world--in his
impatience of the smallest error or injustice, he would have sacrificed
himself and the existing generation (a holocaust) to his devotion to the
right cause. But when he once believed after many staggering doubts and
painful struggles, that this was no longer possible, when his chimeras
and golden dreams of human perfectibility vanished from him, he turned
suddenly round, and maintained that "whatever _is_, is right." Mr.
Southey has not fortitude of mind, has not patience to think that evil
is inseparable from the nature of things. His irritable sense rejects
the alternative altogether, as a weak stomach rejects the food that
is distasteful to it. He hopes on against hope, he believes in all
unbelief. He must either repose on actual or on imaginary good. He
missed his way in _Utopia_, he has found it at Old Sarum--

"His generous _ardour_ no cold medium knows:"

his eagerness admits of no doubt or delay. He is ever in extremes, and
ever in the wrong!

The reason is, that not truth, but self-opinion is the ruling principle
of Mr. Southey's mind. The charm of novelty, the applause of the
multitude, the sanction of power, the venerableness of antiquity, pique,
resentment, the spirit of contradiction have a good deal to do with his
preferences. His inquiries are partial and hasty: his conclusions raw
and unconcocted, and with a considerable infusion of whim and humour and
a monkish spleen. His opinions are like certain wines, warm and generous
when new; but they will not keep, and soon turn flat or sour, for want
of a stronger spirit of the understanding to give a body to them. He
wooed Liberty as a youthful lover, but it was perhaps more as a mistress
than a bride; and he has since wedded with an elderly and not very
reputable lady, called Legitimacy. _A wilful man_, according to the
Scotch proverb, _must have his way_. If it were the cause to which he
was sincerely attached, he would adhere to it through good report and
evil report; but it is himself to whom he does homage, and would have
others do so; and he therefore changes sides, rather than submit to
apparent defeat or temporary mortification. Abstract principle has
no rule but the understood distinction between right and wrong; the
indulgence of vanity, of caprice, or prejudice is regulated by the
convenience or bias of the moment. The temperament of our politician's
mind is poetical, not philosophical. He is more the creature of impulse,
than he