ART. IX. 1. Letter from Lord Stanley to Sir Thomas Hesketh, CONTENTS OF No. CXXVI. ART. I.-1. Memoirs of Baron Cuvier. By Mrs R. Lee. 2. Eloge of Baron Cuvier, delivered in the Chamber of Peers on the 17th December, 1832. By Baron Pasquier, President of the Chamber of Peers. (Trans- lated in Professor Jameson's Philosophical Journal.) 3. Cuvier as a Naturalist. By C. L. Laurilliard, Conser- vator of the Cabinet of Anatomy in the Museum of II. The School of the Heart, and other Poems. By Henry Alford, Vicar of Wimes would, and late Fellow of III. 1. Rural Recollections, or the Progress of Improvement V. An Account of the Rev. John Flamsteed, the first Astro- nomer Royal; compiled from his own Manuscripts, and other authentic Documents, never before Pub- lished. To which is added, his British Catalogue of Stars, Corrected and Enlarged. By Francis Baily, Esq. Vice-President of the Royal Astronomical So- ciety, ART. VII. Thoughts on the Study of Mathematics as a part of a IX. 1. Report: Orange Lodges, Associations, or Societies in Ireland. Ordered by the House of Commons to 2. Second Report from the Select Committee appointed to Enquire into the Nature, Character, Extent, and Tendency of Orange Lodges, Associations, or So- cieties in Ireland, with the Minutes of Evidence, and Appendix. Ordered by the House of Com- mons to be printed, 6th August, 1835. 3. Third Report: Orange Lodges, Associations, or Societies in Ireland. Ordered by the House of Commons to be printed, 6th August, 1835. 4. Report: Orange Institutions in Great Britain and the Colonies. Ordered by the House of Commons to be printed, 7th September, 1835. 5. Report of the Select Committee appointed to Enquire into the Origin, Nature, Extent, and Tendency of Orange Institutions in Great Britain and the Colo- nies, and to Report the Evidence taken before them, and their Opinion to the House. Ordered by the House of Commons to be printed, 7th September, 1835, 471 THE EDINBURGH REVIEW. OCTOBER, 1835. No. CXXV. ART. I.-Memoirs of Lord Bolingbroke. By GEORGE WINGROVE COOKE, Esq. 2 vols. 8vo. London: 1835. TH HE fate of Lord Bolingbroke affords a signal instance of the instability of fortune, and precariousness of fame. Few persons have experienced greater or more sudden vicissitudes. From the height of power in England, with the fairest prospects before him, he was reduced within a few months to the condition of an attainted exile. In one short year he was Secretary of State to Queen Anne, and Secretary of State to the Pretender. At his first visit to Paris, he was courted as the saviour of France-the arbiter and pacificator of Europe. During his second residence in that capital, he was constrained to avail himself of the meanest and vilest agents to obtain a clandestine intercourse with the government of a country he had rescued from destruction. His early ambition had been gratified by a rapidity of elevation beyond the ordinary lot of statesmen. His riper years were passed in penury and banishment; and when restored to competence and home, he was destined to waste the remainder of his life in ineffectual struggles to regain the station he had lost embittered by disappointments and mortifications, which his proud and ambitious spirit was ill able to endure. After toiling for years in the service of the party he had espoused, it was hinted to him that the greatest kindness he could do them was to go back into exile, because his presence in England was an insuperable bar to their success. His varied, and on the whole unfortunate, career shows how necessary it is for public men to possess moral character, as well as ability of conduct and intellectual endowments. Bolingbroke was a man of brilliant parts, with much quick VOL. LXII. NO. CXXV. A ness and penetration, and extraordinary powers of application and capacity for business. He had accomplishments and attainments, that rendered him the delight and ornament of society; and possessed warm and generous affections, that endeared him to his private friends. But with these merits and qualities, he had defects which more than counterbalanced them. Bold, decided, and unscrupulous in the means he used, he was better fitted to achieve a single object, than to pursue and bring to a successful issue a course of policy that required time for its accomplishment. Under an appearance of openness and frankness, which disarmed suspicion, he concealed a dissimulation and want of sincerity, that, when once detected, destroyed all future confidence in his character. At the commencement of his political career, he found the Tories the most powerful body in the state; and though he despised their narrow prejudices and exploded doctrines, ambition led him to attach himself to their party. Having taken this false step at his outset in life, he was never able to extricate himself from the consequences of his first error. In serving his party, he was continually offending and doing violence to their opinions. In combating for them, he borrowed his weapons from their adversaries; and in serving and plotting for the Pretender, he vindicated the Revolution. To injure the Whigs, he went beyond them in the popular principles they professed; and to overturn the Ministry of Walpole, he scrupled not to sacrifice the whole dynasty of the Stuarts. In his political attachments to individuals he was warm but unsteady; and when provoked, his resentment was implacable. After having been the bosom friend of Oxford, he came at length to loathe and detest him with a bitterness of hatred seldom to be found any where but in the quarrels of theologians. After having sacrificed his fortune and station in the service of the Pretender, he sat down deliberately to expose to ridicule and contempt the character, the party, and the cause of the man he had so recently served. He had been provoked, it is true, to this course by the intolerable usage he had received from the Pretender and his court; and to his resentment, and to the hopes he indulged of entire forgiveness in England, we are indebted for the wittiest, the most lively, and most finished of his works. But his Letter to Sir William Windham' did more harm to the Jacobites, than service to its author. He was suffered to languish for several years in exile, and when permitted to return, he was carefully excluded from those paths of ambition he was still desirous to tread. The style of his best works is vehement and spirited; but he is apt to be diffuse and declamatory. His letters of business are admirable-clear, short, and precise; and where argument is re |