THE Whigs are still lords of public opinion in Edinburgh, to an extent of which, before visiting Scotland, I could scarcely have formed any adequate notion. The Tories have all the political power, and have long had it; but from whatever cause (and I profess myself incapable of assigning any rational one), their power does not appear to have given them command of much sway over the general opinions, even of those that think with them regarding political matters. I confess that I, born and bred a Tory, and accustomed, in my part of the country, to see the principles I reverence supported by at least an equal share of talent, was not a little mortified by certain indications of faint-heartedness and absurd diffidence of themselves among the Scottish Tories, which met my eye ere I had been long in Edinburgh.

I am inclined, upon the whole, to attribute a good deal of this to the influence of the Edinburgh Review. That work was set on foot, and conducted for some years, with an astonishing degree of spirit; and although it never did anything to entitle it to much respect, either from English Scholars, or English Patriots, or English Christians, I can easily see how such a work, written by Scotchmen, and filled with all the national prejudices of Scotchmen, should have exerted a wonderful authority over the intellect of the city in which it was published. Very many of its faults (I mean those of the less serious kind—such as its faults in regard to literature and taste), were all adapted for the meridian of Scotland; and for a time, certainly the whole country was inclined to take a pride in its success. The prestige of the Edinburgh Review has now most undoubtedly vanished even there; but there still remains a shadow of it sufficient to invest its old conductors with a kind of authority over the minds of those, who once were disposed to consider them as infallible judges, de omnibus rebus et quibusdam aliis; and then the high eminence of some of these gentlemen in their profession of the law, gives them another kind of hold upon the great body of persons following that profession, which is every thing in Edinburgh; because the influence of those who follow it is not neutralized to any considerable extent by the presence of any great aristocracy, or of any great intellectual cultivation out of themselves.