Volume 1 - Electric Scotland

TORPOR OF THE TORIES. 433
3. A miscellaneous paper of remarkable literary notices,
something of the nature of Ana, but more select than Ana
usually are.
Further, I wish much to commence upon the Orators ; and
also, a thing I mentioned to Prof. Wilson, I have matter for a
pointed article on the History of Logic, in connection with
Whately's book. But for that purpose I should need two
books—viz., Whately's and Eeid's 'Anal, of the Organon of
Aristotle,' furnished originally to Lord Kames—for one part of
his Sketches, and reprinted (as no doubt you remember) by one
of our Fathers in the Eow, MaKpoxeip, I think
i.e., Longimanus,
as Coleridge used to call him. On the whole, you
may rely upon me during next summer as a really active
contributor.
I hear (but living very much alone all this winter I cannot
say that I know it of my own knowledge) that ' Maga ' has of
late been thundering and lightening with more splendour than
ever. Four recent numbers, but not the very latest, I had a
momentary peep into last week. In one of these I saw a very
good review of the Family Library ; and much I wish that the
eloquent writer would fulfil his engagement and trace the
melancholy record of that ruinous torpor and inaction which
too justly he charges upon the Tories. One memorable in-
stance well illustrating his general thesis — that the Tories
never step forward in any career but when forced into it by the
Whigs—he has overlooked : that, I mean, of Bell and Lancaster.
Bell, it was true, was first, and he was even slenderly patron-
ised (zealously, perhaps, for the degree, but slenderly for the
number) ; yet when was it taken up as a national affair ?
Then, first, when Lancaster had stolen his plan, and the Whigs,
the Malcontents of every class, had adopted Lancaster into
their train of artillery. And but for this hostile movement,
would the Tories ever have looked aside at Bell ? I think not.
Your reviewer's illustration from the cases of the ' Edinburgh
and 'Quarterly' Eeviews, from the two London Universities,
and from the cheap bodies of popular literature, all speak the
same melancholy language. I doubt, indeed, whether there has
been one exception, beyond that of your own journal. You un-
questionably had no precedent, though you have since had so
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