sing and re-crossing the Atlantic (he was a very bad sailor) in a
sailing ship, in winter, and in time of war, to fetch his bride. Nor had
he long been married before he took the celebrated country house of
Craigcrook, where, for more than thirty years, he spent all the spare
time of an exceedingly happy life. Then we may jump some fifteen years
to the great Reform contest which gave Jeffrey the reward, such as it
was, of his long constancy in opposition, in the shape of the Lord
Advocateship. He was not always successful as a debater; but he had the
opportunity of adding a third reputation to those which he had already
gained in literature and in law. He had the historical duty of piloting
the Scotch Reform Bill through Parliament, and he had the, in his case,
pleasurable and honourable pain of taking the official steps in
Parliament necessitated by the mental incapacity of Sir Walter Scott.
Early in 1834 he was provided for by promotion to the Scotch Bench. He
had five years before, on being appointed Dean of Faculty, given up the
editorship of the _Review_, which he had held for seven-and-twenty
years. For some time previous to his resignation, his own contributions,
which in early days had run up to half a dozen in a single number, and
had averaged two or three for more than twenty years, had become more
and more intermittent. After that resignation he contributed two or
three articles at very long intervals. He was perhaps more lavish of
advice than he need have been to Macvey Napier, and after Napier's death
it passed into the control of his own son-in-law, Empson. Long, however,
before the reins passed from his own hands, a rival more galling if less
formidable than the _Quarterly_ had arisen in the shape of _Blackwood's
Magazine_. The more ponderous and stately publication always affected,
to some extent, to ignore its audacious junior; and Lord Cockburn
(perhaps instigated not more by prudence than by regard for Lockhart and
Wilson, both of whom were living) passes over in complete silence the
establishment of the magazine, the publication of the Chaldee
manuscript, and the still greater hubbub which arose around the supposed
attacks of Lockhart on Playfair, and the _Edinburgh_ reviewers
generally, with regard to their religious opinions. How deep the
feelings really excited were, may be seen from a letter of Jeffrey's,
published, not by Cockburn, but by Wilson's daughter in the life of her
father. In this Jeffre