He must be blind indeed who cannot read _Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 64 No. 396 October 1848

causes of the long-continued misery and distraction of Ireland. It has

arisen in a great degree from English connexion, but in a way which

the Irish do not perceive, and which they will be the last to admit.

It is all owing to a very simple cause--so simple that philosophers

have passed it over as too obvious to explain the phenomena, and

party-men have rejected it because it afforded no handle for popular

declamation, and gave them no fulcrum whereon to rest the lever which

was to remove an opposite party from power. It is not owing to the

Roman Catholic religion,--for, if so, how have so many Roman Catholic

countries been, and still are, great, and powerful, and happy? It is

not owing to the confiscation of the land, for confiscation as great

followed the establishment of the Normans in England, and the

victories of Robert Bruce in Scotland; and yet, in process of time,

the ghastly wound was healed in both these countries, and from the

united effort of the Britons, Saxons, and North-men, have arisen the

glories and wonders of British civilisation. It is not owing to the

exclusion, from 1608 to 1829, of the Roman Catholics from Parliament;

for, since they were admitted into it, the distractions of Ireland

have gone on constantly increasing, and its pauperism and mendicancy

have advanced in an accelerated ratio. It is entirely owing to

this,--that _England has given Ireland institutions and political

franchises, for the exercise of which it is wholly disqualified by

temperament, habit, and political advancement_. We have put edged

tools into the hands of children, and we are astonished that they have

mangled their limbs. We have emancipated from necessary control the

Bedouin or the savage, and we are disappointed he does not exercise

his newly-acquired powers with the discretion of an Englishman or an

American. We have plunged a youth of sixteen, without control, into

the dissipation of London or Paris, and we are surprised he has run

riot in excess. Thence it is that all the concessions made to Ireland

have instantly and rapidly augmented its political maladies, and that

the only intervals of rest, tranquillity, and happiness it has enjoyed

for the last two hundred years, have been those in which it has for a

brief period been coerced by the wholesome severity of vigorous

government. Thence it is that Whig solicitude, fastening on the

grievances of Ireland as its battle-field, and winning for the

inhabitants privileges for which they are not fitted, has in every

instance so grievously augmented its wretchedness and crimes. This is

the true key to Irish history. Viewed in this light, it is perfectly

clear, intelligible, and consistent with what has occurred in other

parts of the world. Without such guidance, its annals exhibit a chaos

of contradictions; and Ireland must be considered as a _casus

singularis_--an exception from the principles which elsewhere have

ever regulated mankind.

The whole machinery of a free constitution--those institutions under

which the Anglo-Saxons have so long flourished on both sides the

Atlantic--are utter destruction to the semi-barbarous Celtic race to

which they have been extended. Grand juries and petty juries,

self-governments, municipalities, county and burgh elections, popular

representatives, public meetings, hustings' declarations, platform

exaggerations, a licentious press, and all the other attendants on

republican or semi-republican institutions, are utterly destructive to

the impassioned, priest-ridden, ignorant Celtic tribes in the south

and west of Ireland. A paternal despotism is what they require.

We are far from wishing that despotism to be severe--on the contrary,

we would have it beneficent and humane in the highest degree--we would

have it give to Ireland blessings tenfold greater than it will ever

earn for itself in senseless attempts at self-government. We would

commence the work by the grant of sixteen millions of British money,

to set on foot the chief arteries and railroads of the country!--that

grant which, proposed by the patriotic wisdom of Lord George Bentinck,

was defeated by the insane resistance of the Irish members

themselves.[15] We would in every imaginable shape stimulate the

industry of Ireland, and aid the efforts of its really patriotic

children, to extricate their country from the bottomless gulf into

which selfishness, agitation, and the cry for repeal, have plunged it.

But we would intrust little of this grant to the distribution of the

Irish themselves. We would not again be guilty of the enormous error

of committing a magnificent public grant to hands so unfit to direct

it, that we know from the highest authority--that of the

Lord-lieutenant himself--that great part of the fund was misapplied in

private jobbing, and the remainder wasted in making good roads bad

ones. We would execute the works by Irish hands, but distribute the

funds, and guide the undertakings, by English heads. We would deprive

the Irish, till they have shown they are fit to wield its powers, of

the whole rights of self-government. We would commence with a rigorous

and unflinching administration of justice, executed by courts-martial

in cases of insurrection, and by judges without juries in ordinary

cases. A powerful police, double its present strength, should give

security to witnesses, who, if they desire it, should be provided with

an asylum in the colonies at the public expense. "Every thing for the

people, and nothing by them," which Napoleon described as the real

principle of government at all times, should be applied to Ireland at

least during the many years still to run of its national pupilage and

minority.

The truth of these principles has been so signally demonstrated by the

events of which Ireland has recently, and we lament to say is still,

the theatre, that it has at length forced itself on the mind of the

English people. Most fortunately, the Whigs being in power themselves,

and having the responsibility and duties of government thrown upon

them, have at length come to see the matter in its true light. The cry

that all is owing to English misrule, is no longer heard in Great

Britain. Its utter falsehood has been demonstrated in language too

clear to be misunderstood. Even the Liberal journals, who have shown

themselves most earnest in promoting the cause of reform and

self-government in Great Britain, have come to see how utterly it is

misapplied when attempted in Ireland. Hear the _Times_ on this

subject, one of the ablest journals which formerly supported the cause

of parliamentary and municipal reform, as well in Ireland as in this

country.

"The slowly gathering wrath of years has been concentrated to

a point. John Bull was--as Jonathan would express

it--"properly riled" at the behaviour of his once beloved

fondling. He could put up with ingratitude; he could despise

insolence; he could treat bravado with contempt. But here was

the most wonderful combination of insolence, ingratitude,

bravado, and cowardice, that history has recorded. Here were

men belching out treason and fire and sword one day, and the

next day sneaking between the bulwarks of a cabbage-garden,

or through the loopholes of an indictment! For such, and on

such, had he been expending, not only money, but care,

anxiety, sympathy, and fear. He was fooled in the eyes of the

world and his own! The only hope for Ireland is in rest, and

a strong Government. Almost every Englishman who has regarded

her with solicitude within late years, is convinced that what

she and her people require, beyond all things, is discipline.

Her gentry require discipline; her middle classes require

discipline; her peasantry require discipline. They should

altogether be disciplined in a rigid but just system, as the

picked Irishmen have been who are distinguished as the best

foremen in our factories, and the best non-commissioned

officers in our army. Political privileges have been tried

and misused; judicial forms have been tried and abused; Saxon

institutions have been tried, and found not to harmonise with

the Celtic mind. It cannot comprehend them; it does not

appreciate them. It arrays liberty against law, and the

technicalities of law against its spirit. It wants that moral

sense, that instinctive justice and fairness, which have been

the soul and the strength of Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence. This

it must be taught by a strong, an irresistible, and, if need

be, a coercive authority. Duty must be impressed on it as a

habit, and then it will be inanealed with its sympathies. The

greatest boon to Ireland would be the rule of a benevolent

autocrat, who would punish all classes and all parties alike

for a breach of social and civil duties--the landlords for

their cruelty, the tenants for their mendacity, the priests

for their neglect of their most momentous function. This boon

Ireland will not get; but we can force upon her that which

comes the nearest to it, the suppression of a vain, vapid,

selfish, and suicidal agitation. If we do not do it while we

may, we shall rue it with bitterness and humiliation

hereafter."--_Times_, September 1847.

To the same purpose, it is observed in a late number of the

_Economist_, also an able Liberal journal:

"Irish agitation has run its course, and shown its character.

It has had 'rope enough' allowed to manifest what are its

materials, and what its means--what are the objects it

proposes, and of what stuff its leaders are made. It has

displayed a mixture of ferocity, levity, and incapacity,

which has covered with shame and confusion all its quondam

sympathisers and admirers. Demagogism has been stripped

naked, and has appeared as what it really is--a low, savage,

dishonest enormity--an 'evil that walketh in darkness'--the

epidemic malady of Ireland--an enemy which no concessions can

conciliate, which no mildness can disarm, and with which,

because of its dishonesty, no parley can be held.

"An open rebellion has been crushed at its first outbreak. A

number of its leaders and organisers are in prison, and the

Government, with a forbearance and adhesion to routine ideas

which verges on the simple, and almost approaches the

sublime, intrusts their punishment to the slow and uncertain

processes of the law--to the courage of Irish juries, and the

integrity of Irish witnesses. The Government allows rebels

who have appealed to arms, and been worsted in the conflict,

to retreat behind the shelter of the law. It is content to

meet an armament with an indictment; nay, more, it is content

to submit this indictment to the judgment of men, half of

whom are in the ranks of the rebel army, and the other half

in its power. It may have been well to try this hazardous

experiment; but the result of it could not long be doubtful.

Accordingly, we find that convictions cannot be obtained.

Rebels, whose guilt is as clear as the day, are dismissed

from the dock because juries will not agree upon a

verdict--and are to be kept safe till March 1849, then to be

let loose to recommence their work of mischief with all the

increased audacity which impunity cannot fail to generate.

They have taken arms against the Government, and the

Government will have proved impotent to punish them.

"We are not surprised that Irish juries will not convict

Irish rebels. It is too much to expect that they should do

so, even when fully convinced of, and indignant at, their

guilt. It would be almost too much to ask from Englishmen.

Government have a right to call upon jurors to do their duty,

under ordinary circumstances and in ordinary times. In like

manner, Government has a right to call upon all citizens to

come forward, and act as special constables, in all cases of

civil commotion. But it has no right to send them forth,

unexercised and unarmed, to encounter an organised and

disciplined force, provided with musket and artillery: that

is the business of regular troops. In like manner, Government

has no right to expect jurors to act at the hazard of their

lives and property. The law never contemplated that serving

on a jury should be an office of danger. When it becomes

such, other agencies must be brought into operation.

"It will not suffice to the Government to have acted with

such skill and spirit as to have rendered abortive a

formidable and organised rebellion. It must _crush_ the

rebellious spirit and the rebellious power. This can never be

done by the means of juries. Punishment, to be effectual,

must fall with unerring certainty on every one concerned in

the crime. They must be made to feel that no legal chicanery,

no illegitimate sympathy, can avail to save them. The British

nation, we are sure, will never endure that men who have been

guilty of such crimes as the Irish felons should escape

punishment, and be again let loose on society, to mock and

gibe at the impotence of power. Any termination of the crisis

would be preferable to one so fatal and

disgraceful."--_Economist_, Sept. 12, 1848.

These articles, emanating from such sources, induce us to hope that

the long-protracted distractions of Ireland are about to be brought to

a close; and that, after having been for above half a century the

battle-field of English faction, or cursed with Liberal English

sympathy, and its inevitable offspring, Irish agitation and

mendacity--the real secret of its sufferings has been brought to

light; and that, by being governed in a manner suitable to its

character and circumstances, it will at length take its place among

the really civilised nations of the world, and become fit for the

exercise of those privileges which, prematurely conceded, have proved

its ruin.

One circumstance induces the hope that this anticipation maybe

realised, and that is, the highly honourable part which the Irish

enrolled in the police have taken in the late disturbances; the

fidelity of all the Irish in the Queen's service to their colours; and

the general pacific conduct which has, with a few exceptions, been

observed by the numerous Hibernians settled in Great Britain during

the late disturbances. The conduct of the Irish police, in particular,

has been in all respects admirable; and it is net going too far to

assert, that to their zeal, activity, and gallantry, the almost

bloodless suppression of the insurrection is mainly to be ascribed.

The British army does not boast a more courageous body of men than the

Irishmen in its ranks; and it is well known that, after a time, they

form the best officers of a superior kind for all the police

establishments in the kingdom. Although the Irish in our great towns

are often a very great burden, especially when they first come over,

from the vast number of them who are in a state of mendicity, and

cannot at first get into any regular employment, yet when they do

obtain it, they prove hardworking and industrious, and do not exhibit

a greater proportion of crime than the native British with whom they

are surrounded. The Irish quickness need be told to none who have

witnessed the running fire of repartee they keep up from the fields

with travellers, how rapid soever, on the road; their genius is known

to all who are familiar with the works of Swift and Goldsmith, of

Burke and Berkeley. Of one thing only at present _they are incapable,

and that is, self-government_. One curse, and one curse only, has

hitherto blasted all their efforts at improvement, and that is, the

abuse of freedom. One thing, and one thing only, is required to set

them right, and that is, the strong rule suited to national pupilage.

One thing, and one thing only, is required to complete their ruin, and

that is, repeal and independence. An infallible test will tell us when

they have become prepared for self-government, and that is, when they

have ceased to hate the Saxon--when they adopt his industry, imitate

his habits, and emulate his virtues.

* * * * *

We have spoken of the French and the Irish, and contrasted, not

without some degree of pride, their present miserable and distracted

state with the steady and pacific condition of Great Britain, during a

convulsion which has shaken the civilised world to its foundation. But

let it not be supposed that France and Ireland alone have grievances

which require redress, erroneous policy which stands in need of

rectification. England has its full share of suffering, and more than

its deserved share of absurd and pernicious legislation. But it is the

glory of this country that we can rectify these evils by the force of

argument steadily applied, and facts sedulously brought forward,

without invoking the destructive aid of popular passions or urban

revolutions. We want neither Red Republicans nor Tipperary Boys to

fight our battles; we neither desire to be intrenched behind Parisian

barricades nor Irish non-convicting juries; we neither want the aid of

Chartist clubs, with their arsenals of rifles, nor Anti-corn-law

Leagues, with their coffers of gold. We appeal to the common sense and

experienced suffering of our countrymen--to the intellect and sense of

justice of our legislators; and we have not a doubt of ultimate

success in the greatest social conflict in which British industry has

ever been engaged.

We need not say that we allude to the CURRENCY--that question of

questions, in comparison of which all others sink into insignificance;

which is of more importance, even, than an adequate supply of food for

the nation; and without the proper understanding of which all attempts

to assuage misery or produce prosperity, to avert disaster or induce

happiness, to maintain the national credit or uphold the national

independence, must ere long prove nugatory. We say, and say advisedly,

that this question is of far more importance than the raising of food

for the nation; for if their industry is adequately remunerated, and

commercial catastrophes are averted from the realm, the people will

find food for themselves either in this or foreign states. Experience

has taught us that we can import _twelve millions_ of grain, a full

fifth of the national subsistence, in a single year. But if the

currency is not put upon a proper footing, the _means of purchasing

this grain are taken from the people_--their industry is blasted,

their labour meets with no reward--and the most numerous and important

class in the community come to present the deplorable spectacle of

industrious worth perishing of hunger, or worn out by suffering, in

the midst of accumulated stores of home-grown or foreign subsistence.

The two grand evils of the present monetary system are, that the

currency provided for the nation is _inadequate_ in point of amount,

and _fluctuating_ in point of stability.

That it is inadequate in point of amount is easily proved. In the

undermentioned years, the aggregate of notes in circulation in England

and Wales, without Scotland and Ireland, was as follows[16]:--

Bank of England and Population,

Provincial Banks. England and Wales.

1814, L47,501,000 13,200,000

1815, 46,272,650 13,420,000

1816, 42,109,620 13,640,000

1817, 43,291,901 13,860,000

1818, 48,278,070 14,100,000

Including the Scotch and Irish notes, at that period about

L12,000,000, the notes in circulation were about L60,000,000, and the

inhabitants of Great Britain 14,000,000; of the two islands about

19,000,000--or about L3, 4s. a head.

In the year 1848, thirty years afterwards, when the population of the

empire had risen to 29,000,000, the exports had tripled, and the

imports and shipping had on an average more than doubled, the supply

of paper issued to the nation stood thus:--

NOTES.

+------------+------------+--------+---------+------------+

Bank of England, |L18,784,890 |L18,710,728 | -- | L74,162 | England |

Private Banks, | 4,258,380 | 3,520,990 | -- | 737,390 | and Wales. |

Joint Stock | | | | | 19,500,000 |

Banks, | 2,991,351 | 2,479,951 | -- | 511,400 | |

+------------+------------+--------+---------+ Great |

Total in England,| 26,034,621 | 24,711,669 | -- |1,322,952| Britain and|

... Scotland,| 3,455,651 | 3,035,903 | -- | 419,748| Ireland. |

... Ireland, | 5,097,215 | 4,313,304 | -- | 783,911| 29,500,000 |

-----------------+------------+------------+--------+---------+ |

United Kingdom, | 34,587,487 | 32,060,876 | -- |2,526,611| |

Thus showing a decrease of L1,322,952 in the circulation of

notes in England, and a decrease of L2,526,611 in the

circulation of the United Kingdom, when compared with the

corresponding period last year.[17]--_Times_, Aug. 29, 1848.

Thus, in the last thirty years, the population of Great Britain and

Ireland has _increased_ from 19,000,000 to 29,500,000; while its

currency in paper has _decreased_ from L60,000,000 to L32,000,000.

Above fifty per cent has been added to the people, and above a hundred

per cent to their transactions, and the currency by which they are to

be carried on has been contracted fifty per cent. Thirty years ago,

the paper currency was L3, 5s. a head; now it is not above L1, 5s. a

head! And our statesmen express surprise at the distress which

prevails, and the extreme difficulty experienced in collecting the

revenue! It is no wonder, in such a state of matters, that it is now

more difficult to collect L52,000,000 from 29,000,000 of people, than

in 1814 it was to collect L72,000,000 from 18,000,000.

The circulation, it is particularly to be observed, is _decreasing_

every year. It was, in August 1848, no less than L2,500,000 _less_

than it was in August 1847, though that was the August _between_ the

crisis of April and the crisis of October of that year. And this

prodigious and progressively increasing contraction of the currency,

and consequent drying up of credit and blasting of industry, is

taking place at the precise time when the very legislators who have

produced it have landed the nation in the expenditure, in three years,

of L150,000,000 on domestic railways, independent of a vast and

increasing import trade, which is constantly draining more and more of

our metallic resources out of the country! Need it be wondered at that

money is so tight, and that railway stock in particular exhibits, week

after week, a progressive and most alarming decline.

But, say the bullionists, if we have taken away one-half of your

paper, we have given you double the former command of sovereigns; and

gold is far better than paper, because it is of universal and

permanent value. There can be no doubt that the gold and silver

coinage at the Mint has been very much augmented since paper was so

much withdrawn; and the amount in circulation now probably varies in

ordinary times from L40,000,000 to L45,000,000. There can be as little

doubt that the circulation, on its present basis, is capable of

fostering and permitting the most unlimited amount of speculations;

for absurd adventures never were so rife in the history of England,

not even in the days of the South Sea Company, as in 1845, the year

which immediately followed Sir R. Peel's new currency measures, by

which these dangers were to be for ever guarded against. It is no

wonder it was so; for the bill of 1844 aggravates speculation as much

in periods of prosperity, as it augments distress and pinches credit

in times of adversity. By compelling the Bank of England, and all

other banks, to hold constantly in their coffers a vast amount of

treasure, which must be issued at a fixed price, it leaves them no

resource for defraying its charges but pushing business, and getting

out their notes to the uttermost. That was the real secret of the

lowering of the Bank of England's discounts to 3 and 2-1/2 per cent in

1845, and of the enormous gambling speculations of that year, from the

effects of which the nation is still so severely suffering.

But as gold is made, under the new system, the basis of the

circulation beyond the L32,000,000 allowed to be issued in the United

Kingdom on securities, what provision does it make for keeping the

gold thus constituted the _sole basis of two-thirds of the currency

within the country_? Not only is no such provision made, but _every

imaginable facility is given for its exportation_. Under the

free-trade system, our imports are constantly increasing in a most

extraordinary ratio, and our exports constantly diminishing. Since

1844, our imports have _swelled_ from L75,000,000 to L90,000,000,

while our exports have _decreased_ from L60,000,000 to L58,000,000, of

which only L51,000,000 are British and Irish exports and

manufactures.[18] How is the balance paid, or to be paid? _In cash_:

and that is the preparation which our legislators have made for

keeping the gold, the life-blood of industry and the basis of

two-thirds of the circulation, in the country. They have established a

system of trade which, by inducing a large and constant importation of

food, for which scarcely any thing but gold will be taken, induces a

_constant tendency of the precious metals outwards_. With the right

hand they render the currency and credit beyond L32,000,000 entirely

dependent on keeping the gold in the country, and with the left hand

_they send it headlong out of the country to buy grain_. No less than

L33,000,000 were sent out in this way to buy grain in fifteen months

during and immediately preceding the year 1847. They do this at the

very time when, under bills which themselves have passed, and the

railways which themselves have encouraged, L150,000,000 was in the

next three years to be expended on the extra work of railways! Is it

surprising that, under such a system, half the wealth of our

manufacturing towns has disappeared in two years; that distress to an

unheard-of extent prevails every where; and that the Chancellor of the

Exchequer has been obliged to borrow L10,000,000, in the last and

present session of Parliament, during general peace?

Let it not be supposed this evil has passed away. It is in full vigour

at the present moment. It will never pass away as long as _free trade

and a fettered currency_ coexist in this country. The disastrous fact

has been revealed by the publication of the Board of Trade returns,

that while, during the first six months of this year, our imports have

undergone little diminution, our exports have sunk L4,000,000 below

the corresponding months in last year. In May alone, the decrease was

L1,122,000; in April, L1,467,000.[19] Beyond all doubt our exports,

this year, of British produce and manufactures, will sink to

L45,000,000, while our imports will reach at least L85,000,000! How is

the balance paid? IN SPECIE! And still the monetary laws remain the

same, and for every five sovereigns above L32,000,000 lent out, a note

must be drawn in! It may be doubted whether a system so utterly absurd

and ruinous ever was established in any nation, or persevered in with

such obstinacy after its pernicious effects had been ascertained by

experience.

The manner in which these disastrous effects resulted, necessarily and

immediately, from the combined operation of the bills of 1819 and

1844, is thus clearly and justly stated by Mr Salt, in his late

admirable letter to Sir R. Peel on the subject.

"The potato crop failed, and an importation of food became

necessary; the food was imported at a cost not exceeding one

half per cent on the national wealth. It might have been paid

for in goods or in gold, and the limit of the loss would have

been the amount paid--a sum too insignificant, compared to

the national resources, to have been perceptible--and the

national industry could have replaced it in a few weeks.

"But the bill of 1819 had made gold the basis of our whole

system; and, therefore, when the gold was exported to pay for

the food, the whole system was broken up; and the bill

provides that this calamity shall in every case be added to

that of a bad harvest; that the abstraction of an

infinitesimal part of our money shall destroy our whole

monetary system; that the purchase of a small quantity of

food shall cause an immense quantity of starvation, by

destroying the means of distributing the food, and employing

labour. If this were the only evil of the bill, its existence

ought not to be tolerated an hour.

"Instead of placing the national credit and solvency on the

broad and indestructible basis of the national industry and

wealth, you have placed all the great national interest on

gold, the narrowest and most shifting, and therefore the most

unfit, basis it was possible to choose. You could not have

done worse.

"The gold being in quantity perfectly unequal to effect the

exchanges needful for the existence of society, an immense

and disproportioned superstructure of paper money and credit

became a compulsory result, and a certain cause of

perpetually recurring ruin.

"In framing the bill of 1819 you do not appear to have had a

suspicion of this consequence; but in 1844, after an interval

of a quarter of a century, this much seems to have dawned

obscurely in your mind; but, alas! what was your

remedy?--enlarging and securing the too narrow and shifting

basis? Not at all; you crippled and limited the

superstructure. You left us subject to the whole of your

original error, and provided a new one!

"The bill of 1844 provides that, in proportion as the gold

money shall disappear, the paper money shall disappear also!

Out of the money thus doubly reduced, the unhappy people are

compelled to pay unreduced taxes; and out of the inadequate

remnant to discharge unreduced debts, and to provide for the

unreduced necessities of their respective stations. So the

leaven of the law works its way through all society. The

payments cannot be made out of these reduced means, the loss

of the credit follows the loss of the money; the means of

exchange, employment, and consumption are destroyed, and the

world looks with amazement on the consummation of your

work--the wealthiest nation in the world withering up under

the blight of a universal insolvency; an abundance of all

things beyond compute, and a misery and want beyond relief.

"The sole aim of your bill has been to convert paper money

into gold. I have shown how signally you have failed in this

one object, always excepting your special claim of converting

L48,000,000 of paper money into L15,000,000 of gold, for

which mutation I suspect few will thank you. In all other

respects, the whimsicality of your fate has been to establish

a universal inconvertibility. Labour cannot be converted into

wages, East India estates, West India estates, railway

shares, sugar, rice, cotton goods, &c.; in short, all things

are inconvertible except gold. There has been nothing like it

since the days of Midas.

"The facts, sir, are of your creation, not of mine. I cannot

alter or disguise them. You have had confided to your

administration, by our illustrious sovereign, this most

powerful state, of almost unlimited extent and fertility--a

people unrivalled in their knowledge, caution, skill, and

energy, possessed of unlimited means of creating wealth, and

out of all these elements of human happiness your measures

have produced a chaos of ruin, misery, and discontent. You

can scarcely place your finger on the map, and mark a spot in

this vast empire where all the elements of prosperity do not

exist abundantly; you cannot point out one where you have not

produced results of ruin. Every resource is paralysed, every

interest deranged; the very empire is threatened with

dissolution. The Canadas, the West Indies, and Ireland, are

threatening secession, and England has to be garrisoned

against its people as against a hostile force; the very

loyalty of English hearts is beginning to turn into

disaffection. Review once more these vast resources, and

these wretched results, and I trust you will not make the

fatal opinion of your life the only one to which you will

persist in adhering."

This is language at once fearless, but measured--cutting, but

respectful, which, on such an emergency, befits a British statesman.

There is no appeal to popular passions, no ascribing of unworthy

motives, no attempt to evade inquiry by irony; facts, known undeniable

facts, are alone appealed to. Inferences, clear, logical, convincing,

are alone drawn. If such language was more frequent, _especially in

the House of Commons_, the plague would soon be stayed, and its former

prosperity would again revisit the British Empire.

In opposition to these damning facts, the whole tactics of the

bullionists consist in recurring to antiquated and childish terrors.

They call out "Assignats, assignats, assignats!"--they seek to alarm

every holder of money by the dread of its depreciation. They affect to

treat the doctrine of keeping a fair proportion between population,

engagements, and currency, as a mere chimera. In the midst of the

deluge, they raise the cry of fire; when wasting of famine, they hold

out to us the terrors of repletion; when sinking from atrophy on the

way-side, they strive to terrify us by the dangers of apoplexy. The

answer to all this tissue of affectation and absurdity is so evident,

that we are almost ashamed to state it. We all know the dangers of

assignats; we know that they are ruinous when issued to any great

extent. So also we know the dangers of apoplexy and intoxication; but

we are not on that account reconciled to a regimen of famine and

starvation. We know that some of the rich die of repletion, but we

know that many more of the poor die of want and wretchedness. We do

not want to be deluged with inconvertible paper, which has been truly

described as "strength in the outset, but weakness in the end;" but

neither do we desire to be starved by the periodical abstraction of

that most evanescent of earthly things, a gold circulation. Having the

means, from our own immense accumulated wealth, of enjoying that first

of social blessings, an _adequate, steady, and safe currency_, we do

not wish to be any longer deprived of it by the prejudices of

theorists, the selfishness of capitalists, or the obstinacy of

statesmen. Half our wealth, engaged in trade and manufactures, has

already disappeared, under this system, in two years; we have no

disposition to lose the remaining half.

The duty on wheat now is only five shillings a quarter; in February

next it will fall to one shilling a quarter, and remain fixed at that

amount. The importation of grain, which was felt as so dreadful a

drain upon our metallic resources in 1847, may, under that system, be

considered as permanent. _We shall be always in the condition in which

the nation is when three weeks' rain has fallen in August._ Let

merchants, manufacturers, holders of funded property, of railway

stock, of bank stock, reflect on that circumstance, and consider what

fate awaits them if the present system remains unchanged. They know

that three days' rain in August lowers the public funds one, and all

railway stock ten per cent. Let them reflect on their fate if, by

human folly, _an effect equal to that of three weeks' continuous fall

of rain takes place every year_. Let them observe what frightful

oscillations in the price of commodities follow the establishing by

law a fixed price for gold. Let them ponder on the consequences of a

system which sends twelve or fifteen millions of sovereigns out of the

country _annually_ to buy grain, and _contracts_ the paper remaining

in it at the same time in the same proportion. Let them observe the

effect of such a system, coinciding with a vast expenditure on

domestic railways. And let them consider whether all these dreadful

evils, and the periodical devastation of the country by absurd

speculation and succeeding ruin, would not be effectually guarded

against, and the perils of an over-issue of paper also prevented, by

the simple expedient of treating gold and silver, the most easily

transported and evanescent of earthly things, like any other

commodity, and making paper always payable _in them_, but _at the

price they bear at the moment of presentment_. That would establish a

_mixed_ circulation of the precious metals and paper, mutually

convertible, and allow an _increased_ issue of the latter to obviate

all the evils flowing from the periodical abstractions of the former.

To establish the circulation on a gold basis _alone_, in a great

commercial state, is the same error as to put the food of the people

in a populous community on one root or species of grain. Ireland has

shown us, in the two last years, what is the consequence of the

one--famine and rebellion; England, of the other--bankruptcy and

Chartism.

FOOTNOTES:

[11] Lamartine, _Histoire des Girondins_, i. 83.

[12] The Prefect of Police had published an account of the situation

of Paris during the last ten days, in which he states that the most

perfect tranquillity prevailed in the capital; that confidence was

beginning to revive on every point; that a slow but incontestible

progress manifested itself in every branch of industry; and that at no

former period, and under no previous regimen, did Paris offer more

respect for persons or more security for property. Orders were

arriving from the departments. The manufacture of articles of luxury

and jewellery partook of that resuscitation, as appears from the

returns of the inspector-general of the hall-mark at the mint of

Paris. The articles of jewellery completed and ordered during the last

five months produced the following receipts:--in April, 9,000f.; May,

11,000f.; June, 17,000f.; July, 19,000f.; August, 36,000f. The number

of workmen reduced by distress to reside in lodging-houses had

considerably diminished. In the preceding bulletin their number was

31,480; it is now 27,308--17,977 of whom were employed, and 9,331

unoccupied. The houses of confinement contained nearly the same number

of ordinary prisoners, and only 4,058 insurgents of June; 2,909 of the

latter had been liberated since the 26th of July, and 1,005 conveyed

to Havre between the 28th of August and the 4th of September. From the

26th of August to the 5th of September, nine persons committed

suicide.--_Times_, Sept. 11, 1848.

[13] We mean those in the south and west. The other, of Ulster, are of

British descent, and undistinguished from the rest of the Anglo-Saxon

race.

[14] CRIME IN IRELAND.

Serious

Crimes.

Last Quarter of 1829.--Catholic Emancipation passed in March, 300

Do. of 1830.-- Do. 499

Do. of 1831.--Reform Agitation, 814

Do. of 1832.--Reform and Repeal Agitation, 1513

By the Coercion Act the Serious crimes were reduced at once to

a _fourth_ of their number. See _Hansard, Parl. Debates_, Feb.

9, 1834.

[15] "It was not so much through the hostility of the English members,

as through the desertion and hostility of the Irish members, (many of

them Repealers,) that in February 1847, Ireland lost the opportunity

of obtaining a loan of sixteen millions of English gold at L3, 7s. 6d.

per cent, to stimulate the construction, by private enterprise, of

railways in your country.

"Unanimous in Palace Yard, on one Tuesday in favour of the proposition

I then brought forward, on the Thursday se'ennight the same sixty

gentlemen, having seen the prime minister at the Foreign Office in the

interval, voted two to one in the House of Commons against giving

railways to Ireland.

"Out of a hundred and five representatives which Ireland possesses,

twenty-eight only, if my memory serves me correctly, would vote for

that loan to Ireland. Two-thirds of the Irish representatives present

declined the measure--the rest took care to be _non est inventus_ at

the division, which was the hour of Ireland's need.

"Read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest the division list, and you

will find many more true friends of Ireland, on that occasion, among

the supporters of the Union than among the Repealers.

"Is it surprising that, where Irish representatives voted two to one

against the acceptance of that measure, and when but twenty-eight, out

of Ireland's hundred and five, could alone be found to say 'ay,' that

a majority of Englishmen could not be found willing to make a

sacrifice of English interests, to force upon Ireland a boon which the

majority of Irish members rejected?

"It is not Repeal of the Union that Ireland wants; she wants men to

represent her, who, understanding her material and substantial

interests, are able and willing to promote and maintain them; and will

not, on the other hand, to gain the shouts of the mob, divert public

and parliamentary attention to phantom reforms, that have no

substantial virtue in them--or, on the other hand, sell their votes to

win the smiles, or may be something more valuable in the gift of the

minister of the day.--I am, Sir your humble servant,

"G. BENTINCK."

[16] ALISON'S _Europe_, xx., Appendix.

[17] Small as these numbers are, the amount of notes in circulation is

daily still further decreasing. For the week ending 9th September

1848, the amount of notes in circulation of the Bank of England was

only L17,844,665. It is no wonder the same journal adds--"The Railway

Market was _more depressed than ever_ this afternoon; and prices of

all descriptions experienced a considerable fall. London and North

Western were done at 105; Great Western stand at 18 to 20

_discount_."--_Times_, 10th Sept. 1848.

[18]

Exports, Declared Value. Imports, Official Value.

1844, L58,584,292 L75,441,565

1845, 60,111,681 85,284,965

1846, 57,786,576 75,958,875

1847, 58,971,106 90,921,866

--_Parl. Returns._

[19]

EXPORTS.

| | | | |

| of 1847. | of 1848. | | |

+-----------+-----------+---------+----------+

Butter | L62,879 | L71,576 | L8,697 | -- |

Candles | 22,155 | 26,475 | 4,329 | -- |

Cheese | 15,149 | 11,089 | -- | L4,060 |

Coals and culm | 432,497 | 517,925 | 85,420 | -- |

Cotton manufactures | 9,248,835 | 8,023,825 | -- |1,225,010 |

Cotton yarn | 2,628,616 | 2,214,031 | -- | 414,185 |

Earthenware | 429,387 | 365,382 | -- | 64,005 |

Fish, herrings | 37,883 | 31,220 | -- | 6,663 |

Glass | 153,746 | 124,121 | -- | 29,625 |

Hardwares and cutlery | 1,096,956 | 939,523 | -- | 157,433 |

unwrought | 163,515 | 119,921 | -- | 43,594 |

Linen manufactures | 1,502,770 | 1,413,819 | -- | 88,951 |

Linen yarn | 315,196 | 236,076 | -- | 79,120 |

Machinery | 541,403 | 398,770 | -- | 142,633 |

Metals--Iron and steel | 2,462,954 | 2,545,650 | 82,696 | -- |

Copper and brass | 849,751 | 546,648 | -- | 303,103 |

Lead | 100,620 | 57,331 | -- | 43,289 |

Tin, unwrought | 72,882 | 73,477 | 595 | -- |

Tin, plates | 235,771 | 259,950 | 24,179 | -- |

Salt | 141,195 | 115,757 | -- | 25,438 |

Silk manufactures | 494,806 | 263,798 | -- | 231,008 |

Soap | 76,686 | 74,166 | -- | 2,520 |

Sugar, refined | 203,628 | 212,298 | 8,670 | -- |

Wool, sheep or lambs' | 95,412 | 58,256 | -- | 37,156 |

Woollen yarn | 444,797 | 291,985 | -- | 152,812 |

Woollen manufactures | 3,564,754 | 2,578,470 | -- | 986,284 |

+-----------+-----------+---------+----------+

|L25,394,243|L21,571,939|L214,585 |L4,036,889|

The entire decrease of exports during the half-year is thus

shown to be L3,822,304.

IMPORTS.

| Imported. | Taken for |

| | Home Consumption. |

| | |

| 1847. | 1848. | 1847. | 1848. |

+----------+----------+----------+----------+

qrs. | 2,195,579| 1,548,464| 2,547,938| 1,436,463|

Indian corn, qrs. | 2,082,038| 652,788| 2,082,369| 647,470|

Flour and meal, cwts. | 3,382,959| 459,797| 3,860,187| 433,759|

Butter and cheese, cwts. | 298,568| 291,713| 342,170| 312,394|

Eggs, No. |41,299,514|48,791,793|41,276,990|48,786,604|

Cocoa, lbs. | 2,540,298| 2,407,034| 1,764,590| 1,542,119|

Coffee, British, lbs. | 6,394,508|10,227,072|13,545,147|15,158,187|

Ditto, Foreign, lbs. | 5,395,669| 7,704,282| 6,092,252| 3,900,457|

+----------+----------+----------+----------+

Total coffee |11,790,177|17,931,354|19,637,399|19,058,644|

Sugar--West India, cwts. | 1,288,138| 1,091,375| 994,163| 1,212,726|

Mauritius, cwts. | 884,699| 568,475| 617,681| 470,410|

East India, cwts. | 683,901| 679,279| 710,514| 669,196|

Foreign, cwts. | 1,110,948| 621,301| 622,284| 427,542|

+----------+----------+----------+----------+

Total sugar | 3,967,686| 2,960,430| 2,944,642| 2,779,874|

Tea, lbs. |30,999,703|32,788,914|23,101,975|24,365,380|

Rice, cwts. | 676,130| 497,038| Free. | -- |

Ditto, qrs. | 32,343| 31,410| Free. | -- |

Spirits, galls | 4,328,426| 4,525,729| 2,282,072| 2,069,720|

Wines, galls | 3,332,866| 3,380,826| 3,264,521| 3,114,158|

Opium, lbs. | 103,708| 83,693| 27,208| 36,985|

Tobacco, lbs. |11,100,328|10,822,184|13,419,830|13,416,118|

and raisins, cwts. | 189,844| 107,644| 194,951| 236,918|

oranges, chests | 209,647| 281,362| 206,058| 261,302|

Ditto, at value, L| 773| 2,961| 12,449| 8,463|

Spices, lbs. | 2,250,664| 3,460,497| 1,564,612| 1,632,833|

BYRON'S ADDRESS TO THE OCEAN.

Childe Harold's Pilgrimage undertakes an Idea--that of a proud

spirit, born in a castle, self-driven from the bosom of home, seeking

refuge, solace, renovation, from Nature, of sensibilities worn out

with enjoyment. Or, he brings into play a neglected, unused

sensibility--the joy of the Sublime and the Beautiful. We receive, as

given, a mind gifted with extraordinary powers of will and

understanding--by the favour of birth, nursed upon the heights of

society--conversant with pleasure and passion; and, bearing all this

constantly in mind, we must read the poem. From it large passages

might be selected, in which the scorn, despite, bitterness that

elsewhere break in, disfeaturing beauty and sublimity, are silent;

and the passion of divine beholding stands out alone. Is this the

character--or what is the character, of the celebrated concluding

Address to the Ocean? Few things in modern poetry have been more

universally--more indiscriminately admired; be it ours now to recite

with you the famous Stanzas--and here, sitting beneath the

sea-fronting porch of our Marine Villa, indulge in a confabulatory

critique.

The Wanderings are at an end. The real and the imaginary pilgrim,

standing together upon Mount Albano, look out upon the blue

Mediterranean. He has generously, honourably, magnanimously, thrown

upon the ground the checkered mantle of scorn, anger, disappointment,

sorrow, and ennui, which had wrapped in disguise his fair stature and

features; and he stands a restored, or at least an escaped man, gazing

with eye and soul upon the beautiful and majestic sea rolling in its

joy beneath his feet. He looks; and he will deliver himself up, as

Nature's lone enthusiast, to the delicious, deep, dread, exulting,

holy passion of--vary the word as he varies it--The Ocean.

Let us chant--with broken, though haply not unmusical voice--what may

be called--the Hymn. That is a high term--let us not anticipate that it

has been misapplied. Childe Harold, or Lord Byron--for it here little

matters whether a grace of pleased fancy resolve the Two into One, or

show the Two side by side, noble forms in brotherly reflection--here is

at last the powerful but self-encumbered Spirit with whom we have

journeyed so long in sunlight and in storm--delighted, sympathising,

wondering at least, or confounded and angry when he will not let us

wonder--here He is at last himself, in unencumbered strength, setting

like the sun upon the sea he gazes on--the clouds broken through,

dispersed, and vanquished, even if a half-tinge of melancholy

remembrance hang in the atmosphere, radiant in majestic farewell.

"But I forget.--My pilgrim's shrine is won,

And he and I must part--so let it be,--

His task and mine alike are nearly done;

Yet once more let us look upon the sea;

The midland ocean breaks on him and me,

And from the Alban Mount we now behold

Our friend of youth, that Ocean, which when we

Beheld it last by Calpe's rock unfold

Those waves, we follow'd on till the dark Euxine roll'd

"Upon the blue Symplegades: long years--

Long, though not very many, since have done

Their work on both; some suffering and some tears

Have left us nearly where we had begun:

Yet not in vain our mortal race hath run,

We have had our reward--and it is here;

That we can yet feel gladden'd by the sun,

And reap from earth, sea, joy almost as dear

As if there were no man to trouble what is clear.

"Oh! that the Desert were my dwelling-place

With one fair Spirit for my minister,

That I might all forget the human race,

And, hating no one, love but only her!

Ye Elements!--in whose ennobling stir

I feel myself exalted--can ye not

Accord me such a being? Do I err

In deeming such inhabit many a spot?

Though with them to converse can rarely be our lot.

"There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,

There is a rapture on the lonely shore,

There is society, where none intrudes,

By the deep Sea, and music in its roar:

I love not Man the less, but Nature more,

From these our interviews, in which I steal

From all I may be, or have been before,

To mingle with the Universe, and feel

What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.

"Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean!--roll!

Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain;

Man marks the earth with ruin--his control

Stops with the shore;--upon the watery plain

The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain

A shadow of man's ravage, save his own,

When, for a moment, like a drop of rain,

He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan,

Without a grave, unknell'd, uncoffin'd, and unknown.

"His steps are not upon thy paths--thy fields

Are not a spoil for him--thou dost arise,

And shake him from thee; the vile strength he wields

For earth's destruction thou dost all despise,

Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies,

And send'st him, shivering in thy playful spray

And howling, to his Gods, where haply lies

His petty hope in some near port or bay,

And dashest him again to earth;--there let him lay.

"The armaments which thunderstrike the walls

Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake,

And monarchs tremble in their capitals,

The oak leviathans, whose huge ribs make

Their clay creator the vain title take

Of lord of thee, and arbiter of war;

These are thy toys, and, as the snowy flake,

They melt into thy yeast of waves, which mar

Alike the Armada's pride, or spoils of Trafalgar.

"Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee--

Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they?

Thy waters wasted them while they were free,

And many a tyrant since; their shores obey

The stranger, slave, or savage; their decay

Has dried up realms to deserts:--not so thou,

Unchangeable save to thy wild waves' play--

Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow--

Such as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now.

"Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form

Glasses itself in tempests; in all time,

Calm or convulsed--in breeze, or gale, or storm,

Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime

Dark-heaving;--boundless, endless, and sublime--

The image of Eternity--the throne

Of the Invisible; even from out thy slime

The monsters of the deep are made; each zone

Obeys thee; thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone.

"And I have loved thee, Ocean! and my joy

Of youthful sports was on thy breast to be

Borne, like thy bubbles, onward: from a boy

I wanton'd with thy breakers--they to me

Were a delight; and if the freshening sea

Made them a terror--'twas a pleasing fear,

For I was as it were a child of thee,

And trusted to thy billows far and near,

And laid my hand upon thy mane--as I do here."

These Stanzas may be separated from the Poem--the feeling of readers

innumerable so separates them--as a HYMN TO THE OCEAN. The passage, a

great effort of a great poet, intends a final putting forth of all his

power--it has been acknowledged and renowned as such; and, if it has

failed, a critique showing this, and showing the ground of the

failure, maybe useful to you, inexperienced yet in the criticism of

poetry, though all alive to its charm.

We observe you delight in the first Four Stanzas--ay, you recite them

over again after us--and the voice of youth, tremulous in emotion, is

pathetic to the Old Man. He will not seek, by what might seem to you,

thus moved, hypercritical objections to some of the words; but,

pleased with your pleasure, he is willing to allow you to believe the

stanzas entirely good in expression as in thought. For here the morbid

disrelish of the sated palate is cleansed away. The obscuring cloud of

the overwhelmed heart is dispersed. The joy of the wilderness here

claimed is not necessarily more or other than that of every powerful

and imaginative spirit, which experiences that solitude is, in simple

truth, by a steadfast law of our nature, the condition under which our

soul is able to wed itself in impassioned communion effectually to the

glorious Universe--where, too, the subjugating footsteps of man,

impairing the pure domain of free nature, are not. "Pathless,"

"lonely,"--of themselves bespeak neither satiety nor hostility: there

is "society by the deep sea, and music in its roar!" all quite right.

Here is a heart, in its thirst for sympathy, peopling the desert with

sympathisers. Here is expansion of the heart; and the spirit that

rejoices in the consciousness of life roused into creative activity.

For an ear untuned and untuning, here is one that listens out

harmonies which you, languid or inept, might not discern. "Pleasure!"

"rapture!" "society!" "music!"--a chain of genialities!

"I love not man the less, but nature more,

From these our interviews."

What will you require of kindliest humanity from any poet, from any

lover of nature, that is not here? The savage grandeur of earth and

sea have their peril--the fleeing of human homes and haunts--the

voluptuous banishment self-imposed--the caressing of dear fancies in

secret invisible recesses inviolable--these tend all to engendering

and nurturing an excessive self-delight akin to an usurping self-love;

and the very sublimities of that wonderful intercourse, in which, upon

the one part, stands the feeble dwarf Man, in his hour-lived weakness,

and upon the other, as if Infinitude itself putting on cognisable

forms, the imperishable Hills and the unchangeable Sea--that

intercourse in which he, the pigmy, conscious of the divinity within

him, feels himself the greater--he infinite, immortal, and these

finite and vanishing--the power and exultation of that intercourse

may well engender and nourish Pride. Self-love and Pride, tempting,

decoying, bewildering, devouring demons of the inhuman Waste! But the

self-reproved, repentant pilgrim has well understood these dangers. He

knows that the delight of woods and waterfalls, of stars and storms,

may alienate man from his fellow-man. He has guarded himself by some

wise temperance. He has found here his golden mean. From thus

conversing, he "loves not man the less, but nature more." Is this a

young Wordsworth, beginning, in the school of nature, to learn the

wisdom of humanity?

At all events, here is, for the occasion, the most express and earnest

disclaimer of the mood of misanthropy; and we rejoice to hear the

Pilgrim speak of interviews

"in which I steal

From all I may be, or have been before."

From all! that is, from all the ungracious, the harsh, the unkind, the

sore, the embittered, the angry, the miserable! Not, surely, from all

the amiable and all the gladsome; and especially not from the whole

personality and identity of his character. The picture he had given us

of himself was that of a powerful mind, self-set at war with its kind,

yet within an exasperated hate ever and anon unfolding undestroyed,

sometimes hardly vitiated, some portion of its original ingenerate

faculty of love. Here we behold him now as God made him, and no longer

possessed by a demon. Change his rhyme into our prose--and you do not

dislike our prose--and in sober and sincere sadness the Childe thus

speaks--"I steal, under the power of these delicious, renovating,

gladdening, hallowing influences, out of myself--out of that evil

thing which man had made me--rather, alas! which I had made myself

into;--and if long wandering, disuse of humanity, separation from the

scene of my wrongs, and this auspicious dominion of inviolate nature

have in these past years already amended me--if I have been worse than

I am--even that worse and that worst these 'interviews' obliterate and

extinguish." The soured milk of human kindness is again sweetened. Or,

if that be too much to say, at least man, with all the dissonance that

hangs by his name and recollections, is forgotten, suspended--for the

time absolutely lost. If this be not the meaning, what is?

"And feel

What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal,"

is indeed powerless writing, and the stanza merited a better close.

But the whole stanza protests, proclaims the glad healing power of the

natural world over him. He has described this as well as he could, and

sums up with saying that by him it is indescribable. "I derive from

these communions a rapturous transformation--so great, so wondrous,

that my ignorant skill of words is utterly unable to render it; but,

at the same time, so self-powerful, that, in despite of this my

concealing inability, tones of it will outbreak, make themselves

heard, felt, and understood." Thus Byron sets the tune of his Address

to the Ocean. The first Four Stanzas, therefore, be their poetry more

or less, required, upon this account, enucleation; and further, dear

Neophyte, inasmuch as they are particularly humane, they should take

their effectual place among evidences which separate him personally

from some of his poetical Timons.

You--dear Neophyte--have called the Four Stanzas beautiful,--that is

enough for us,--and they recall to your heart--you say--the kindred

lines of Coleridge--which we call "beautiful exceedingly."--

"With other ministrations thou! O Nature!

Healest thy wandering and distemper'd child.

Thou pourest on him thy soft influences,

Thy sunny hues, fair forms, and breathing sweets,

Thy melodies of woods, and winds, and waters,

Till he relent, and can no more endure

To be a jarring and a dissonant thing

Amid this general dance and minstrelsy;

But, bursting into tears, wins back his way,

His angry spirit heal'd and harmonised

By the benignant touch of love and beauty."

Thus--we repeat our words--"Byron sets the tune of his Address to the

Ocean."

The poem, then, is an Address to the Ocean by a Lover of the Ocean. It

seems reasonable, then, to ask, first, what is it natural to expect

that such a poem should be? And if it proves to be something

remarkably different, then to inquire whether any particular

circumstance or condition has intervened which justifies the poet in

following an unexpected course.

Now, for natural expectation, the theme is one of eulogy; and one may

say, therefore, that praise customarily expresses itself in one or

other of two principal ways--namely, directly or indirectly. We praise

directly, for instance, when, moved by the contemplation of some great

or interesting subject, we single forth, one after another, the

qualities of its character, or the facts in its history, which have

provoked our love, our admiration, our joy, our gratitude. Upon the

other hand, we praise indirectly when we extol the subject of our

eulogy by dispraising another foreign subject, which we oppose to the

chosen one in the way of relief or foil; whether we establish mere

comparison of contrast between the two, or cite an opposition of actual

enmity between them--as if, in hymning Apollo, we should insist upon

the horror and fury, the earth-pollution and the earth-affliction, of

the monster Python.

A moment of reflection satisfies us that both ways are alike

natural--both, with occasion, alike unavoidable; but it is impossible

to help equally seeing that these two ways of eulogy differ materially

from each other in two respects,--the temper of inspiration which

dictates, animates, and supports the one or other manner of

attributing renown, and the motive justifying the one eulogistic

procedure or the other. The temper of direct praise is always wholly

genial; that of lauding by illaudation has in it perforce an ungenial

element. The motive to direct praise eternally subsists and is there,

as long as the subject eulogised subsists and is there. This, then, is

the ordinary method. If any thing has just happened that provokes the

indirect way--as if Python has just been vanquished--then good and

well; or if the poet, by some personal haunting sorrow, or by an

unvanquished idiosyncrasy, must arrive at pleasure through pain, so be

it: but this method is clearly extraordinary and exceptive to the

rule; and the reason for using it must be prominent, definite, and

flashing in all men's eyes. The other method never can require

justifying--this does always; and if it fail conspicuously in aught,

the very opposite effect to that intended is produced, and the eulogy

is no laud. You may say, indeed, and say truly, that all eulogy shall

be mixed--that naturally and necessarily every subject has its title

to favour by sympathy and by antipathy. Which of the two shall

predominate? We need scarcely answer that question. The mood of mind

in which the Poet sings must be genial and benign, though he may have

to deal in fierce invective.

Read then, dearest Neophyte, the first Four Stanzas--recite them

again, for you have them by heart. It is not easy to imagine any thing

more completely at variance with all that preamble for the hymn than

the hymn itself. The poet, imbued, as we have seen, with the love of

nature and of man, will breathe on both his benediction. He will

glorify the Sea. And how does he attain the transported and

affectionate contemplation of the abyss of waters? By the opposition

of man's impotence to the might of the sea; by the opposition of the

land subjected to man, mixed up in his destinies, and changeable with

him, to the ocean free from all change, excepting that of its own

moods, the free play of its own gigantic will. For though,

philosophically speaking, the immense mass of waters is in itself

inert and powerless; lifted into tides by the sun and moon; lifted

into storm by raging and invisible winds; yet the poet, lawfully, and

by a compulsion which lies alike upon all our minds, apprehends in

what is involuntary, self-willed motion, wild changeable moods, a

pleasure of rolling--sun, moon, and winds, being for the moment left

utterly out of thought; and it may be that Byron here does this well.

But, what is the worth, what the meaning of the first Four Stanzas--in

which you have delighted, because in them the Bard you love had

deliberately and passionately rejected all hostile regard of man, and

reclaimed for himself his place among the brotherhood--when we see

that hostile regard in all its bitterness, instantaneously return and

become the predominating characteristic of the whole wrathful and

scornful song?

Was his previous confession of faith utterly false and hollow? If

sincere and substantial, what in a moment shattered it?

"Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean--roll!

Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee."

This is good in temper so far--nor in aught inconsistent with the

spirit pervading the introductory Stanzas; if the ten thousand fleets

are presented for the magnificence of the picture. But are they? No,

already for spleen. The full verse is

"Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee--_in vain_!"

In vain! for what end in vain? Why for one that never was contemplated

by them, nor by any rational being--that of leaving the bosom of the

deep permanently furrowed by their wakes! This is a minuteness of

thinking we shudder to put down--but mend the matter if you can. Try

to imagine something great, if not intelligible--that the attempt

which has failed was, in some titanic and mysterious way, to have

established a dominion of man over the sea, to have yoked it like the

earth under his hand, ploughed it, set vines and sown corn fields, and

built up towered cities. But "that thought is unstable, and deserts us

quite." "In vain," whatever it means, or if it means nothing--(and

will no one tell us what it means?)--still proposes the sea in

conflict with an adversary, and does not contemplate it for its own

pure great self. The whole Hymn is founded on contrast, and therefore

of indirect inspiration. To aggrandise the sea, Byron knows of no

other way than to disparage the earth; and there is equally a want of

truth, and of imagination and passion. If he had the capacity of

worthily praising nature, if he had the genuine love and admiration

for her beauty and greatness which he proudly claims, he has not shown

this here; and we are induced to think that there were in his mind,

faculties, intellectual and moral, stronger there than the poetical,

and upon which the poetical faculty needed to stay itself--from which

it needed to borrow a factitious energy--say wit and scorn, the

faculties of the satirist.

"In vain," indeed! Imagination beholds ten thousand fleets sweeping

over the ocean--or a hundred of them, or one--and man's exulting

spirit feels that it was not in vain. The purposes for which fleets do

sail--to carry commerce, to carry war, to carry colonies, to carry

civilisation, to bring home knowledge, have triumphantly prospered;

and, of course, are not in the meaning of the poet, although properly

they alone are in the meaning of the word. But, perversely enough, the

imagination of the reader accepts for an instant the pomp of the

representation--"ten thousand fleets sweep over thee"--for good, as an

adjunct of the ocean's magnificence; and in the confusion of thought

and feeling which characterises the passage, this verse of mockery

tells to the total resulting impression, in effect, like a verse of

passion. The reverence which is not intended--not the contempt which

is intended--for these majestic human creations, is acknowledged at

last. The poet, with his living fraternal shadow beside him, is

sitting upon the Italian promontory--love and wonder look through his

eyes upon that sea rolling under that sky--and he speaks

accordingly,--

"Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean--roll!"

Roll thy gentle tides on, sweet Mediterranean Sea! to beat in murmurs

at my weary feet! Roll, in thine own unconfined spaces, Atlantic

Ocean! with placid swell or with mounting billows, from pole to pole!

Roll, circumambient World-Ocean! embracing in thy liquid arms our

largest continents as thine islands, and immantling our whole globe. A

fair, gentle, sedate beginning; and at the very next step--war to the

knife!

The confused, unstudied impression left upon you is that of a powerful

mind moving in the majesty of its power. But it is not moving in the

majesty of power, after one step taken straight forwards, at the

second to wheel sharply round and march off in the opposite direction.

How otherwise, Homer, Pindar, Milton! They walk as kings, heroes,

bards, archangels. The first canon of great, impassioned, profound

writing--that the soul, filled with its theme, and with affection

fitted for its theme, moves on slowly or impetuously--with a glide, or

with a rush, or with a bound--but that it ever moves consistently with

itself, pouring out its affection, and, in pouring it out, displaying

its theme, and so evolving its work from itself in unity--is here

sinned against by movements owning no law but mere caprice.

How, then, is the glorification of his subject sought here to be

attained by Byron? By means of another subject shown us in hostility,

and quelled. Man, in his weakness, is put in contrast and in conflict

with ocean's omnipotence. Man sends out his fleets, apparently for the

purpose of ruining the ocean. He cannot: he can ruin the land; but on

the land's edge his deadly dominion is at an end. There the reign of a

mightier and more dreadful Ruler, a greater Destroyer, a wilder

Anarch, begins. The sea itself rises, wrecks the timbered vessels,

drowns the crews--or at least those who fall overboard--tosses the

mariner to the skies and on to shore, and swallows up fleets of war.

Such is the first movement or strain. What is the amount relatively to

the purport of the poem? Why, that the first point of glorification

chosen, the first utterance of enthusiastic love and admiration from

the softened heart and elevated soul of a poet, who has just told us

that there is such music in its roar, that by the deep sea he loves

not man the less, but nature more, is, "All hail, O wrathful, dire,

almighty, and remorseless destroyer!"--surely a strange ebullition of

tenderness--an amatory sigh like a lion's roar--something in

Polyphemus' vein--wooing with a vengeance. All this, mark ye, dear

neophyte, following straight upon a proclamation of peace with all

mankind--upon an Invocation to Nature for inward peace!

Grant for a moment that Man is properly to be viewed as Earth's

ravager, not its cultivator, and that "his control stops with the

shore," is good English in verse for "his power of desolating, or his

range of desolation, is bounded by the sea-shore;" grant for a moment

that it is a lawful and just practical contemplation to view him

ravaging and ranging up to that edge, and to view in contrast the

glad, bright, universally-laughing Ocean beyond--unravaged, unstained,

unfooted, no smoke of conflagration rising, only the golden morning

mist seeming all one diffused sun. Grant all this--and then what we

have to complain of is, that the contrast is prepared, but not

presented; and that the natural replication to "Man marks the earth

with ruin," is not here. Instead of picture for picture--instead of,

look on this picture and on that--we have

"on the watery plain

The wrecks are all thy deed."

That is to say, peace, happiness, beauty, nowhere! Man wrecks up to

the shore. There the tables are turned upon him. There the sea ravages

the land, and wrecks him in return. Merciful Heaven! nothing but

wrecking; as if evil spirits only possessed the universe--as if the

only question to be asked any where were, Who wrecks here?

Is not this a glaring instance of a false intellectual procedure

arising out of a false moral temper? The unceasing call of the Hymn is

for the display of the subject extolled. And here the beautiful, or

the proud superiority of the "peaceful, immeasurable plain," or of the

indignant, independent, thundrous sea, was imperiously suggested for

some moments surely, if the Poem be one of glorification. But no! We

may imagine for ourselves, if we please, the beauty, splendour, joy,

tempestuous liberty of the unfettered waters; but the love of the

ocean is not in the Poet's mind, as it ought to have been--only the

hate of man.

As it ought to have been? Yea, verily. Had he not taken the pledge? To

drink but of the purest spring of inspiration--the Fount of Love. And

may he, without reproach, break it when he chooses, and we not dare to

condemn? Of all promises, the promise made by poet of world-wide fame

before the wide world, in his soul's best mood, and in nature's

noblest inspiration, is the most sacred--to break it is a sin, and a

sin that brings its appropriate punishment along with it,--loss or

abeyance of the faculty divine. Byron had sworn to love man and

nature, and to glorify their works, on the very instant he seeks to

degrade and vilify. We listen to a religious overture--to the Devil's

March. We are invited to enter with him a temple of worship--and

praise and prayer become imprecations and curses. It is as if a

hermit, telling his beads at the door of his cell, retired into its

interior to hold converse with a blaspheming spirit. Fear not to call

it by its right name--this is Hypocrisy.

So much as to the fitness of the mood; now as to the truth of the

matter.

What is, justly considered, the relation of man to the sea? Is it here

truly spoken? Certainly not. The Facts and the Songs of the world are

all the other way. In history, the ocean is the giant slave of the

magician Man--with some difficulty brought under thraldom--humorous,

and not always manageable--mischievous when he gets his own way. But

compare statistically the service and the detriment, for Clio must

instruct Calliope and Erato. Passion that cannot sustain itself but by

hiding that which has been, and accrediting that which has not been,

is personal, not poetical--is mad, not inspired. The truth is, that

the Ship is the glory of man's inventive art and inventive daring--the

most splendid triumph of heroical art. And--for the history of

man--the service of the sea to his ship has been the civilising of the

earth. The wrecks are occasional--so much so that, in our ordinary

estimate, they are forgotten. It would be as good poetry to say that

all the inhabitants of the land live by wrecking.

In this first movement or strain, then, two great relations upheld by

man are put in question,--his relation to the land, and his relation

to the sea. The Basis of Song to the true and great poet is the truth

of things--the truth as the historian and the philosopher know them.

Over this he throws his own affection and creates a truth of his

own--a poetical truth. But the truth, as held in man's actual

knowledge, is recognisable through the transparent veil. Here it is

distorted, not veiled. The two relations are alike falsified. For in

order to bring man into conflict with the sea, where he and not the

sea is to be worsted, he must first be made the foe of the earth! "Man

marks the earth with ruin." Is this the history of man on the earth?

Man has vanquished the Earth, but for its benefit as well as his own.

He has displaced the forest and the swamp, the wild beast and the

serpent. He has adorned the earth like a bride; as if he had made

captive a wild Amazon, charmed her with Orphean arts, wedded and made

her a happy mother of many children. Whatever impressive effect such

verses may have on the inconsiderate mind, it has been illegitimately

attained by a preposterous and utterly unprovoked movement of

tempestuous passion, and by two utterly false contemplations of man's

posture upon the globe, which two embrace about his whole mortal

existence. Eloquence might condescend to this--poetry never.

Note well, O Neophyte! that the calm, contemplative, loving first

line,

"Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean! roll!"

precludes all comparison with such sudden bursts as "Ruin seize thee,

ruthless king!" &c., and "Quousque tandem abutere, Catilina," &c.; but

it does not preclude, it invites the killing comparison with

"O Thou that with surpassing glory crown'd

Look'st from thy sole dominion, like the God

Of this new world,--at whose sight all the stars

Hide their diminish'd heads, to thee I call,

But with no friendly voice, and add thy name,

O Sun! to tell thee how I hate thy beams,

That bring to my remembrance from what state

I fell--how glorious once above thy sphere!" &c.

Where the speaker is fraught with personal, not as a poet with

impersonal affection--where he comes charged with hate, not with love;

and yet how slowly, how sedately, through how many thoughts, how much

admiration, and how many verses, he reaches his hate at last, which is

his object! But on _that_ soliloquy, dear Neophyte, we must discourse

another day.

We must go a little--not very much--into particulars; for otherwise, O

Neophyte! believe thou, whatever wiseacres say, there can be no true

criticism of poetry. Let us--and that which might have been expected

will appear,--a detail of moral and intellectual disorder. The stanza

of which we have been speaking begins well--as we have seen and said.

Thenceforth all is stamped with incongruity, and shows an effect like

power, by violently bringing together, in a most remarkable manner,

things that cannot consist--by the transition from the Universal to

the Individual, when for

"The wrecks are all thy deed,"

which shows us a thousand ships foundering in mid ocean, and the

earth's shores all strewn with fragments of oak-leviathans, we have

instantaneously substituted, as if this were the same thing,

"When for a moment, _like a drop of rain_,

He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan,

Without a grave, unknell'd, uncoffin'd, and unknown."

What has happened? What is meant? Is this literally the representation

of some single human being actually dropping, as unfortunately happens

from time to time, from a ship's side into the immensity of waters?

And is this horrible game and triumph of Ocean, which threatened to

annihilate the species, upon a sudden confined to "a man overboard?"

Or are we to understand that, by a strong feat of uncreating and

recreating imagination, this one man, dropped as if naked from the

clouds into the sea and submerged, impersonates and impictures, by

some concentration of human agony and of human impotence, that

universally diffused annihilation of Man in his ships which was the

matter in hand? We do not believe that any reader can give a

satisfactory explanation or account of the course of thinking that has

been here pursued. Upon the face of the words lies that natural pathos

which belongs to the perishing of the individual, which serves to

blind inquiry, and stands as a substitute for any reasonable thinking

at all; and thus a grammatical confusion between Man and a man makes

the whole absolute nonsense.

Then look here:--

"Upon the watery plain

The wrecks are _all thy deed_."

This is not only not true--it is false. If man, clothed in the thunder

of war, is able to strew ruin upon the land, he, militant, by the same

power, strews wreck and ruin upon the waters; and so the distinction

pretended, whatever it might be worth, fails. And does not the

swallowing of the unknelled and uncoffined, which is attributed to the

sea as the victor of man, take place as effectually when beak or

broadside sends down a ship with her hundreds of souls, when the great

sea, willing or unwilling, appears merely as the servile minister of

insulting man's hate and fury?

"Alike the Armada's pride and spoils of Trafalgar."

"Rule Britannia" rings in our ears, and gives that assertion the lie.

Does Macaulay's Ode idly recount an ineffectual muster? Did the Lord

High Admiral of England, with all his commodores and captains, do

nothing to the Armada? With what face dared an English Poet say to the

sea that on all those days "the wrecks were all thy deed?" The storms

were England's allies indeed, from Cape Clear to the Orcades. But only

her allies; and, much as we respect the storms and their services, we

say to the English fleet, "The wrecks were all thy deed." At Trafalgar

the storms finally sided with the Spaniards. "Let the fleet be

anchored," said Nelson ere he died; and, had that been possible, it

had been done by Collingwood. After the fight Gravina came out to the

rescue--but the sea engulfed the spoils. Yet, spite of that, we say

again to the English fleet, "The wrecks were all thy deed;" and the

sea answers--and will answer to all eternity--"Ay, ay, ay!"

Byron, we verily believe, was the first Great Poet that owned not a

patriot's heart. No pride ever had he in his Country's triumphs either

on land or sea. It seems as if he were impatient of every national

and individual greatness that, however far aloof from his sphere,

might eclipse his own. He has written well--but not so well as he

ought to have done--of Waterloo. The glory of Wellington overshadowed

him; and, by keeping his name out of his verses, he would keep the

hero himself out of sight. But there he is resplendent in spite of the

Poet's spleen. _Verbum non amplius_ for Trafalgar! not one for Nelson.

Not so did Cowper--the pious, peace-loving Cowper--regard his

country's conflicts. At thought of these the holy Harper's soul awoke.

He too sung of the sea:--

"What ails thee, restless as the waves that roar,

And fling their foam against thy chalky shore?

Mistress _at least, while Providence shall please_,

AND TRIDENT-BEARING QUEEN OF THE WIDE SEAS."

That is majestic--and this is sublime:--

"They trust in navies, and their navies fail--

God's curse can cast away ten thousand sail."

Ay, then, indeed, "ten thousand fleets sail over Thee in vain." Had

Byron Cowper's great line in his mind? The copy cannot stand

comparison with the original.

If we will try the poet by his words, and know whether he has mastered

the consummation of his art by "writing well," we may cull from

several instances of suspicious language, in this stanza, the

following--

"Nor doth remain

A shadow of man's ravage _save his own_."

What is the meaning--the translation? "There is not on the ocean to be

found a shadow of ravage in which man is the agent. The only ravage

known on the ocean, in which man is concerned, is that which he

suffers from the ocean." This, if false, is nevertheless an

intelligible proposition. But "ravage" is a strange word--a shocking

bad one--applied, as you presently find that it must be, to one

drowning man being "ravaged" by being drowned; and even more strange

still is the grammatical opposition of "his ravage," as properly

signifying, the ravage which he achieves, to "his own ravage" as

properly signifying the ravage which he endures!

Moreover, what is meant by "remain"? Properly, to linger for a moment

ere disappearing. But the proposition is, that ruin effected by man

has no place at all on the waters. The poet means, that as long as

you, the contemplator, tread the land, you walk among ruins made by

man. When you pass on to the sea, no shadow of such ruin any longer

accompanies you,--that is, any longer _remains_ with you.

One great fault of style which the Hymn shows is Equivocation. The

words are equivocal. Hence the contradiction--as in this stanza

especially--between what is promised and what is done. Weigh for a

moment these lines--

"Upon the watery plain,

The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain

A shadow of man's ravage save his own,

When for a moment, like a drop of rain,

He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan,"

&c., and tell us what they seem to describe. You will find yourself in

a pretty puzzle. A ship? a fleet? myriads of ships lost? or one

drowning man? Surely one drowning man. His own phrase,

"the bubbling cry

Of some strong swimmer in his agony,"

here pre-appears. But he had bound himself quite otherwise. By his

pledge he should, in contrast with man's wreck active upon shore, have

given man's wreck passive upon the flood,--the earth strewn with ruin

by man's hand, the sea strewn with ruin of man himself,--_magnis

excidit ausis_.

The words "remain" and "man" have played the part here of juggling

fiends,--

"They palter with us in a double sense,

They keep the word of promise to the ear,

And break it to our hope."

For lend us your ear for a few minutes. The word "remain" is

originally and essentially a word of time, and means to "continue" in

some assigned condition through a certain duration of time; as, for

example, he "remained in command for a year." In this clause of

Byron's, it has become essentially a word that has regard to space

without regard to time. To see that it is so, you must begin with

possessing the picture that has been set before you, and which is

here the basis and outset of the thinking. This picture is--"man marks

the earth with ruin." Realise the picture at the height of the words

without flinching. For example, from the Atlantic eastward to the

Pacific, man ravages. Here Napoleon--a little farther on Mahomet the

Second--farther, the Crusaders--beyond these Khuli Khan or Timour

Leng--lastly, the Mogul conquerors of the Celestial Empire,--a chain

of desolation from Estremadura to Corea. Had land extended around the

globe, it had been a belt of desolation encircling the globe. Corn

fields, vineyards, trampled under foot of man and horse,--villages,

towns, and great cities, reeking with conflagration, like the smoke

ascending from some enormous altar of abomination to offend the

nostrils of heaven--armed hosts lying trampled in their blood--the

unarmed lying scattered every where in theirs; for man has trodden the

earth in his rage, and before him was as the garden of Eden, behind

him is the desolate wilderness. This is a translation of the

hemistich,--"Man marks the earth with ruin,"--into prose. It is a

faithful, a literal translation--Byron meant as much: and you,

neophyte, in an instantaneous image receive as much--perhaps with more

faith or persuasion, because leaden-pacing, tardy-gaited exposition

goes against such faith; but some belief will remain if we, who have

put ourselves in the place of the poet, have used colours that seize

upon your imagination.

Well, then, if your imagination has done that which the summary

word-picture of the poet required of you, you have swept the earth, or

one of its continents, with instantaneous flight from shore to shore,

and seen this horrible devastation--this widely-spread ravage. You

have not staid your wing at the shore, but have swept on, driven by

your horror, till you have hung, and first breathed at ease, over the

Mid Pacific, over the wide OCEAN OF PEACE--over the unpolluted,

everlasting ocean, murmuring under your feet--the unpolluted,

everlasting heavens over your head. _Here_ is no ravage of man's: no!

nor the shadow of it--

--"Nor doth remain

A shadow of man's ravage."

But how "nor doth remain?" The ravage has gone along with you from

sea-marge to sea-marge. _At sea_ it is no longer with you. Traversing

the land it _remained_ your companion. It _remained_ the continual and

loathed object of your eyes. Now no shadow of it is to be seen--it

haunts your flight no longer. No shadow of it any longer accompanies

your aerial voyage--any longer stays, abides, _remains_ with you. If

the word has not this meaning, it has no meaning here in this clause.

In this clause it cannot mean this--"upon the ocean, the ravage made

by man appears like a flash of lightning, seen and gone,--upon the

ocean this ravage, or some shadow of this ravage, has a momentary

duration, but no more than momentary, no abiding, no _remaining_."

This cannot be the meaning, since of man it has been expressly said

'his control stops with the shore'--that is, ends there, is not on the

ocean at all. Manifestly the question at issue is, not whether

destruction effected by man lasts upon the waters, but whether it is

at all upon the waters; and Byron's decision is plainly that it is not

at all. For he has already said "upon the watery plain the wrecks are

all thy deed." That is to say, any sort of wreck effected by man upon

the flood at all has been twice rejected in express words; and this

word "remain" must imperatively be understood consonantly to this

rejection.

Byron, then, we see, in denying that wrecks made by man "remain" upon

the "watery plain," takes a word which properly sets before you an

extending in time, and uses it for setting before you an extending in

space. The ravage of which man is the agent does not extend over the

"watery plain"--no, not a shadow of it.

But pray attend to this--no sooner does the sequent clause "save his

own," take its place in the verse, than the word "remain" shifts its

meaning back, from the signification accidentally forced upon it as

has been explained, and reverts to its original and wonted power as a

word of time! The force of the united clauses now stands thus--"upon

the water there cannot be found a trace of the ruin executed by man.

But of the ruin suffered by him there is an apparition, a vestige, a

_shadow_, a vanishing display, namely--

"When for a moment, like a drop of rain,

He sinks into thy depths, with bubbling groan,

Without a grave, unknell'd, uncoffin'd and unknown."

He plunges, and all is over. The "bubbling groan" is the momentarily

_remaining_ notice of his extinction.

Now this first equivocation has an immediate moral

consequence--namely, a reaction upon the feelings of the poet.

"Remain," as an "extending in space," acts upon the imagination

expansively here, if it were suffered to act--and if room were given

it to act upon the imagination--inasmuch as "nor doth remain," as a

word of extending in space, marks or helps to mark out the two great

regions into which his lordship divides the terraqueous globe--ravaged

land and unravaged water. But "remain," as an "extending in time,"

acts here contractively; and "nor remain" means now "does not outlive

the moment!" and in this manner an entirely new direction or tenor is

given to thought and feeling--for the zeal of diminishing seizes on

the imagination of the writer. He is led to making man insignificant

by the momentariness of his perishing! He has contracted, by power of

scorn, and by the trick of a word, the seventy years of man into an

instant. That is one diminution, and another follows upon it. The

Fleets, wrecked whenever they fight against the water, vanish from his

fancy, as in the shifting of a dream; and he sees, amidst the troubled

world of waters--_one_ man perishing! One mode of insignificancy

admitted, induces another. With the shrinking of time to a moment goes

along, the shrinking of multitude to one!

The same double-dealing takes place with the word "Man." Man signifies

the individual human being--or the race. "Of man's first

disobedience"--mankind's. "Man marks the earth with ruin"--mankind

does so. "Nor doth remain a shadow of man's ravage"--of mankind's

ravage. "When for a moment, like a drop of rain, _he_ sinks into thy

waves "--that is now the single sailor, whom a roll of the ship has

hurled from the topmast into the waters; or, when the ship has gone

down, some strong swimmer who has fought in vain upon the waters, and,

spent in limb and heart, sinks. And thus the reader, after stumbling

for two or three steps in darkness and perplexity, within a moment of

having left mankind in the annihilating embrace of Ocean, upon a

sudden finds himself set face to face with one man, we shall suppose

"The last man," drowning!

In the Stanza now commented on, there was a struggle depicted, a

question proposed between Man and the Ocean--which shall be the

Wrecker? The Ocean prevails; Man is wrecked. In the succeeding Stanza

there is, it would seem, another question moved between the same

disputants. No, it is the same. Let us examine well. A moment before,

Man appeared as treading the earth as a Destroyer, his proud step

stayed at high water-mark. Now he appears upon the earth as a

traveller and a reaper--by implication or allusion--by the figure of

"not."

"His steps are _not_ upon thy paths, thy fields

Are _not_ a spoil for him."

He walks and reaps the earth; he does not walk and reap the ocean.

This is plainly the process of the "worthy cogitation;" and

unquestionably the assertion is true--true to the letter, but only to

the letter. For, standing on Mount Albano, or on the Land's End, or

here sitting beneath the porch of our Marine Villa fronting the Firth

of Forth, we are poets every one of us, and we will venture beyond the

letter;--

"His steps are not upon thy paths!"

--reply--chaunter of Man's Hope, and of England's Power,--

"Thy march is o'er the mountain wave,

Thy home is on the deep."

There is a dash of sea-craft for you; and, "cheered by the grateful

sound, for many a league old ocean smiles."

And for the sickle! What! must the net and the harpoon go for nothing?

No harvests on the barren flood! What else are pearl-fisheries,

herring-fisheries, cod-fisheries, and whale-fisheries? "The sea! The

deep, deep sea!" Why, the sea cannot keep its own; cannot defend the

least or the mightiest of its nurselings from the hand of the gigantic

plunderer Man.

----"thy fields,

Are not a spoil for him."

The fields of earth are not. For he ploughed and sowed ere he reaped,

and earned back his own. But on _thy_ fields, no ploughing, no

sowing--all reaping! Sheer spoil. Poor, helpless, tributary, rifled,

ravaged Ocean!

Then follows a very eminent instance of the fault which has been urged

as radical in these Stanzas--forced, unnatural, wilful, or false

sequence of thought; a deliberate intention in the mind of the writer,

taking the place of the spontaneous free suggestion proper to poetry.

We have had man trying to produce ruin on the ocean, and wrecked,

swallowed up. Now, man tries to walk and reap the ocean. The poet has

outraged mother earth, and her vengeance is upon him. He has

wrongfully and wilfully brought in the Earth, for its old alliance

with man to hear hard words; and he suffers the penalty. Cease, rude

Boreas, blustering railer, for you are out of breath. Mere mouthing is

not command of words; the sound we hear now is but the echo of the

last stanza, and the angry Childe is unwittingly repeating himself,--

----"Thou dost arise

And shake him from thee; the vile strength he wields

_For earth's destruction_ thou dost all despise,

Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies,

And send'st him, shivering in thy playful spray,

And howling, to his gods, where haply lies

His petty hope in some near port or bay,

And dashest him _again to earth--there let him lay_!"

Here is again the contest, again the ruining upon earth,--nay, he

destroys the earth itself--again the wrecking of the ship. Surely

there is great awkwardness in stepping on from the proof of man's

impotence in the sinking of his ship, to the proof of man's impotence

in the sinking of his ship. "Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies"

may be a vigorous verse, though we doubt it; but if the ship outlive

the storm, which many a ship has done many a thousand times, it can be

turned against the ocean, who has done his worst _in vain_. What is

man's "_petty hope_?" and what means "_again_ to earth?" Is it again

from the skies--or back to the earth from which he embarked? Not one

expression is precise; and so, with some scorn of man's old ally, who

now so roughly receives him,--"there let him _lay_!" There is

something very horrible indeed in insulting a dead man in the Cockney

dialect.

In all this there is no dignity, no grandeur; Byron does not well to be

angry--it is seldom that any man or poet does--for, though anger is a

"short madness," it is not a "fine frenzy." Such _Te Deum_ true Poetry

never yet sang, for true Poetry never yet was blasphemous--never yet

derided Man's Dread or Man's Hope, when sinking in multitudes in the

sea, which God holds in the hollow of his hand.

Go on to the next Stanza--

"The armaments which thunderstrike the walls," &c.

Why, here is another shipwreck--only now a fleet of war--before, one

merchant-ship perhaps. The Earth, too, is again implicated, and we

have the same scornful antithesis of Earth and Ocean. Earth with her

towery diadem--Earth, the nurse of nations, trembles at the approach

of armaments, which the ocean devours like melting snow. There has

been, then, a certain progression in the three stanzas. A drowning

man--a merchant-ship tossed and stranded--an armada scattered and

lost. Three striking subjects of poetical delineation, each strikingly

shown with some true touches, mixed with much false writing. One may

understand that in consequence from out the whirlwind and chaos of the

composition, resembling the tumult of the sea, there will remain to

the reader who does not sift the writing an impression of power--of

some great thing done--of Man and his Earth humbled, and the Ocean

exalted. In the mean time, the way of the thoughts, the course of the

mind, by which this ascent or climax is obtained, is extremely hard to

trace, if traceable. The critic may extricate such an order from the

disorder: but observe, that the ascent or climax can be attained only

by neglecting certain strong indications that go another way. Thus, in

the first stanza--

"Upon the watery plain

The wrecks are all thy deed,"

includes all that is or can be said more of ship or fleet. Again, in

the next stanza--

"Thou dost arise

And shake him from thee; the vile strength he wields

For earth's destruction thou dost all despise"--

Here is again said _all_ that is possible to be said. "Thou dost arise

and shake him from thee" being perhaps the strongest expression

obtained at all; and the "vile strength" being precisely the Armadas

described immediately afterwards with so much pomp and pride. Thus

there is really confusion and oscillation of thought--mixed with a

progress a standing still--and this characteristic of much of Byron's

poetry comes prominently out--Uncertainty. Impulses and leaps of a

powerful spirit _are_ here; but self-knowing Power, a mind master of

its purposes, disciplined genius, Art accomplished by studies profound

and severe, lawful Emulation of the great names that shine in the

authentic rolls of immortal Fame, the sanctioned inspiration which the

pleased Muses deign to their devout followers, are _not_ here.

The strength of Man, proved in contest with Ocean and found weakness,

is disposed of. The Earth, as bound up with Man and his destinies,

came in for a share of rough usage. Now she takes her own turn--in

connexion with Man, but now principal. Here the pride of the words is

great--the meaning sometimes almost or quite inextricable. Recite the

Stanza, beginning

"Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee,"

and when the sonorous roll has subsided, try to understand it. You

will find some difficulty, if we mistake not, in knowing who or what

is the apostrophised subject. Unquestionably the World's Ocean, and

not the Mediterranean. The very last verse we were afar in the

Atlantic. "Thy shores are empires." The shores of the World's Ocean

are Empires. There are, or have been, the British Empire, the German

Empire, the Russian Empire, and the Empire of the Great Mogul--the

Chinese Empire, the Empire of Morocco, those of Peru and Mexico, the

Four Great Empires of Antiquity, the French Empire, and some others.

The Poet does not intend names and things in this very strict way,

however, and he will take in all great Monarchies, nor will he grudge

us the imagining the whole Earth laid out in imperial dominions.

Well then--we again, dear Neophyte, bid you try to understand the

Stanza, and tell us what it means. What rational thought is there

here? With what propriety do we consider the whole Earth as the shores

of the Ocean--when _shore_ is exactly the interlimitation of land and

sea? Is this a lawful way of celebrating the Ocean, to throw in the

whole of the lately despised Earth as its brilliant appendage? The

question rises, how far from the shore does the shore extend--and

whether inwards or outwards?

But there is a meaning and a good one in a way. ~Ariston men hydor~.

The water civilises the land. 'Tis an old remark--but how? By ships.

Here, then, are the tables turned. Lately the sea did nothing with

ships but destroy them. Now it patiently wafts them, and by commerce

and colonies the Sea civilises the Globe! Surely this is poetical

injustice. The first glory of the Sea was, that Man could not sail

upon its bosom. The second glory of the Sea is, that, by offering its

bosom to be furrowed by Man's daring and indefatigable keels,

it--ministerially then--civilises the World. The Sea is the civiliser

of the Land--Man is--the Destroyer merely.

Pray, what is the meaning of saying that the Roman and the Assyrian

Empires are shores of the Sea: and changed, excepting that the same

waters wash the same strands? The deep inland Empires recede too much

from the sea-shore to allow any hold to the relation proposed in the

words, "changed in all save thee." We know the Sea as their limit--an

accident, rather than as a part of their being. The meeting of sea

and land being the limit of an empire, the limit remains whilst the

Imperial State has withered from the land. Does the immobility of the

limit belong more to one element than to the other? And is the Roman

Empire, O Neophyte, more unchanged _in_ the Mediterranean and Atlantic

than it is _in_ the Apennines, and Alps, and Pyrenees, and Helvellyn?

Every clause that regards Earth is, in one way or in another,

intolerable--small or tortured. "Thy waters wasted them while they

were free," means either "swallowed up their ships, or--_ate away

their edges_!" Alas! that most unhappy meaning is the true one--and

what a cogitation to come into a man's--an inspired Poet's head! "Thy

waters fretted away the maritime littoral edges of the Assyrian, the

Grecian, the Roman, the Carthaginian Empires, whilst those Empires

flourished!" And this interesting piece of geographical, and

geological, and hydrographical meditation makes part in a burst of

indignant spleen which is to go near to annihilating Man from the face

of the Globe! Was it possible to express more significantly the

imbecility of Old Ocean? And has he not been fretting ever since? And

are not the limits the same, as we were told a minute ago? Old Ocean

must be in his dotage if he can do no more than that--and we must

elect him perpetual President of the Fogie Club.

Such wretched writing shows, with serious warning, how a false temper,

admitted into poetry, overrules the sound intellect into gravely and

weightily entertaining combinations of thought which, looked at either

with common sense or with poetical feeling, cannot be sustained for a

moment. How many of Lord Byron's admirers believe--and, in spite of

Christopher, will continue to believe--that in these almost senseless

stanzas he has said something strong, poignant, cutting, of good edge,

and "full of force driven home!"

"Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow--

Such as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now."

We accept the image; let us grant that the Personification is a fine

one. Nevertheless it does not entirely satisfy the imagination. And

why? Because the thought of the azure brow, on which time writes no

wrinkles, suggests for a moment the thought of the white brow--the

brow of man or woman--the human brow, on which Time does write

wrinkles along with the engraver, Sorrow. For a moment! but _that_ is

not the intended pathos--and it fades away. The intended pathos here

belongs to the wrinkles Time writes on the brow of the Earth--while it

spares that of the Sea. But Time deals not so with our gracious Mother

Earth. Time keeps perpetually beautifying her brow, while it leaves

the brow of Ocean the same as it was at Creation's Dawn. How far more

beautiful has the Daedal Earth been growing, from century to century,

over Continent and Isle, under the love of her grateful children! The

Curse has become a Blessing. In the sweat of their brow they eat their

bread; but Nature's self, made lovelier by their labour of heart and

hand, rejoices in their creative happiness, and troubled life prepares

rest from its toil in many a pleasant place fair as the bowers of

Paradise.

We approach the next Stanza reverently, for it has a religious

look--an aspect "that threatens the profane."

"Thou glorious Mirror, where the Almighty's Form

Glasses itself in tempests," &c.

Suitably recited! let it be suitably spoken of--fearlessly, in truth.

The vituperating spirit has exhausted itself--is dead; and all at once

the Poet becomes a worshipper. From cherished exasperation with the

Creature--from varying moods of hate and scorn--he turns to

contemplation of the Creator. Such transition is suspicious--can such

worship be sincere? Fallen, sinful--yet is man God's noblest work. In

His own image did He create him; and to glorify Him must we vilify the

dust into which He breathed a living soul? Let the Poet lament, with

thoughts that lie too deep for tears, over what Man has made of Man!

And in the multitude of thoughts within him adore his Maker--in words.

But he who despises his kind, and delights, in heaping contumely on

the race of man throughout all his history on earth and sea--how may

he, when wearied with chiding, all at once, as if it had been not

hindrance but preparation, dare to speak, in the language of worship,

of the Almighty Maker of Heaven and of Earth?

The Stanza, accordingly, is not good--it is laboured, heavy, formal,

uninspired by _divine afflatus_. There is not in it one truly sublime

expression. Nothing to our mind can be worse than "where the

Almighty's _Form_ glasses itself &c.--" The one word "Form" is

destructive, in its gross materialism, alike of natural Poetry and

natural Religion. If it be not, show us we are wrong, and henceforth

we shall be mute for ever. "In all time, calm or convulsed, in breeze,

or gale, _or storm_," is poor and prosaic; and "or storm," a pitiable

platitude after "in tempests." And the conversion of a Mirror into a

Throne--of the Mirror too in which the Almighty's "_Form_ glasses

itself," into the Throne of the "_Invisible_"--is a fatal

contradiction, proving the utter want of that possession of soul by

one awful thought which was here demanded, and without which the whole

stanza becomes but a mere collocation and hubbub of big-sounding

words. "Even from out thy slime, the monsters of the deep are made,"

is violently jammed in between lines that have no sort of connexion

with it, and introduces a thought which, whether consistent with true

Philosophy or abhorrent from it, breaks in upon the whole course of

contemplation, such as it is,--to say nothing of the extreme poverty

of language shown in the use of such words as "monsters of _the deep_"

made out of the slime _of the sea_.

The strain--such as it is--ceases suddenly with this Stanza; and the

Poet having thus got done with it, exclaiming "and I have loved thee,

Ocean," proceeds forthwith to a different matter altogether--to the

pleasure he was wont to enjoy, when a boy, in swimming among the

breakers. The verses are in themselves very spirited; but we must

think--and hope so do you--very much out of place, and a sad descent

from the altitude attempted, and believed by the Poet himself to have

been attained, in the preceding Stanza about the Almighty.

Why, listening Neophyte, recite both Stanzas, and then tell us whether

or no you think they maybe improved by being put into--our Prose. We

do not seek thereby to injure what Poetry may be in them, but to bring

it out and improve it.

"Thou glorious Mirror, in which, when black with tempests, Fancy might

conceive Omnipotence imaged in visible reflection!--Thou Sea, that in

all thy seasons, whether smooth or agitated, whether soft or wild wind

blow, in all thy regions, icy at the Pole, dark-heaving at the

Equator, ever and every where callest forth our acknowledgment that

Thou art illimitable, interminable, sublime; that Thou art the symbol

of Eternity--(like a circle by returning into itself;) that Thou art

the visible Throne of the Invisible Deity--Thou whose very dregs turn

into enormous life--Thou who, possessing the larger part of every

zone, art thus a King in every zone; Thou takest thy course around the

Earth,--great by thine awfulness, by thine undiscoverable depth, by

thy solitude!

"And I, thy Poet, was of old thy Lover! In young years my favourite

disport was to lie afloat on thy bosom, carried along by Thee,

passive, resigned to Thy power, one of Thy bubbles. A boy, Thy waves

were my playmates, or my playthings. If, as the wind freshened, and

they swelled, I grew afraid, there was a pleasure even in the

palpitation of the fears, for I lived with Thee and loved Thee, even

like a child of Thine, and believed that Thy billows would not hurt

me, and laid my hand boldly and wantonly on their crests--as at this

instant I do, here sitting upon the Alban Mount--_and making (as they

say) a long arm_."

HA! THE DINNER-GONG!

_Printed by William Blackwood and Sons, Edinburgh._

* * * * *

Transcriber's Notes:

Obvious spelling and punctuation errors were repaired, but period or

regional spellings and grammatical uses were retained (inuendo,

substract, Sphynges, etc.). Both administrador and administrator,

hardworking and hard-working, sun-burned and sunburned, were used in

this text, in separate articles.

P. 390: "had once eaten a pea"; original reads "had once eat a pea."

P. 429: "savanna is covered"; original reads "savana."

"A head"(P. 439; "a head of the cavallada") and "a-head"(P. 435) were

changed to "ahead" as in P. 439 ("figure ahead suddenly").

P. 476: "eaten the bread"; original reads "eat the bread."

P. 511: "proof of man's impotence in the sinking of his ship, to the

proof of man's impotence in the sinking of his ship." This repetition

is faithful to the original.

He must be blind indeed who cannot read in this rapid summary the real