not to be compressed into a few pages; much of the theory is yet very doubtful, much of the practice is still, in great measure, empirical. Above all, the relative weight which has to be given to the many detailed observations, often conflicting in their evidence, is a point which perhaps nothing but careful study and long experience can decide. A theoretical cyclone is, on paper at least, a very simple thing: the actual thing, as it exists in nature, assumes many different forms, and the species can no more be fully described in one than can the whole human race be described by Olivia's celebrated inventory: "Item, two lips indifferent red; item, two gray eyes, with lids to them; item, one neck, one chin, and so forth." Every cyclone, as every face, has a character of its own one may be regular, equable,

gentle; another wild, passionate, stormy: one may be solitary, dragging the whole body of neighboring air into its own selfish whirl; another may have a social disposition, and be one of a group, or may throw off smaller ones and pass along, surrounded by a more or less numerous and turbulent family. To arrive at any conclusion with regard to the behavior of things so multiform and various, is of the very greatest difficulty; and whilst we can see in our daily paper that the Meteorological Office has made a vast stride towards the accomplishment of the task, we are not to expect that the forecasts will be absolutely free from mistakes. We cannot be so surprised at their occasional failures as we are at their general accuracy.-Fraser's Magazine.

OUGHT private letters to an editor from his contributors to be published? Mr. Macvey Napier was editor of the Edinburgh Review for eighteen years, from 1829 to 1847. Among his correspondents during that period were some of the most distinguished men of the time: Macaulay, Brougham, Lytton, Jeffrey, Carlyle, Dickens, Thackeray, John Mill, and many others of less note. They wrote to him long letters-letters were as a rule longer then than they are now proposing articles, deprecating corrections, expressing opinions about the work of their fellow-laborers, making themselves agreeable or disagreeable as the case might be, and occasionally throwing in scraps of gossip about common acquaintances and the events of the day. It was Mr. Napier's practice to keep these documents, and a selection from them was recently printed by his son for private circulation. The privilege of reading them is now extended to all who choose to avail themselves of it. Many doubtless will avail themselves of the privilege, for the letters

contain abundance of dainty morsels for the curious; but while we read and smile, it is impossible altogether to banish the thought that what we read was not intended for our inspection, and that much of it could only have been written in confidence. In fact it is only the confidential part of an editor's correspondence that possesses any lively interest for the general reader. The business communications which pass between editor and contributor have some value for the minute biographer, the close student of character and literary development, but for all but this small fraction of mankind the passage of a few years, or even months, makes them flat and stale.

What the multitude likes to pick out of such papers is precisely what the writers of them would have been most anxious to conceal from the general eye, their opinion of their own work, and their opinion of the work of their fellow-contributors. There is not so much of this in the selection from Mr. Napier's letters as there might have been if some of his correspondents had been less guarded, or if the selector had been less scrupulous in his choice; but there is a good deal, and it is undoubtedly the salt of the volume. Yet it is a trouble

some question in rigid ethics whether the individual, who would as soon think of publishing his love-letters as his private letters to an editor, ought thus to be sacrificed for the amusement of the majority. All who love gossip, with a tender conscience, must be secretly glad that the owners of interesting confidential correspondence are seldom unwilling to take the responsibility of deciding this delicate point. Unhappily, it will not trouble the inheritors of the letters, telegrams, and post-cards of the present generation.

We are helped to get rid of any lingering scruples that we may feel about our right to enjoy the amusing lights in which some of Mr. Napier's correspondents are placed by the publication of their letters, by the fact that it is an act of justice to the editor himself. An editor in his lifetime gets but scant justice. He is lucky if he possess a self-approving conscience. Very rarely does a voice of approval reach him from the outside. Good-natured friends who write to congratulate him on his last number, invariably append some irritating **but " which turns the praise into bitterness. It is an excellent number on the whole, but why did he not draw his pen through such and such? And how can he allow So-and-so to go on writing on subjects on which he does not know the merest rudiments? When people are displeased with any thing in their periodical they lay the blame upon the editor; when any thing strikes them as particularly good, they wonder who wrote it. This is as it should be, but the poor editor-to whom, it may be, some touch of the goodness is due, and who has been compelled to retain passages intensely objectionable to his own taste, out of regard for the feelings or the services of a valuable member of his staff-is apt to think that hard measure is dealt out to him. The world knows nothing of his difficulties. On one occasion, when Mr. Napier was more than usually distracted and perplexed, and had taken the advice of his predecessor, Lord Jeffrey, that experienced and logical authority began his reply with a clear classification of the main considerations by which an editor ought to be guided in deciding the all-important question of admission or rejection. These considerations

were three in number-the effect upon the general body of the contributors, the effect upon the general body of readers, and the effect in the editor's deliberate opinion upon the advancement of what he believed to be right. Here alone is a sufficiency of embarrassing considerations for a hesitating mind, disturbed by circumstances from the healthy rule of trusting to its instincts, and Lord Jeffrey could probably have given many others of a more subtle and annoying kind. An editor, in fact, has all the worry of a police magistrate, without statutes to direct him, without the majesty of the law to hedge him round with respect, and with the paralyzing disadvantage that many of the offenders who appear in his court are his own personal friends and indispensable associates.

Very rare

It was due in common fairness that the world should have an opportunity of seeing the difficulties with which Mr. Napier had to struggle, as the head of a famous organization, and the dignity, firmness, and tact with which he maintained his position and did his duty. He came after a more famous man than himself in the management of the Edinburgh Review, and was placed in authority over other men of note who had been connected with the Review from its commencement. qualities indeed were needed to preserve the necessary discipline without estranging support essential to the very existence of the great quarterly. Mr. Napier's task was comparatively easy in dealing with outsiders who knocked at his door seeking admission. There can be no more respectable vehicle," Mr. Carlyle once wrote, for any British man's speculations than it (the Edinburgh Review) is and has always been.' It was not only honorable to write for the Edinburgh Review, but profitable, for it paid liberally, as a respectable journal should. Hence, Mr. Napier's offers of contributions were numerous. All the highest talent of the country, with the exception of the attached fuglemen of the opposite party, was at his service. The large body of political indifferentists, of men of letters pure and simple, desired no more respectable, and could obtain no more profitable, vehicle for their speculations than the

could not possibly write the article in time for the next number.

Edinburgh Review. But for successful dealing with his numerous volunteers Mr. Napier needed only a moderate share of two great gifts-caution in accepting, and courtesy in declining. He had a large share of both. When he was in doubt or difficulty, he seems to have consulted Jeffrey, with whom he remained on cordial terms. Jeffrey's advice was invaluable, and it was never obtruded, but always given with admirable regard to editorial rights and sus ceptibilities. It was with Jeffrey's advice that Mr. Napier fortified himself when writers of somewhat more advanced views, or more lively style than suited the traditions of the Review, sought to make it a vehicle for their speculations. The opinions and tastes of the two men were so thoroughly in accord that there was no breach of continuity when the editorship passed from the one to the other. As shrewd, matter-of-fact men, they were both aware of the value of lively writing; but they had to consider also that the Review had reached decorous middle age, and was the organ of a triumphant party, and that it was of paramount importance that its contents, whether lively or dull, should be safe. When Charles Dickens wrote asking whether it would "meet the purposes of the Review to come out strongly against any system of education based exclusively on the principles of the Established Church," and proposing to show why such a why such a thing as the Church Catechism is wholly inapplicable to the state of ignorance that now prevails; and why no system but one, so general in great religious principles as to include all creeds, can meet the wants and understandings of the dangerous classes of society," one can imagine how the editor's mind was tossed between desire and fear. proposal was probably not considered safe. Dickens wrote again to propose an article on the Abolition of Capital Punishment. Jeffrey, who was one of Dickens's most enthusiastic admirers, was consulted, and approved of the idea; but the novelist wrote at the last moment to say that he was living in such a maze of distractions," with so many insuperable obstacles crowded into the way of his pursuits," that he

With Thackeray Mr. Napier was hardly inore fortunate. A review from his hand appeared in October, 1845, three years before the publication of "Vanity Fair." The subject was N. P. Willis's" Dashes at Life," in discussing which there was little room for conflicting with the political principles of the Review. But Thackeray ran against another rock-the severe taste of the editor. "From your liberal payment,' he wrote, in acknowledging receipt of his honorarium, "I can't but conclude that you reward me, not only for laboring, but for being mutilated in your service. 1 assure you I suffered cruelly by the amputation which you were obliged to inflict upon my poor dear paper. 1 mourn still-as what father can help doing for his children ?-for several lively jokes and promising facetie, which were born and might have lived but for your scissors, urged by ruthless necessity." Jeffrey did not think much of the article, even after all this pruning and trimming. The taste of the Edinburgh Review was very severe in some directions. Thackeray was not the only contributor who had to mourn the loss of his children, and it is curious to note the different forms in which they expressed their grief and anger. A youthful aspirant, such as G. H. Lewes was in 1842, is all submission and sweet reasonableness, even when an article is returned to him to be entirely rewritten. It is not unpleasant to his feelings to submit to alterations;" he is "at all times anxious to alter and to receive criticism, however severe ;" and he writes as if he meant it. The courteous Bulwer Lytton is not less complaisant ; but though he thanks the editor with every appearance of cordiality for "smoothing his article into shape," and hopes that he will never hesitate to cut out what he does not like, he declares himself unable to understand some general hints as to his faults of style. Macaulay was equaliy generous in his professions of submission, but not so successful in concealing his feelings when the knife was actually applied. "I hope you will not scruple to exercise your prerogative," he writes. "You

will not find me a refractory subject." But we find him soon afterwards complaining that the passages omitted were the most pointed and ornamental sentences in the review." One contributor, and one only, made a clear and frank bargain beforehand that his arti. cles were not to be trifled with. When Mr. Carlyle was asked to write for the Review, he explained without the least. flummery on what conditions he was willing to try his hand. "My respected friend, your predecessor,' he wrote, "had some difficulty with me in adjust ing the respective prerogatives of author and editor, for though not, as I hope, insensible to fair reason, I used sometimes to rebel against what I reckoned mere authority, and this partly perhaps as a matter of literary conscience; being wont to write nothing without studying it if possible to the bottom, and writing always with an almost painful feeling of scrupulosity, that light editorial hacking and hewing to right and left was in general nowise to my mind. In what degree the like difficulties might occur between you and me, I cannot pretend to guess; however, if you are willing, then I also am willing, to try." The sturdy independence of this understanding left no room for the petty wrangling over flowers of rhetoric and sallies of wit which embitter the relations between editor and contributor. Mr. Napier appears to have been an editor with whom it would have been difficult to quarrel satisfactorily. He was most painstaking in his courtesy, untiring in his efforts to make his alterations pleasant to the victim. Once, indeed, he threw the gentle-hearted Leigh Hunt into an agony by an incautious word. Hunt wrote to him gayly proposing a "very chatty" article on some subject. He replied that he would be very glad to have a gentlemanlike" article. But on the intercession of Macaulay, to whom the wounded essayist made complaint, Mr. Napier explained that he meant no offence, and explained it with such politeness, and so completely restored Leigh Hunt's easy temper, that he borrowed ten pounds from Macaulay a few days afterwards.

great embarrassment of his editorship— his relations with "tremendous Harry Brougham." How to keep Brougham, and how to keep him within bounds, and how to keep him without losing Macaulay, were problems which gave Mr. Napier many anxious moments during his first ten years of office. He could not afford to lose either Brougham or Macaulay. Without them the Review would have been intolerably dull. The abundance of heavy matter to which the editor's severe taste and the restraints of his traditions condemned it, would have sunk the Review beneath the level of popular request if the supporting force, the buoyancy, the intense life and movement of their writing had been withdrawn. It seems strange to the present generation that the retention of Brougham's services should ever have been an object of such paramount importance. There is not much life in his contributions to the Edinburgh Review now. A back number, with five of his articles in it-he boasted some thirtyfive years after the commencement of the Review that he had written about a fifth of its whole bulk-is not a book that one takes from the shelf for a halfhour's refreshment and delight. But though Brougham's articles are dry bones to us, they had a vigorous life in their day. The pulse of the time beat violently-very violently-in them. We can see only the rusty machinery with which the stage thunder and lightning was manufactured, in the now deserted theatre, the tattered, moth-eaten robes in which the great actor draped himself; his contemporaries were filled with the excitement and passion of the play. There was no such incarnation of force, loud, tempestuous, overpowering force, in his time as Brougham. He is often called an extraordinary" man, and extraordinary he was in all conscience. About the time when Mr. Napier came in contact with him, he was the greatest individual power in English political life. There was no parliamentary debater whose hostility was so much to be feared, and outside Parliament, among the masses of the people, there was no hero worshipped with such enthusiasm. His splendid oratory in defence of Queen Caroline had put the crown on his reputation, and he had added many

But all Mr. Napier's worries with the mass of his contributors and applicants were as nothing compared with the one

dazzling jewels to it by his eloquent championship of philanthropic schemes and popular causes, and his unmeasured and overpowering vituperation of their enemies. With all these elements of greatness, which enabled him to render invaluable services to enlightenment and progress, with all this solid gold, there was a large admixture of baser matter. There is and must be this admixture in all greatness, and it is not as a rule good to dwell upon it. But Brougham left the world no choice in the matter. The same Titanic energy which threw the grander parts of his extraordinary" composition into glorious prominence, would not suffer the baser parts to remain in the shade. He had a passion for engrossing the whole credit of every enterprise with which he was connected. He never hesitated to sacrifice a colleague when it served his ambition, and there was no trick to which he would not resort to remove whatever stood in his way. No human being could possibly have known all that Brougham pretended to know, but the extent and variety of his knowledge was gigantic, and no human being ever possessed such a power of disguising ignorance by overbearing talk. At the time when he was celebrated throughout the country -justly celebrated, we must not forget -as the author of great legal reforms, the leader of the movement for the abolition of slavery, the indispensable patron of wide-reaching schemes for the extension of education, his ministerial colleagues were groaning over the Lord Chancellor's untrustworthiness, and a good-natured friend was following him all over London to enjoy the humor of him as a phenomenon, the marvellous abundance and gayety of his talk, the childlike caprices of his arrogance, his browbeating of dignitaries, his exaggerated deference to men of small account, his uncontrollable indiscretions, his absurd affectations, and above all, the audacity of his lies. And the most remarkable part of it all was that there was no more thorough sympathizer with this peculiar humor than Lord Brougham himself. He was indeed an "extra

ordinary" man.

man made round him. The whole character of the man comes out in these letters-his domineering spirit, his unscrupulousness, the curious cowardice which lay at the heart of all his blustering, his marvellous appetite and capacity for work. There are touches of kindliness too, which serve to redeem what is in some respects a repulsive exhibition. The cowardice of the giant is, as it happens, a redeeming feature, and gives an aspect of comedy to what might otherwise arouse simple indignation and disgust. The objects for which, in his relations with the Edinburgh Review, he put forth his despotic will were petty in themselves, and the results would not have been tragic if he had succeeded in them. The utmost that the despot achieved, beyond keeping his unfortunate editor in a constant worry, was to throw some of his fellow-contributors, and notably Macaulay, into fine frenzies of heroic anger, which at this distance of time Macaulay himself might afford to smile at. More than this the great perturbing agent, the Satan of the Edinburgh Review Paradise, was not permitted to accomplish, for he encountered in Mr. Napier a man of singularly firm will, and he always gave in when hard pushed, invariably protesting that his. meaning had been misunderstood, and that all his desires were as reasonable as. his motives were pure and public-spirited. Defeat had no power to mortify his. exuberant vitality; when beaten in one quarter, he flew off to another, heart and soul, without a backward glance.. The imperturbable self-satisfaction of the man shows itself in many droll shapes. in his letters to Mr. Napier. We find him describing with undisguised pride the number of pages he has written in a given time, the distance he has travelled without sleep or remission of work, the respect paid to him by great people, the prodigious effect produced by his speeches. "I was obliged," he writes on one occasion, "to exert myself last night as I had not done for years. The speech has made a great noise; but if it had one fault, there was no relief, no ordinary matter for the mind to rest upon. Every sentence was a figure or a passage. I marked that for an hour and. a half by the clock, I was speaking in tropes and allusions." But above all,.

Mr. Napier's correspondence shows strong light upon one little corner of the vast whirlpool which this extraordinary NEW SERIES.-VOL. XXX., No. 5

40