AQUILIUS.--They may insist, for they are an obstinate race. What

moral, or what religion, is inculcated in this--"A brute of a

husband"--selfish, a tyrant, a gourmandiser--ill-treats an amiable

wife. He scorns patient virtue, and is an infidel. He must be

_converted_--that is the religious object. He must be metamorphosed,

not after Ovid's fashion--there is the moral object. How is it done,

do you remember? If not, you will never guess. By what latent virtue

is he to be reclaimed? Virtue, indeed! would the indignant Puritan

proclaim--what virtue is in poor human rags? He shall be reclaimed

through his vice! Indeed, Madam Puritan, that is a novelty. So,

however, it is. The man is a glutton. On his conversion-day he is

gifted with an extraordinary appetite and discriminating taste. It is

a pie--yes, _a pie_, that converts him to piety.

CURATE.--Oh, oh, oh! you are mocking surely. A pie!

AQUILIUS.--Yes, a pie. It is remarkably good--quite delicious. It puts

the brute in good humour with himself and every body, and he grunts

applause, and promises his favour to the cook. At this stage--this

incipient stage of his conversion--a pathetic butler bursts into

tears, and affectionately sobs out the beautiful truth. The cook for

the occasion was his mistress--the ill-treated wife. He becomes a

perfect Christian on the instant; and with the conversion comes the

moral metamorphosis, and the "brute of a husband" is, on a sudden, the

best and most religious of men. Now, in what respect, Mr Curate, would

you bid any of your flock to go and do likewise? Setting aside as

worthless, then, to say the best of it, the moral, the set-up primness

of the whole affair is so odious, that you long even for a little

wickedness to set nature upon nature's legs, that we may at least

acknowledge the presence of humanity.

CURATE.--We must ask Lydia to defend the writers of her sex. You are

severe upon poor Hannah, who would have been good enough in spite of

her extreme vanity, if the clique had let her alone. Her _Coelebs_ was

to be the novel _par excellence_, the model tale,--and with no little

contempt for all others.

AQUILIUS.--Your Lydia has too much good sense, and too much plain

honesty, to defend any thing wrong because it is found in woman. The

utmost you can expect from her is not to object to the saintly Hannah,

as was the charity of the Wolverhampton audience, when her play was

acted there. Master Betty was hissed, and this impromptu was uttered,

during a lull, from the gallery--

"The age of childhood now is o'er,

Of folly and of whim--

We dont object to Hannah More,

But we'll _ha-na-more_ of him."

CURATE.--Yet she is supposed to have done some good by her minor tales

for the poor. Possibly she did--the object was at all events good.

AQUILIUS.--And here she was the precursor to a worse set, so bad that

it can hardly be said of them that they are "daturos progeniem

vitiosiorem."

CURATE.--Yes, even wickedly religious. The scheme was, that the poor

should teach the rich, and the infant the man. I remember reading some

of these tales of Mrs Sherwood's. Is there not one where a little

urchin, not long after he is able to run alone, is sent out on an

errand,--an unconverted child,--commits the very natural sin of

idleness, loiters by the way, and lies under a tree. There, you will

suppose, sleep comes upon him--no, but grace. He rises a converted

man-child, an infant apostle, goes home and converts his wicked

grandfather, or great-grandfather. "Ex uno disce omnes." Great was the

outcry against Maria Edgeworth's children's tales, because they did

not inculcate religious dogmas. This was a great compliment to her

genius, for it showed that every sect would have wished her theirs.

She wisely left the catechism to fathers, mothers, and nurses, and

preferred leaving to the parson of each parish the prerogative of

sermonising.

AQUILIUS.--Some of you take your prerogative as a sanitary

prescription, and sweeten your own tempers by throwing off their

acerbities, _ad libitum_, one day in the week; abusing in very

unmeasured terms all mankind, and their own congregation in

particular--indeed, often in language that, used on week days, and by

any other people, would be looked upon as nearly akin to what is

called "cursing and swearing." So do extremes sometimes meet. A little

thunder clears the air wonderfully; the _lightning may_ not always be

evident.

CURATE.--All writers, especially novelists and reviewers, assume this

privilege of bitterness, without the restriction to one day out of

seven; hence, to say nothing of the better motives in the other case,

they are more practised in acerbity than amiability. Your medicine

becomes the habit, not the cure. We must have civil tongues the

greater part of our lives. Your literary satirist uses the drunkard's

remonstrance--

"Which is the properest day to drink--

Saturday, Sunday, Monday?

Each is the properest day, I think;

Why should you name but one day?"

AQUILIUS.--But to return to our subject. Novels are not objected to as

they were; now that every sect in politics and religion have found

their efficacy as a means, the form is adopted by all. And with a more

vigorous health do each embody their principle. The sickly

sentimentality school is sponged out--or nearly so. The novel now

really represents the mind of a country in all its phases, and, if not

the only, is nearly the best of its literature. It assumes to teach as

well as to amuse. I could wish that, in their course down the stream

of time, it had not taken the drama by the neck, and held it under

water to the drowning.

CURATE.--You are wrong. The novel has not drowned the drama. It is the

goody, the Puritan school, has done the work, and will, not drown, but

suffocate, the noble art that gave us Shakspeare, by stopping up all

avenues and entrance to the theatres--having first filled the inside

with brimstone, or at least cautioned the world that the smell of

brimstone will never quit those who enter. In discussing the subject,

however, I would class the play and the novel together, under "works

of fiction." Why, by the way, did the self-styled religious world that

set up a crusade against novelists--and "fiction-mongers"--show such

peculiar favour to John Bunyan, and his _Pilgrim's Progress_--the most

daring fiction? I believe that very imaginative, nay, very powerful

work, has gone through more editions than any other in our language: a

proof at least that there is something innate in us all,--a natural

power of curiosity to see and hear more than actual life presents to

us--that sends all, from infancy to age, in every stage of life,

either openly or secretly, to the reading tales of fiction. We all

like to see Nature herself with a difference; and, loving "to hold the

mirror up to nature," we prefer that the glass should be coloured, or

at least a shade deeper, and love the image more than the thing.

AQUILIUS.--Yes; and we indulge in a double and seeming contrary

propensity--excitement and repose. We are safe in the storm--look out

"from our loopholes of retreat," as Cowper calls them, on the busy

world--and in our search after that equally evasive philosopher's

stone, the "~gnothi seauton~," like to squint at our deformities in

private, and, by seeing them in other folks, we learn our faults by

deputy.

CURATE.--And what a wonderful and wisely-given instinct is there in us

all, that we may learn to the utmost in one short life--an instinct by

which we recognise as nature, as belonging strictly to ourselves, what

we have never seen or experienced, and have only portrayed to us in

works of fiction. All people speak of the extensive range of

Shakspeare's genius--that he appears to have been conversant with

every mode of life, with the sentiments and language appropriate to

each--that he is at once king, courtier, citizen, and clown; yet what

do those who so admire him for this universality know themselves, but

through him, of all these phases of life? We recognise them by an

instinct, that enters readily into the possibilities of all nature

which is akin to us; and if this be so, the busiest man who is no

reader, may, in his walk through life, see much more of mankind than

the reader, but know far less. Who teaches to read puts but the key of

knowledge into the scholar's hand. It was well said by Aristophanes,

"Masters for children, poets for men."

AQUILIUS.--True; and if all literary fiction could be withdrawn and

forgotten, and its renovation prohibited, the greater part of us would

be dolts, and, what is worse, unfeeling, ungenerous, and under the

debasing dominion of the selfishness of simple reason. It has always

appeared to me that those who cautiously keep novels from young people

mistake the nature of mind, thinking it only intellect, and would

cultivate the understanding alone. Imagination they look upon as an

_ignis fatuus_, to be extinguished if possible--an _ignis fatuus_

arising out of a quagmire, and leading astray into one. There is

nothing good comes from the intellect alone. The inventive faculty is

compound, in which imagination does the most work; the intellectual

portion selects and decides, but collects not the materials. All true

sentiment, all noble, all tender feeling, comes not of the

understanding, but of that mind--or heart, if we so please to call

it--which imagination raises, educates, and perfects. Even feelings

are to be made--are much the result of education. The wildest romances

will, in this respect, teach nothing wrong. If they create a world

somewhat unlike the daily visible, they create another, which is a

reality to the possessor, to the romantic, from which he can extract

much that is practical, though it may seem not so; for from hence may

spring noble impulses, generosity and fortitude. It is not true that

such reading enervates the mind: I firmly believe it strengthens it in

every respect, and fits it for every action, by unchaining it from a

lower and cowardly caution. Who ever read a romance that inculcated

listless, shapeless idleness? It encourages action and endurance. We

have not high natures till we learn to suffer. I have noted much the

different effects troubles have upon different persons, and have seen

the unromantic drop like sheep under the rot of their calamities,

while the romantic have been buoyant, and mastered them. They have

more resources in themselves, and are not bowed down to one thought

nor limited to one feeling: in fact, they are higher beings.

CURATE.--The caution professes mainly to protect women; yet, among all

the young women whom I have been acquainted with, I should say that

the novel-readers are not only the best informed, but of the best

nature, and some capable of setting examples of a sublime

fortitude--the more sublime because shown in a secret and all-enduring

patience. Who are they that will sit by the bed-side of the sick day

and night, suffer privation, poverty, even undeserved disgrace, and

shrink not from the self-imposed duty, but those very young women in

whom the understanding and imagination have been equally cultivated,

so as to render the feelings acute and impulsive?--and these are

novel-readers. Love, it is said, is the only subject all novels are

constructed upon; and such reading encourages extravagant thoughts,

and gives rise to dangerous feelings. And why dangerous? And why

should not such thoughts and feelings be encouraged? Are they bad? Are

they not such as are requisite for wife and mother to hold, and best

for the destiny of woman--best in every view--best if her lot be a

happy one, and far best if her lot be an ill one? For the great mark

of such an education is endurance--a power to create a high duty, and

energy and patience where both are wanted. Women never sink under any

calamity but blighted affection; and we love them not less, we admire

them not less, that they do sink then, for their heroism is in the

patience that brings and that awaits death.

AQUILIUS.--I have heard Eusebius say that he has made it a point,

wherever he goes, to recommend earnestly to all young mothers to

select no nurse for their children but such as have a good stock of

nursery tales. He has often purposed to write an essay on the subject

of the requisite education for nurses, asserting that there ought to

be colleges for training to that one purpose alone; for, as the nurse

gives the first education, the first impression, she gives the most

important. The child that is not sung to, and whose ear has not been

attentive to nursery tales, he would say, would be brought up to turn

his father and mother out of doors, and deserve, if he did not come,

to be hanged; and if such unfortunate child be a daughter, she would

live to be a slut, a slattern, a fool, and a disgrace. He had no

doubt, he said, believing that all Shakspeare's creations were

realities, that Regan and Goneril were ill nursed, and no readers; and

that Cordelia was in infancy well sung to, and being the youngest, was

set to read romances to her old and wayward father,--

"Methinks that lady is my child Cordelia!"

How full are these few words of the old father's feeling, and

reminiscent of the nursery, of songs, of tales, wherein he had seen

the growth of his "child Cordelia!" Eusebius would be eloquent upon

this subject: I cannot tell you half of what he thought and vigorously

expressed. He used to delight in getting children together and telling

them stories, and invariably began with "once upon a time," which, he

used to say, had, if any words could have, a magical charm.

CURATE.--Bad, indeed, was the change when story reading and telling

ceased to be a part of education: and what was put in its

place?--stuff that no child could understand or care about. The good

old method once abandoned, there was no end to the absurdities that

followed; and they who wrote them knew nothing about children, or what

would amuse, and, by interesting, improve them. The false system of

cramming them with knowledge, which it was impossible for them to

digest, really stopped their intellectual growth, and checked the

natural spring of their feelings. Wisdom-mongering went on upon the

"rational plan," till the wise-heads, full-grown infant pumpkins,

fatuated, empty of anything solid or digestible; and so they grew, and

grew from night to morn, and morn to night, stolid boobies, lulled

into a melancholy sleep by the monotonous hum of "Hymns in Prose."

AQUILIUS.--"Hymns in Prose!" Is not that one of Mrs Barbauld's books

for children, I have often heard mothers say, "that is so very good?"

CURATE.--Oh yes! Here it is in Lydia's library.

AQUILIUS.--Open it--any where.

CURATE.--Well, now, I do not think the information given to the child

here is quite correct in its order, for I think the parent of the

mother must be the child's grandmother. "The mother loveth her little

child; she bringeth it up on her knees; she nourisheth its body with

food."

AQUILIUS.--A very unnatural parent if she did not. It is very new

information for a child. Well, go on.

CURATE.--"She feedeth its mind with knowledge. If it is sick, she

nurseth it with tender love; she watcheth over it when asleep; she

forgetteth it not for a moment."

AQUILIUS.--A most exemplary and extraordinary mother--not a moment! Go

on.

CURATE.--"She teacheth it how to be good; she rejoiceth daily in its

growth." I do not see the connexion between the "teaching to be good"

and the growth. "But who is the parent of the mother? Who nourisheth

her with good things, and watcheth over her with tender love, and

remembereth her every moment? Whose arms are about her to guard her

from harm?"

AQUILIUS.--Stay a moment--whose arms? Why, the husband's to be sure;

which the child may have seen, and need not have been told as a

lesson.

CURATE.--"And if she is sick, who shall heal her?" Now, you would say,

the apothecary, and so would the child naturally answer; but that

would not be according to the "rational plan." The riddle is to have

a religious solution--"God is the parent of the mother; he is the

parent of all, for he created all."

AQUILIUS.--Shut the book! shut the book! or rather put it in the fire,

or one of these days one of your own babes will be so spoon-fed. So

these are hymns for children! Why, the children brought up on this

"rational plan" have set up themselves for teachers, and in a line,

too, sometimes quite beyond Mrs Barbauld's intention. I took up a book

of prayers off a goody-table the other day, written by a boy of six

years old, with a preface by himself, to the purport that his object

was to improve the thoughtless world. At the end were some verses--all

such cherub children love to "lisp in numbers." As well as I can

remember, they ran thus--they are lines on the occasion of its

father's breaking his leg, or having some accidental sickness--

"O Lord! in mercy do look down,

And heal my dear papa;

Or if it please thee not to cure,

Do comfort dear mama!"

CURATE.--Well, I don't think there is a pin to choose between the hymn

in prose and the hymn in verse, excepting that the infant versifier is

rather more intelligible. I saw the little book a month or two ago at

----. I must have called after you; for I suspect some lines in pencil

at the end were your work. Did you write these?--

"Defend me from such wretched stuff

As children write and parents puff!

Put the small hypocrites to bed,

And whip the big ones in their stead!"

AQUILIUS.--At least I will write them in Lydia's, to protect the

future. The child would have been better employed in reading Jack the

Giant-killer. But what think you of Bible stories, adopted for those

of somewhat more advanced childhood--a religious novel made out of the

history of Joseph, price eighteenpence? I picked it up at the same

house, and had permission to put it in my pocket. It is a curious

story to choose, as the writer says, "to entertain my young reader

without vitiating his mind." I mean not the genuine story, but such as

the writer promises it to be; for he says in his preface, "I am not at

all aware of having at all departed from the spirit of the text, nor

from the rules of probability. I have, indeed, ventured upon a few

conjectures and fictious possibilities, which some very grave reader

may perhaps be offended with." The author professes his object to be,

to make the Bible popular; so what the conjectures and fictious

possibilities that may offend very grave people may be, we must guess

by the object--to make it fashionable. But the recommendation to the

young on the score of love, and the "_letting down_" the Bible to the

capacities of the young, must be given in the author's own words: "The

sacred volume is fertile of subjects calculated both to please and

instruct, when let down, by proper elucidation, within the reach of

young capacities. And rather than one class of readers should want

entertainment, let me tell them, that the Bible contains many

histories of love affairs; perhaps this may tend more to recommend it

to attention than all besides which I could say." You will not,

however, conclude that I object to religious novels. It is a

legitimate mode of enforcing doctrines by lives, and showing the

pernicious effects of what is false, and the natural result of the

good.

CURATE.--And will not the authority of parables justify the adoption?

There may, it is true, be mischievous novels of the kind; but what is

there that may not be perverted to a bad use? We had at one time

irreligious and basely immoral novels; and there have been too many

such recently from the Parisian press--blasphemous, immoral,

seditious. The existence of such demands the antidote. You have, of

course, read Miss Hamilton's "Modern Philosophers?" That work was well

timed, and did its work well, so cleverly were the very passages from

Godwin and others of that school brought in juxtaposition with their

necessary results. It is a melancholy tale.

AQUILIUS.--Yes; but this quiet woman, whom, as I am told, if you had

met her in society, you would never have suspected of power and shrewd

observation, by her little pen scattered the philosophers right and

left, and their works with them. I read the other day Godwin's "St

Leon"--a most tiresome, objectless novel; the repetitions, varying

with no little ingenuity of language, of the expression of the

feelings of St Leon, are tiresome to a degree. In his _Caleb Williams_

the same thing is done; but there it agrees well with the nature of

the tale, and well represents the movements of the persecuting Erinnys

in the mind of the victim. I read it at a great disadvantage, it must

be owned, for I had just laid down that tale of singular interest, the

"Kreutzner" of Mrs H. Lee. There is a slight resemblance in some

points to Godwin's style, especially to this expression of the

feelings of the victim; but they are exactly timed to suspend the

narrative just where it ought to stay. Too rapid a succession of

events would have been out of keeping with that incessant persecution,

which tracks more perfectly, because more surely and slowly. The true

bloodhound is not fleet. Cassandra stayed her prophetic speech; but

the pause was the scent of blood, and awful was the burst that

followed. Know you the _Canterbury Tales_?

CURATE.--Oh yes; and well remember that strangely interesting and most

powerful one of "Kreutzner." I have admired how, in every tale, the

style is various and characteristic. I see, then, that you have taken

to "light reading" of late.

AQUILIUS.--It is not very easy to say what light-reading is. I once

heard a very grave person accused of light-reading, because he was

detected with the "History of a Foundling" in his hand. He replied,

"You may call it light-reading, but to me there is more solid matter

in it than in most books. I find it all substance,--full weight in the

scale of sense, common or uncommon, and will weigh down a library of

heavy works. And yet you may pleasantly enough handle it--it fits so

well, and the pressure is so convenient. You may even fancy it light

too, for it imparts a vigour as you hold it. And so you can play with

it for your health, as did the Greek king, in the Arabian tale, with

the mallet and medicinal balls which the physician Douban gave him,

with which he was lustily to exercise himself. It was all play, but

the drugs worked through it. There may be something sanatory even in

the 'History of the Foundling.' There is a light-reading which is the

heaviest of all reading: it comes with a deadly weight upon the

eyelids, and then drops like lead from your fingers,--but then,

indeed, it proves light enough in escaping." Fielding's novel is not

of this kind: my grave friend always read it once a-year, and said he

as often found new matter in it. Did you ever--indeed I ought not to

ask the question--notice Fielding's admirable English? Our best

writers have had a short vocabulary, and such was the case with

Fielding; but he is the perfect master of it. The manners he portrays

are gone by. Some of the characters it would be impossible now to

reproduce, and yet we know at a glance that they were drawn from life.

CURATE.--Comparing that novel, and indeed those of that day, with our

more modern, may we not say, that this our England is improved?

AQUILIUS.--I hope so: it is at least more refined. But there is a

question, Is not the taste above the honesty? Some say, it is a better

hypocrite. I do not venture an opinion, but take Dr Primrose's

ingenious mode of prophecy, who, in ambiguous cases, always wished it

might turn out well six months hence.

CURATE.--Now, indeed, you speak of a novel _sui generis_--that had no

prototype. It stands now unapproachable and original as the Iliad.

Yet I have often wondered by what art Goldsmith invested _such_

characters with so great interest. That in every one he put something

of himself, it has been well observed; hence the strong vitality, the

flesh and blood life of all. I believe the great charm lies in its

simpletonianism--I coin a word; admit it. There is scarcely a

character that is not more or less of the simpleton; and the more

this simpletonianism is conspicuous, the more are we delighted.

Perhaps the reader, whether justified or not, is all along under the

conviction that he has himself more common sense than any of the

company to whom he is introduced, and with whom he becomes familiar.

Simplicity runs through the whole tale--a fascinating simplicity,

distinct from, and yet in happy relation with, this simpletonianism.

The vicar is a simpleton in more things than his controversy, and is

the worthy parent of Moses of the spectacles. The eccentricity of the

baronet, the over-trust and the mis-trust of mankind, at the

different periods of his life, are of the simpletonian school; and

not the least so that act of injurious folly, the giving up his

estate to a nephew, of whom he could have known no good. Mrs Primrose

is a simpleton born and bred, and in any other hands but those of

charitable Goldsmith must have turned out an odious character, for

she has scarcely feeling, and certainly no sense. Simpletonianism

reigns, whether at the vicarage or at Farmer Flamborough's. Yet is

there not a single character in this exquisitely perfect novel that

you would in any one respect wish other than as put before you. There

is a great charm in this simpletonianism: the reader is in perfect

sympathy with the common feelings of all, yet cognisant of a

simpletonianism of which none of the _dramatis personae_ are

conscious. He thus sits, as it were, in the conclave of nature's

administrators, knows the secret that fixes characters in their

lines; and is pleased to see the strings pulled, and the figures move

according to their kind; is delighted with their perfect harmony, and

looks on with complacency and self-satisfaction, believing himself

all the while, though he may in reality be something of a simpleton,

a person of very superior sagacity. Follies that do not offend,

amuse--they are not neutral: we cheat ourselves into an idea that we

are exempt from, and are so much above them, that we can afford to

look down and laugh: we say to ourselves we are wiser. May not this

in some measure be the cause that all, whether children of small or

of bigger growth, of three feet or six, take pleasure in the jokes,

verbal and practical, of the clown Mr Merryman, and pardon the

wickedness of Punch when he so adroitly slips the rope round the neck

of the simpleton chief-justice, who trusted himself within reach of

the knave's fingers.

AQUILIUS.--Your theory is plausible; be the cause what it may, our

best authors seem to have been aware of the charm of simpletonianism.

Never was there a more perfect master of it than Shakspeare. And how

various the characters--what differences between Shallow, Slender,

Malvolio, and indeed all his troop of simpletons! None but he would

have thought of putting Falstaff in the category. But let no man boast

of his wisdom; we had laughed with him, but laugh too at him when

simpletonianised in the buck basket. The inimitable Sterne, did he not

know the value of simpletonianism, and make us love it, in the weak

and in the wise, in the Shandean philosophy and the no-philosophy of

the misapprehending gentle Uncle Toby, and the faithful Trim, taking

to himself a portion of both masters' simpletonianism? Did not Le Sage

know the value of this art?--Gil Blas retaining to the last somewhat

of the simpleton, and, as if himself unconscious, so naively relating

his failure with the Archbishop of Grenada. And have we not perfect

examples in the delicious pages of Cervantes?--the grave, the wise,

the high-minded simpletonianism of Don Quixotte; and that

contrastingly low and mother-wit kind in the credulous Sancho

Panza--ignorance made mad by contact with madness engendered of

reading? The very Rosinante that carried madness partakes of the sweet

and insane simpletonianism, and Sancho and his ass are fellows well

met, well matched.

CURATE.--As he is the cleverest actor that plays the fool, so is he

the wisest and ablest writer that portrays simpletonianism. I suppose

it is an ingredient in human nature, and that we are none of us really

exempt, but that it is kept out of sight, for the most part, and

covered by the cloak of artificial manners; and so, when it does break

out, the touch of human nature is irresistible; we in fact acknowledge

the kinship. But the nicest painting is required; the least

exaggeration turns all to caricature. Even Fielding's hand, though

under the direction of consummate genius, was occasionally too

unrestrained. His Parson Adams might have been a trifle more happily

delineated; we see its error in the after-type, Pangloss. What a

field was there for extravagance in Don Quixotte! but Cervantes had a

forbearing as well as free hand. How could people mistake the aim of

Cervantes, and pronounce him to be the Satirist of Romance? He was

himself the most exquisite romancer. His episodes are romantic in the

extreme, whether of the pastoral or more real life. Though it was not

right in Avelanda to take up his tale, it must be regretted that

Cervantes changed the plan of his story. What would the tournament

have been? Some critics have thought all the after-part inferior:

without admitting so much, he certainly wrote it in pique, and

possibly might not have concluded the tale at all, if it had not been

thus forced upon him.

AQUILIUS.--We must not omit to mention our own Addison. There is an

air of simpletonianism running through all his papers, as one

unconscious of his own wit, so perfect was he in his art; and as to

character, the simpletonianism of Sir Roger de Coverley must ever

immortalise the author--for the good eccentric Sir Roger is one of the

world's characters, that can never be put by and forgotten. What nice

touches constitute it!

CURATE.--Yes, great nicety; and how often the little too far injures!

I confess I was never so charmed with some of the characters in Sir

Walter Scott's novels, from this carrying too far. Even

simpletonianism must not intrude, as did sometimes Monkbarns and the

Dominie: the "prodigious!" and absence of mind were beyond nature.

Character should never become the author's puppets: mere eccentricity

and catch phraseology do not make simpletonianism. Smollet, too, fell

into the caricature. He sometimes told too much, and let his figures

play antics. The fool would thereby spoil his part. There must be some

repose every where, into which, as into an obscure, the mind of the

reader or spectator may look, and make conjecture--some quiet, in

which imagination may work. The reader is never satisfied, unless he

too in a certain sense is a creator; the art is, to make all his

conjectures, though seemingly his own, the actual result of the

writing before him. "Master Shallow, I owe you a thousand pounds." How

much does the mind accumulate at once, to fill up the history of those

few words! There is no need of more--all is told; while the spectator

thinks he is making out the history himself.

AQUILIUS.--It is a great fault in a very popular novel writer of the

day, that he will not give his readers credit for any imagination at

all; every character is in extreme. To one ignorant of the world, but

through books, it would appear that there is not a common middle

character in life: we are to be acquainted with the minutest

particulars, or rather peculiarities, of dress and manners. It is as

if a painter should colour each individual in his grouping, in the

most searching light. The inanimate nature must be made equally

conspicuous, and every thing exaggerated. And it is often as forced in

the expression as it is exaggerated in character. He has great powers,

great genius, overflowing with matter, yet as a writer he wants

agreeability: his satire is bitter, unnecessarily accumulated, and his

choice of odious characters offers too frequently a disgusting picture

of life.

CURATE.--The worst is, that, with a genius for investing his

characters with interest, by the events with which he links them

together, in which he has so much art, that he compels persons of most

adverse tastes to read him,--he is not a good-natured writer, and he

evidently, it might be almost said professedly, writes with a

purpose--and that I think a very mischievous one, and one in which he

is to a certain extent joined by some other writers of the day--to

decry, and bring into contempt as unfeeling, the higher classes. This

is a very vulgar as well as evil taste, and is quite unworthy the

genius of Mr Dickens. And, what is a great error in a novelist, he

gives a very false view of life as it is. There is too much of the

police-office reporter in all his works. _Dombey and Son_ is, however,

his greatest failure, as a whole. You give him credit for a deep plot

and mystery, ere you have gone far; but it turns out--nothing.

Admirable, indeed, are some things, parts and passages of wonderful

power; but the spring that should have attached them has snapped, and

they are, and ever will be, admired, only as scenes. The termination

is miserable--a poor conclusion, indeed, of such a beginning; every

thing is promised, nothing given, in conclusion. Some things are quite

out of possibility. The whole conduct of the wife is out of nature.

Such a character should have a deep cause for her conduct: she has

none but the having married a disagreeable man, out of pique, from

whom she runs away with one still more odious to herself and every

one, and assumes, not a virtue which she has not, but a vice which she

scorns, and glories in the stigma, because it wounds her husband. Such

a high and daring mind, and from the commencement so scorning

contamination, could not so degrade itself without having a stronger

purpose than the given one. The entire change of character in Dombey

is out of all nature--it is impossible; nor does the extraordinary

affection of the daughter spring from any known principle of humanity.

The very goodness of some of the accessory characters becomes

wearisome, as the vice of others is disgusting.

AQUILIUS.--After all, he is an uncomfortable writer: he puts you out

of humour with the world, perhaps with yourself, and certainly with

him as a writer. Yet let us acknowledge that he has done much good. He

should be immortalised, if only for the putting down the school

tyrannies, exposing and crushing school pretensions, and doubtless

saving many a fair intellect from withering blight and perversion. He

takes in hand fools, dolts, and knaves; but Dickens wants

simpletonianism. He gave some promise that way in his _Pickwick

Papers_, but it was not fulfilled. Turn we now to Mrs Trollope. What

say you to her _Vicar of Wrexhill_? let it have a text, and what is

it? I will not suggest a text--that is your province. I dare to say

you would easily find one.

CURATE.--Why, I think Mrs Trollope was very unfairly dealt with. The

narrative in that novel was a fair deduction from the creed of a sect;

and if it does not always produce similar consequences, it is because

men will be often better than their creeds. But that fact does not

make her comment unfit for the text, that it told; I should judge from

the abuse that has been heaped upon it--no, not upon it, but upon the

authoress. Why was it not open to her to make this answer to other

works of fiction, as she thought, inculcating evil? What Miss Hamilton

did with the philosophers, she did with the Antinomians.

AQUILIUS.--It has been the fashion to call her a coarse writer--a

vulgar writer. I see nothing of it in her best works. She takes vulgar

and coarse people to expose them as warnings, and, if possible, to

amend them. We cannot spare Mrs Trollope from our literature. I have

been told by an eye-witness that her American "camp scene" is very far

short of the truth, and that she could not give the details. He must

surely be a bit of a bigot, who would hastily pronounce that even

Greave's _Spiritual Quixotte_ is an irreligious work. There are too

many people interested in decrying the novel of so powerful a writer

as Mrs Trollope, to suffer her to be without reproach both for style

and object. I should rather object to her that she writes too

much--for she is capable, were she to bestow due time upon it, to

write something better than has yet dropped from her pen; let her give

up her fashionable novels. When I say better, yet would I except the

_Vicar of Wrexhill_: for, however unpopular with some, it places her,

as a writer, very high.

CURATE.--They who oppose themselves to any set of opinions must make

up their minds, during the present generation at least, to receive but

half their meed of praise. Was this ever proved more remarkably than

in the publication of that singular novel, _Ten Thousand a-Year_? It

is a political satire, certainly; but not only that--it has a far

wider scope; but it was sufficiently so to set all the Whigs against

it. And sore enough they were. But has there been any such novel since

the days of Fielding? And it exhibits a pathos, and tone of high

principle and personal dignity, that were out of the reach even of

Fielding. This novel, and its precursor, the _Diary of a Physician_

will--must--ever live in the standard literature of the country.

AQUILIUS.--And why not add _Now and Then_? One thing I cannot but

greatly admire in Mr Warren--he is ever alive to the dignity of his

profession. Hating law as I do, in all its courses, ways, contacts,

and consequences, and officials, from the Lord Chief-Justice to the

petty constable; and having a kind of envious dislike to the

arrogation to themselves, by lawyers, of the greater part of the great

profits and emoluments of the country; and seeing, besides, that most

men of any station and property pay, in their course of life, as much

to lawyers as in taxes, the one cried-up grievance; yet I confess that

Mr Warren has put the noble portraiture of the profession, in all its

dignity and usefulness, and in its high moral and intellectual

acquirements and actions, so vigorously before me, that I recant, and

even venerate the profession--against my will, nevertheless.

CURATE.--How touching are the early struggles with his poverty, in the

person of the young physician himself! with what fine taste and

feeling of the gentleman and the scholar are they written! Perhaps no

novel can show a more perfectly complete-in-itself character than his

Gammon, in whom is the strange interweaving of the man of taste and

sense--even, in some sense, better feeling--with the vile and low

habits of knavery.

AQUILIUS.--The author differs from most novelists in this, that he

does not make love, by which must be understood love-making or

love-pursuing, the subject, but incidental to his subject. He sets up

affection, rather, in the niche for his idolatry. Tenderness, and duty

linked with it, and made sublime by it, is with him far more than the

"passion," of love. It is life with love, rather than in the chase of

it, that we see detailed in trial and in power.

CURATE.--It is so; and yet you do not, I presume, mean to blame other

authors if they have made "the passion" their subject. We are only

bound to the author's choice, be it what it may--love, ambition, or,

any other--we must have every feature of life, every notice of action,

pictured.

AQUILIUS.--Surely: but there is a masculine virtue, seeing that the

one field has been so decidedly occupied, in making it less prominent;

and where it is thus abstinently administered, there is often a great

charm in the conciseness and unexpectedness. Let me exemplify Mr

Southey's _Doctor_. There may be, strictly speaking, or rather

speaking after the fashion of novels, but little love-making; there

are, nevertheless, two little scenes, that are the most touchingly

effective I ever remember to have read. The one is a scene between

cousins--dependent and in poverty, I think, at Salisbury; the other,

the unexpected and brief courtship of Doctor Dove himself. It is many

years since I read _The Doctor_, yet these two scenes have often been

conjured up, and vividly pictured to my imagination. I doubt if

Southey could have told a love-tale in any other way, and few in any

way would have told one so well.

CURATE.--Those who dwell too unsparingly on such scenes, and spin out

their sentimental tales, and bring the loving pair incessantly before

the eye, do for the most part the very thing which the nature of the

passion forbids. Its whole virtue is in the secrecy. And though the

writer often supposes a secrecy, by professing himself only the

narrator and not the witness, yet the reader is not quite satisfied,

seeing that he too is called in to look over the wall or behind the

hedge; and the virtue he is willing to give the lovers is at some

expense of his own, for he has a shrewd suspicion that both he and the

writer are little better than spies.

AQUILIUS.--Surely you will admit something conventional, as you would

the soliloquy on the stage--words must pass for thoughts. I find a

greater fault with those kind of novels; they work, as it were, too

much to a point, beyond which, and out of which aim, there is no

interest. These I call melodramatic novels, in which the object seems

to harrow up or continually excite the feelings, to rein the hasty

course of curiosity, working chiefly for the denouement, after which

there is nothing left but a blank. Curiosity, satisfied, cannot go

back; the threads have all been taken up that lead out of the

labyrinth--they will not conduct you back again. Novels of this kind

have greater power, at first, than any other; but, the effect for

which they labour fully produced, the effervescence is over; and

though we remember them for the delight they have given, we do not

return to them. Novels of less overstrained incident, full of a

certain _naivete_ in the description of men and manners, from which

the reader may make inferences and references out of his own

knowledge, though they will not be read by so many, will be read

oftener by the same persons. Perhaps there is more genius in the

greater part of these novels, but the writers sacrifice to effect--to

immediate effect--too much. Cooper's novels are somewhat of this kind;

and may I venture to say that the Waverley novels, as they are called,

assume a little more than one could wish of this character. Authors,

in this respect, are like painters of _effect_--they strike much at

first, but become even tiresome by the permanency of what is, in

nature, evanescent. It is too forced for the quietness under which

things are both seen and read twice. Generally, in such tales, when

the parties have got well out of their troubles, we are content to

leave them at the church door, and not to think of them afterwards.

CURATE.--Novelists, too, seem to think that, by their very title, they

are compelled to seek novelties. I have to complain of a very bad

novelty. The "lived together happy for ever after" is not only to be

omitted, but these last pages of happiness are sadly slurred over; as

if the author was mostly gifted with the malicious propensity for

accumulating trouble upon his favourites, and with reluctance

registered their escape into happiness. They do out of choice what

biographers do out of necessity, the disagreeable necessity of

biography, and for which--I confess the weakness--I dislike it. I do

not like to come to the "vanitas vanitatum"--to see the last page

contradict and make naught of the vitality, the energy, the pursuit,

the attainment of years. It is all true enough--as it is--that old men

have rheum, but, as Hamlet says, it is villanous to set it down. You

have, of course, read that powerful novel _Mount Sorel_. You remember

the last page--the one before had been "voti compos"--all were happy;

and there it should have ended. Not a bit of it. Then follows the

monumental scene. You are desired to look forward, to see them, or

rather to be told of their lying in their shrouds, with their feet,

that recently so busily walked the flowery path of the accomplishment

of their hopes, upturned and fixed in the solemn posture of death.

AQUILIUS.--Yes, I remember it well, and being rather nervous, declined

reading _Emilia Wyndham_, by the same author, because I heard it was

melancholy, and feared a similar conclusion. I agree with you with

respect to biography: and remember, when a boy, the sickening

sensation when I read at school the end of Socrates. I wish

biographers would know where to stop, and save us the sad catastrophe.

It is strange, that you must not read the life of a buffoon but you

must see his tricks come to an end, and his whole broad farce of life

suddenly drop down dead in tragedy. Whatever may be said of the

biographer in his defence, I hold the novelist inexcusable.

CURATE.--I should even prefer the drop-scene of novel happiness to

come quietly down before the accoucheur and the registrar of births

make their appearance. Why should we be told of a nursery of brats--a

whole quiverful, as Lamb says, "shot out" upon you? It is better to

take these things for granted. Doubtless it is as true, that the happy

couple will occasionally suffer--she from nerves, and he under

dyspepsia; but we do not see such matters, nor ought they to be

brought forward, although I doubt not the authors might obtain a very

handsome fee from an advertising doctor for only publishing the

prescriptions. If they go on, however, in this absurd way, it is to be

feared they will go one step further with the biographers, and publish

the will, with certificate of probate and legacy-tax duly paid.

AQUILIUS.--We are not, however, as bad as the French. If our novels do

sometimes require an epitaph at the end, they do not make death at

once a lewd, sentimental, frightful, and suicidal act--and that not as

a warning, but as a French sublime act.

CURATE.--You have read, then, the _Juif Errant_. I am not very well

acquainted with French novels, but have read some very pretty stories

in the voluminous Balzac, most of which were not of a bad tendency.

Did you ever read the Greek novels _Theagenes and Chariclea_, and the

_Loves of Ismenias and Ismene_? Being curious to see how the

Thessalonian archbishop, who lived in the times of Manuelis and Alexis

Commenus, about the year 750, would speak the sentiments of his age on

the passion of love, I lately took up his novel, the "_Loves of

Ismenias and Ismene_."

AQUILIUS.--I know it not; perhaps you will give me an outline, and

select passages. I have great respect for the old Homeric commentator.

CURATE.--I remember a few tender passages, and graceful descriptions

of gardens and fountains, and that he is not unmindful of his Homer,

for he refers to the gardens of Alcinous as his model. I confess I am

a little ashamed of the archbishop; but read with more than shame that

Greek novel of Longus, written it is doubted whether in the second or

fourth century, and to which, it is said, Eustathius was indebted for

his novel. Longus's _Daphnis and Chloe_ is a pastoral,--it would burn

well. There are pleasing descriptions in both of garden scenery.

Speaking of gardens and fountains reminds me of the richness of the

_Arabian Nights' Entertainments_, which I am surprised did not before

come into our discussion. How strange is it that, though manners and

scenes are so far from our usages and any known locality, we admit

them at once within the recognised boundary of imaginative nature!

They are indeed fascinating; yet have I not unfrequently met with

persons who professed that they could not endure them.

AQUILIUS.--Were they young persons?--if so, they must be very scantily

gifted with a conciliating imagination, though they may very possibly

be the most reasonable of human beings. The charm that renders the

_Arabian Nights_ acceptable in all countries appears to me to arise

from this--that vivid are the touches which speak of our common

nature, and what is extraneous is less defined. Indeed, not

unfrequently is great use made of the obscure--such obscure as

Rembrandt, the master of mystery, profusely spread around the gorgeous

riches of his pencil. There is here and there, too, a sprinkling of

simpletonianism in a foreign shape, showing that all nations have

something akin.

CURATE.--Besides, they have the charm of magic, and a magic which

blends very skilfully and harmoniously with the realities of every-day

life. They were evidently composed in a country where magic was a

creed. Could such tales have been ever the product of this country, so

different from any of our "fairy tales?" though perhaps none of ours,

those that delighted us in our childhood, are of English origin. Magic

of some kind or other must have been adopted in tale at a very early

period. Ulysses' safety girdle, which he was directed mysteriously to

throw behind him, and I believe not to look back, comes undoubtedly

from some far land of faery, from whence the genius of Homer took it

with a willing hand.

AQUILIUS.--Grecian fable is steeped in the charmed fountain. The power

of the Medusa's head, and the black marble prince's metamorphoses, are

nearly allied. And a Circe may be discovered in many places of Arabic

enchantment.

CURATE.--Time converts everything into beauty. You smile, thinking

doubtless that age has something to do with ugliness. Perhaps so,

though it follows not but that there may be, personally speaking, to

every age its own beauty, visible to eyes not human, whilst we are

under earthly beauty's fascination, at any rate with regard to fact

and to fable. Time unites them, as it covers the riven rock with

lichen; so the shattered and ugliest idols of remotest ages doth Time

hand over to Fable, to remodel and invest with garments of beauty or

deformity, to suit every desire of the imagination. Strange as it may

seem, it is true that there is in most of us, weary and unsatisfied

with this matter-of-fact world, a propensity to throw ourselves into

dream, and let fancy build up for us a world of its own, and, for a

season, fit us with an existence for it--taking with us the beautiful

of this, and charming what is plain under the converting influence of

fiction. Who understood this as Shakspeare did? His _Tempest_,

_Midsummer's Night Dream_, his _Merchant of Venice_, are built up out

of the materials supplied by this natural propensity.

AQUILIUS.--How beautiful are impossibilities when genius sets them

forth as truth! Who does not yield implicit belief to every creation

of Shakspeare? I prefer the utter impossibilities to improbabilities

converted into real substantial fact. Let us have _Mysteries of

Udolpho_ uncleared up; it is dissatisfying at the end to find you have

been cheated. One would not have light let in to a mysterious obscure,

and exhibit perhaps but a bare wall ten feet off. I had rather have

the downright honest ghost than one, on discovery, that shall be

nothing but an old stick and a few rags. The reader is put in the

condition of the frogs in the fable, when they found themselves

deluded into wonder and worship of an old log. I would not even clear

up the darkness of ignorance respecting the Pyramids, and will believe

that the hieroglyphics are the language of fables, that are better,

like the mummies, under a shroud. Wherever you find a bit of the

mysterious, you are sure to be under a charm. In _Corinne_ of Madame

de Stael, not the most romantic of authors, the destiny cloud across

the moon you would not have resolved into smoke ascending from a

house-top. Let the burial-place of Oedipus be ever hid. Imagination

converts ignorance into a pleasure. There is a belief beyond, and

better than that of eyes and ears.

CURATE.--Not at present; at this moment I will trust both. I hear the

carriage, and here is Lydia returned from ----. I hope she has picked

up the parcel of books which I gathered for our reading.

Now here, Eusebius, our dialogue broke off, and we greeted the

Curate's wife. The box, it seems, had not reached the little town; so,

with a woman's nice tact, Lydia, the Curate's Lydia, had brought us

two novels to begin with. I therefore put my letter to you by, until

we had read them, and I was enabled to say something about them. You

perceive, Eusebius, that I have made some mention in the dialogue of

you, and your opinions upon nursery _fabulous_ education. Lydia

says--for to her we mentioned your whim--that you must come and

discuss it with her; and she will, to provoke you, bring you into

company with some very good people, and very much devoted to

education. She tells me she has a neighbour who burnt Gay's fables,

which a godfather had given to one of her children; because, said she,

it taught children lying, for her children looked incredulous as one

day she told them that beasts cannot speak. The Curate's wife promises

herself some amusement, you perceive, when you come; you must

therefore be as provoking as possible. But now, Eusebius, we have read

the novels brought to us. The first, _Jane Eyre_, has been out some

time: not so the other, _Madame de Malguet_, which has only now made

its first appearance. I do not think it fair, though it is a common

practice with critics, to give out a summary of the tales they

review--for this is sure to spoil the reading. I will resume, then,

the dialogue, omitting such parts as may be too searching into the

story.

LYDIA.--Well, I am glad we read _Jane Eyre_ first, for I should have

been sorry to have ended with tears, which she has drawn so

plentifully; and not from my eyes alone, though both you men, as

ashamed of your better natures, have endeavoured to conceal them in

vain.

AQUILIUS.--It _is_ a very pathetic tale--very singular; and so like

truth that it is difficult to avoid believing that much of the

characters and incidents are taken from life, though woman is called

the weaker sex. Here, in one example, is represented the strongest

passion and the strongest principle, admirably supported.

CURATE.--It is an episode in this work-a-day world, most interesting,

and touched at once with a daring, yet delicate hand. In spite of all

novel rules, the love heroine of the tale has no personal beauty to

recommend her to the deepest affection of a man of sense, of station,

and who had seen much of the world, not uncontaminated by it. It

seems to have been the purpose of the author to show that high and

noble sentiments, and great affection, can be both made subservient,

and even heightened, by the energy of practical wisdom. If the author

has purposely formed a heroine without the heroine's usual

accomplishments, with a knowledge of the world, and even with a

purpose to heighten that woman in our admiration, he has made no

small inroad into the virtues that are usually attributed to every

lover, in the construction of a novel. He, the hero, has great

faults--why should we mince the word?--vice. And yet so singular is

the fatality of love, that it would be impossible to find two

characters so necessary to exhibit true virtues, and make the

happiness of each. The execution of the painting is as perfect as the

conception.

LYDIA.--I think every part of the novel perfect, though I have no

doubt many will object, in some instances, both to the attachment and

the conduct of Jane Eyre.

AQUILIUS.--It is not a book for Prudes--it is not a book for

effeminate and tasteless men; it is for the enjoyment of a feeling

heart and vigorous understanding.

LYDIA.--I never can forget her passage across the heath, and her

desolate night's lodging there.

CURATE.--But you will remember it without pain, for it was at once the

suffering and the triumph of woman's virtue.

AQUILIUS.--To my mind, one of the most beautiful passages is the

return of Jane Eyre, when she sees in the twilight her "master" and

her lover solitary, and feeling his way with his hands, baring his

sightless sorrow to the chill and drizzly night.

CURATE.--But what think you of _Madame de Malguet_? In a different

way, that is as unlike any other novel as _Jane Eyre_. This, too, is

written to exhibit the character of woman under no ordinary

circumstances.

AQUILIUS.--She reminds me of the Chevalier d'Eon, whose portrait I

remember to have seen years ago in the _Wonderful Magazine_--half man,

half woman. Madame de Malguet is perhaps an amalgamation of the

Chevalier and Lady Hester Stanhope. These, after all, are not the

beings to be exempt from the _tender passion_, but it is under the

strongest vagaries. Love without courtship is the very romance of the

passion; and such is there in the tale of _Madame de Malguet_. The

scene is laid in a little town, and its immediate neighbourhood, in

France; and though a "Tale of 1820," carries back its interest, and

much of the detail of the story, to the horrors of the first French

Revolution. There is consequently a wide field for diversity of

character, and for conflict of opinions, and their effects, as shown

upon every grade of social life; and it is very striking that the

deepest rooted prejudices, ere the conclusion, change sides, and are

fitted upon characters to whom, at the commencement, they seemed but

little to belong. The inborn aristocratic feelings, alike with the

republican habits, meet their check; and I suppose it was the

intention of the author to show the weakness of both.

CURATE.--I am not certain of that, for I think the innate is preserved

even through the disguise of contrary habits. I know not which is the

hero--the Buonapartean soldier or the English naval captain. There are

some discussions on subjects of life interspersed, which show the

author to be a man of a deeply reflecting mind, and endued with no

little power of expressing what he thinks and what he feels.

AQUILIUS.--When I found fault with this wet blanket of happiness, the

monumental termination of _Mount Sorel_, I did not so soon expect to

meet with a repetition of this fault. I must pick a quarrel with the

writer for unnecessarily putting his characters _hors-de-combat_. I

think authors now-a-days need not be afraid of the fate of

Cervantes--of having them taken off their hands, and made to play

their parts upon any other stages than their own.

LYDIA.--You seem, both of you, to forget the real moral of the

story--that a person endowed with a little more than common sense,

general kindness, amiability, and energy of character, may be more

useful in the world than the most accomplished hero.

CURATE.--You would have found him too a hero, if his actions had been

within the sphere of heroism. I hope to meet with Mr Torrens again. He

has very great powers, and his conceptions are original.

And now, Eusebius, having written you this account of our dialogue,

and breathed country air, and witnessed happiness, I am, yours ever,

and

"Precipue sanus, nisi cum pituita molesta est."

AQUILIUS.

CONTINENTAL REVOLUTIONS--IRISH REBELLION--ENGLISH DISTRESS.

Seven months have barely elapsed since the throne of Louis Philippe

was overturned, by a sudden and well-concerted urban tumult; and six

have not expired since the fervour of revolution invaded the Germanic

empire, and Italy, torn by the innovating passions, commenced a strife

with the Austrian power. How marvellous have been the changes, how

vehement the action, how powerful the reaction, since those events

commenced! Involved in the whirlwind of anarchy, the greater as well

as the lesser states of Germany seemed to be on the verge of

destruction. Austria, tormented by diversity of lineage, race, and

interest, seemed to be irrevocably broken up; and amidst the rebellion

in Lombardy, the severance of Venice, the insurrection in Bohemia, and

the fierce demand of the Hungarians for independence, it seemed

scarcely possible to hope that the house of Hapsburg could maintain

its existence, or the important element of Austria in the balance of

European power be preserved. Torn by contending passions, a prey to

the ambition of the republicans, the dreams of the socialists, and the

indignation of the loyalists, France resembled a fiery volcano in the

moment of irruption, of which the throes were watched by surrounding

nations with trembling anxiety for their own existence. Italy, with

Sicily severed from the throne of Naples; Rome in scarcely disguised

insurrection against the Papal authority; Lombardy, Tuscany, and

Venice in open revolt; and Piedmont, under revolutionary guidance,

commencing the usual system of external democratic aggression,

scarcely presented a spot on which the eye of hope could rest.

Prussia, the first to be reached by the destructive flame, seemed so

strongly excited, that it was hard to say whether its national unity

or monarchical institutions would first fall to pieces. England,

assailed by Chartism in the one island, and the approaching

insurrection of the Irish in the other; oppressed with a debt to which

its finances, under present management, seemed unequal--having

borrowed L8,000,000 in a single year of general peace--seemed shaken

to its foundation. The distress so generally diffused by the combined

effect of free trade and a fettered currency, appeared at once to have

dried up its material resources and overturned the wonted stability of

the national mind: every thing seemed to be returning to chaos; and

even the most sanguine advocates of human perfectibility, the most

devout believers in democratic regeneration, looked on with trembling

anxiety, and could hardly anticipate any other result from the

disturbed passions of society, but a general and sanguinary war,

terminating in the irresistible ascendency of one victorious power, or

possibly a fresh inundation, over the exhausted field of European

strife, of northern barbarians.

But truth is great, and will prevail. There are limits imposed by the

wisdom of nature to the madness of the people, not less than the

strife of the elements. Extraordinary convulsions seldom fail to

restore government, after a time, to a bearable form: the letting

loose of the passions of nations ere long rouses the feelings and

alarms the interests, which produce reaction, and restore the

subverted equilibrium of society. Men will not be permanently ruled by

brutal force. Triumph reveals the latent tyranny of the multitude;

power brings to light the selfishness and rapacity of their leaders.

How strikingly have those truths--so often enunciated, so little

attended to--been demonstrated by the events of the last summer! Six

months only have elapsed, and what years, what centuries of experience

have been passed during that brief period! How many delusions has it

seen dispelled, and fallacies exposed; how many pretensions levelled,

and expectations blasted; how many reputations withered, and

iniquities detected! How much has the peril of inflammatory language

been demonstrated, and the hollowness of revolutionary regeneration

established! how quickly have words been blown into the air by deeds,

and the men of eloquence supplanted by those of the sword! "Words,"

says Lamartine,[11] "set nations on fire; bayonets alone restore them

to reason." Who has furnished such a commentary on these words as

Lamartine himself?

Is it the doctrines of the French Revolution which were deemed

seductive, its principles insinuating, its example dangerous? The Red

Republicans, the insurrection of June, the slaughter of a greater

number of men in a single revolt than has taken place in many a

decisive battle, the withering agony of Parisian destitution, the ten

thousand captives in its dungeons; the nightly transportation, for

weeks together, of hundreds of deluded fanatics; the state of

siege,--the prostration of freedom, a military dictatorship, rise up

in grim and hideous array to dispel the illusion. Is it the Io Paeans

of Italian regeneration which have caused the heart of the patriot to

throb all over the world, and led the enthusiastic to anticipate a

second era of Italian independence in the old age of its civilisation?

The defeats on the Adige, the fall of Milan, the dispersion of the

Lombard and Tuscan levies, tell us how miserable was the delusion on

which such expectations rested, and how vain is the hope that a

selfish and worn-out nation, destitute alike of civil firmness or

military courage, can successfully establish its independence. Is it

from Rome that this regeneration of society is expected to arise, and

the reforming pope who is to be the Peter the Hermit of the new

crusade in favour of the liberties of mankind? Behold him now

trembling in his palace, bereft of authority, deprived of

consideration; hated, despised, discrowned; waiting to see which of

the Tramontane powers is to send a regiment of horse to receive the

keys of the Eternal City, and give a lasting ruler to the former

mistress of the world.

Is it Prussia that is to take the lead in the regeneration of the

world, and from the north that a new Arminius is to issue, to assert

the liberties of the great Teutonic family of mankind? Turn to Berlin,

and see to what a pitiable degree of weakness revolutionary triumphs

have reduced the monarchy of the Great Frederick. Behold its monarch

and its army defeated by a band of students and shop-boys; its arsenal

pillaged by an insurgent mob; and the power which withstood the banded

strength of Europe, a century ago, and fronted Napoleon in the

plenitude of his power, waging a doubtful and aggressive war with

Denmark, a fifth-rate power, and paralysed by processions of

apprentices, and the menaces of trades-unions, in the capital. Is it

Ireland that is regarded as the sheet-anchor of the cause of

revolution, and from the Emerald Isle that the bands of heroes are to

issue who are to crush the tyranny of England, restore the freedom of

the seas, and avenge the long quarrel of the Celt with the Saxon? It

is in Boulagh Common that we must look for the exploits of the new

Spartan heroes, and among the widow's cabbages we must search for the

grave of a modern Leonidas! Is it in the energy, courage, and

perseverance of the army of Tipperary, that we must find the

realisation of the long-cherished hopes of Irish independence, and the

demonstration of the solid foundation on which the much vaunted

prospects of Hibernian success against British oppression is to be

founded! It must augment the admiration which all the world must feel

at the _gallant_ conduct of the Irish, in this memorable struggle, to

reflect that they owed their _success_ to themselves alone; that none

of their arms had been purchased, nor preparations made, with the

wealth of the stranger; that they had spurned the charity of England

as proudly as they had repelled its arms; and that, whatever could be

cast up against them, this, at least, could not be said, that they had

evinced ingratitude for recent benefits, or eaten the bread of their

benefactor while they were preparing to pierce him to the heart!

Memorable, indeed, has been the year which has given these examples,

and taught these lessons, to mankind. History will be sought in vain

for a period in which, during so short a time, so many important

political truths were unfolded, so many moral precepts taught, by

suffering; or in which, after being for a season obscured by clouds,

the polar star of religion and duty has shone forth with so bright a

lustre. It is a proud thing for England to reflect on the exalted post

she has occupied during this marvellous and trying time. While other

nations, possessed of far greater military forces, were reeling under

the shock, or prostrated by the treachery and treason of their

defenders, she alone has repelled the danger by the constable's baton.

She has neither augmented her army, nor increased her navy; she has

not added a gun to her ships, nor a bayonet to her battalions. She has

neither yielded to the violence of the Revolutionists, nor been guilty

of deeds of cruelty to repress them. If her government is to blame for

their conduct during the crisis, it is for having been too

lenient--for having dallied too long with agitation, and winked at

sedition till it grew into treason. A fault it undoubtedly has been,

for it has brought matters to a crisis, and caused the ultimate

outbreak to be repressed with far greater and more unavoidable

severity than would have been required if the first merciful coercion

had taken place. Had the Habeas Corpus Act been suspended in November,

and the farce of Irish patriotism been hindered from turning into a

burlesque tragedy, for one person whom it would have been necessary to

imprison or transport, fifty must now undergo that punishment. Yet is

this leniency or temporisation, misplaced as it was, and calamitous as

it has turned out, a proud passage in England's story. It is some

consolation to reflect that she conquered the revolutionary spirit, by

which so many of the military monarchies of Europe had been

prostrated, by moral strength alone; that scarce a shot was fired in

anger by her troops, and not a drop of blood was shed on the scaffold;

and that undue forbearance and lenity is the only fault which, during

the crisis, can be imputed to the government which braved the storm

under which the world was reeling.

Nor is the moral lesson less striking, or less important, which

France, during the same period, has read to mankind. She has not, on

this occasion, been assailed by the Continental powers. No Pitt or

Cobourg has stood forth to mar, by ensanguined hostility, the bright

aurora of her third Revolution. No Louis Philippe has stepped in, to

change its character or intercept its consequences, and reap for

royalty the fruits of insurrection. No bands of Cossacks or plumed

Highlanders have again approached the capital of civilisation, to

wrest from Freedom the rights she has acquired, or tear from her brows

the glory she has won. Whatever she has gained, or suffered, or lost,

has been owing to herself, and herself alone. Europe has looked on in

anxious, it may be affrighted, neutrality. Though undermined every

where by the spirit of propagandism, though openly assailed in some

quarters by scarcely disguised attacks, the adjoining powers have

abstained from any act of hostility. Albeit attacked by a

revolutionary expedition, fitted out and armed by the French

government at Paris, Belgium has attempted no act of retaliation.

Victorious Austria, though grievously provoked, has accepted the

mediation of France and England: when Turin was at his mercy, the

triumphant Radetsky sheathed his victorious sword at Milan, and sought

not to revenge on Piedmont the unprovoked aggression which its

revolutionary government had committed on the Imperial dominions in

Italy. Russia has armed, but not moved; the Czar has left to the

patriotism and valour of Denmark the burden of a contest with the

might of revolutionised Germany. Revolution has every where had fair

play; a clear stage and no favour has been accorded to it by all the

surviving monarchies in Europe. The enthusiasm of Lamartine, the

intrigues of Caussidiere, the dreams of Louis Blanc, the ambition of

Ledru Rollin, have been allowed their full development. Nothing has

intercepted the realisation of their projects. If France has suffered

beyond all precedent from her convulsion; if her finances are in a

state of hopeless embarrassment; if forty-five per cent has been

added to her direct taxes, and the addition cannot be levied from the

public distress; if three hundred thousand men have been added to her

regular army; if poverty and destitution stalk through her streets; if

her jails teem with ten thousand captives, and thousands of families

mourn a father or a brother slain on the barricades, or transported

for civil war,--the cause is to be found in the Revolution, and the

Revolution alone.

The terrible and tragic result of the strife in the streets of Paris

in June, has done scarcely a less service to mankind, by opening the

eyes of the world to the real nature of crimes which recent events had

rendered popular, and restoring their old and just appellation to acts

of the deepest atrocity, which the general delusion had caused to pass

for virtues. Since the successful result of the Revolt of the

Barricades in 1830, the ideas of men have been so entirely subverted,

that no government was practicable in France but that of corruption or

the sword; and treason and sedition appeared to have been blotted out

of the list of crimes in the statute-book of England. So licentious

had the age become, and so much was government paralysed by terror at

the unprecedented turn which the public mind had taken, that, in

Ireland especially, it can scarcely be said, for the last ten years,

that, in regard to state offences, there has been any government at

all. The Repeal agitation--the wholesale liberation of prisoners by

Lord Normanby--the unchecked monster meetings,--the quashing of

O'Connell's conviction by the casting vote of one Whig peer, in

opposition to the opinion of the twelve judges of England--the

unparalleled and long-continued violence of the treasonable press in

Dublin--the open drilling and arming of the people in the south and

west of Ireland--the undisguised announcement of an approaching

insurrection, of which the time was openly fixed for the completion of

harvest--were so many indications that Government had become

paralysed, and ceased to discharge its functions, in the neighbouring

island.

If matters were not as yet so menacing in England, it was not that the

executive was more powerful or efficient in this country, but that the

English mind was slower to take fire than on the other side of the

Channel, and that more weighty interests required to be subverted

among the Saxons than the Celts, before the institutions of society

were overturned, and anarchy, plunder, and spoliation, became the

order of the day. Yet even here there were many indications of

Government having become paralysed, and lamentable proof that the

public tranquillity was preserved, more by the moderation of its

assailants than the strength of its defenders. The violence and

general impunity of the trades-unions, in both England and Scotland;

the open and undisguised preparations of the Chartists in both

countries; the toleration in the metropolis, on two different

occasions, of a Chartist Convention, which aspired at usurping the

government of the country; the uniform and atrocious violence of the

revolutionary press; the entire impunity with which, on every

occasion, the most dangerous sedition was spouted on the platform, or

retailed in the columns of the journals; the open preparation, at

last, of treasonable measures; and the organisation of the disaffected

in clubs, where arms were distributed, and projects of rebellion,

massacre, and conflagration hatched--were so many indications, and

that, too, of the most alarming kind, that matters were approaching a

crisis in these islands; and that the paralysis and imbecility of a

Government which had ceased to discharge its functions, might prove,

as it did in France in the feeble hands of Louis XVI., the precursor

of a dreadful and disastrous convulsion.

Thanks to the French revolution and Irish rebellion, this state of

matters has met, for the time at least, with a decisive check. The

eyes of men have been opened; things are called by their right name.

We again hear of treason and sedition--words, of late years, so much

gone into disuse that the rising generation scarcely knew what they

meant. In France the heroes of the barricades have ceased to be lauded

as the greatest of men. Insurrection is no longer preached as the

first of social duties. That which was the chief of civic virtues on

the 24th February has become the greatest of civic crimes on the 24th

June. The soldiers of treason no longer meet with an honoured

sepulchre, nor, if surviving, are they feted and caressed by royal

hands. If killed, they are thrust into undistinguished graves; if

taken alive, they are immured in dungeons or transported. Universal

suffrage has done that which royalty was too indulgent or too timorous

to do--it has ceased the dallying with treason. It has fought the Red

Republic with its own weapon, and conquered in the strife. It has

erected a military despotism in the great revolutionised capital.

Industry, almost destroyed by, the first triumph of anarchy in France,

is slowly reviving under the protection of absolute power. With

suppression of the trade of the "journaliste," the "emeutier," and the

"homme des barricades," other branches of employment are at length

beginning to revive.[12]

Nor is the change less remarkable in Great Britain, where government

have not only followed Mr Pitt's example of suspending the Habeas

Corpus Act in Ireland, but have passed a special statute, assimilating

for two years the punishment of aggravated cases of sedition to what

it was by the old common law of Scotland. Great was the abuse which

the Whig writers for half a century bestowed on the Scotch Judges in

1793, for applying the punishment of the Scotch law to the sedition of

1793, and transporting Muir and Fische Palmer, for trying to force on

a revolution by means of a national convention. The "Martyrs'

Monument" in Edinburgh stands as a durable monument of their sympathy.

Lord Campbell, in his _Lives of the Chancellors_, has in bitter terms

exhaled their collected indignation. But scarcely was the ink of his

lordship's lucubrations dry, when he saw fit, as a member of Lord John

Russell's cabinet, to bring in a bill to _assimilate the punishment of

sedition in Ireland to the old law of Scotland_; and under it Mitchell

has been transported fourteen, and Martin ten years--the very

punishments inflicted for similar offences on Muir and Fische Palmer.

The difference is, that for one person transported or imprisoned under

Mr Pitt's system of timely coercion and prevention, in 1793, in Great

Britain and Ireland, a hundred will be transported or imprisoned under

the Whig system of long temporisation and final repression, in 1848.

So true it is, that undue weakness in the prevention of crime is the

inevitable parent of undue sternness in its punishment, and that in

troubled times government incur the reality of severity to avoid its

imputation.

Not less important, to the final interests of mankind, is the exposure

of the real designs and objects of the revolutionary party, over the

world, which has now taken place. The days of delusion are gone past;

words have ceased to mislead men as to the nature of things. For half

a century, men have been continually misled by the generous and

elevated language under which the democratic party veiled their real

designs. The strength of revolution consists in the power it possesses

of rousing effort by the language of virtue, to render it subservient

to the purposes of vice. But its designs have now reached their

accomplishment: men see what was intended under all this veil of

philanthropic intentions. The revolutionists have been victorious in

Paris; and immediately their projects of spoliation, anarchy, and

plunder, were set on foot, and approached so near their

accomplishment, that a desperate and last effort of all the holders of

property became indispensable, to prevent the total ruin of society;

and carnage to an unheard of extent for three days stained the streets

of Paris, to avert the triumph of the Red Republic, and the return of

the Reign of Terror. The cry for repeal turned into rebellion in

Ireland; and a vast concentration of the forces of England was

requisite to prevent the Emerald Isle becoming the theatre of general

massacre, devastation, and ruin. For two hours the Chartists got

possession of Glasgow, and instantly a general system of plunder and

sacking of houses commenced. The Chartist Convention was long

tolerated in England, and, in return, they tried to overturn the

Government on the 10th April; and organised a general plan of plunder

and conflagration, which was to have broken out in the end of August,

and was only mercifully prevented by the designs of the conspirators

having become known, and the timely vigour of Government having

prevented their accomplishment. The ultimate objects of the enemies of

society, therefore, have become apparent: deeds have told us what

meaning to attach to words. Revolution in France means spoliation, and

the division of property, at a convenient opportunity. Repeal in

Ireland means the massacre of the Protestants, and the division of

their estates at a convenient opportunity. Chartism in England means

general plunder, murder, and conflagration, the moment there is the

least chance of perpetrating these crimes with impunity.

Ireland has been, in an especial manner, the subject of these general

delusions; and there is perhaps no subject on which foreigners, the

English, and the Irish themselves, have for so long a period been

entirely misled, as in regard to the real cause of the protracted, and

apparently irremediable evils of that distracted country. The

proneness of the English to believe, that all mankind will be blessed

by the institutions under which they themselves have flourished and

waxed great, and the virulence with which party ambition has fastened

upon Ireland, as the battle-field on which to dispossess political

opponents, and gain possession of power, are the main causes of this

long-continued and wide-spread misconception. We have to thank the

Irish for having, by their reception of the magnificent gift of

England in 1847, and subsequent rebellion in 1848, done so much to

dispel the general delusion. To aid in disseminating juster views on

the subject, we shall proceed to disinter from the earlier volumes of

this Magazine, an extract from the first of a series of papers on

Ireland, published in 1833, immediately before Lord Grey's Coercion

Act, and which might pass for an essay on present events. It affords a

striking example, both of the justice of the views there enunciated,

and of the pernicious and continual recurrence of those real causes of

Irish suffering, which party spirit in both islands has so long

concealed from the people of Great Britain.

"It is in vain to attempt to shake ourselves loose of

Ireland, or consider its misery as a foreign and extraneous

consideration with which the people of this country have

little concern. The starvation and anarchy of that kingdom is

a leprosy, which will soon spread over the whole empire. The

redundance of our own population, the misery of our own poor,

the weight of our own poor-rates, are all chiefly owing to

the multitudes who are perpetually pressing upon them from

the Irish shores. During the periods of the greatest

depression of industry in this country since the peace, if

the Irish labourers could have been removed, the native poor

would have found ample employment; and more than one

committee of the House of Commons have reported, after the

most patient investigation and minute examination of evidence

from all parts of the country, that there is no tendency to

undue increase among the people of Great Britain, and that

the whole existing distress was owing to the immigration from

the sister kingdom.

"Nature has forbidden us to sever the connexion which

subsists between the two countries. We must swim or sink

together. It is utterly impossible to effect that disjunction

of British from Irish interests, for which the demagogues of

that country so strenuously contend, and which many persons

in this island, from the well-founded jealousy of Catholic

ascendency in the House of Commons, and the apparent

hopelessness of all attempts to improve its condition, are

gradually becoming inclined to support. The legislature may

be separated by act of Parliament; the Government may be

severed by Catholic revolts; but Ireland will not the less

hang like a dead weight round the neck of England; its

starving multitudes will not the less overwhelm our

labourers; its passions and its jealousies will not the less

paralyse the exertions of our Government. Let a Catholic

Republic be established in Ireland; let O'Connell be its

President; let the English landholders be rooted out, and

Ireland, with its priests and its poverty, be left to shift

for itself; and the weight, the insupportable weight of its

misery, will be more severely felt in this country than ever.

Deprived of the wealth and the capital of the English

landholders, or of the proprietors of English descent; a prey

to its own furious and ungovernable passions; ruled by an

ignorant and ambitious priesthood; seduced by frantic and

unprincipled demagogues, it would speedily fall into an abyss

of misery far greater than that which already overwhelms it.

For every thousand of the Irish poor who now approach the

shores of Britain, ten thousand would then arrive, from the

experienced impossibility of finding subsistence at home;

universal distress would produce such anarchy as would

necessarily lead the better classes to throw themselves into

the arms of any government who would interfere for their

protection. France would find the golden opportunity, so long

wished for, at length arrived, of striking at the power of

England through the neighbouring island; the tricolor flag

would speedily wave from the Giant's Causeway to Cape Clear;

and even if England submitted to the usurpation, and

relinquished its rebellious subjects to the great parent

democracy, the cost of men and ships required to guard the

western shore of Britain, and avert the pestilence from our

own homes, would be greater than are now employed in

maintaining a precarious and doubtful authority in that

distracted island.

"Whence is all this misery, and these furious passions, in a

country so richly endowed by nature, and subjected to a

Government whose sway has, in other states, established so

large a portion of general felicity? The Irish democrats

answer, that it is the oppression of the English Government

which has done all these things; the editors of the Whig

journals and reviews repeat the same cry; and every Whig,

following, on this as on every other subject, their leaders,

like a flock of sheep, re-echo the same sentiment, until it

has obtained general belief, even among those whose education

and good sense might have led them to see through the

fallacy. Yet, in truth, there is no opinion more erroneous;

and there is none the dissemination of which has done so much

to perpetuate the very evils which are the subject of such

general and well-founded lamentation. Ireland, in reality, is

not miserable because she has, but because _she has not been

conquered_; she is suffering under a redundant population,

not because the tyranny of England, but the tyranny of her

own demagogues, prevents their getting bread; and she is torn

with discordant passions, not because British oppression has

called them into existence, but because Irish licentiousness

has kept them alive for centuries after, under a more

rigorous Government, they would have been buried for ever.

"It is the more extraordinary that the popular party in both

islands should so heedlessly and blindly have adopted this

doctrine, when it is so directly contrary to what they at the

same time maintain in regard to the causes of the

simultaneous rise and prosperity of Scotland. That poor and

barren land, they see, has made unexampled strides in wealth

and greatness during the last eighty years: its income during

that period has been quadrupled, its numbers nearly doubled,

its prosperity augmented tenfold; they behold its cities

crowded with palaces, its fields smiling with plenty, its

mountains covered with herds, its harbours crowded with

masts, the Atlantic studded with its sails; and yet all this

has grown up under an aristocratic rule, and with a

representative system from which the lower classes were in a

great measure excluded. In despair at beholding a nation

whose condition was so utterly at variance with all their

dogmas of the necessity of democratic representation to

temper the frame of government, they have recourse to the

salutary influence of English ascendency, and ascribe all

this improvement to the beneficial influence of English

freedom. Scotland, they tell us, has prospered, not because

she has, but because she has not, been governed by her own

institutions: and she is now rich and opulent, because the

narrow and jealous spirit of her own Government has been

tempered by the beneficial influence of English freedom.

Whether this is really the case, we shall examine in a

succeeding Number; and many curious and unknown facts as to

the native institutions of Scotland we promise to unfold;

but, in the mean time, let it be conceded that this

observation is well founded, and that all the prosperity of

Scotland has been owing to English influence. How has it

happened that the _same_ influence at the _same_ time has been

the cause of all the misery of Ireland? The common answer

that Scotland was always an independent country, and that

Ireland was won and ruled by the sword, is utterly

unsatisfactory, and betrays an inattention to the most

notorious historical facts. For how has it happened that

Ireland was conquered with so much facility, while Scotland

so long and strenuously resisted the spoiler? How did it

happen that Henry II., with eleven hundred men, achieved with

ease the conquest of the one country, while Edward II., at

the head of eighty thousand men, was unable to effect the

subjugation of the other? How was it that Scotland, not once,

but twenty times, expelled vast English armies from her

territory, while Ireland has never thrown them off since the

Norman standard first approached her shores? And without

going back to remote periods, how has it happened that the

same influence of English legislation, which, according to

them, has been utterly ruinous to Ireland, has been the sole

cause of the unexampled prosperity of Scotland? that the same

gale which has been the zephyr of spring to the one state,

has been the blast of desolation to the other? It is evident

that there is a fundamental difference between the two

states; and that, if we would discover the cause of the

different modes in which the same legislation of the dominant

state has operated in the two countries, we must look to the

different condition of the people to whom it was applied.

"One fact is very remarkable, and throws a great light on

this difficult subject--and that is, that at different

periods opposite systems have been tried in Ireland, and that

invariably the system of concession and indulgence has been

immediately followed by an ebullition of more than usual

atrocity and violence.

"The first of these instances is the great indulgence showed

to them by James I. That monarch justly boasted that Ireland

was the scene of his beneficent legislation; and that he had

done more to its inhabitants than all the monarchs who had

sat on the English throne since the time of Henry II. He

established the boroughs; gave them a right of sending

representatives to Parliament; and first spread over its

savage and unknown provinces the institutions and the

liberties of England. What was the consequence? Did the

people testify gratitude to their benefactors? Did they prove

themselves worthy of British freedom, and capable of

withstanding the passions arising from a representative

government? We shall give the answer in the words of Mr Hume.

"'The Irish, everywhere intermingled with the English, needed

but a hint from their leaders and priests to begin

hostilities against a people whom they hated on account of

their religion, and envied for their riches and prosperity.

The houses, cattle, goods, of the unwary English were first

seized. Those who heard of the commotions in their

neighbourhood, instead of deserting their habitations, and

assembling for mutual protection, remained at home, in hopes

of defending their property, and fell thus separately into

the hands of their enemies. After rapacity had fully exerted

itself, cruelty, and the most barbarous that ever, in any

nation, was known or heard of, began its operations. A

universal massacre commenced of the English, now defenceless,

and passively resigned to their inhuman foes. No age, no sex,

no condition, was spared. The wife weeping for her butchered

husband, and embracing her helpless children, was pierced

with them and perished by the same stroke. The old, the

young, the vigorous, the infirm, underwent a like fate, and

were confounded in one common ruin. In vain did flight save

from the first assault: destruction was every where let

loose, and met the hunted victims at every turn. In vain was

recourse had to relations, to companions, to friends;

connexions were dissolved, and death was dealt by that hand

from which protection was implored and expected. Without

provocation, without opposition, the astonished English,

living in profound peace and full security, were massacred by

their nearest neighbours, with whom they had long upheld a

continual intercourse of kindness and good offices.

"'But death was the slightest punishment inflicted by those

rebels: all the tortures which wanton cruelty could devise,

all the lingering pains of body, the anguish of mind, the

agonies of despair, could not satiate revenge excited without

injury, and cruelty derived from no cause. To enter into

particulars would shock the least delicate humanity. Such

enormities, though attested by undoubted evidence, appear

almost incredible. Depraved nature, even perverted religion,

encouraged by the utmost license, reach not to such a pitch

of ferocity, unless the pity inherent in human breasts be

destroyed by that contagion of example, which transports men

beyond all the usual motives of conduct and behaviour.

"'The weaker sex themselves, naturally tender to their own

sufferings, and compassionate to those of others, here

emulated their more robust companions in the practice of

every cruelty. Even children, taught by the example, and

encouraged by the exhortation of their parents, essayed their

feeble blows on the dead carcasses or defenceless children of

the English. The very avarice of the Irish was not a

sufficient restraint of their cruelty. Such was their frenzy,

that the cattle which they had seized, and by rapine made

their own, were yet, because they bore the name of English,

wantonly slaughtered, or, when covered with wounds, turned

loose into the woods and deserts.

"'The stately buildings or commodious habitations of the

planters, as if upbraiding the sloth and ignorance of the

natives, were consumed with fire, or laid level with the

ground. And where the miserable owners, shut up in their

houses and preparing for defence, perished in the flames,

together with their wives and children, a double triumph was

afforded to their insulting foes.

"'If any where a number assembled together, and, assuming

courage from despair, were resolved to sweeten death by

revenge on their assassins, they were disarmed by

capitulations and promises of safety, confirmed by the most

solemn oaths. But no sooner had they surrendered, than the

rebels, with perfidy equal to their cruelty, made them share

the fate of their unhappy countrymen.

"'Others, more ingenious still in their barbarity, tempted

their prisoners by the fond love of life, to imbrue their

hands in the blood of friends, brothers, parents; and having

thus rendered them accomplices in guilt, gave them that death

which they sought to shun by deserving it.

"'Amidst all these enormities, the sacred name of RELIGION

resounded on every side; not to stop the hands of these

murderers, but to enforce their blows, and to steel their

hearts against every movement of human or social sympathy.

The English, as heretics, abhorred of God, and detestable to

all holy men, were marked out by the priests for slaughter;

and, of all actions, to rid the world of these declared

enemies to Catholic faith and piety, was represented as the

most meritorious. Nature, which, in that rude people, was

sufficiently inclined to atrocious deeds, was farther

stimulated by precept; and national prejudices impoisoned by

those aversions, more deadly and incurable, which arose from

an enraged superstition. While death finished the sufferings

of each victim, the bigoted assassins, with joy and

exultation, still echoed in his expiring ears that these

agonies were but the commencement of torments infinite and

eternal.'"

"This dreadful rebellion left consequences long felt in Irish

government. Cromwell, the iron leader of English vengeance,

treated them with terrible severity: at the storming of a

single city, 12,000 men were put to the sword; and such was

the terror inspired by his merciless sword, that all the

revolted cities opened their gates, and the people submitted,

trembling, to the law of the conqueror. The recollection of

the horrors of the Tyrone rebellion was long engraven in the

English legislature; and it produced, along with the terrors

of religious dissension, the severe code of laws which were

imposed on the savage population of the country before the

close of the seventeenth century. A hundred years of peace

and tranquillity followed the promulgation of these

oppressive laws. That they were severe and cruel is obvious

from their tenor; that they were in many respects not worse

than was called for by the horrors which preceded their

enactment, and followed their repeal, is now unhappily proved

by the result.

"The next great period of concession commenced about the year

1772, soon after the accession of George III. The severe code

under which Ireland had so long lain chained, but quiet, was

relaxed; the Catholics were admitted to a full share of the

representation; the more selfish and unnecessary parts of the

restrictions were removed; and, before 1796, hardly any part

of the old fetters remained, excepting the exclusion of

Catholics from the Houses of Lords and Commons, and the

higher situations in the army. Did tranquillity,

satisfaction, and peace, follow these immense concessions,

continued through a period of thirty years? On the contrary,

they were immediately followed by the same result as had

attended the concessions of James I. A new rebellion broke

out; the horrors of 1798 rivalled those of 1641; and the

dreadful recollection of the Tyrone massacre was drowned in

the more recent suffering of the same unhappy country.

"The perilous state in which Ireland then stood, imperfectly

known at the time even to the Government, is now fully

developed. From the Memoirs of Wolfe Tone, recently

published, it appears that 250,000 men were sworn in,

organised, drilled, and regimented; that colonels and

officers for this immense force were all appointed; and the

whole, under the direction of the central committee at

Dublin, only awaited the arrival of Hoche and the French

fleet to hoist the tricolor flag, and proclaim the _Hibernian

Republic_ in close alliance with the Republic of France. With

truth it may be said, that the fate of England then hung upon

a thread. Napoleon, and the unconquered army of Italy, were

still in Europe; a successful descent of the advanced guard,

15,000 strong, under Hoche, would immediately have been

followed up by the invasion of the main body under that great

leader; and the facility with which the French fleet reached

Bantry Bay in February 1797, where they were only prevented

from landing by tempestuous gales, proves that the command of

the seas cannot always be relied on as a security against

foreign invasion. Had 40,000 French soldiers landed at that

time in Ireland, to organise 200,000 hot-headed Catholic

democrats, and lend the hand of fraternity to their numerous

coadjutors on the other side of St George's Channel, it is

difficult to say what would have been the present fate of

England.

"The rebellion of 1798 threw back for ten years the progress

of the indulgent measures so long practised towards Ireland.

But at length the spirit of clemency again resumed its sway;

the system of concession was again adopted, and the last

remnants of the Irish fetters removed by the liberal Tory

administration of England. First, the Catholics were declared

eligible to any situations in the army and navy; and at

length, by the famous Relief Bill, the remaining distinctions

between Catholic and Protestant were done away, and an equal

share of political influence was extended to them as that of

their Protestant brethren. What has been the consequence? Has

Ireland increased in tranquillity since this memorable

change? Have the prophecies of its advocates been verified,

as to the stilling of the waves of dissension and rebellion?

Has it proved true, as Earl Grey prophesied it would, in his

place in the House of Lords,

Defluit saxis agitatus humor;

Concedunt venti, fugiuntque nubes;

Et minax (quod sic voluere) ponto

Unda recumbit?

"The reverse of all this has notoriously been the case. Since

this last and great concession, Ireland has become worse than

ever. Midnight conflagration, dastardly assassination, have

spread with fearful rapidity; the sources of justice have

been dried up, and the most atrocious criminals repeatedly

suffered to escape, from the impossibility of bringing them

to justice. A universal insurrection against the payment of

tithes has defied all the authority of Government, in open

violation of the solemn promises of the Catholics that no

invasion on the rights of the Protestant church was intended;

and the starving clergy of Ireland have been thrown as a

burden upon the consolidated fund of England. At this moment

the authority of England is merely nominal over the

neighbouring island; the Lord Lieutenant is less generally

obeyed than the great Agitator, and the dictates of the

Catholic leaders are looked up to in preference to the acts

of the British Parliament. In despair at so desperate a state

of things, so entirely the reverse of all they had hoped from

the long train of conciliatory measures, the English are

giving up the cause in despair; while the great and gallant

body of Irish Protestants are firmly looking the danger in

the face, and silently preparing for the struggle which they

well know has now become inevitable.

"The result of experience, therefore, is complete in all its

parts. Thrice, during the last two hundred years, have

conciliatory measures been tried on the largest scale, and

with the most beneficent intention; and thrice have the

concessions to the Catholics been followed by a violent and

intolerable outbreak of savage ferocity. The two first

rebellions were followed by a firm and severe system of

coercive government; as long as they continued in force,

Ireland was comparatively tranquil, and their relaxation was

the signal for the commencement of a state of insubordination

which rapidly led to anarchy and revolt. The present

revolutionary spirit has been met by a different system.

Every thing has been conceded to the demagogues; their

demands have been granted, their assemblies allowed, their

advice followed, their leaders promoted; and the country in

consequence has arrived at a state of anarchy unparalleled in

any Christian state.

"What makes the present state of Ireland, and the democratic

spirit of its inhabitants, altogether unpardonable is, the

extreme indulgence and liberality with which, for the last

fifty years, they have been treated by this country. During

the whole war, Ireland paid _neither income-tax nor assessed

taxes_; and the sum thus made a present of by England to her

people, amounted at the very lowest calculation to

L50,000,000 sterling. She shared in the full benefit of the

war in consequence of the immense extent of the demand for

agricultural produce which its expenditure occasioned,

without feeling any of the burdens which neutralised its

extension in this country. No poor's rates are levied on her

landholders--in other words, they are levied on England and

Scotland instead--and this island is in consequence

overwhelmed by a mass of indigence created in the

neighbouring kingdom, but which British indulgence has

relieved them from the necessity of maintaining. The amount

of the sums annually paid by the Parliament of Great Britain

to objects of charity and utility in Ireland almost exceeds

belief, and is at least five times greater than all directed

to the same objects in both the other parts of the empire

taken together. Yet with all their good deeds, past, present,

and to come, Ireland is the most discontented part of the

United Kingdom. She is incessantly crying out against her

benefactor, and recurring to old oppression rendered

necessary by her passions, instead of present benefactions,

of which her democratic population have proved themselves

unworthy by their ingratitude.

"Notwithstanding all the efforts of her demagogues to

distract the country, and counteract all the liberality and

beneficence of the English Government, Ireland has advanced

with greater rapidity in industry, wealth, and all the real

sources of happiness, during the last thirty years, than any

other part of the empire. Since the Union, she has made a

start both in agricultural and manufacturing industry, quite

unparalleled, and much greater than Scotland had made during

the first hundred years after her incorporation with the

English dominions. It is quite evident that, if the

demagogues would let Ireland alone--if the wounds in her

political system were not continually kept open, and the

passions of the people incessantly inflamed, by her popular

leaders, she would become as rich and prosperous as she is

populous--that, instead of a source of weakness, she would

become a pillar of strength to the united empire--and instead

of being overspread with the most wretched and squalid

population in Europe, she might eventually boast of the most

contented and happy."

So far what we wrote in December 1832. We make no apology for the

length of this quotation. So precisely is it applicable to the present

time, that were we to write anew on the subject, we should certainly

reproduce the same ideas, and probably, in a great degree, make use of

the same words. It affords a remarkable proof of the manner in which

Ireland has been influenced, in all periods of its history, by the

same causes; and of the way in which all its natural advantages have

been thrown away, by the indolence and want of energy in its

inhabitants, joined to the unhappy extension to it, through British

connexion, of the privileges, excitement, and passions, consequent on

a free constitution, for which it was unfitted by its character,

temperament, and state of social advancement.

Need it be said how precisely the same truths have been illustrated in

later times, and, most of all, in the memorable year in which we now

write? The melancholy tale is known to all: it is written in

characters of fire in England's annals. Such was the state of

excitement, anarchy, and licentiousness to which the Irish were

brought under the Whig rule, by the combined operation of the Reform

mania, and the Repeal agitation, that Lord Grey, albeit the most

impassioned opponent of Mr Pitt's preventive policy, was compelled to

adopt it; and the celebrated Coercion Bill of 1833 invested Government

with extraordinary powers, and for a time superseded, by martial law,

in some districts of Ireland, the ordinary administration of justice.

The result, as much as the anarchy which had preceded it, demonstrated

where the secret of Ireland's ills was to be found, and what was the

species of government adapted for its unsettled, impassioned, and

semi-barbarous inhabitants.[13] Instantly, as if by enchantment, the

disorders ceased: midnight fires no longer illuminated the heavens,

midnight murders no longer struck terror into the inhabitants. The

savage passions of the people, growing out of the civilised license

unhappily allowed them under British rule, were rapidly coerced, and,

instead of Ireland exhibiting an amount of agrarian outrage and

atrocity unprecedented in any Christian land, even her worst provinces

returned to their usual, though yet serious and lamentable

average.[14]

The evil days of conciliation and concession, however, soon returned.

When Sir R. Peel assumed the helm for a brief period in 1835, he said,

that his chief difficulty was Ireland. It was so in truth--not from

the difficulties, great as they were, with which the administration of

Ireland was surrounded, but from the monstrous delusions on the

subject with which the Whigs, then possessed of the chief influence in

the state, had imbued the public mind. So feeble was Government under

his successors, from 1835 to 1841--so thoroughly had they drenched the

people of Great Britain with the belief that severity of rule was the

sole cause of the miseries of Ireland, and that conciliation and

concession were their appropriate remedy--that powers the most

disastrous, privileges the most undeserved, were bestowed on the Irish

people. The very agitators were lauded, flattered, and promoted.

O'Connell was offered a seat on the Bench; the whole, or nearly the

whole, patronage of the country was surrendered into his hands. The

greater part of the police were nominated according to the suggestions

of himself or his party; the Orangemen of the north--the bulwark of

the throne--were vilified, prosecuted, and discouraged;

self-government became the order of the day; municipal reform was

conceded; an ignorant, priest-led, half-savage people were intrusted

with one of the highest duties of civilised citizens--that of electing

their own magistrates. O'Connell, under the new municipal

constitution, was elected Lord Mayor of Dublin; a majority, both of

the constituency and members of Parliament, ere long became Repealers.

The Whig system of governing Ireland, by yielding to its selfish

passions and fostering its political vices, received its full

development; Whig journals, reviews, and magazines, lauded the policy

to the skies, and predicted from its effects the speedy removal of all

the evils which had arisen from the Tory system of coercion and

repression in the Emerald Isle.

The results were soon apparent. Assured of countenance and support

from high quarters--cordially supported by the Popish hierarchy and

priesthood--intrenched, beyond the power of assault, in almost all the

boroughs--possessed of considerable support or connivance in the rural

magistracy--backed, in many parts of the country, by the torch of the

incendiary or the firelock of the assassin--wielding at once the

delegated powers of Government, the daggers of desperadoes, the

enthusiasm of the people, O'Connell proceeded with the step of a

conqueror in the work of agitation. The Temperance movement, headed by

Father Mathew, came most opportunely to aid its funds, by diverting

the vast sums hitherto spent by the people on physical, to support the

cause of mental agitation. Seventy temperance bands were soon

established to head the temperance clubs; the uniforms of the

musicians were so made, that, by being merely turned, they could be

converted into the bands of so many regiments; the Rent flourished;

whisky-shops were ruined; the grand Intoxicator demolished his

inferior competitors; Conciliation Hall boasted of its three thousand

pounds a-week! The distilleries were bankrupt. The simple, misled

people of England believed that, under the combined influence of

political agitation, municipal reform, and suddenly-induced sobriety,

Ireland was to be effectually regenerated, and the Celt was at once

to leap into the privileges of the Saxon, without going through his

seven centuries of painful apprenticement. Monster meetings became

general. Assemblages said to consist of eighty or a hundred thousand,

and which really contained twenty or thirty thousand persons, were

held in the whole south and west of Ireland. Meanwhile industry was

paralysed; capital shunned the agitated shores; labour was diverted

from the field to the platform; the earnings of the poor were wrenched

from them, by priestly influence and the terrors of purgatory, to aid

in the great work of dismembering the empire. Instead of attending to

their business--instead of working at their lazy-beds or tending their

cattle--instead of draining their bogs or reclaiming their wastes, the

people were continually kept running about from one monster meeting to

another, and taught to believe that they were to look for happiness,

not through the labour of their hands, or the sweat of their brows,

but in swelling seditious processions, listening to treasonable

harangues, and extending the ramifications of a vast and atrocious

Ribbon conspiracy throughout Ireland.

Society could not long exist under such a system; but it was long ere

the Liberal party saw the error of their ways--when Sir Robert Peel's

government, in 1843, at length became convinced that the evil had come

to such a height that it could no longer be endured, and that society

would be dissolved under its influence. The meeting, accordingly, at

Clontarff was proclaimed down; O'Connell was prosecuted, and a

conviction obtained. But the Whigs were not long of coming up to the

rescue. A majority of three Whig law peers to two Conservative

ones--Lords Lyndhurst and Brougham being in the minority--overruled

the opinion of the twelve judges of England, and quashed the

prosecution. Elated with this victory, agitation resumed its sway in

Ireland; but it did so under darker auspices, and with more dangerous

ends. Organisation, with a view to insurrection, was now avowedly set

on foot; arms were purchased in large quantities; and the Whig

Secretary of Ireland had the extreme imprudence to write a letter,

which found its way into the public prints, and was soon placarded

over Ireland, in which it was stated generally, and without

qualification, that every Irishman was entitled to possess and carry

arms. Nay, this was made the _cheval de bataille_ between the two

parties; and when Sir R. Peel was turned out in July 1846, it was on

the question of the bill for prohibiting _the possession of arms in

Ireland_. The Whigs came into power on the basis of the Irish

peasantry being entitled to be armed. It covers, like charity, a

multitude of sins in Sir R. Peel, that he left office on the same

question.

But the laws of nature are more durable in their operation than the

revolutions of statesmen. The effects of twenty years' agitation and

disorder in Ireland ere long became apparent. The reign of murder,

incendiarism, and terror, brought down an awful retribution on its

authors. Agriculture, neglected for the more agreeable and gainful

trade of agitation or assassination, had fallen into such neglect,

that the land, in many parts of the country, had become incapable of

bearing grain crops. Nothing would do but lazy-beds, in which often a

wretched crop was raised in the centre of the ridge, on a third of the

land, while the remaining two-thirds were under water. The potato

famine came, in 1846, upon a country thus prepared for such a

visitation--wasted by agitation, disgraced by murder, impoverished by

the protracted reign of terror. Its effects are well known. Ireland,

wholly incapable, from its infatuated system of self-government, of

doing any thing for itself, fell entirely as a burden on England.

Great part of Scotland was wasted by a similar calamity, and in

regions--the West Highlands and Islands--far more sterile and barren

than the south and west of Ireland. But Scotland had not been torn by

political passions, nor palsied by repeal agitation. Scotland righted

itself. It bore the visitation with patience and resignation. It

neither sought nor received aid from England. Not a shilling was

advanced by the Exchequer to relieve Scotch suffering. Ten millions

were given by the nation to relieve that of Ireland: of this immense

sum eight millions were borrowed, and remain a lasting charge on Great

Britain. Hundreds of thousands, raised from the suffering and won by

the labour of England and Scotland, followed in the same direction. In

return, the Irish gave us contumely, defiance, and ingratitude. The

_Nation_ thundered forth weekly its fiendish vituperation against the

people who had saved its countrymen. It was eagerly read by hundreds

of thousands who owed their existence to British generosity. The

beggar gave place to the bully. Great part of the funds, lavished with

misplaced humanity on Irish suffering, was employed in the purchase of

arms to destroy their benefactors; and the unparalleled munificence of

England to Ireland in 1847, was succeeded by the unparalleled

rebellion of Ireland against England in 1848.