closet with a groom, busy oiling the locks of his fowlingpieces, and
lamenting the decay into which they had fallen during his ministry.'

In some respects, the book will create surprise, particularly as to
the private life and character of the great Aristarch. While the
_Edinburgh Review_ was in progress under the care of Mr Jeffrey, it
was a most unrelenting tribunal for literary culprits, as well as a
determined assertor of its own political maxims. The common idea
regarding its chief conductor represented him as a man of
extraordinary sharpness, alternating between epigrammatic flippancy
and democratic rigour. Gentle and refined feeling would certainly
never have been attributed to him. It will now be found that he was at
all times of his life a man of genial spirit towards the entire circle
of his fellow-creatures--that his leading tastes were for poetry and
the beautiful in external nature, particularly fine scenery--that he
revelled in the home affections, and was continually saying the
softest and kindest things to all about him--a lamb, in short, while
thought a lion. The local circle in which he lived was somewhat
limited and exclusive, partly, perhaps, in consequence of having been
early shut in upon itself by its dissent from the mass of society on
most public questions; but in this circle Jeffrey was adored by men,
women, and children alike, on account of his extreme kindliness of
disposition. He was almost, to a ridiculous degree, dependent on the
love of his friends; and the terms in which he addresses some of them,
particularly ladies, sound odd in this commonsense world. Thus, the
wife of one of his friends is, 'My sweet, gentle, and long-suffering
Sophia.' He pours out his very heart to his correspondents, and with
an effect which would reconcile to him the most irascible author he
ever scarified. Thus, to his daughter, who had just left him with her
husband:--'I happened to go up stairs, and passing into our room, saw