come up to his aid, trips up your heels, and lays you sprawling, and pummels you when down. (This was not our substantial idea' of Cribb.) "He pays off both scores of old friendship and newly-acquired enmity in a breath !-in one perpetual volley,-one raking fire of arrowsleet shot, from his pen!" (This is not "hot and cold.") "However his own reputation or the cause may suffer, he cares not one pin about that! He cannot bear success of any kind; and if any principle were likely to become popular, would turn round against it to shew his power in shouldering it on one side! He naturally (being a genuine John Bull,) butts at all obstacles." Were it not for his pugnacious disposition, the high towers and rotten places of the world would fall before the battering-RAM of his hard-headed reasoning! He cannot agree to any thing established. His principle is repulsion,-his nature contradiction, (Pleasant man !)-An Ishmaelite without a fellow. He is always playing at Hunt the slipper' in politics !" "His gallantry wants principle." "He changes his opinions as he does his friends, and much on the same account. He has no comfort in fixed principles!" "He runs a question down, (he is a greyhound here,) worries, and kills it," and "this he calls sport royal, which he thinks as good as cudgel-playing, or singlestick, or any thing else that has life in it! (oh, lord! oh, lord!) He likes the cut and thrust, (a swordsman,) the falls, (wrestler, too!) bruises, and dry blows of an argument."-Here is "wit at several weapons," or I never saw it. "I might say Mr. Cobbett is an honest man, with a total want of principle! I mean, he is in downright earnest in what he says— in the part he takes at the time,-but, in taking that part, he is led entirely by headstrong obstinacy, caprice, novelty, pique, or personal motive of some sort, and not by a steadfast regard for truth!" "His understanding is the dupe and slave of his momentary, violent, and irritable humours!" "His conscience is at the mercy of the first provocation he receives, of the first whim he takes in his head." "Whatever he finds out is his own, and he only knows what he finds out. He is in the constant hurry and fever of gestation!" "What I have written," said Paine," I have written," (prodigious !") Not so, Mr. Cobbett,-what he has written, is no rule to him what he is to write. What outrageous inconsistency! Headstrong fickleness! Understood want of all rule and method!! He blesses himself, (pious man,) from all ties and shackles upon his understanding,-he has mortgages on his brain. He takes both sides of a question, and maintains one as steadily as the other. Wherever he is, there is the strength of abuse! He is not like a man in danger of being bedridden in his faculties. An argument does not stop to stagnate and muddle in his brain,—his ideas are served up like PANCAKES, hot and hot! "Fresh theories give him fresh courage, he is like a young and lusty bridegroom, that divorces a favourite speculation every morning, and marries, a new one every night. He is not wedded to his opinions,-not he,—there is not one Mrs. Cobbett among all his opinions!! He makes the most of the last thought,-seizes fast hold of it,-rumples it about in all directions with rough, strong hands, has his wicked will of it, takes a surfeit, and then throws it away!!! (Happy, thrice happy, Cobbett, in having such a delicate eulogist as Mr. Hazlitt.) Changing his opinions is not so wonderful,-what is more remarkable is, his facility of forgetting old ones. He does not pretend to consistency, and cuts a friend or principle with decided indifference. It is a hollow thing. The only time he grew romantic was in bringing over the relics of Thomas Paine from America. His admiration is short-lived,-his contempt only is rooted, and his resentment lasting! He has an ill habit of prophecying. The art of prophecying does not suit his style. He is great in attack-not in defence, he cannot fight an uphill battle. He will not bear the least punishing, (How like Cribb!) If any one turn upon him, (which few people like to do,) he immediately turns tail, (Cribb again.) He must lay on all the blows and take none, he is bullying and cowardly! (oh, Cribb!) A BIG BEN in politics, who will fall foul upon others, and crush them by his weight, but is not prepared for resistance, and is soon staggered by a few smart blows. Whenever he has been set upon, he has shrunk out of the controversy. The Edinburgh Review made what is called a dead set at him some years ago, and he has borne a great grudge to it ever since, which he hates worse than the Quarterly. I cannot say I do." We have then in a note: "Mr. Cobbett speaks as well as he writes, (for) the only time I saw him he had on a scarlet broadcloth waistcoat, with the flaps of the pockets hanging down.' Here, reader, ends this " Fancy sketch" of Mr. Cobbett by Mr. Hazlitt, which for delicacy of touch, chaste colouring and clearness, we despair of ever seeing equalled. The keeping is admirable, the chiaro-scuro inimitable, the grouping beyond praise. How delightfully the pugilist, the singlestick fighter, the wrestler, the sword and rapier-man, the bull, the ram, and the bridegroom harmonize. Add to these the mutton-fist, the turnips that look green in prose, the pancakes hot and hot, and if you be not pleased, yours, reader, is indeed a most fastidious taste. THE REFLECTOR. No. II. CITIZEN WHETSTONE. We intended to have given only one portrait this month, but cannot resist the importunity of our correspondent, Mr. Daniel Doggrel, whose communication we subjoin. We must express our surprise, however, at his having ascertained our intention to erect what he is pleased to call a Temple to Fame. SIR, To the Editor of the Brighton Magazine. Learning that you are about to erect a temple to Fame, and to decorate it with the portraits of the Worthies of the Metropolis, I trust you will afford room amongst your columns for that pillar of the constitution, Mr. which I herewith offer for your acceptance. There being nothing base about him, I need not suggest to what order he belongs. By profession a compositor, Mr. should rank amongst the Corinthians, did I not know his aversion from all aristocratic situations. I hope you will admire my capital style, which, I further trust, will be found equally admirable as the lengthy, elaborate, florid gothic, of his friend the venerable Major, Yours, dear Sir, very sincerely, Oh, Muse! pray leave me not alone, I wish to sing of William But, mark-the intention I disown, Who labours to support the throne, DANIEL DOGGREL. With pride's inflation who's not blown? All these can't in his face be thrown, They can't apply to If led astray by libels strewn Before them daily,-not by * )? *Messrs. Lambton and Waddington in our next Number. D. D. DECLINE OF NATIONS. Ir is a belief sanctioned by history, that when nations have risen to a great degree of wealth and prosperity, they do not long remain in that state, but begin to decline. All the nations of antiquity, China excepted, have shewn us that this is the natural tendency of things; and, therefore, speculators on futurity have predicted the same fate as awaiting the British empire. Without contesting, or attempting to contest, a theory that is supported by the testimony of history, there is, however, a very good reason for doubting its application with respect to the British islands. All the examples that we have in support of this theory are taken from nations in warm climates, where people can live with little exertion, where nature does much and industry but little. Egypt, Greece, Italy and Persia, once so grat, are all of this description. We have no example of the decline of a northern nation. None of the examples, therefore, apply to Britain, which does not admit of that degraded, indolent race existing, that now people those once-great countries on southern latitudes. This is a most happy consideration for those who wish well to their posterity, and at once takes away the basis from the arguments, the predictions, and the conclusions of those who call out that Britain has arrived at the zenith of her prosperity, and is now beginning to decline. Mr. Burke, one of the most profound and ingenious writers that modern times have produced, in treating of this important subject, says— "I am not quite of the mind of those speculators who seem "assured that necessarily, and by the constitution of things, 66 "all states have the same periods of infancy, manhood and de"crepitude, that are found in the individuals who compose them. "The objects which are attempted to be forced into analogy are "not founded in the same classes of existence. Individuals are physical beings, subject to laws universal and invariable; but "commonwealths are not physical, but moral essences; they are "artificial combinations, and in their proximate efficient cause, "the arbitrary productious of the human mind. We are not yet "acquainted with the laws which necessarily influence that kind "of work made by that kind of agent. 66 "There is not, as in the physical order, a distinct cause by "which any of those fabrics must necessarily grow, flourish and "decay; nor, indeed, in my opinion, does the moral world pro"duce any thing more determinate on that subject than what may serve as an amusement (liberal, indeed, and ingenious, "but still only an amusement) for speculative men. I doubt "whether the history of mankind is yet complete enough, if ever it can be so, to furnish grounds for a sure theory on the "internal causes which naturally affect the fortune of a state. I "am far from denying the operation of such causes, but they "are infinitely uncertain, and much more obscure, and much more difficult to trace, than 'the foreign causes that tend to "depress, and sometimes overwhelm, society." 66 66 Mr. Burke, whose acuteness and political sagacity cannot be called in question, appears clearly to doubt the theory adopted generally of the rise and fall of nations; but even to his penetrating mind it never occurred, that the examples given in support of the theory, of the truth of which he doubts, were all found in nations where the people lived on the southern part of the temperate zone; and that, therefore, even if the conclusion had been right with respect to them, it would not have applied to nations situated in a colder and more northerly latitude, such as that of Britain. It may perhaps be said, that Flanders, Holland, and Denmark, are nations in a northern situation, and that they have declined: and in appearance they have done so, but not in reality; for what appears in them decline, is not a real but a comparative decline. Other nations have risen, while they have remained stationary, and therefore have had the appearance of declining. It is true that Bruges, Ghent, Antwerp, Lubeck, and others the Hanseatic towns, have individually declined, from commerce having taken a different direction since the discovery of America, and the passage to the East Indies by the Cape of Good Hope; but the countries in which they are situated are rich and well cultivated, and the people happy. That portion of ephemeral importance which they acquired from particular circumstances, is gone, but they are not countries in a state of decay or desolation, like Egypt, Syria, Greece or |