the critic, not the thing criticised, is ever foremost in its pages; he adapts, not himself to his theme, but the theme to himself, and often forms and pronounces his judgments in a way more calculated to arrest the attention of the reader than to forward the interests of truth. A love of aggressive paradox mars the integrity of his verdicts, and inclines him to reverse, from the mere spirit of opposition, the general decisions of the world. He has assailed the fame of Cicero, Josephus, Kant, Goethe, and Plato, with the same animus with which he defends the memory of Judas Iscariot. Mere differences of opinion regarding acknowledged facts must rest on individual differences of taste; but Mr. De Quincey cannot, in all the instances of his eager iconoclasm, be cleared from the charge of confounding the facts themselves with his own misinterpretations of them. In the case of an author who travels over so wide a field, with the same pretension of extensive and profound research, it is impossible everywhere to test the accuracy of his statements without an amount of information on all conceivable subjects, which few critics would venture to claim, and which few authors, on examination, are found to possess; but in various instances, where remarkable statements have been made by Mr. De Quincey with more than usual confidence, we have to chose between his own confident assertion and a mass of evidence pointing to conclusions directly the reverse. He has nowhere, for example, substantiated the charges which he has brought against the philosopher Kant; and few who are acquainted with the life and works of that great leader of modern thought, will be disposed to give absolute credit to a mere dogmatic impeachment of his intellectual honesty. Some of the results of Mr. De Quincey's studies in the region of Greek speculation, will meet with still less favour in the eyes of any student of Hellenic literature; nor can his so-called review of Plato's Republic be read by any one who is familiar with the majestic original without a feeling somewhat akin to indignation. It would require a distinct essay to expose the misrepresentations which abound in this paradoxical sketch. The critic seems to have utterly misapprehended the mere ethical purpose of the work. He treats the communistic scheme given in the fifth book, avowedly a digression, as if it were the root and centre of the whole dialogue; and, by ignoring the historical view through which alone it becomes intelligible, he refuses to treat even that section with ordinary equity. It is much to be regretted that this foolish diatribe should have been reprinted in the collected edition of his works, for it wants even that display of ingenuity which, in most of his essays, at least affords amusement to his readers. Our author's justice, or at least his generosity, fails him again in treating of several of his distinguished contemporaries. His open depreciation of Keats and Shelley is less offensive. The cast of his mind is not that which is best fitted to appreciate the former, while his large participation in the odium theologicum incapacitates him from dealing fairly with the latter; but the biographical notices of his own familiars and compeers in the struggle of life—Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey—which, while professedly reverential, are artfully calculated to lower our reverence for those great writers, leave an impression very far from satisfactory. With regard to others, as Lamb and Landor, and some of our older classics, as Goldsmith, Pope, and Milton, where his judgment is unbiassed by any prejudice or perversity, his natural subtlety and discrimination come into play with remarkable success. His criticisms have always the interest of originality; and, by some new explanation or unexpected illustration, he often throws a light on facts which have eluded and difficulties which have baffled all earlier commentators. In this way he has added to our pleasures by increasing our power of enjoyment, and conferred many obligations on the student of ancient as well as modern history. We have characterized his best style as affording some of the purest specimens of eloquence in the language; the ordinary level of his writing is unusually classic and graceful; apt sometimes to err on the side of over-refinement. It is wanting in directness; his humour constantly runs away with him, and in general he chooses the longest road to his end. His digressions every now and then swallow up his main subject. We pursue an event through his pages and find it involved in "snowy mazes," interminable as those which, in his own anecdote, the elder Coleridge had to unfold. When he promises to tell a story we expect another King of Bohemia and his Seven Castles, and, in following the detail of his reasons for some new conviction, we are driven to forget the main fact of the author's own belief.—With all his defects, Mr. De Quincey is one of the men of his time who will live beyond it. The records of his learning and controversial power may pass with other curiosities of a critical age; but his picture of the outcast Ann on the London streets, the dreams and fantasies he has connected with that whole epoch of his life, the most solemn of his rhapsodies, the simple pathos of his best sketches, and the bright flashes of his humour—are imperishable memorials of an impassioned and peculiar genius.—J. N
DERBY, the title of the Stanleys, an illustrious family which, since the reign of Henry III., has figured conspicuously in English history. Thomas, the first earl, married the sister of the celebrated earl of Warwick, "the king-maker," and obtained in 1485 the title of Earl of Derby as a reward for his invaluable services at the battle of Bosworth, where, on the field, he placed the crown of Richard III. on the head of the victorious Richmond.—Edward, third earl of Derby, was famous for his magnificent hospitality, his "goodly disposition to his tenants," his "liberality to strangers," his "famous housekeeping," and his benevolence to the poor. Camden says that at his death, "the glory of hospitality seemed to fall asleep." "His greatness," quaintly says the biographer Lloyd, "supported his goodness, and his goodness endeared his greatness; his height being looked upon with a double aspect—by himself as an advantage of beneficence, by others as a ground of reverence." But the glory of the house of Stanley was—
James, seventh earl of Derby, whose steadfast loyalty so nobly fulfilled the motto of his family—sans changer—and casts such a lustre on their annals. He was the eldest son of William, sixth earl of Derby, by Elizabeth, daughter of Edward Vere, seventeenth earl of Oxford, and of Anne, daughter of the great Lord Burleigh. He was born in 1606. In the course of his travels on the continent, he met at the Hague the lady to whom he was afterwards united—the famous Charlotte de la Tremouille, daughter of Claude, duke of Thouars, and related to the blood-royal of France. Derby was no frequenter of courts, but spent his life in splendid privacy, superintending and improving his extensive estates in Lancashire, and in his little kingdom of the Isle of Man. When the great civil war, however, broke out, he at once abandoned his peaceful pursuits, and was one of the first who joined the king when Charles retired to York in 1642. It was at first intended to raise the royal standard at Warrington, and Derby, whose influence in that district was unbounded, had mustered sixty thousand men in the royal cause, when he was informed that the king had resolved to set up his standard at Nottingham, and was ordered to repair to head-quarters. He obeyed this injunction, and was immediately sent back with orders to attempt to surprise Manchester. When all requisite preparations were made, and even the hour of assault was fixed, he received a summons to join the king without delay. He promptly obeyed this injunction, and on his arrival was deprived of the command of the troops he had raised, and was once more sent back into Lancashire. These repeated insults became known to the parliamentary party, who, in the belief that they must have alienated the earl from the royal cause, endeavoured to gain him over to their side. But "Derby's loyalty was of that exalted, pure, and simple character, which was ready to suffer all things not only for the king, but from the king;" and the offers of the parliamentarians were at once indignantly rejected. Nothing, however, was now left for him to do but to fortify his mansion at Lathom, and to hold it out till better times. At this juncture he learned that his enemies were planning an invasion of the Isle of Man; and leaving his countess to complete the fortification of Lathom, he sailed there in person, and secured the safety of the island. During his absence Fairfax, at the head of a strong force, laid siege to Lathom house, and offered the most liberal terms to the countess if she would surrender that stronghold. But she firmly replied that she was there under a double trust, of faith to her lord and of allegiance to her king, and that she was determined to preserve her honour and obedience, though it should be to her ruin. The courageous heroine animated the garrison both by her words and her example, harrassed the enemy by constant sallies, repeatedly captured their guns, and slew a great number of their men; and at length the besiegers, after the lapse of three months, having lost not less than two thousand men, raised the siege on the approach of Prince Rupert. The mansion sustained a second siege under
