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should not then have to blush for the disingenuousness of the most devoted worshipper of speculative truth, for the servility of the boldest champion of intellectual freedom. We should not then have seen the same man at one time far in the van, at another time far in the rear of his generation. We should not then be forced to own that he who first treated legislation as a science was among the last Englishmen who used the rack, that he who first summoned philosophers to the great work of interpreting nature, was among the last Englishmen who sold justice. And we should conclude our survey of a life placidly, honourably, beneficently passed," in industrious observations, grounded conclusions, and profitable inventions and discoveries,” 1 with feelings very different from those with which we now turn away from the checkered spectacle of so much glory and so much shame.

1 From a Letter of Bacon to Lord Burleigh.

OF VOL 1.

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ESSAYS.

SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE.'

(Edinburgh Review, October, 1638.)

MR. COURTENAY has long been well known to politicians as an industrious and useful official man, and as an upright and consistent member of Parliament. He has been one of the most moderate, and, at the same time, one of the least pliant members of the Conservative party. His conduct has, indeed, on some questions, been so Whiggish, that both those who applauded and those who condemned it have questioned his claim to be considered as a Tory. But his Toryism, such as it is, he has held fast through all changes of fortune and fashion; and he has at last retired from public life, leaving behind him, to the best of our belief, no personal enemy, and carrying with him the respect and good will of many who strongly dissent from his opin

ions.

This book, the fruit of Mr. Courtenay's leisure, is introduced by a preface in which he informs us that the

1 Memoirs of the Life, Works, and Correspondence of Sir William Tem ple. By the Right HoN. THOMAS PEREGRINE COURTENAY. 2 vols Svo. London: 1836.

VOL. IV.

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