Tytler for the history of which he has already afforded so favourable a specimen. The want of such a history, complete, authentic, and ably written, has been long and deeply felt; and Mr. Tytler, by supplying the desideratum, will have rendered a service of no ordinary importance to his country. There are, it is true, already in existence several modern histories of Scotland. But unfortunately those of them that possess any degree of excellence are rather fragments of Scottish history than Scottish histories. From the recollection we retain of the others (which in the early enthusiasm of historical studies we not only attempted to read, but read), we should now be strongly inclined to pronounce them unreadable. Besides the advantages of general talent and acquirement, Mr. Tytler possesses over these writers the additional and important advantage of having had recourse to sources of information which have not hitherto been explored. His style is, on the whole, good-though defaced occasionally by feeblenesses and inaccuracies which are unworthy of the author. We could cite several examples of tautological expressions; but we abstain from doing so, confident that Mr. Tytler's good taste will remove most of them from a second edition. There is one mode of incorrect expres sion, however, which, as it is not quite so obvious, it may be proper to notice. There is an example of it in vol. iii. p. 23, "might have been expected to have averted." Here the objec tion is to the second perfect. It is meant to be expressed, that at a given time past a certain act might be expected to avert a certain other act. Now the first perfect or rather pluperfect might have been expected," completely effects the purpose of throwing back the mind of the reader to the "time past" in question. And the mind being thus thrown back, of course every thing then happening is to it in the relation of present. Consequently in such cases the second, viz. the infinitive verb should always be in the present tense: and the expression in question should stand, "might have been expected to avert." If Mr. Tytler will consult any of the classical Roman writers, who are in general much more philosophically accurate in the employment of the tenses than we are, he will find that the best writers (Cicero for example) invariably gives to one of the verbs a present signification, and generally puts the infinitive verb in the present and not in the perfect.

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These volumes also contain many indications that the business of correcting the press has been imperfectly performed. It seems doubtful, however, whether the following inconsistency is to be referred to that cause. Mr. Tytler says [vol. ii. p. 114] "The ransom finally agreed on was a hundred thousand pounds,

to be paid by annual instalments of four thousand pounds." "It was also declared, that until payment of the ransom there should be a ten years' truce between the kingdoms." How could a hundred thousand pounds be paid in ten years at the rate of four thousand pounds a year? Again [p. 125] he says, "he had already paid the first ten thousand marks."

There is also a glaring and, to the reader, most troublesome and perplexing inconsistency in his account of the pedigree of the competitors for the Scottish crown after the death of Alexander 3rd. Such oversights,-for in such a writer as Mr. Tytler they cannot proceed from ignorance,-are, to every reader who desires to receive clear ideas from what he reads, an exceeding annoyance, and ought to be proportionally avoided by every writer who aims at any object higher than that of helping to dispel the ennui of the lowest-minded, least intellectual, and least enlightened of his species. Sir Walter Scott's account of the transaction above alluded to is no less distinguished for its clearness than for its brevity.

There is in Sir Walter Scott [History, vol. i. p. 11] a glaring instance of a non sequitur, which, though it evidently arises from haste, or an inadvertent transposition of the sentences, we are induced to allude to on account of the perplexity which it may occasion to many, particularly as the book is intended for wide circulation. We transcribe the passage:

'Ungaria, sister of Ungus, king of Picts, was married to Aycha 4th, king of Scots, and their son Alpine succeeding his father as king of Scots, flourished from 833 to 836, in which last year he was slain, urging some contests in Galloway. The Pictish throne, then thrown open for want of an heir male, was claimed by Kenneth, son and successor of Alpine, who, as descended of Ungaria, the sister of Ungus, urged his right of inheritance with an army. Wrad, the last of the Pictish monarchs, died at Forteviot, in 842, fighting in defence of his capital and kingdom, and the Pictish people were subdued.'

Now it is here observable that if the third of these three sentences be placed second, and the second third, sense and a sequitur will be obtained; as they stand they are unintelligible.

ART. III.-Memoirs, Correspondence, and Private Papers of Thomas Jefferson, late President of the United States. Now first published from the original Manuscripts. Edited by Thomas Jefferson Randolph. 4 vols. 1829. Colburn and Bentley.

THIS is one of the most important publications ever presented to the world. In the catalogue of the benefactors of man

kind, few deserve so high a station as Thomas Jefferson. As the author of the Declaration of Independence, and as one of the principal movers of the North American Revolution, his claims on the gratitude and admiration of posterity are divided with Washington, Franklin, and others, so excellent in their respective spheres, that it might be difficult, and would certainly be invidious, to say which was the most wise, the most disinterested, the most persevering in the perilous, and, at times, almost hopeless path, of arduous and self-devoting duty. But American liberty was destined to a second, scarcely less perilous, though less conspicuous struggle; a struggle in which there were no wounds, and guns, and drums, to fix the attention of Europe; but one in which the best energies of feeling and thought were necessary to save the United States from the effects of the vague terrors, with which many of their wellmeaning citizens were inspired by the excesses of the French Revolution; and which, being worked on with all the arts of persuasion, by a large and influential party, in possession, for a time, of the government, who saw, or professed to see, no safety or permanence for political institutions, but in a government of corrupt influence, had very nearly thrown the young republic into the arms of something very like our own happy aristocratical constitution. The good sense of the bulk of the people preserved them from this blessing; but the main glory of the signal victory over the domestic enemy belongs, on this occasion, undividedly to Jefferson.

The doctrines of anarchy and confusion, as they were called here; the doctrines against which, under the watchword of "social order" and shouts "for God and the King," we fired away in thirty years nearly three thousand millions of money in gunpowder, including the cost of the machinery, animate and inanimate, by which the said gunpowder was borne over land and sea for the final purposes of ignition, rarefaction, expansion, and explosion; the doctrines of the right of the possessors of life and property to choose for themselves the legislators who dispose of that life and property; of the right of the governed to discuss fully and freely, in censure as in praise, the public measures of their rulers, and the principles of their political and religious institutions; these doctrines were brought at once and efficiently into action on the accession of Jefferson to the Presidency, and "the dissolution of social order," which our fireand-sword logicians so long and confidently preached as the infallible consequence of the establishment of such maxims of government, consisted in the total abolition of internal taxes, in the rapid extinction of national debt, in the preservation of peace VOL. XIII. Westminster Review.

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with all the world, in the bloodless acquisition of the important territory of Louisiana, and the complete possession of the Mississippi, in the efficient protection and ample reward of domestic industry, and in the establishment, beyond the reach of injury from the combined despotisms of the earth, of an asylum for the oppressed and unfortunate of all nations.

Mr. Randolph, the editor of these volumes, has done little more than publish Jefferson's papers as he found them; not supplying any connecting link, nor even the date of Jefferson's death. We do not much object to this, because to impose on an executor the necessity of being an author, might be the cause of depriving the world of many valuable remains. All that can fairly be required from any one, to whom the papers of another are consigned in trust for the public, is an early and ungarbled publication of all that do not in any way trespass on the privacy of the living. To require more would be to require what must be sometimes difficult, sometimes impossible, and always a source of delay. The publication before us carries with it intrinsic evidence of being an honest and complete publication of all papers of public interest. The sanctity of private life is respected throughout. It abounds with materials of knowledge and reflection to the historian, the philosopher, the patriot, the philanthropist; with examples of high encouragement to all who make it their study to ameliorate the condition of their fellow-men; examples of the noblest objects of public good, pursued through good and evil fortune, through good and evil report, with undeviating and inflexible rectitude.

The first paper in the collection is a memoir of himself, which Jefferson began in 1821, at the age of seventy-seven, but which he did not bring down later than the 21st of March, 1790. The first settler of the family appears to have been from the vicinity of Snowdon, a fact which may be recorded to the honour of Wales, though Jefferson is not a Cymric name. This must have been at a very early period of the American settlements. Jefferson's father was the first of the family who occupied the lands which Jefferson inherited, called Shadwell, in Virginia.

Jefferson himself was born in 1743 or 1744: he always concealed his birth-day, that it might not be publicly celebrated. He saw in such celebrations a germ of aristocratical distinctions; and discouraged them, to the extent of his power, both by precept and example. He received a tolerably good education, which he finished at William and Mary College in 1762. He then became a student of law, and in 1767 was inducted to the bar, at which he continued till the Revolution.

In 1769, he became a member of the Virginia Legislature.

In 1772, he married Mrs. Bathurst Skelton, a widow of twentythree. In 1774, when the bill had passed in the English Parliament for shutting up the Port of Boston on the 1st of June, he was one of the young members of the Virginia Legislature, who (as always happens in great emergencies) took the lead out of the hands of the old ones, and who carried a Resolution for fixing on the 1st of June as "a day of fasting, humiliation, and prayer, to implore Heaven to avert from us the evils of civil war, to inspire us with firmness in support of our rights, and to turn the hearts of the King and Parliament to moderation and justice." The effect of this measure on the minds of the people appears to have been very great. Jefferson was one of the first delegates to the Convention, which was then elected for choosing delegates to a general Congress of the Colonies, which met for the first time, at Philadelphia, on the 5th of September, 1774. He was himself one of the delegates to the second Congress, in which he took his seat on the 21st of June, 1775.

On the 7th of June, 1776, the delegates from Virginia (Jefferson being one), in obedience to instructions from their constituents, proposed to Congress to declare the Colonies independent of Great Britain. The proposal was adopted. Jefferson drew up the Declaration, which, after three days of discussion, was carried with some alterations, and signed by every member present, except one. It affords a remarkable proof of the general good sense and judgment of the members of this Congress, that every change which was sanctioned in this most important of documents was a change for the better.

On the 1st of June, 1779, Jefferson was appointed governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia. At the end of the second year he resigned his administration, from a persuasion that under the pressure of invasion the civil and military power should be united in a military commander: General Nelson was appointed to succeed him. About this time he appears to have been marked out as an especial object of vengeance by Lord Cornwallis.

'Lord Cornwallis then proceeded to the Point of Fork, and encamped his army from thence all along the main James River, to a seat of mine, called Elk-hill, opposite to Elk Island, and a little below the mouth of the Byrd Creek. [You will see all these places exactly laid down in the map annexed to my notes on Virginia, printed by Stockdale.] He remained in this position ten days, his own headquarters being in my house at that place. I had time to remove most of the effects out of the house. He destroyed all my growing crops of corn and tobacco; he burnt all my barns, containing the same