and of criticism by the introduction of party-spirit)—­while Lord Byron is called to a grave moral reckoning.  There is, however, little of the cant of morality in the Edinburgh Review—­and it is quite free from that of religion.  It keeps to its province, which is that of criticism—­or to the discussion of debateable topics, and acquits itself in both with force and spirit.  This is the natural consequence of the composition of the two Reviews.  The one appeals with confidence to its own intellectual resources, to the variety of its topics, to its very character and existence as a literary journal, which depend on its setting up no pretensions but those which it can make good by the talent and ingenuity it can bring to bear upon them—­it therefore meets every question, whether of a lighter or a graver cast, on its own grounds; the other blinks every question, for it has no confidence but in the powers that be—­shuts itself up in the impregnable fastnesses of authority, or makes some paltry, cowardly attack (under cover of anonymous criticism) on individuals, or dispenses its award of merit entirely according to the rank or party of the writer.  The faults of the Edinburgh Review arise out of the very consciousness of critical and logical power.  In political questions it relies too little on the broad basis of liberty and humanity, enters too much into mere dry formalities, deals too often in moot-points, and descends too readily to a sort of special-pleading in defence of home truths and natural feelings:  in matters of taste and criticism, its tone is sometimes apt to be supercilious and cavalier from its habitual faculty of analysing defects and beauties according to given principles, from its quickness in deciding, from its facility in illustrating its views.  In this latter department it has been guilty of some capital oversights.  The chief was in its treatment of the Lyrical Ballads at their first appearance—­not in its ridicule of their puerilities, but in its denial of their beauties, because they were included in no school, because they were reducible to no previous standard or theory of poetical excellence.  For this, however, considerable reparation has been made by the prompt and liberal spirit that has been shewn in bringing forward other examples of poetical genius.  Its capital sin, in a doctrinal point of view, has been (we shrewdly suspect) in the uniform and unqualified encouragement it has bestowed on Mr. Malthus’s system.  We do not mean that the Edinburgh Review was to join in the general hue and cry that was raised against this writer; but while it asserted the soundness of many of his arguments, and yielded its assent to the truths he has divulged, it need not have screened his errors.  On this subject alone we think the Quarterly has the advantage of it.  But as the Quarterly Review is a mere mass and tissue of prejudices on all subjects, it is the foible of the Edinburgh Review to affect a somewhat fastidious air of superiority over prejudices of all kinds, and a determination not to indulge in any of the amiable weaknesses of our nature, except as it can give a reason for the faith that is in it.  Luckily, it is seldom reduced to this alternative:  “reasons” are with it “as plenty as blackberries!”