I am heartily glad that the QR. is in your hands,

– for many reasons public & private. That it will injure your professional interests I do not think, & I am quite sure that in rescuing a part of your time from professional pursuits, it will promote your better interests, & enable you to exercise a wider & much more beneficial influence! That Journal will now become what it ought to be. I am not so hasty as to suppose a thorough reform can be immediately effected: but we shall at least make peace with America, without delay, & have no more such papers as those upon Keats & Maturin.

You will be able to avoid gross offences at first, – & gradually to bring it in all its departments to something like consistency, & to your own standard.

I must get my brother to bring you acquainted with Henry Taylor, – for his sake. It will do him good, & he is worth all that can be done for him. That paper upon Landors Conversations

is his – I have not seen it (for Murray forgot to send me the last number,) – but I know from himself that it was originally written in a very reprehensible spirit, & made ten times worse by Gifford, – who struck out all the qualifying & redeeming parts – more suo.

– But you will form a better opinion of Henry Taylor if you will look at some memoirs of Charles Featherstonehaugh in one of the London Magazine for one of the last spring months.

You will see there not only how he writes – but some thing very like his own history.

I must tell you more of him. At present he is in the Colonial Office, – & in a fair way, from his talents, of becoming one day a very considerable person. In fact whoever may be the mouth piece for that office, what is in that mouth will come from his head. – He is a fine, generous, noble, creature. But he wants religion: – more by his misfortune than his fault; for he was not trained up in the way that he should go.

His father (a most extraordinary man for acquirements, talents, & strength of character) is the second of three brothers: The elder of whom, William Taylor was a Northumberland Laird, born to a good property, – I think the estate was let for 1200 a year.

This head of the family was ruined by the French Revolution, – in a manner most honourable to himself, – & which you will know how to appreciate, tho it is hardly to be expected that any man who did not live in those stirring times, can tell what the elevation of mind was which they produced. He thought the law of primogeniture unjust, & therefore – without dividing the estate, gave his brothers their equal share of the its worth, – & thus embarrassed himself for life – without benefitting them.

The younger brother squandered his portion, – & with it his character, – so that he has disappeared from society.<George> The second (Henry T’s father) was afflicted with a complaint in the eyes, just at the time when he ought to have gone to college; – & during those years his education was finished (I will venture to say better than it would then have been done at college) by William, – who read to him, while he sate in darkness. These two brothers farmed together in the county of Durham, & were well known as some of the most scientific farmers in England. George married & was early left a widower with three sons.

He educated them himself, – & I will venture to say that no family could produce three brothers of greater promise. The two elder grew up & were both in a public office,

when the one was seized with typhus, – the other caught it in nursing him, – & the father arrived in London – to find the one dead, – & witness the death of the other.

Lord of his own resolves, of his own heart absolute master: –

His boys were bred up in the highest principles of honour & integrity – but for religion they were left at large; – the disease of the family was a dislike to existing establishments. I suppose if the <father> had called himself any thing it would have been an Unitarian. Time & affliction have wrought a great change in him. He married again about three or four years ago,

– the attachment had been of long standing, – but the marriage was delayed till he <should> have fulfilled his duty to his children: – nor did it take place till after the loss of the two eldest. – My brother will tell you more of him, – & what I have said will induce you to regard his son with some interest. But the young man is a most promising person, with the heart & mind of a poet.

If you would like an article (& it would be very useful at this time) upon the quiet, real – substantial reforms which are going on in the North of Germany, Henry Robinson can supply you with one. I think you know him: but if you do not, he may be applied to thro Gooch, – or thro me.

A word or two now concerning my own contributions. I have begun Bayard for your first number;

& am planning (as I mentioned in my last) a paper on the Church-Societies.

You shall have an article regularly for every number for some time to come, & if you desire, a shorter paper also upon any book of travels,

– it is but to say so. And it will be well to make a good shew of strength at your commencement. Tell Murray to send me the new edition of Baxters Works, that I may write a life of him for you.

This I shall enjoy doing. I have his own Life & times,

– & I have also as most useful auxiliaries Ormes rascally life of Owen (upon whom (i.e. Orme) the lash shall be well laid.)

Jacksons life of Goodwin,

& that rich repository of ill arranged materials Nichols’s Arminianism & Calvinism compared.

I have also cart loads of Quakerism, so that I want only Baxters own works

Another subject that I can undertake is the present state of Portugal.

I am desired to say that Sara thanks you for your letter, – & that M^rs C. will communicate your message to Hartley.

– I had nearly forgotten to say that I shall thankfully receive your Blackstone