uncompromising advocate and defender of the ministerial policy, and poured unmeasured reprobation and contempt upon the party which opposed Pitt's measures. The period of intense excitement, which witnessed the downfall of Bonaparte, was one of great prosperity for the newspapers. There were not many nights on which the evening newspapers did not publish second, third, and even fourth and fifth editions, with the extraordinary news brought by every arrival from the Continent, which was in one sanguinary ferment from the Tagus to the Vistula.' Sometimes so much as ten, twenty, or even a hundred guineas was paid for a single paper, smuggled over from the Continent during the non-intercourse period; and we doubt not that, if the news was of great importance, and bore with any singular degree of force or directness upon the conduct or event of the war, the enterprising journalist who became possessed of it reaped a golden harvest. When the great era of peace and national glory arrived, the ministerial journals were, of course, in great triumph |