son—in his own opinion. He is both judge and jury in his own cause; the sole standard of right and wrong. To differ with him is inexcusable; for "there is but one perfect, even himself." He is the central point of all moral and intellectual excellence; the way, the truth, and the life. There is no salvation out of his pale; and yet he makes the terms of communion so strict, that there is no hope that way. The crime of Mr. William Smith and others, against whom this high-priest of impertinence levels his anathemas, is in not being Mr. Southey. What is right in him, is wrong in them; what is the height of folly or wickedness in them, is, "as fortune and the flesh shall serve," the height of wisdom and virtue in him; for there is no medium in his reprobation of others and approbation of himself. Whatever he does, is proper: whatever he thinks, is true and profound: "I, Robert Shallow, Esquire, have said it." Whether Jacobin or Anti-jacobin, Theophilanthropist or Trinitarian, Spencean or Ex-Spencean, the patron of Universal Suffrage or of close Boroughs, of the reversion of sinecure places, and pensions, or of the abolition of all property,—however extreme in one opinion or another, he alone is in the right; and those who do not think as he does, and change their opinions as he does, and go the lengths that he does, first on one side and then on the other, are necessarily knaves and fools. Wherever he sits, is the head of the table. Truth and justice are always at his side. The wise and virtuous are always with him. How should it be otherwise? He calls those "wise and virtuous" who are of his way of thinking; the rest are "sciolists, profligates, and coxcombs." By a fiction of his own making, not by a fiction of the law, Mr. Southey can do no wrong; and to accuse him of it, is a libel on the face of it, and little short of high treason. It is not the poet-laureate, the author of "Wat Tyler" and of the "Quarterly Review," who is to blame for his violence and apostacy; with that portion of self-sufficiency which this author possesses, "these are most virtuous;" but it is the person who brings forward the contradictions and intemperance of these two performances who is never to be forgiven for questioning Mr. Sou-
