Richmond.'

Our author has some judicious remarks on 'Criticism, its Curiosities
and Researches,' and is himself a critic of refined and delicate
appreciation. We certainly do not agree with him in thinking that the
literature of the last century is superior to that of the present; but
we can nevertheless admit that many of his favourite writers are
deserving of a higher and more reverent regard than is now generally
awarded them. We would quarrel with no man about his preferences;
still, we cannot hold Mr Willmott justified in such sweeping
condemnation of our current literature as he appears disposed to pass
upon it. It would seem, indeed, that in his disgust at 'the corrupted
streams of popular entertainment,' he has not cared to make himself
acquainted with the best of our modern writers. Of these he seems--if
we may judge from his total oversight of them--to have hardly a
knowledge of the names. 'He lives,' as he admits, 'among the society
of an elder age.' Here, however, he numbers 'tasteful learning with
the chiefest blessings of his home.' If he had lived in the last
century, he would probably have gone back for his idols to an earlier
one; and yet his remarks on taste and criticism are of a catholic
nature, although his just application of their canons have this
chronological boundary. We have no room, however, for his disquisition
on these elegant subjects; neither can we follow our accomplished
clergyman into his disquisitions on fiction, history, biography,
philosophy, and its pleasures, nor the 'domestic interiors' of taste
and learning. We had intended to quote some fine sentences on the
consolations of poetry, but find we have not room for them. The reader
will do well to get the book, and read them there. It is a work
altogether well worth reading. Nay, it will bear reading many times,
and even become pleasanter as one's acquaintance with it increases.