brated speech, which is familiar to many of our readers. But however celebrated, or however familiar, sentiments so noble and just can hardly be too often repeated, or too strongly impressed. The occasions have been rare in which the dignity of man could appear in so imposing a light as in this speech, and still more rare in which they have been embraced with a power so tremendous, and an effect so astounding.

'At times, Lord Thurlow was superlatively great. It was the good fortune of the Reminiscent, to hear his celebrated reply to the Duke of Grafton, during the inquiry into Lord Sandwich's administration of Greenwich hospital. His Grace's action and delivery, when he addressed the house, were singularly dignified and graceful; but his matter was not equal to his manner. He reproached Lord Thurlow with his plebeian extraction, and his recent admission into the peerage. Particular circumstances caused Lord Thurlow's reply to make a deep impression on the Reminiscent. His lordship had spoken too often, and began to be heard with a civil but visible impatience. Under these circumstances, he was attacked in the manner we have mentioned. He rose from the woolsack, and advanced slowly to the place, from which the chancellor generally addresses the house; then, fixing on the duke the look of Jove, when he has grasped the thunder; "I am amazed," he said, in a level tone of voice, "at the attack which the noble duke has made on me. Yes, my lords," considerably raising his voice, "I am amazed at his Grace's speech. The noble duke cannot look before him, behind him, or on either side of him, without seeing some noble peer, who owes his seat in this house to his successful exertions in the profession to which I belong. Does he not feel that it is as honorable to owe it to these, as to being the accident of an accident ?—To all these noble lords, the language of the noble duke is as applicable and as insulting as it is to myself. But I don't fear to meet it single and alone. No one venerates the peerage more than I do; but my lords, I must say that the peerage solicited me, not I the peerage. Nay more, I can say and will say, that, as a peer of parliament; as speaker of this right honorable house, as keeper of the great seal; as guardian of his majesty's conscience; as lord high chancellor of England, nay, even in that character alone, in which the noble duke would think it an affront to be considered-but which character none can deny me—as a MAN, I am at this moment as respectable; I beg leave to add, I am at this time, as much respected, as the proudest peer I now look down upon." The effect of this speech, both within the walls of parliament and out of them, was prodigious. It gave Lord Thurlow an ascendency in the house, which no chancellor had ever po sessed; it invested him, in public opinion, with a charac

ter of independence and honor; and this, although he was ever on the unpopular side of politics, made him always popular with the people.' pp. 164-166.

Our extracts shall be closed with the Reminiscent's remarks on the care, which certain eminent writers have bestowed on their compositions, before they entrusted them to the public eye. Such rigid practices would alarm the writers of novels, and the reviewers of these modern days. Newton wrote out the first chapter of his Chronology, which is the larger part of that great work, eighteen times with his own hand, and he published nothing which he had not copied many times over. Who can refrain from deploring the degeneracy of these our latter days? To write much and rapidly is now the watchword; to make one novel a year, and two if possible, or at all events to be always in the press, and running a race with the printers; to indite poetry, with Pegasus at his greatest speed, by inspiration, leaving sense, nature, reason, truth, and such dull things to the poor possession of the uninitiated; to send out reviews quarterly, monthly, weekly, on all sorts of subjects, with some of which the writers themselves are acquainted, and of others as ignorant as the readers, whom they would instruct; these are the feats of modern literature, these the exploits of modern genius, these the trophies of modern learning. But we are revealing secrets. Let us return to the Reminiscent.

'We have mentioned,' says he, Mr Burke's endless corrections of his compositions; Bossuet, by the account of his Benedictine editors, was equally laborious; but in this they differed; that Burke appears to have been satisfied with his original conceptions, and to have been fastidious only in respect to words and phrases; Bossuet seems to have been equally dissatisfied with his first thoughts and his first words. The inequality between those works of Bossuet, which the Benedictine editors published from the drafts of them, and those published by himself, is utterly inconceivable ; it is a literary phenomenon; it might be considered impossible that both should proceed from the same pen, or be the thoughts or words of the same person.

'Rousseau himself has informed us, that between his first committing of a sentence to paper and his final settlement of it, his obliterations and alterations were countless. That this should have been the case of such writers as Robertson or Gibbon, is not surprising; their eternal batteries and counter batteries of words seem

to be the effect of much reflection and many second thoughts; but that it should have been the case with writers like Bossuet, Burke, and Rousseau, who appear to pour streams equally copious and rapid of unpremeditated eloquence, appears extraordinary; it justifies the common remark, that we seldom read with pleasure, what has not been composed with labor. The molle atque facetum, which Horace ascribes to Virgil, indicates a composition which taste has inspired, but which doings and iterated doings have worked into softness. Such are the pages of Addison, such the Offices of Cicero; such also, but in a superlative degree, are many passages of Milton.' pp. 209, 210.

A long chapter on the jurisprudence of France, both ancient and modern, and on the English law of property, contains many historical facts and ingenious remarks, not only communicating useful hints to the professional student, but adapted to the understanding and improvement of the general reader. Notices of the author's various writings are interspersed throughout the volume, and so arranged as to enable us to trace the course of his studies. His work, entitled Hora Juridica Subseciva, has been highly approved by lawyers, and his Hora Biblica, by theologians, as containing a fund of valuable knowledge, well digested, and compressed within a small compass. He has written several theological essays, and also the lives of Bossuet, Fenelon, and other eminent persons. He is wayward in some of his poetical criticisms. In preferring Homer to Virgil, and Dryden to Pope, he has our full consent to enjoy his opinion; but we do not agree, that 'Virgil's language sometimes ceases to be Latin,' nor believe that the works of Gray are more read and admired than those of any other English poet.' Nor shall we soon be convinced, that the muse of Gray was of a higher order' than that of Goldsmith. But the author is so candid and good tempered in all his criticisms, as well as in all his writings, that for our own credit we forbear to quarrel with him on so small a matter as that of extolling a favorite poet, a liberty belonging to every one that chooses to exercise it, and we take leave of his little volume, with grateful feelings toward the Reminiscent, for the sources of entertainment, which he has opened to us.

6

ART. III.-Ensayo de la Historia Civil del Paraguay, Buenos Ayres y Tucuman. Por el DOCTOR D. GREGORIO FUNES. Libro VI. Capituli 1-3, vol. 1. pp. 242333. [Published in Buenos Ayres, 1817. The three chapters here specified contain the History of the Insurrection, which broke out in Peru in the year 1780.]

Or the vast acquisitions gained by Spain, in the tropical and southern regions of the New World, none was more interesting in itself, more splendid as conquests, or more highly prized by the metropolis, for the immense riches drawn from the country and the inhabitants, than the extensive empires of Peru and Mexico. Unlike the rest of America, these two populous nations were formed into powerful organised states, analogous in many respects to what Europeans had been accustomed to see at home. Their subjugation, therefore, was effected, not as that of the rest of the continent was, by successive victories over insulated tribes, but by striking at the government itself, at the head of the empire, around which the whole population rallied, and with the fall of which the empire itself was at an end. The Mexicans were a much more fierce and warlike people than the Peruvians; and of course the first conquest of Mexico was a far more arduous task than the conquest of Peru. But when the Mexican nation was once really subdued, the subjugation was complete and final; because the emperors of Mexico being determined by election, so soon as the regular succession was effectually interrupted, it became impracticable to restore it by a new election in after times. But in Peru it was otherwise. Here the principle of hereditary succession being firmly established, it was impossible to eradicate the idea of a Peruvian sovereignty from the minds of the Indians, until the whole race. of the Incas was extinct. This peculiarity in the situation of Peru occasioned the Spaniards much annoyance, by compelling them, on the one hand, to many acts of cruelty against the family of the Incas, and, on the other, by repeatedly leading the Peruvians into dangerous insurrections.

The most remarkable of all these attempts was the rising of the Inca Jose Gabriel Tupac Amaru, towards the close of the last century, an event in the history of Spanish America only exceeded in interest and importance by the original con

quest, and by the recent separation of the country from Spain. Mild and submissive as the Peruvian Indians are by nature, they were, on this occasion, driven by the tyrannical system of intolerable oppression, which their taskmasters pursued, to take up arms in open and general rebellion, throughout the southern and central mountainous provinces of Peru. This insurrection spread so widely, and was so desperately maintained, that for a time it seriously threatened the downfal of the Spanish empire in that quarter. Had the good fortune of the insurgent tribes been equal to the justice of their cause, a bloody retribution would then have been visited upon the posterity of Pizarro, for all the wrongs they had done the Indians, and the scattered remnant of the lineage of the Sun would have been reinstated upon the throne of the Incas.

Such is the jealous mystery, in which Spain has been anxious to wrap the affairs of her American possessions in modern times, that this attempt to revolutionise Peru was scarcely heard of in Europe or in the United States, until it was first briefly noticed by Humboldt.* But the revolution of the Spanish American governments has unfolded the dreadful secrets of that great prison house, as the French revolution threw open the cells of the Bastille. Some of these hitherto closely guarded arcana of despotism we disclosed to our readers in our number for July last; and we propose to give here, as an apt illustration of a part of the article alluded to, a condensed account of the insurrection of Tupac Amaru, as we find it in substance contained in the authentic history of Dean Funes. With this object we have prefixed to our article the three chapters of his History of Paraguay, which treat specially of this insurrection, referring our readers to a former article in our Journal for the general character and merits of this valuable work.

We use the word Peru to designate the seat of the attempted revolution; but the expression requires some explanation. Our readers may need to be reminded that in the year 1778, the viceroyalty of the Rio de la Plata, or Buenos Ayres, was erected out of the viceroyalty of Peru. In making the division, no regard was had to the national bounda

* Political Essay on New Spain, vol. ii. c. 6. p. 150.