office. On the two first of these points the measure has been several times altered. As it was first introduced last year, the Commissioners and Inspectors were to be appointed by one of the Secretaries of State, and no qualification was required. As it was amended in committee, they were all to be appointed by the Lord Chancellor; and the Commissioners were to consist of two Masters in Chancery and a Barrister of ten years' standing. Under the present bill the appointments still remain with the Chancellor, but the persons eligible as Commissioners are vice-chancellors, masters in chancery, persons who have held either of those offices, or that of chief-justice of Bengal, and practising Serjeants or Barristers of twelve years' standing. As to the official persons. from among whom the Commissioners may be selected, we have no remark to make. The prescribed qualification secures their being men of legal knowledge and judicial habits; and of sufficient eminence to be strongly under the control of public opinion. No man in such a station would lend himself to a job, personal or political. The other qualification, twelve years' standing at the Bar, secures only Legal experience. We venture to suggest the Conveyancing Bar as likely to afford the best candidates. The legal business of the commissioners will be almost altogether Conveyancing; and that Bar, little drained by preferment, contains a remarkable proportion of men distinguished by learning, diligence, and talent. We have seen that, as the bill now stands, the appointment of the Commissioners rests with the Chancellor, and that it was originally given to the Secretary of State. We should much prefer its being vested in the Crown. The Chancellor must, of course, have always a preponderating voice in all legal appointments; and, if the appointment be under the great seal, he will be technically as well as morally responsible; but, if he have the sole nomination, he alone will be responsible. If it rest with the Crown, the Prime Minister at least will share the responsibility. This will be a great safeguard against hasty appointments. It is generally admitted that the substitution by Lord Brougham, of the Crown for the Chancellor, in the appointment of Masters in Chancery, has been beneficial. And it must be added that there are two ministers, each of whom will probably come more in contact with the commissioners; namely, the Home Secretary and the President of the Council. The President of the Council has now become the English Minister of Education; and, we fear we must add, that the administration of the poor-laws now practically rests with the Home Secretary. Education, and Relief of the Poor, are the two great purposes for VOL. LXXXIII. NO. CLXVIII. 21 A which charities are now founded or maintained. Each of these ministers will find the business of his department materially affected by the manner in which the Commissioners perform their trust. An ill-judging or careless Commissioner may allow parish after parish to be pauperized by its charities. zealous and intelligent Commissioner may materially assist in carrying out the plans of the committee of the Privy Council. A bigoted or negligent Commissioner may materially impede them. Perhaps the Chancellor, the Home Secretary, and the Lord President, might each nominate a Commissioner; but we had far rather leave this to be disposed of by a Cabinet Minute, than by Act of Parliament. We are not sure that in a matter of such importance the first commissioners ought not to be named in the act. 6 As to the Inspectors, they are to be the eyes and ears of the commissioners. They are to make such enquiry, inspection, and ❝ examination in such districts, as may from time to time be assigned to them by the commissioners, and they are to report "their opinion, and the grounds thereof.' On their activity and zeal, and, above all, on their discretion, will mainly depend the good working of the measure. We think it clear, therefore, that they ought to be appointed and removed by the Commissioners. The labours of the Commissioners will be great, and their responsibility anxious, under any circumstances; but both will be much increased if they have neither the power to select their own instruments; nor the power to remove them if inefficient; nor the influence which the possession of these powers confers. The number of Inspectors, too, appears to be insufficient. If each is to have a district, they must share England and Wales. The act may direct the appointment of two Inspectors, but should enable the commissioners to appoint more with the consent of the Treasury. We now come to the Tenure by which the Commissioners are to hold. The bill, copying the former bill, enables them to hold during good behaviour; that is, for life for who has heard during this century of a great public officer holding under good behaviour dismissed? Indolence, carelessness, ill-temper, indiscretion, vanity, intolerance, altogether, do not amount to legal misbehaviour; but any one of them would make a man an incompetent, or perhaps a mischievous, Commissioner. In an unparliamentary office like this, the only real tenure, during good behaviour, is tenure during her Majesty's pleasure. No man holding under that tenure need fear removal unless he deserve it; and the consciousness that he is subject to it will prevent his deserving it. Having considered the principal provisions which are contained in the bill, we have now to notice some which we think that it ought to contain. No provision is made for the travelling expenses of the Commissioners or Inspectors. For the efficient performance of their functions, the commissioners, however, must frequently travel, and the inspectors must almost live on the road. If they are to bear these expenses out of their salaries, their interest will always be in opposition to their duty. Probably under the 9th section these expenses may be allowed to the inspectors by the Treasury. But this power does not extend to the commissioners. The best course would be to insert a clause for this purpose, resembling the 14th section of the 5 and 6 Vic. c. 84-the act creating the lunacy commissioners. All advertisements, appointments, and other instruments made in pursuance of the act, ought to be exempted from duty,-following the precedent of the poor-law amendment act, (4 and 5 W. IV. cap. 76, sec. 86.) These, however, are trifling omissions. But there is one of considerable importance. We have seen that, by the 53d section, the Commissioners are to report what charities have ceased to be beneficial, or have become injurious. But there the bill stops. It neither authorizes the Commissioners nor the Court of Chancery to act on such a Report. By the 19th section, indeed, when a charitable fund under £100 a-year cannot be applied according to the intention of the donor, the Commissioners may direct its application to any charitable purpose whatever. But if it can be applied, however mischievous the application may be, they can do nothing but report. We are no advocates for any undue extension of the powers of the Commissioners; but there can be little doubt, we think, that the bill ought at least to enable them to recommend, in all such cases, a new scheme for the application of the fund, and perhaps to enable the Court of Chancery to act on their recommendation. To direct abuses to be reported, and yet leave them unsusceptible of reform, is worse than a half-measure. ART. IX.-The Collected Writings of WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. With many Additions. Two volumes, large 8vo. London: 1846. THERE is perhaps no writer of the present age, taken in the whole, more likely to survive and make acquaintance with another, than Mr Landor. This is often the reward of those writings which, on their first appearance, have neither been much depreciated nor much extolled; for the right balance is as apt to be lost by a sudden jerk upward, as by a stone thrown in. Mr Landor has avoided both extremes. Wisdom may have feared him as something dangerous; but Folly has avoided him as something incomprehensible. He has been left to take his solitary way; and has omitted no privilege of singularity that belonged to it. With one hand resting near the heart of Southey, he has clenched and thrust the other into the face of every God of Southey's idolatry. A writer of the extremest liberal opinions, he has desired not to be confounded' with the Coxes and Foxes of the age.' A declared Republican, though the representative of an ancient family, he has rebuked the drunken democracy of Mr William Pitt.' But of this wayward spirit, we are bound to add, there has been much less of late than of old. The violent and capricious will has not so often run before, and committed, the masculine intellect. The phrases just now quoted, are not even preserved in this edition. And other evidence is here, of abated bitterness, of enlarged and manly tenderness, and of wisdom as generous and cordial as it is lofty and pure. In these volumes are collected, for the first time, the entire works of this remarkable writer. Here are his Poems, both English and Latin, with many large and striking additions, (we may instance the series of Hellenics ;) his Tragedies, his Dramatic Fragments, and a new five-act Play on the Siege of Ancona, (all which he modestly classes under the general title of Acts and Scenes,-describing them as Imaginary Conversations in Metre ;) and his Examination of Shakespeare; his Pentameron; and his Pericles and Aspasia ;-bearing, every one of them, the marks of thorough revision, and enriched, especially the Pericles, with innumerable new passages quite worthy of the old. Of these last-named books it is not our present intention to speak; but we cannot pass them in even this recital, without remarking that in them, more perhaps than in any other of his writings, (and eminently in the exquisite Pentameron, where Petrarch and Boccaccio converse; and in the Shakespeare Examination, where the great poet speaks as the author of Hamlet and Othello might have spoken ;) Mr Landor's genius has thoroughly subjected itself to those of his characters. Every word they utter in these books, issues out a sense of the beauty and wisdom with which they had affected the writer's soul; nor do we feel surer of the destiny of any existing works with future generations. What remains to be named of the Collection, are those famous Dialogues with which Mr Landor's name is most extensively associated. It is twenty-two years since the Imaginary Conversations were noticed in this Journal. They consisted then of thirty-six Dialogues, and were comprised in two volumes. In the course of the five following years, the volumes increased to five, and the Dialogues to eighty-two. In number, without naming their enlargement and increase in other respects, the latter now amount to a hundred and twenty-five, and occupy nearly a volume and a half of this general edition; which, we may remark, is beautifully, clearly, and not too minutely printed, in the form of double columns. Certainly no other book of Conversations, with which we are acquainted, can be said in all respects to compare with them. We do not speak merely of the Dialogues' between Theron and Aspasio, Hylas and Philonous, and other ideal personages ;-in which writers, great and small, the Berkeleys and the Harveys, have recommended their respective systems of Metaphysics or Divinity;—but of Dialogues attributed to real people, such as those by Langhorne, Lyttelton, and Hurd. Of these, Langhorne's little book, in which Charles the Second and his Wits are speakers, is perhaps the liveliest and most in character. Lyttelton is also amusing, and not uncharacteristic. Hurd, though occasionally warmed by recollections of poetry and romance, is on the whole politely cold. If we went abroad to pursue the comparison, we should say, passing Fénélon, Paschal, and Fontenelle, that perhaps the best Dialogues for character, written up to the time of Mr Landor, since the time of their great European inventor, Plato, (for the Indians were before the Greek in the form, as well as in much of the matter of his reasoning,) are those in the celebrated Cortegiano of Raffaelle's friend, Castiglione; in which Bembo and others are the speakers. There is a good old English translation, with the title of the Court-Gentleman. When this Journal formerly spoke of the Imaginary Conversations, it was pointed out how exquisite the discrimination of character was in many cases, and how strange and wilful the indifference to it in others: How imperfect the dramatic apprecia |