"'We can not,' I answered, 'command our sentiments. M. de S----

had merit and estimable qualities; but his gloomy, bitter, and

overbearing temper made me equally afraid of his company, his

friendship, and his love. To make him happy, I must have

renounced all intercourse with society, and even the exercise of

my talents. I was poor and proud; I desire, and hope I shall ever

desire, to owe nothing to any one but myself. My friendship for

him prompted me to use every endeavor to lead him to more just

and reasonable sentiments: failing in this, and persuaded that

his obstinacy proceeded less from the excess of his passion than

from the violence of his character, I took the firm resolution to

separate from him entirely. I refused to see him in his last

moments, because the sight would have rent my heart; because I

feared to appear too barbarous if I remained inflexible, and to

make myself wretched if I yielded. Such, madame, are the

motives of my conduct--motives for which, I think, no one can

blame me.'

"'It would indeed,' said the lady, 'be unjust to condemn you. My

poor friend himself in his reasonable moments acknowledged all

that he owed you. But his passion and his malady overcame him,

and your refusal to see him hastened his last moments. He was

counting the minutes, when at half-past ten, his servant came to

tell him that decidedly you would not come. After a moment's

silence, he took me by the hand with a frightful expression of

despair. Barbarous woman! he cried; but she will gain nothing by

her cruelty. As I have followed her in life, I shall follow her

in death! I endeavored to calm him; he was dead.'

"I need scarcely tell you, my dear friend, what effect these last

words had upon me. Their analogy to all my apparitions filled me

with terror, but time and reflection calmed my feelings. The

consideration that I was neither the better nor the worse for all

that had happened to me, has led me to ascribe it all to chance.

I do not, indeed, know what _chance_ is; but it can not be denied

that the something which goes by that name has a great influence

on all that passes in the world.

"Such is my story; do with it what you will. If you intend to

make it public, I beg you to suppress the initial letter of the

name, and the name of the province."

This last injunction was not, as we see, strictly complied with; but, at

the distance of half a century, the suppression of a name was probably

of little consequence.

There is no reason to doubt the entire truth of Mademoiselle Clairon's

narrative. The incidents which she relates made such a deep and enduring

impression on her mind, that it remained uneffaced during the whole

course of her brilliant career, and, almost at the close of a long life

spent in the bustle and business of the world, inspired her with solemn

and religious thoughts. Those incidents can scarcely be ascribed to

delusions of her imagination; for she had a strong and cultivated mind,

not likely to be influenced by superstitious credulity; and besides, the

mysterious sounds were heard by others as well as herself, and had

become the subject of general conversation in Paris. The suspicion of a

trick or conspiracy never seems to have occurred to her, though such a

supposition is the only way in which the circumstances can be explained;

and we are convinced that this explanation, though not quite

satisfactory in every particular, is the real one. Several portentous

occurrences, equally or more marvelous, have thus been accounted for.

Our readers remember the history of the Commissioners of the Roundhead

Parliament for the sequestration of the royal domains, who were

terrified to death, and at last fairly driven out of the Palace of

Woodstock, by a series of diabolical sounds and sights, which were long

afterward discovered to be the work of one of their own servants, Joe

Tomkins by name, a loyalist in the disguise of a puritan. The famous

"Cocklane Ghost," which kept the town in agitation for months, and

baffled the penetration of multitudes of the divines, philosophers, and

literati of the day, was a young girl of some eleven or twelve years

old, whose mysterious knockings were produced by such simple means, that

their remaining so long undetected is the most marvelous part of the

story. This child was the agent of a conspiracy formed by her father,

with some confederates, to ruin the reputation of a gentleman by means

of pretended revelations from the dead. For this conspiracy these

persons were tried, and the father, the most guilty party, underwent the

punishment of the pillory.

A more recent story is that of the "Stockwell Ghost," which forms the

subject of a volume published in 1772, and is shortly told by Mr. Hone

in the first volume of his "Every Day Book." Mrs. Golding, an elderly

lady residing at Stockwell, in Surrey, had her house disturbed by

portents, which not only terrified her and her family, but spread alarm

through the vicinity. Strange noises were heard proceeding from empty

parts of the house, and heavy articles of furniture, glass, and

earthenware, were thrown down and broken in pieces before the eyes of

the family and neighbors. Mrs. Golding, driven by terror from her own

dwelling, took refuge, first in one neighboring house, and then in

another, and thither the prodigies followed her. It was observed that

her maid-servant, Ann Robinson, was always present when these things

took place, either in Mrs. Golding's own house, or in those of the

neighbors. This girl, who had lived only about a week with her mistress,

became the subject of mistrust and was dismissed, after which the

disturbances entirely ceased. But the matter rested on mere suspicion.

"Scarcely any one," says Mr. Hone, "who lived at that time listened

patiently to the presumption, or without attributing the whole to

witchcraft." At length Mr. Hone himself obtained a solution of the

mystery from a gentleman who had become acquainted with Ann Robinson

many years after the affair happened, and to whom she had confessed that

she alone had produced all these supernatural horrors, by fixing wires

or horse-hairs to different articles, according as they were heavy or

light, and thus throwing them down, with other devices equally simple,

which the terror and confusion of the spectators prevented them from

detecting. The girl began these tricks to forward some love affair, and

continued them for amusement when she saw the effect they produced.

Remembering these cases, we can have little doubt that Mademoiselle

Clairon's maid was the author of the noises which threw her mistress and

her friends into such consternation. Her own house was generally the

place where these things happened; and on the most remarkable occasions

where they happened elsewhere, is expressly mentioned that the maid was

present. At St. Cloud it was to the maid, who was her bed-fellow, that

Clairon was congratulating herself on being out of the way of the cry,

when it suddenly was heard in the very room. She had her maid in the

carriage with her on the Boulevards, and it was immediately after the

girl had asked her a question about the death of M. de S---- that the

gun-shot was heard, which seemed to traverse the carriage. Had the maid

a confederate--perhaps her fellow-servant on the box--to whom she might

have given the signal? When Mademoiselle Clairon went a-shopping to the

Rue St. Honore, she probably had her maid with her, either in or outside

the carriage; and, indeed, in every instance the noises took place when

the maid would most probably have been present, or close at hand. In

regard to the unearthly cry, she might easily have produced it herself

without any great skill in ventriloquism, or the art of imitating

sounds; a supposition which is rendered the more probable, as its

realization was rendered the more easy, by the fact of no words having

been uttered--merely a wild cry. Most of the common itinerant

ventriloquists on our public race-courses can utter speeches for an

imaginary person without any perceptible motion of the lips; the

utterance of a mere sound in this way would be infinitely less

difficult.

The noises resembling the report of fire-arms (very likely to have been

unconsciously, and in perfect good faith, exaggerated by the terror of

the hearers) may have been produced by a confederate fellow-servant, or

a lover. It is to be observed, that the first time this seeming report

was heard, the houses opposite were guarded by the police, and spies

were placed in the street, but Mademoiselle Clairon's own house was

merely "examined." It is evident that these precautions, however

effectual against a plot conducted from without, could have no effect

whatever against tricks played within her house by one or more of her

own servants.

As to the maid-servant's motives for engaging in this series of

deceptions, many may have existed and been sufficiently strong; the

lightest, which we shall state last, would probably be the strongest.

She may have been in communication with M. de S----'s relations for some

hidden purpose which never was effected. How far this circumstance may

be connected with the date of the first portent, the very night of the

young man's death, or whether that coincidence was simply accidental, is

matter for conjecture. The old lady, his relative, who afterward visited

Clairon, and told her a tale calculated to fill her with superstitious

dread, _may_ herself have been the maid-servant's employer for some

similar purpose; or (which is at least equally probable) the tale may

have had nothing whatever to do with the sound, and may have been

perfectly true. But all experience in such cases assures us that the

love of mischief, or the love of power, and the desire of being

important, would be sufficient motives to the maid for such a deception.

The more frightened Clairon was, the more necessary and valuable her

maid became to her, naturally. A thousand instances of long continued

deception on the part of young women, begun in mere folly, and continued

for the reasons just mentioned, though continued at an immense cost of

trouble, resolution, and self-denial in all other respects, are familiar

to most readers of strange transactions, medical and otherwise. There

seem to be strong grounds for the conclusion that the maid was the

principal, if not the sole agent in this otherwise supernatural part of

this remarkable story.

THE REV. WILLIAM LISLE BOWLES.

We must not allow a poet of the tender and manly feeling of Mr. Bowles

to pass away from among us with a mere notice of his death amid the

common gossip of the week. The peculiar excellence of his Sonnets and

his influence on English poetry deserve a further notice at our hands.

The Rev. William Lisle Bowles, of an ancient family in the county of

Wilts, was born in the village of King's Sutton, in Northamptonshire--a

parish of which his father was vicar--on the 24th of September, 1762.

His mother was the daughter of Dr. Richard Gray, chaplain to Nathaniel

Crew, bishop of Durham. He was educated at Winchester School, under Dr.

Joseph Warton, and rose to be the senior boy. Warton took much notice of

him; and, on his removal to Oxford, in 1782, was the means, we have

heard, of inducing him to enter at Trinity College, of which Tom Warton

was then the senior Fellow. "Among my contemporaries at Trinity," he

says, "were several young men of talents and literature--Headley, Kett,

Benwell, Dallaway, Richards, Dornford." Of these Headley is still

remembered by some beautiful pieces of poetry, distinguished for

imagery, pathos, and simplicity.

Mr. Bowles became a poet in print in his twenty-seventh year--publishing

in 1789 a very small volume in quarto, with the very modest title of

"Fourteen Sonnets." His excellencies were not lost on the public; and in

the same year appeared a second edition, with seven additional sonnets.

"I had just entered on my seventeenth year," says Coleridge, in his

"Biographia Literaria," "when the Sonnets of Mr. Bowles, twenty-one in

number, and just then published in a quarto pamphlet, were first made

known and presented to me by a schoolfellow [at Christ's Hospital] who

had quitted us for the University. As my school finances did not permit

me to purchase copies, I made, within less than a year and a half, more

than forty transcriptions--as the best presents I could offer to those

who had in any way won my regard. And with almost equal delight did I

receive the three or four following publications of the same author."

Coleridge was always consistent in his admiration of Mr. Bowles.

Charlotte Smith and Bowles, he says--writing in 1797--are they who first

made the sonnet popular among the present generation of English readers;

and in the same year in which this encomium was printed, his own volume

of poetry contains "Sonnets attempted in the manner of Mr. Bowles." "My

obligations to Mr. Bowles," he adds in another place, "were indeed

important, and for radical good;" and that his approbation might not be

confined to prose, he has said in verse:

"My heart has thanked thee, Bowles, for those soft strains

Whose sadness soothes me, like the murmuring

Of wild bees in the sunny showers of spring."

Mr. Bowles's sonnets were descriptive of his personal feelings; and the

manly tenderness which pervades them was occasioned, he tells us, by the

sudden death of a deserving young woman with whom

"Sperabat longos, heu! ducere soles,

Et fido acclinis consenuisse sinu."

An eighth edition appeared in 1802; and a ninth and a tenth have since

been demanded.

While at Trinity--where he took his degree in 1792--Mr. Bowles obtained

the Chancellor's prize for a Latin poem. On leaving the University he

entered into holy orders, and was appointed to a curacy in Wiltshire;

from which he was preferred to a living in Gloucestershire--and in 1803

to a canonry in Salisbury Cathedral. His next step was to the rectory of

Bremhill in Wiltshire--to which he was presented by Archbishop Moore.

Here he remained till his death--beloved by his parishioners and by all

who had the pleasure of his acquaintance. A volume of his sermons

("Paulus Parochialis"), designed for country congregations, was

published in 1826.

The Sonnets were followed, at an Horatian interval, by other poems

hardly of an inferior quality: such, for instance, as his "Hope, an

Allegorical Sketch"--"St. Michael's Mount"--"Coombe Ellen"--and "Grave

of Howard." His "Spirit of Discovery by Sea," the longest of his

productions, was published in 1804, and is now chiefly remembered by the

unhappy notoriety which Lord Byron obtained for it by asserting in his

"English Bards" that the poet had made the woods of Madeira tremble to a

kiss. Lord Byron subsequently acknowledged that he had mistaken Mr.

Bowles's meaning: too late, however, to remove the injurious impression

which his hasty reading had occasioned. Generally, Mr. Bowles's more

ambitious works may be ranked as superior to the poems of Crowe and

Carrington--both of which in their day commanded a certain

reputation--and as higher in academical elegance than the verse of Mr.

James Montgomery; while they have neither the nerve and occasional

nobility of Cowper, nor that intimate mixture of fancy, feeling, lofty

contemplations, and simple themes and images which have placed

Wordsworth at the head of a school.

The school of the Wartons was not the school of Pope; and the

comparatively low appreciation of the great poetical satirist, which Mr.

Bowles entertained and asserted in print, was no doubt imbibed at

Winchester under Joseph Warton, and strengthened at Oxford under Tom.

Mr. Bowles's edition of Pope is a very poor performance. He had little

diligence, and few indeed of the requirements of an editor. He undertook

to traduce the moral character of Pope; and the line in which Lord

Byron refers to him on that account

"To do for hate what Mallet did for hire"

will long be remembered to his prejudice. His so-called "invariable

principles of poetry" maintained in his Pope and in his controversy with

Byron and Campbell, are better based than critics hitherto have been

willing to admit. Considering how sharply the reverend Pamphleteer was

hit by the Peer's ridicule, it must be always remembered, to the credit

of his Christianity, that possibly the most popular of all the dirges

written on Lord Byron's death came from Mr. Bowles's pen; and the

following tributary stanza is deepened in its music by the memory of the

former war.

"I will not ask sad Pity to deplore

His wayward errors who thus sadly died,

Still less, CHILDE HAROLD, now thou art no more,

Will I say aught of Genius misapplied;

Of the past shadows of thy spleen or pride:

But I will bid th' Arcadian cypress wave,

Pluck the green laurel from the Perseus's side,

And pray thy spirit may such quiet have

That not one thought unkind be murmured o'er thy grave."

It only remains for us to add, that Mr. Bowles wrote a somewhat poor

life of Bishop Ken--that he was famous for his Parson Adams-like

forgetfulness--that his wife died in 1844, at the age of 72--and that he

himself at the time of his death was in his eighty-eighth year.--_London

Athenaeum._

MORNING IN SPRING.

(FROM THE GERMAN OF GUSTAV SOLLING.)

From the valleys to the hills

See the morning mists arise;

And the early dew distills

Balmy incense to the skies.

Purple clouds, with vapory grace,

Round the sun their soft sail fling;

Now they fade--and from his face

Beams the new-born bliss of Spring!

From the cool grass glitter bright

Myriad drops of diamond dew;

Bending 'neath their pressure light,

Waves the green corn, springing new

Nought but the fragrant wind is heard,

Whispering softly through the trees,

Or, lightly perched, the early bird

Chirping to the morning breeze

Dewy May-flowers to the sun

Ope their buds of varied hue.

Fragrant shades--his beams to shun--

Hide the violet's heavenly blue

A joyous sense of life revived

Streams through every limb and vein:

I thank thee, Lord! that I have lived

To see the bright young Spring again!

ETA.

[From Household Words.]

WORK! AN ANECDOTE.

A calvary officer of large fortune, who had distinguished himself in

several actions, having been quartered for a long time in a foreign

city, gradually fell into a life of extreme and incessant dissipation.

He soon found himself so indisposed to any active military service, that

even the ordinary routine became irksome and unbearable. He accordingly

solicited and obtained leave of absence from his regiment for six

months. But, instead of immediately engaging in some occupation of mind

and body, as a curative process for his morbid condition, he hastened to

London, and gave himself up entirely to greater luxuries than ever, and

plunged into every kind of sensuality. The consequence was a disgust of

life and all its healthy offices. He became unable to read half a page

of a book, or to write the shortest note; mounting his horse was too

much trouble; to lounge down the street was a hateful effort. His

appetite failed, or every thing disagreed with him; and he could seldom

sleep. Existence became an intolerable burden; he therefore determined

on suicide.

With this intention he loaded his pistols, and, influenced by early

associations, dressed himself in his regimental frock-coat and crimson

sash, and entered St. James's Park a little before sunrise. He felt as

if he was mounting guard for the last time; listened to each sound, and

looked with miserable affection across the misty green toward the Horse

Guards, faintly seen in the distance.

A few minutes after the officer had entered the park, there passed

through the same gate a poor mechanic, who leisurely followed in the

same direction. He was a gaunt, half-famished looking man, and walked

with a sad air, his eyes bent thoughtfully on the ground, and his large

bony hands dangling at his sides.

The officer, absorbed in the act he meditated, walked on without being

aware of the presence of another person. Arriving about the middle of a

wide open space, he suddenly stopped, and drawing forth both pistols,

exclaimed, "Oh, most unfortunate and most wretched man that I am!

Wealth, station, honor, prospects, are of no avail! Existence has become

a heavy torment to me! I have not strength--I have not courage to endure

or face it a moment longer!"

With these words he cocked the pistols, and was raising both of them to

his head, when his arms were seized from behind, and the pistols twisted

out of his fingers. He reeled round, and beheld the gaunt scarecrow of a

man who had followed him.

"What are you?" stammered the officer, with a painful air; "How dare you

to step between me and death?"

"I am a poor, hungry mechanic;" answered the man, "one who works from

fourteen to sixteen hours a day, and yet finds it hard to earn a living.

My wife is dead--my daughter was tempted away from me--and I am a lone

man. As I have nobody to live for, and have become quite tired of my

life, I came out this morning, intending to drown myself. But as the

fresh air of the park came over my face, the sickness of life gave way

to shame at my own want of strength and courage, and I determined to

walk onward and live my allotted time. But what are _you_? Have you

encountered cannon-balls and death in all shapes, and now want the

strength and courage to meet the curse of idleness?"

The officer was moving off with some confused words, but the mechanic

took him by the arm, and threatening to hand him over to the police if

he resisted, led him droopingly away.

This mechanic's work was that of a turner, and he lived in a dark

cellar, where he toiled at his lathe from morning to night. Hearing that

the officer had amused himself with a little turnery in his youth, the

poor artisan proposed to take him down into his work-shop. The officer

offered him money; and was anxious to escape; but the mechanic refused

it, and persisted.

He accordingly took the morbid gentleman down into his dark cellar, and

set him to work at his lathe. The officer began very languidly, and soon

rose to depart. Whereupon, the mechanic forced him down again on the

hard bench, and swore that if he did not do an hour's work for him, in

return for saving his life, he would instantly consign him to a

policeman, and denounce him for attempting to commit suicide. At this

threat the officer was so confounded, that he at once consented to do

the work.

When the hour was over, the mechanic insisted on a second hour, in

consequence of the slowness of the work--it had not been a fair hour's

labor. In vain the officer protested, was angry, and exhausted--had the

heartburn--pains in his back and limbs--and declared it would kill him.

The mechanic was inexorable. "If it _does_ kill you," said he, "then you

will only be where you would have been if I had not stopped you." So the

officer was compelled to continue his work with an inflamed face, and

the perspiration pouring down over his cheeks and chin.

At last he could proceed no longer, come what would of it, and sank back

in the arms of his persecuting preserver. The mechanic now placed before

him his own breakfast, composed of a two-penny loaf of brown bread, and

a pint of small beer; the whole of which the officer disposed of in no

time, and then sent out for more.

Before the boy who was dispatched on this errand returned, a little

conversation had ensued; and as the officer rose to go, he smilingly

placed his purse, with his card, in the hands of the mechanic. The poor,

ragged man received them with all the composure of a physician, and with

a sort of dry, grim humor which appeared peculiar to him, and the only

relief of his other wise rough and rigid character, made sombre by the

constant shadows and troubles of life.

But the moment he read the name on the card all the hard lines in his

deeply-marked face underwent a sudden contortion. Thrusting back the

purse and card into the officer's hand, he seized him with a fierce grip

by one arm--hurried him, wondering, up the dark broken stairs, along the

narrow passage--then pushed him out at the door!

"You are the fine gentleman who tempted my daughter away!" said he.

"I--_your_ daughter!" exclaimed the officer.

"Yes, my daughter; Ellen Brentwood!" said the mechanic. "Are there so

many men's daughters in the list, that you forget her name?"

"I implore you," said the officer, "to take this purse. _Pray_, take

this purse! If you will not accept it for yourself, I entreat you to

send it to her!"

"Go and buy a lathe with it," said the mechanic. "Work, man! and repent

of your past life!"

So saying, he closed the door in the officer's face, and descended the

stairs to his daily labor.

IGNORANCE IN ENGLAND.--Taking the whole of northern Europe--including

Scotland, and France and Belgium (where education is at a low ebb), we

find that to every 2-1/4 of the population, there is one child acquiring

the rudiments of knowledge; while in England there is only one such

pupil to every fourteen inhabitants. It has been calculated that there

are at the present day in England and Wales nearly 8,000,000 persons who

can neither read nor write--that is to say, nearly one quarter of the

population. Also, that of all the children between five and fourteen,

more than one half attend no place of instruction. These statements

would be hard to believe, if we had not to encounter in our every-day

life degrees of illiteracy which would be startling, if we were not

thoroughly used to it. Wherever we turn, ignorance, not always allied to

poverty, stares us in the face. If we look in the _Gazette_, at the list

of partnerships dissolved, not a month passes but some unhappy man,

rolling, perhaps, in wealth, but wallowing in ignorance, is put to the

_experimentum crucis_ of "his mark." The number of petty jurors--in

rural districts especially--who can only sign with a cross, is enormous.

It is not unusual to see parish documents of great local importance

defaced with the same humiliating symbol by persons whose office shows

them to be not only "men of mark," but men of substance. A housewife in

humble life need only turn to the file of her tradesmen's bills to

discover hieroglyphics which render them so many arithmetical puzzles.

In short, the practical evidences of the low ebb to which the plainest

rudiments of education in this country have fallen, are too common to

bear repetition. We can not pass through the streets, we can not enter a

place of public assembly, or ramble in the fields, without the gloomy

shadow of Ignorance sweeping over us.--_Dickens's "Household Words."_

[From The Ladies' Companion.]

MEN AND WOMEN.

A woman is naturally gratified when a man singles her out, and addresses

his conversation to her. She takes pains to appear to the best

advantage, but without any thought of willfully misleading.

How different is it with men! At least it is thus that women in general

think of men. The mask with them is deliberately put on and worn as a

mask, and wo betide the silly girl who is too weak or too unsuspicious,

not to appear displeased with the well-turned compliments and flattering

attentions so lavishly bestowed upon her by her partner at the ball. If

a girl has brothers she sees a little behind the scenes, and is saved

much mortification and disappointment. She discovers how little men mean

by attentions they so freely bestow upon the last new face which takes

their fancy.

Men are singularly wanting in good feeling upon this subject; they pay a

girl marked attention, flatter her in every way, and then, perhaps, when

warned by some judicious friend that they are going too far, "can hardly

believe the girl could be so foolish as to fancy that any thing was

meant."

The fault which strikes women most forcibly in men is _selfishness_.

They expect too much in every way, and become impatient if their

comforts and peculiarities are interfered with. If the men of the

present day were less selfish and self-indulgent, and more willing to be

contented and happy upon moderate means, there would be fewer causes of

complaint against young women undertaking situations as governesses when

they were wholly unfit for so responsible an office. I feel the deepest

interest in the present movement for the improvement of the female sex;

and most cordially do I concur in the schemes for this desirable purpose

laid down in "The Ladies' Companion;" but I could not resist the

temptation of lifting up my voice in testimony against some of the

every-day faults of men, to which I think many of the follies and

weaknesses of women are mainly to be attributed.

Mr. Thackeray is the only writer of the present day who touches, with

any severity, upon the faults of his own sex. He has shown us the style

of women that he thinks men most admire, in "Amelia," and "Mrs.

Pendennis." Certainly, my own experience agrees with his opinion; and

until men are sufficiently improved to be able to appreciate higher

qualities in women, and to choose their wives among women who possess

such qualities, I do not expect that the present desirable movement will

make much progress. The improvement of both sexes must be simultaneous.

A "gentleman's horror" is still a "blue stocking," which unpleasing

epithet is invariably bestowed upon all women who have read much, and

who are able to think and act for themselves.

A YOUNG WIFE

THE RETURN OF POPE PIUS IX. TO ROME.

The banishment of a Pope has hitherto been a rare event: the

following detailed and graphic description of the return of PIUS

IX. to his seat of empire, superadds a certain degree of

historical importance to its immediate interest. It is from the

correspondence of the "London Times."

VELLETRI, _Thursday, April_ 11.

All speculation is now set at rest--the last and the most important

stage in the Papal progress has been made--the Pope has arrived at

Velletri.

The Pope was expected yesterday at three o'clock, but very early in the

morning every one in the town, whether they had business to execute or

not, thought it necessary to rush about, here, there, and every where. I

endeavored to emulate this activity, and to make myself as ubiquitous as

the nature of the place, which is built on an ascent, and my own nature,

which is not adapted to ascents, would allow me. At one moment I stood

in admiration at the skill with which sundry sheets and napkins were

wound round a wooden figure, to give it a chaste and classic appearance,

which figure--supposed to represent Charity, Fortitude, Prudence, or

Plenty--was placed as a _basso relievo_ on the triumphal arch, where it

might have done for any goddess or virtue in the mythology or calendar.

At another moment I stood on the Grand Place, marveling at the arch and

dry manner in which half a dozen painters were inscribing to Pio Nono,

over the doors of the Municipality, every possible quality which could

have belonged to the whole family of saints--one man, in despair at

giving adequate expression to his enthusiasm, having satisfied himself

with writing _Pio Nono Immortale! Immortale! Immortale! Vero Angelo!_

But to say the truth, there was something very touching in the

enthusiasm of this rustic and mountain people, although it was sometimes

absurdly and quaintly expressed; for instance, in one window there was a

picture, or rather a kind of transparency, representing little angels,

which a scroll underneath indicated as the children of His Holiness.

Whether the Velletrians intended to represent their own innocence or to

question that of His Holiness, I did not choose to inquire. Then there

were other pictures of the Pope in every possible variety of dress;

sometimes as a young officer, at another as a cardinal; again, a corner

shop had him as a benevolent man in a black coat and dingy neck-cloth;

but, most curious of all, he at one place took the shape of a female

angel placing her foot on the demon of rebellion. The circumstance of

his Protean quality arose from each family having turned their pictures

from the inside outside the houses, and printed Pio Nono under each; but

if the features of each picture differed, not so the feelings that

placed them there: it was a touching and graceful sight to see the

people as they greeted each other that morning.

As the day drew on, the preparations were completed, and the material of

which every house was built was lost under a mass of scarlet and green.

But, alas! about three o'clock the clouds gathered upon Alba; Monte

Calvi was enveloped in mist, which sailed over the top of Artemisio; the

weather turned cold; and the whole appearance of the day became

threatening. The figure of the Pope on the top of the triumphal arch, to

compose which sundry beds must have been stripped of their sheets--for

it was of colossal dimensions--quivered in the breeze, and at every

blast I expected to see the worst possible omen--the mitre, which was

only fastened by string to the sacred head, falling down headless; but

having pointed this out to some persons who were too excited themselves

to see anything practical, a boy was sent up, and with two long nails

secured the mitre more firmly on the sacred head than even Lord Minto's

counsels could do. At three o'clock the Municipality passed down the

lines of troops amid every demonstration of noisy joy. There were half a

dozen very respectable gentlemen in evening dress, all looking

wonderfully alike, and remarkably pale, either from the excitement or

the important functions which they had to perform; but I ought to speak

well of them, for they invited me to the reserved part of the small

entrance square, where I had the good fortune to shelter myself from the

gusts of wind which drove down from the hills. From three to six we all

waited, the people very patient, and fortunately so crowded that they

could not well feel cold. The cardinal's servants--strange

grotesque-looking fellows in patchwork liveries--were running up and

down the portico, and the soldiers on duty began to give evident signs

of a diminution of ardor. Some persons were just beginning to croak,

"Well, I told you he would not come," when the cannon opened from the

heights, the troops fell in--a carriage is seen coming down the hill,

but it is the wrong road. Who can it be? The troops seem to know, for

the chasseurs draw their swords, the whole line present arms, the band

strikes up, and the French General Baraguay d'Hilliers dashes through

the gates. Again roar the cannon--another carriage is seen, and this

time in the right direction; it is preceded by the Pope's courier,

covered with scarlet and gold. The people cheered loudly, although they

could not have known whom it contained; but they cheered the magnificent

arms and the reeking horses. It was the Vice-Legate of Velletri,

Monsignore Beraldi. The Municipality rushed to the door of the carriage,

and a little, energetic-looking man in lace and purple descended, and

was almost smothered in the embraces of the half dozen municipal

officers, who confused him with questions--"Dove e la sua Santita!"

"Vicino! Vicino!" "E a Frosinone, e a Valomontone?" "Bellissimo,

bellissimo, recevimento! sorprendente! Tanto bello! tanto bello!" was

all the poor little man could jerk out, and at each word he was stifled

with fresh embraces; but he was soon set aside and forgotten, when half

a dozen of the Papal couriers galloped up, splashed from head to foot.

They were followed by several carriages with four or six horses, the

postillions in their new liveries; then came a large squadron of

Neapolitan cavalry, and immediately afterward the Pope. It was a

touching sight. While the women cried, the men shouted; but however

absurd a description of enthusiasm may be, in its action it was very

fine. As he passed on, the troops presented arms, and every one knelt.

He drew up in front of the municipality, who were so affected or so

frightened that their speech ended in nothing. The carriage door was

opened, and then the scene which ensued was without parallel; every one

rushed forward to kiss the foot which he put out. One little Abbate, Don

Pietro Metranga, amused me excessively. Nothing could keep him back; he

caught hold of the sacred foot, he hugged it, he sighed, he wept over

it. A knot of gentlemen were standing on the steps of the entrance,

among others Mr. Baillie Cochrane, in the Scotch Archers' uniform, whom

His Holiness beckoned forward, and put out his hand for him to kiss.

Again the carriages would have moved on, for it was late, and _Te Deum_

had to be sung; but for some time it was quite impossible to shake off

the crowd at the door. At last the procession moved, and I, at the peril

of my life--for the crowd, couriers, and chasseurs rode like

lunatics--ran down to the cathedral. To my surprise, the Pope had

anticipated me, and the door was shut. I was about to retire in despair,

when I saw a little man creeping silently up to a small gate, followed

by a very tall and ungainly prince in a red uniform, which put me very

much in mind of Ducrow in his worst days. I looked again, and I knew it

was my friend the Abbe, and if I followed him I must go right. It was as

I expected. While we had been abusing the arrangements, he had gone and

asked for the key of the sacristy, by which way we entered the church.

It was densely crowded in all parts, and principally by troops who had

preoccupied it. When the host was raised, the effect was grand in the

extreme. The Pope, with all his subjects, bowed their heads to the

pavement, and the crash of arms was succeeded by the most perfect

silence. The next ceremony was the benediction of the people from the

palace, which is situate on the extreme height of the town. Nerving

myself for this last effort, I struggled and stumbled up the hill. There

the thousands from the country and neighborhood were assembled, and in a

few minutes the Pope arrived. In the interval all the facades of the

houses had been illuminated, and the effects of the light on the various

picturesque groups and gay uniforms was very striking. A burst of music

and fresh cannon announced the arrival of His Holiness. He went straight

into the palace, and in a few minutes the priests with the torches

entered the small chapel which was erected on the balcony. The Pope

followed, and then arose one shout, such as I never remember to have

heard: another and another, and all knelt, and not a whisper was heard.

As the old man stretched out his hands to bless the people, his voice

rung clear and full in the night:

"Sit nomen Dei benedictum."

And the people, with one voice, replied:

"Ex hoc et nunc et in seculum."

Then the Pope:

"Adjutorum nostrum in nomine Domini."

The people:

"Qui fecit coelum et terram."

His Holiness:

"Benedicat vos omnipotens Deus Pater, Filius, et Spiritus

Sanctus."

And the people, with one voice:

"Amen!"

_Thursday Evening._

The Velletri fireworks were certainly a failure; the population

understands genuflexions better than squibs and crackers; but the

illumination, which consisted of large pots of grease placed on posts at

intervals of a yard down every street, had really a very good effect,

and might afford a good hint for cheap illuminations in England. What is

most remarkable to an Englishman on such occasions is, the total absence

of drunkenness and the admirable and courteous conduct of the people to

each other. It seemed to me that the population never slept; they were

perambulating the streets chanting "Viva Pio Nono" all night; and, at 8

o'clock this morning, there was the same crowd, with the same

excitement. I went early to the Papal Palace to witness the reception of

the different deputations; but, notwithstanding my activity, I arrived

one of the last, and on being shown into a waiting-room found myself

standing in a motley group of generals of every clime, priests in every

variety of costume, judges, embassadors, and noble guards. A long suite

of ten rooms was thrown open, and probably the old and tapestried walls

had never witnessed so strange a sight before as the gallery presented.

There was a kind of order and degree preserved in the distribution of

the visitors. The first room mostly contained priests of the lower

ranks, in the second were gentlemen in violet colored dresses, looking

proud and inflated; then came a room full of officers, then

distinguished strangers, among whom might be seen General Baraguay

d'Hilliers, Count Ludolf, the Neapolitan embassador, the Princes

Massimo, Corsini, Ruspoli, Cesareni, all covered with stars, ribbons,

and embroidery. The door of each room was kept by the municipal troops,

who were evidently very new to the work, for the pages in their pink

silk dresses might be seen occasionally instructing them in the salute.

Presently there was a move, every one drew back for Cardinal Macchi; he

is the _doyen_ of the college, and, as Archbishop of Velletri, appeared

in his brightest scarlet robes--a fit subject for the pencil of the

great masters. He was followed by Cardinals Asquini and Dupont in more

modest garb, and each as he passed received and gracefully acknowledged

the homage of the crowd. While we were standing waiting, two priests in

full canonicals marched by with stately steps, preceded by the cross,

and bearing the consecrated elements which they were to administer to

the Pope; they remained with him about twenty minutes, and again the

doors were thrown open, and they came out with the same forms. The

Sacrament was succeeded by the breakfast service of gold, which it would

have made any amateurs of Benvenuto Cellini's workmanship envious to

see. At last the breakfast was ended, and I began to hope there was some

chance of our suspense terminating, when there was a great movement

among the crowd at one end of the gallery, the pages rushed to their

posts, flung back the two doors, and the Prime Minister, Cardinal

Antonelli, entered. Standing in that old palace, and gazing on the

Priest Premier, I could realize the times of Mazarin and Richelieu.

Neither of these could have possessed a haughtier eye than Antonelli, or

carried themselves more proudly: every action spoke the man

self-possessed and confident in the greatness of his position. He is

tall, thin, about forty-four or forty-five, of a dark and somewhat

sallow complexion, distinguished not by the regularity or beauty of his

features, but by the calmness and dignity of their expression. As the

mass moved to let him pass to the Papal apartments at the other

extremity of the gallery, there was nothing flurried in his manner or

hurried in his step--he knew to a nicety the precise mode of courtesy

which he should show to each of his worshipers; for instance, when the

French general--ay, the rough soldier of the camp--bent to kiss his

hand, he drew it back, and spoke a few low, complimentary words as he

bowed low to him, always graciously, almost condescendingly. When the

Roman princes wished to perform the same salute his hand met their lips

half-way. When the crowd of abbes, monks, priests, and deacons, seized

it, it passed on unresistingly from mouth to mouth, as though he knew

that blessing was passing out of him, but that he found sufficient for

all. I was beginning to marvel what had become of my little friend of

the preceding evening, Don Pietro, when I observed a slight stoppage,

occasioned by some one falling at the Cardinal's feet. It was Don

Pietro. He had knelt down to get a better hold of the hanging fringes,

and no power could withdraw them from his lips; he appeared determined

to exhaust their valuable savor, and, for the first time, I saw a smile

on Antonelli's countenance, which soon changed into a look of severity,

which so frightened the little abbate that he gave up his prey. Cardinal

Antonelli went in to the Pope, and expectation and patience had to be

renewed. Then came all the deputations in succession, men with long

parchments and long faces of anxiety. There could not have been less

than eight or ten of these, who all returned from the interview looking

very bright and contented, ejaculating "_Quanto e buono! quanto buono!_"

To my great disappointment, a very officious little gentleman, who, it

appears, is a nephew of Cardinal Borroneo, and who, only two days since,

had been appointed a kind of deputy master of the ceremonies, informed

me that it was very unlikely His Holiness could receive any more people,

as he had to go out at eleven, which fact was confirmed by the Papal

couriers, who marched, booted and spurred, whip in hand, into the

ante-room. This announcement had scarcely been made, when Cardinal

Antonelli appeared and informed us that the Pope would receive two or

three at a time, but that they must not stop long. The first batch

consisted of "our own correspondent;" Don Flavio Ghigi, I looked round

to see who was the third, it was the little abbate. As we entered the

presence chamber, I made an inclination, but, to my surprise, both Don

Flavio and Don Pietro rushed forward. The Ghigi gracefully, and with

emotion, kissed the Sovereign's foot, and then his hand, which was

extended to him. His Holiness had evidently been greatly excited. He

took Don Flavio by the hand, saying, "Rise up, my son, our sorrows are

over." Meanwhile Don Pietro had embraced not merely the foot, but the

ankle. Vainly the Pope bade him rise. At last he exclaimed, looking at

the little man with wonder, "Eh! Che Don Pietro con una barba!" "Ah,"

said the unclerical priest, not in any degree taken by surprise, "Since

our misfortunes, your Holiness, I never had the heart to shave." "Then,

now that happier times are come, we shall see your face quite clean,"

was the Pope's reply. More genuflexions, more embracings, and away we

went. After a few minutes' delay, the gentlemen of the chamber gave

notice that His Holiness was about to pass; he was preceded by priests

bearing the crucifix, and this time wore a rich embroidered stole; his

benevolent face lighted up as he blessed all his servants who knelt on

his passage. He has a striking countenance, full of paternal goodness;

nor does his tendency to obesity interfere with the dignity of his

movements. Some half-dozen Capuchins fell down before him, and the

guards had some difficulty in making them move out of the way. As the

Pope moved he dispensed his blessing to the right and to the left.

Meanwhile a great crowd had collected outside. When he appeared he was

enthusiastically cheered. He entered his carriage--the scarlet couriers

kicked, cracked, and spurred--the troops all knelt--the band played some

strange anthem, for he has become rather tired of "_Viva Pio Nono_,"

with which he has no agreeable associations--and the pageant passed

away.

I was compelled to decline the invitation from the Council of State;

and, soon after his Holiness's departure, I started for Rome, in order

to arrive before the gates were shut, for the passport system is in the

strictest operation. All along the road fortunately the preparations

have taken the turn of cleanliness--whitewash is at a premium. At

Genzano and Albano the woods of Dunsinane seem to be moving through the

towns. At the former place I saw General Baraguay d'Hilliers, who had to

send to Albano for two cutlets and bread, the supplies of Genzano being

exhausted. The Pope leaves Velletri to-morrow, Friday, 12th, at 8

o'clock. At Genzano the Neapolitan troops leave him, and are replaced by

the French; at Albano he breakfasts, and enters Rome at 4 o'clock.

Preparations are making for a grand illumination, and the town is all

alive.

ROME, _Friday Evening, April_ 12.

The history of the last two years has taught us to set very little

reliance on any demonstrations of public opinion. But for this sad

experience I should have warmly congratulated the Pope and his French

advisers on the success of their experiment, and augured well of the new

Roman era from the enthusiasm which has ushered it in. It is true that

there was wanting the delirious excitement which greeted our second

Charles on his return from a sixteen years' exile; nor were the forms of

courtly etiquette broken through as on that memorable 21st of March,

when Napoleon, accompanied by Cambronne and Bertrand dashed into the

court of the Tuileries and was borne on the shoulders of his troops into

the Salle des Marechaux. Even the genuine heartiness, the uncalculating

expression of emotion, which delighted the Pope at Frosinone and

Velletri, were not found in Rome; but then it must be remembered that it

was from Rome the Pope was driven forth as an exile--that shame and

silence are the natural expressions of regret and repentance; so,

considering every thing, the Pope was very well received. Bright banners

waved over his head, bright flowers were strewn on his path, the day was

warm and sunny--in all respects it was a morning _alba notanda creda_,

one of the _dies fasti_ of the reformed Papacy.

And yet the thoughts which the gorgeous scene suggested were not of

unmixed gratification. French troops formed the Papal escort; French

troops lined the streets and thronged St. Peter's. At first the mind was

carried back to the times when Pepin, as the eldest son of the Catholic

church, restored the Pope to the throne of the Apostle, and for the

moment we were disposed to feel that the event and the instrument were

happily associated; but a moment's glance at the tri-color standard, at

the free and easy manner of the general-in-chief when he met the Pope at

the gate of the Lateran, recalled the mind back to the French Republic,

with all its long train of intrigue, oppression, and infatuated folly.

But, whatever the change of scene may be, it must be admitted that the

drama was full of interest and the decorations magnificent. When the sun

shone on the masses collected in the Piazza of St. Giovanni, and the

great gates of the Lateran being thrown open the gorgeous hierarchy of

Rome, with the banners of the various Basilicae, the insignia and costume

of every office issued forth, the effect was beyond measure imposing. An

artist must have failed in painting, as he must have failed in composing

such a picture. Precisely at 4 o'clock the batteries on the Place

announced that the _cortege_ was in view, and presently the clouds of

dust blown before it gave a less agreeable assurance of its approach.

The procession was headed by a strong detachment of cavalry; then

followed the tribe of couriers, outriders, and officials--whom I

described from Velletri--more troops, and then the Pope. As he passed

the drums beat the _generale_, and the soldiers knelt, it was commonly

reported, but I know not with what truth; it was the first time they

ever knelt before the head of the church. Certainly, with the Italians

church ceremonies are an instinct--the coloring and grouping are so

accidentally but artistically arranged; the bright scarlet of the

numerous cardinals mingling with the solemn black of the _Conservatori_,

the ermine of the senate, the golden vestments of the high-priests, and

the soberer hues of the inferior orders of the clergy. When the Pope

descended from the carriage a loud cheer was raised and handkerchiefs

were waved in abundance; but, alas! the enthusiasm that is valuable is

that which does not boast of such a luxury as handkerchiefs. Very few

people seemed to think it necessary to kneel, and, on the whole, the

mass were more interested in the pageant itself than in the

circumstances in which it originated. The excitement of curiosity was,

however, at its height, for many people in defiance of horse and foot

broke into the square, where they afforded excellent sport to the

chasseurs, who amused themselves in knocking off their hats and then in

preventing them from picking them up. I ran down in time to see his

Holiness march in procession up the centre of the magnificent St.

Giovanni. This religious part of the ceremony was perhaps more imposing

than that outside the church. The dead silence while the Pope prayed,

the solemn strains when he rose from his knees, the rich draperies which

covered the walls and cast an atmosphere of purple light around, the

black dresses and the vails which the ladies wore, mingling with every

variety of uniform, stars, and ribbons, produced an admirable effect.

The great object, when this ceremony was half finished, was to reach St.

Peter's before the Pope could arrive there, every body, of course,

starting at the same moment, and each party thinking they were going to

do a very clever thing in taking a narrow roundabout way to the Ponte

Sisto, so choking it up and leaving the main road by the Coliseum and

the Foro Trajano quite deserted. In the palmiest days of the circus Rome

could never have witnessed such chariot-racing. All ideas of courtesy

and solemnity befitting the occasion were banished. The only thing was

who could arrive first at the bridge. The streets as we passed through

were quite deserted--it looked like a city of the dead. As we passed

that admirable institution, the Hospital St. Giovanni Colabita, which is

always open to public view, the officiating priests and soldiers were

standing in wonder at the entrance, and the sick men raised themselves

on their arms and looked with interest on the excitement occasioned by

the return of the Head of that Church, to which they owed the foundation

where they sought repose, and the faith that taught them hope. By the

time we arrived at St. Peter's the immense space was already crowded,

but, thanks to my Irish pertinacity, I soon elbowed myself into a

foremost place at the head of the steps. Here I had to wait for about an

hour, admiring the untiring energy of the mob, who resisted all the

attempts of the troops to keep them back, the gentle expostulations of

the officers, and sometimes the less gentle persuasion of the bayonet.

At 6 o'clock, the banners flew from the top of Adrian's Tomb, and the

roar of cannon recommenced; but again the acclamations were very

partial, and, but for the invaluable pocket-handkerchiefs of the

ever-sympathizing ladies, the affair must have passed off rather coldly.

It was, however, very different in St. Peter's. When his Holiness trod

that magnificent temple the thousands collected within its walls

appeared truly impressed with the grandeur, the almost awful grandeur of

the scene. The man, the occasion, and the splendor, all so striking;

never was the host celebrated under a more remarkable combination of

circumstances. The word of command given to the troops rang through the

immense edifice, then the crash of arms, and every man knelt for some

moments amid a breathless silence, only broken by the drums, which

rolled at intervals. The mass was ended. St. Peter's sent forth the tens

of thousands, the soldiers fell in, the pageantry was at an end. Then

came the illumination, which was very beautiful, not from the brilliancy

of the lights, but from its being so universal. St. Peter's was only

lighted _en demi-toilette_, and is to appear in his glory to-morrow

evening; but as the wind played among the lamps, and the flames

flickered and brightened in the breeze, the effect from the Pincian was

singularly graceful. The Campodoglio, that centre of triumph, was in a

blaze of glory, and the statues of the mighty of old stood forth, like

dark and solemn witnesses of the past, in the sea of light. But one by

one the lamps died out, the silence and the darkness of the night

resumed their sway, and the glory of the day became the history of the

past.

Thus far prognostications have been defeated. The Pope is in the

Vatican. Let us hope the prophets of evil may again find their

predictions falsified; but, alas! it is impossible to be blind to the

fact, that within the last few days the happiness of many homes has been

destroyed, and that the triumph of the one has been purchased by the

sorrows of the many. True, some 30,000 scudi have been given in charity,

of which the Pope granted 25,000; but there is that which is even more

blessed than food--it is liberty. There were conspiracies, it is true.

An attempt was made to set fire to the Quirinal; a small _machine

infernale_ was exploded near the Palazzo Teodoli. There was the excuse

for some arrests, but not for so many. But if the hand of the

administration is to press too heavily on the people, the absence of

prudence and indulgence on the part of the church can not be compensated

for by the presence of its head. In former days of clerical ignorance

and religious bigotry the master-writings of antiquity, which were found

inscribed on old parchments, were obliterated to make way for missals,

homilies, and golden legends, gorgeously illuminated but ignorantly

expressed. Let not the church fall into the same error in these days, by

effacing from its record the stern but solemn lessons of the past, to

replace them by illiberal, ungenerous, and therefore erroneous views,

clothed although they may be with all the pride and pomp of papal

supremacy. Doubtless some time will elapse before any particular course

of policy will be laid down. The Pope will for the moment bide his time

and observe. No one questions his good intentions, no man puts his

benevolence in doubt. Let him only follow the dictates of his own

kindness of heart, chastened by his bitter experience, which will teach

him alike to avoid the extremes of indulgence and the excesses of

severity.

_Saturday Morning, April_ 13.

I am glad to be able to add that the night has passed off in the most

quiet and satisfactory manner, and I do not hear that in a single

instance public tranquillity was disturbed. The decorations, consisting

of bright colors and rich tapestry, which ornamented the windows and

balconies yesterday, are kept up to-day, and the festive appearance of

the city is fully maintained. There is an apparent increase of movement

in all the principal thoroughfares. His Holiness is engaged to-day in

receiving various deputations, but to-morrow the ceremonies will

recommence with high mass at St. Peter's, after which the Pope will

bless the people from the balcony, and no doubt for several days to come

religious observances will occupy all the time and attention of his

Holiness. I am very glad to find, from a gentleman who arrived last

night, having followed the papal progress through Cesterna, Velletri,

Genzano, and Albano, several hours after I had left, that the most

perfect tranquillity prevailed on the whole line of road, and up to the

gates of Rome, at four o'clock this morning not a single accident had

occurred to disturb the general satisfaction. Of course the whole city

is alive with reports of various descriptions; every body draws his own

conclusions from the great events of yesterday, and indulges in

vaticinations in the not improbable event of General Baraguay

d'Hilliers' immediate departure, now that his mission has been

accomplished. A fine field will be open for speculation. Meanwhile the

presence of the sovereign has been of one inestimable advantage to the

town--it has put the municipality on the alert. The heaps of rubbish

have been removed from the centres of the squares and the corners of the

different streets, to the great discomfiture of the tribes of hungry

dogs which, for the comfort of the tired population, had not energy to

bay through the night. Workpeople have been incessantly employed in

carting away the remains of republican violence. I observe, however,

that the causeway between the Vatican and St. Angelo, which was broken

down by the mob, has not yet been touched. Are we to hail this as an

omen that the sovereign will never again require to seek the shelter of

the fortress, or as an evidence that the ecclesiastical and the civil

power are not yet entirely united?

[From Bentley's Miscellany.]

THE GENIUS OF GEORGE SAND.

THE COMEDY OF FRANCOIS LE CHAMPI.

Scarcely half a dozen years have elapsed since it was considered a

dangerous experiment to introduce the name of George Sand into an

English periodical. In the interval we have overcome our scruples, and

the life and writings of George Sand are now as well known in this

country as those of Charles Dickens, or Bulwer Lytton. The fact itself

is a striking proof of the power of a great intellect to make itself

heard in spite of the prejudices and aversion of its audience.

The intellectual power of George Sand is attested by the suffrages of

Europe. The use to which she has put it is another question.

Unfortunately, she has applied it, for the most part, to so bad a use,

that half the people who acknowledge the ascendency of her genius, see

too much occasion to deplore its perversion.

The principles she has launched upon the world have an inevitable

tendency toward the disorganization of all existing institutions,

political and social. This is the broad, palpable fact, let sophistry

disguise or evade it as it may. Whether she pours out an intense novel

that shall plow up the roots of the domestic system, or composes a

proclamation for the Red Republicans that shall throw the streets into a

flame, her influence is equally undeniable and equally pernicious.

It has been frequently urged, in the defense of her novels, that they do

not assail the institution of marriage, but the wrongs that are

perpetrated in its name. Give her the full benefit of her intention, and

the result is still the same. Her eloquent expositions of ill-assorted

unions--her daring appeals from the obligations they impose, to the

affections they outrage--her assertion of the rights of nature over the

conventions of society, have the final effect of justifying the

violation of duty on the precarious ground of passion and inclination.

The bulk of her readers--of all readers--take such social philosophy in

the gross; they can not pick out its nice distinctions, and sift its

mystical refinements. It is less a matter of reasoning than of feeling.

Their sensibility, and not their judgment, is invoked. It is not to

their understanding that these rhapsodies are addressed, but to their

will and their passions. A writer who really meant to vindicate an

institution against its abuses, would adopt a widely different course;

and it is only begging George Sand out of the hands of the jury to

assert that the _intention_ of her writings is opposed to their

_effect_, which is to sap the foundations upon which the fabric of

domestic life reposes.

Her practice accords harmoniously with her doctrines. Nobody who knows

what the actual life of George Sand has been, can doubt for a moment the

true nature of her opinions on the subject of marriage. It is not a

pleasant subject to touch, and we should shrink from it, if it were not

as notorious as every thing else by which she has become famous in her

time. It forms, in reality, as much a part of the philosophy she desires

to impress upon the world, as the books through which she has expounded

her theory. It is neither more nor less than her theory of freedom and

independence in the matter of passion (we dare not dignify it by any

higher name) put into action--rather vagrant action, we fear, but, on

that account, all the more decisive. The wonder is, how any body,

however ardent an admirer of George Sand's genius, can suppose for a

moment that a woman who leads this life from choice, and who carries its

excesses to an extremity of voluptuous caprice, could by any human

possibility pass so completely out of herself into another person in her

books. The supposition is not only absurd in itself, but utterly

inconsistent with the boldness and sincerity of her character.

Some sort of justification for the career of Madame Dudevant has been

attempted to be extracted from the alleged unhappiness of her married

life, which drove her at last to break the bond, and purchase her

liberty at the sacrifice of a large portion of her fortune, originally

considerable. But all such justifications must be accepted with

hesitation in the absence of authentic data, and more especially when

subsequent circumstances are of a nature to throw suspicion upon the

defense. Cases undoubtedly occur in which the violent disruption of

domestic ties may be extenuated even upon moral grounds; but we can not

comprehend by what process of reasoning the argument can be stretched so

as to cover any _indiscretions_ that take place afterward.

Madame Dudevant was married in 1822, her husband is represented as a

plain country gentleman, very upright and literal in his way, and quite

incapable, as may readily be supposed, of sympathizing with what one of

her ablest critics calls her "aspirations toward the infinite, art and

liberty." She bore him two children, lived with him eight years, and,

shortly after the insurrection of July, 1830, fled from her dull house

at Nohant, and went up to Paris. Upon this step nobody has a right, to

pronounce judgment. Nor should the world penetrate the recesses of her

private life from that day forward, if her life could be truly

considered private, and if it were not in fact and in reality a part and

parcel of her literary career. She has made so little scruple about

publishing it herself, that nobody else need have any such scruple on

that head. She has been interwoven in such close intimacies with a

succession of the most celebrated persons, and has acted upon all

occasions so openly, that there is not the slightest disguise upon the

matter in the literary circles of Paris. But even all this publicity

might not wholly warrant a reference to the erratic course of this

extraordinary woman, if she had not made her own experiences, to some

extent, the basis of her works, which are said by those most familiar

with her habits and associations, to contain, in a variety of forms, the

confession of the strange vicissitudes through which her heart and

imagination have passed. The reflection is not limited to general types

of human character and passion, but constantly descends to

individualization; and her intimate friends are at no loss to trace

through her numerous productions a whole gallery of portraits, beginning

with poor M. Dudevant, and running through a remarkable group of

contemporary celebrities. Her works then are, avowedly, transcripts of

her life; and her life consequently becomes, in a grave sense, literary

property, as the spring from whence has issued the turbid principles she

glories in enunciating.

We have no desire to pursue this view of George Sand's writings to its

ultimate consequences. It is enough for our present purpose to indicate

the source and nature of the influence she exercises. Taking her life

and her works together, their action and re-action upon each other, it

may be observed that such a writer could be produced and fostered only

in such a state of society as that of Paris. With all her genius she

would perish in London. The moral atmosphere of France is necessary

alike to its culture and reception--the volcanic soil--the perpetual

excitement--the instability of the people and the government--the

eternal turmoil, caprice, and transition--a society agitated and

polluted to its core. These elements of fanaticism and confusion, to

which she has administered so skillfully, have made her what she is. In

such a country as England, calm, orderly, and conservative, her social

philosophy would lack earth for its roots and air for its blossoms. The

very institutions of France, upon which no man can count for an hour,

are essential to her existence as a writer.

But time that mellows all things has not been idle with George Sand.

After having written "Indiana," "Lelie," "Valentine," and sundry other

of her most conspicuous works, she found it necessary to defend herself

against the charge of advocating conjugal infidelity. The defense, to be

sure, was pre-eminently sophistical, and rested on a complete evasion of

the real question; but it was a concession to the feelings and decorum

of society which could not fail in some measure to operate as a

restraint in future labors. Her subsequent works were not quite so

decisive on these topics; and in some of them marriage was even treated

with a respectful recognition, and love was suffered to run its course

in purity and tranquillity, without any of those terrible struggles with

duty and conscience which were previously considered indispensable to

bring out its intensity.

And now comes an entirely new phase in the development of George Sand's

mind. Perhaps about this time the influences immediately acting upon her

may have undergone a modification that will partly help to explain the

miracle. Her daughter, the fair Solange, is grown up and about to be

married; and the household thoughts and cares, and the tenderness of a

serious and unselfish cast, which creep to a mother's heart on such

occasions, may have shed their sweetness upon this wayward soul, and

inspired it with congenial utterances. This is mere speculation, more or

less corroborated by time and circumstance; but whatever may have been

the agencies by which the charm was wrought, certain it is that George

Sand has recently produced a work which, we will not say flippantly in

the words of the song,

"Has for once a moral,"

but which is in the highest degree chaste in conception, and full of

simplicity and truthfulness in the execution. This work is in the form

of a three-act comedy, and is called "Francois le Champi." (For the

benefit of the country gentlemen, we may as well at once explain that

the word _champi_ means a foundling of the fields.)

The domestic morality, the quiet nature, the _home feeling_ of this

comedy may be described as something wonderful for George Sand; not that

her genius was not felt to be plastic enough for such a display, but

that nobody suspected she could have accomplished it with so slight an

appearance of artifice or false sentiment, or with so much geniality and

faith in its truth. But this is not the only wonder connected with

"Francois le Champi." Its reception by the Paris audience was something

yet more wonderful. We witnessed a few weeks ago at the Odeon its

hundred and fourth or fifth representation--and it was a sight not

readily forgotten. The acting, exquisite as it was through the minutest

articulation of the scene, was infinitely less striking than the

stillness and patience of the spectators. It was a strange and curious

thing to see these mercurial people pouring in from their gay _cafes_

and _restaurants_, and sitting down to the representation of this

dramatic pastoral with much the same close and motionless attention as a

studious audience might be expected to give to a scientific lecture. And

it was more curious still to contrast what was doing at that moment in

different places with a like satisfaction to other crowds of listeners;

and to consider what an odd compound that people must be who can equally

enjoy the rustic virtues of the Odeon, and the grossnesses and prurient

humors of the Varietes. Paris and the Parisians will, probably, forever

remain an enigma to the moral philosopher. One never can see one's way

through their surprising contradictions, or calculate upon what will

happen next, or what turn any given state of affairs will take. In this

sensuous, sentimental, volatile, and dismal Paris, any body who may

think it worth while to cross the water for such a spectacle, may see

reproduced together, side by side, the innocence of the golden age, and

the worst vices of the last stage of a high civilization.

At the bottom of all this, no doubt, will be found a constitutional

melancholy that goes a great way to account for the opposite excesses

into which the national character runs. A Frenchman is at heart the

saddest man in the universe; but his nature is of great compass at both

ends, being deficient only in the repose of the middle notes. And this

constitutional melancholy opposed to the habitual frivolity (it never

deserved to be called mirth) of the French is now more palpable than

ever. Commercial depression has brought it out in its darkest colors.

The people having got what they wanted, begin now to discover that they

want every thing else. The shops are empty--the Palais Royal is as

_triste_ as the suburb of a country town--and the drive in the Champs

Elysees, in spite of its display of horsemen and private carriages,

mixed up in motley cavalcade with hack cabriolets and omnibuses, is as

different from what it used to be in the old days of the monarchy, as

the castle of Dublin will be by-and-by, when the viceregal pageant is

removed to London. The sparkling butterflies that used to flirt about in

the gardens of the Tuileries, may now be seen pacing moodily along,

their eyes fixed on the ground, and their hands in their pockets,

sometimes with an old umbrella (which seems to be received by common

assent as the emblem of broken-down fortunes), and sometimes with a

brown paper parcel under their arms. The animal spirits of the Parisians

are very much perplexed under these circumstances; and hence it is that

they alternately try to drown their melancholy in draughts of fierce

excitement, or to solace it by gentle sedatives.

George Sand has done herself great honor by this charming little drama.

That she should have chosen such a turbulent moment for such an

experiment upon the public, is not the least remarkable incident

connected with it. Only a few months before we heard of her midnight

revels with the heads of the Repulican party in the midst of the fury

and bloodshed of an _emeute_; and then follows close upon the blazing

track of revolution, a picture of household virtues so sweet and

tranquil, so full of tenderness and love, that it is difficult to

believe it to be the production of the same hand that had recently flung

flaming addresses, like brands, into the streets to set the town on

fire. But we must be surprised at nothing that happens in France, where

truth is so much stranger than fiction, as to extinguish the last

fragment of an excuse for credulity and wonder.

AMUSEMENTS OF THE COURT OF LOUIS XV.

At one time the whole court was thrown into great commotion by a sudden

fancy which the king took for worsted work. A courier was instantly

dispatched to Paris for wool, needles, and canvas. He only took two

hours and a half to go and come back, and the same day all the courtiers

in Versailles were seen, with the Duke of Gesvres at their head,

embroidering like their sovereign. At a later period, both the new and

the old nobility joined in the common pursuit of pleasure before their

fall. Bad taste and frivolousness marked their amusements. Titled

ladies, who eagerly sought the favor of being allowed a seat in the

presence of Madame de Pompadour, visited in secret the popular ball of

the Porcherons, or amused themselves by breaking plates and glasses in

obscure cabarets, assuming the free and reckless tone of men. Their

husbands in the meanwhile embroidered at home, or paced the stately

galleries of Louis XIV, at Versailles, a little painted cardboard figure

in one hand, while with the other they drew the string which put it in

motion. This preposterous amusement even spread throughout the whole

ration, and grave magistrates were to be met in the streets playing,

like the rest, with their _pantins_, as these figures were called. This

childish folly was satirized in the following epigram:

"D'un peuple frivole et volage

Pantin fut la divinite.

Faut-il etre s'il cherissait l'image

Dont il est la realite?"

The general degeneracy of the times was acknowledged even by those who

shared in it. The old nobles ascribed it to that fatal evil, the want of

female chastity. Never, indeed, had this social stain been so universal

and so great.--_Women in France during the Eighteenth Century._

THE PLEASURES OF OLD AGE.--One forenoon I did prevail with my mother to

let them carry her to a considerable distance from the house, to a

sheltered, sunny spot, whereunto we did often resort formerly to hear

the wood-pigeons which frequented the fir trees hereabout. We seated

ourselves, and did pass an hour or two very pleasantly. She remarked,

how merciful it was ordered that these pleasures should remain to the

last days of life; that when the infirmities of age make the company of

others burdensome to us and ourselves a burden to them, the quiet

contemplation of the works of God affords a simple pleasure which

needeth not aught else than a contented mind to enjoy: the singing of

birds, even a single flower, or a pretty spot like this, with its bank

of primroses, and the brook running in there below, and this warm

sunshine, how pleasant they are. They take back our thoughts to our

youth, which ago doth love to look back upon.--_Diary of Lady

Willoughby._

[From Bentley's Miscellany.]

THE CIRCASSIAN PRIEST-WARRIOR AND HIS WHITE HORSE.

A TRUE TALE OF THE DAGHESTAN.

The Russian camp lay at the foot

Of a bold and lofty hill,

Where many a noble tree had root,

And babbled many a rill;

And the rill's laughter and the shade--

The melody and shade combin'd--

Men of most gentle feelings made,

But of unbending mind.

On that hill's side, concealed by trees,

Slumber'd Circassia's might,

Awaiting till the war-horse neighs

His welcome to the light.

The first gray light broke forth at length,

And with it rose the Invader's strength.

Now, if the Vulture, reasoning bird,

Foretelling blood and scenting strife,

Had not among the hill-clouds stirr'd,

One would have said that human life,

Save that of shepherds tending flocks,

Breathed not among yon silent rocks.

What Spectre, gliding tow'rd the rays

Of rising sun, meets Russian gaze,

And is it fright, amaze, or awe,

Distends each eye and hangs each jaw?

A Horse, as snow on mountain height,

His master clothed all, too, in white,

Moved slowly up the mountain's side,

Arching his neck in conscious pride.

And though the cannon pointed stood,

Charged with its slumb'ring lava flood,

The rider gave no spur nor stroke,

Nor did he touch the rein which lay

Upon the horse's neck--who yoke

Of spur nor rein did e'er obey.

His master's voice he knew--the horse,

And by it checked or strain'd his course.

But even no voice was needed now,

For when he reach'd the mountain's brow,

He halted while his master spread

His arms full wide, threw back his head,

And pour'd to Allah forth a pray'r--

Or seem'd to pray--for Russian ear

Even in that pure atmosphere,

The name of Allah 'lone could hear.

The sound, whose purport is to name

God's name--it is an awful sound,

No matter from what lips it came,

Or in what form 'tis found--

Jehovah! Allah! God alike,

Most Christian heart with terror strike.

For ignorant as may be man,

Or with perverted learning stored,

There is, within the soul's wide span,

A deep unutterable word.

A music, and a hymn,

Which any voice of love that breaks

From pious spirit gently wakes,

Like slumb'ring Cherubim.

And "Allah, Allah, Allah!" rose

More thrilling still for Russian foes

By Russian eyes unseen!

Behind a thick wood's screen,

Circassia's dreadful horsemen were

Bowed to the earth, and drinking there

Enthusiasm grand from pray'r,

Ready to spring as soldier fir'd,

When soldier is a Priest inspir'd.

Ay, o'er that host the sacred name

Of Allah rolled, a scorching flame,

That thrilled into the heart's deep core,

And swelled it like a heaving ocean

Visited by Tempest's roar.

Invader! such sublime emotion

Bodes thee no good--so do not mock

The sacred sound which fills each rock.

"Yon Priest must fall, and by his blood

Damp the affrighted army's zeal,

Who dream his body's proof and good

'Gainst flying ball or flashing steel."

A gun was pointed--match applied--

The ball leaped forth; the smoke spread wide.

And cleared away as the echo died,

And "Allah! Allah! Allah!" rose

From lips that never quiver'd:

Nor changed the White Priest's grand repose,

The White Horse never shiver'd.

The cannoneer, now trembling, blushed,

For he rarely missed his aim,

While his commander forward rushed,

With words of bitter blame.

"There is no mark to guide the eye,"

Faltered the chidden man;

"Yon thing of white is as the sky--

No difference can I scan!"

"Let charge the gun with _mitraille_ show'r,

And Allah will be heard no more."

And the gun was charged, and fixed, and fired;

Full fifty bullets flew.

The smoke hung long, the men admired

How the cannon burst not through.

And the startled echoes thundered,

And more again all wondered--

As died away the echoes' roar--

The name of Allah rose once more.

And "Allah! Allah! Allah!" rose,

While horse and rider look'd repose,

As statues on the mountain raised,

Round whom the _mitraille_ idly blazed,

And rent and tore the earth around;

But nothing shook except the ground,

Still the untroubled lip ne'er quivered,

Still that white altar-horse ne'er shivered.

"Wait his return," the captain cried;

"The mountain's side a mark supplies,

And range in line some twenty guns:

Fire one by one, as back he runs;

With _mitraille_ loaded be each gun--

For him who kills a grade is won!"

But back the White Horse ran not--no!

His pace was gentle, grand, and slow;

His rider on the holy skies,

In meditation fix'd his eyes.

The enemy, with murderous plan,

Knew not which to most admire,

The grand White Steed, the grander man,

When, lo! the signal--"Fire!"

"Unscath'd! unscath'd! now mark the race!"

The laughing soldiers cried:

The White Horse quickens not his pace,

The Priest spurs not his side.

"Ha! mark his figure on the rock!"

A second gun is ringing,

The rock itself is springing,

As from a mine's low shock,

Its splinters flying in the air,

And round the Priest and steed is there

Of balls and stones an atmosphere.

What not one stain upon his side!

The whited robe remains undyed--

No bloody rain upon the path--

Surprise subdues the soldier's wrath.

"Give him a chance for life, one chance;

(Now, hear the chance the captain gave)

Let every gun be fired at once--

At random, too--and he, the brave,

If he escape, will have to tell

A prodigy--a miracle--

Or meet the bloodiest grave

That ever closed o'er human corse,

O'er rider brave, or gallant horse."

And away, and away, like thunder weather,

Full twenty cannon blaze together;

Forth the volcano vomits wide.

The men who fired them spring aside,

As back the cannons wheeled.

Then came a solemn pause;

One would have thought the mountain reeled,

As a crater opes its jaws.

But the smoke and sulphur clearing,

Down the mountain's side, unfearing,

Phantom-like glided horse and man,

As though they had no danger ran.

"Hurrah! hurrah!" the soldiers cheer,

And clap their hands in wild delight.

Circassia's Priest, who scorn'd to fear,

Bears the applause of Muscovite.

But, soldiers, load your guns once more;

Load them if ye have time,

For ears did hear your cannons roar,

To whom it is as sweet bells chime,

Inviting to a battle feast.

Dark eyes did see the _mitraille_ driven,

With murderous intent,

'Gainst the High Priest, to whom was given

Protection by offended Heaven,

From you on murder bent,

Haste, sacrilegious Russian, haste,

For behold, their forest-screen they form,

With the ominous sounds of a gathering storm.

Promptly--swiftly--fatally burst,

That storm by Patriot-piety nursed;

Down it swept the mountain's side;

Fast o'er the plain it pour'd,

An avalanche--a deluge wide,

O'er the invader roared.

A White Horse, like a foaming wave,

Dashed forward 'mong the foremost brave,

And swift as is the silver light,

He arrowy clear'd his way,

And cut the mass as clouds a ray.

Or meteor piercing night.

Aimed at him now was many a lance,

No spear could stop his fiery prance,

Oft would he seize it with his mouth,

With snort and fierce tempestuous froth,

While swift the rider would cut down

The lanceman rash, and then dash on

Among advancing hosts, or flying,

Marking his path with foemen dying.

Now, the morning after, when

The gray light kiss'd the mountain,

And down it, like a fountain,

Freshly, clearly ran--oh, then

The Priest and White Horse rose,

So white they scarce threw shade,

But now no sacrilegious blows

At man nor horse are made.

The eyes profane that yester glared,

Hung'ring for that sacred life,

Were quench'd in yester's fatal strife,

And void of meaning stared.

No lip could mock--no Russian ear

Thanksgiving unto Allah hear,

"To Allah, the deliverer!"

The mountain look'd unchang'd, the plain is red;

Peaceful be the fallen invaders' bed.

_Paris._ J.F.C.

ON ATHEISM.--"I had rather," says Sir Francis Bacon, "believe all the

fables in the Legend, the Talmud, and the Koran, than that this

universal frame is without a mind. God never wrought miracles to

convince Atheists, because His ordinary works are sufficient to convince

them. It is true, that a little philosophy inclineth men's minds to

Atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth them back to religion; for

while the mind of man looketh upon second causes scattered, it may

sometimes rest on them, and go no further; but when it beholdeth the

chain of them confederate and linked together, it must needs fly to

Providence and Deity."

[From the London Examiner.]

UNSECTARIAN EDUCATION IN ENGLAND.

Upon none of the various classes of official men who have been employed

for the last twenty years in introducing or extending social and

administrative reforms, has a more delicate, invidious, and thankless

task devolved, than upon those who have had the charge of the

preliminary arrangements for a system of national education.

A growing sense of the importance of this great subject has been slowly

manifesting itself since the close of last century. The Edgeworths

diffused practical views of individual education. Lancaster demonstrated

the possibility, by judicious arrangement, of imparting instruction to

great numbers of children at once, and, by thus reducing the cost of

education, of rendering it acceptable to the poorest. Before Lancaster

entered the field some benevolent persons, among whom Nonconformists

were the most numerous and active, had set on foot Sunday schools for

the benefit of those whose week-day toil left them no leisure for mental

cultivation. The High Church and Tory parties at first very bitterly

opposed these Sunday and Lancaster schools; but finding the tide too

strong against them, they set up Dr. Bell, as a Churchman, against

Lancaster the Dissenter, and organized the National School Society in

opposition to the British and Foreign School Society. Controversy, as

usual, not only increased the numbers of those who took an interest in

the discussion, but rectified and improved public opinion on the matters

at issue. The _Edinburgh Review_ took the lead, and for a considerable

time kept it, as the champion of unsectarian education; and the wit and

wisdom of Sydney Smith did invaluable service in this field.

The result was, that, very gradually, by means of individuals and

private associations, opportunities of education were extended to

classes who had not previously enjoyed them; improved methods of tuition

were introduced; and the good work went on in an imperfect, scrambling,

amorphous way till after the passing of the reform bill, and the

establishment of the Whigs in power. From this time we have to date the

first regular efforts--poor enough at first, lamentably inadequate

still, but steadily and progressively increasing--to countenance and

extend general education by the government and legislature.

The beginnings were very feeble, as we have said. From 1833 to 1838,

L20,000 was annually voted for the promotion of educational purposes,

and this paltry sum was administered by the Lords of the Treasury. Since

1839 the annual grant has been administered by the Committee of Council

on Education, and its amount has been progressively augmented. From 1839

to 1842 inclusive it was L30,000 per annum; in 1843 and 1844 it was

L40,000; L75,000 in 1845; L100,000 in 1846 and in 1847; and in 1848 it

was raised to L125,000. The distribution of this grant being intrusted

to a committee of council, the president became to a certain extent

invested with the character of a Minister of Education. A machinery of

government inspectors of schools was organized, and a permanent

educational secretary attached to the committee. Not to mention other

valuable results, we may add that the establishment of workhouse and

factory schools, and the institution of the normal school for training

teachers at Kneller Hall, are among the most prominent benefits for

which we are indebted to this growing recognition of a care for the

extension of general education as one of the duties of government.

When we thus look back on the twenty years since 1830, it can not be

denied that a great advance has been made. We have now the rudiments of

an educational department of government. The grants annually voted by

parliament for educational purposes are still, it must be confessed,

unworthily small, when contrasted with the sums freely voted for less

essential objects; and the operations of the committee on education have

been thwarted, impeded, and obstructed by all kinds of narrow-minded and

vexatious opposition. Still we can console ourselves by the reflection

that we have got an educational department of government; that the

public mind is becoming familiarized with its existence, and convinced

of its utility; and that its organization, slowly indeed, but surely, is

being extended and perfected.

This was substantially admitted by Mr. Fox in the able speech

introducing his supplementary educational plan to the House of Commons;

and with the strongest sense of the merits and claims of the government

measure, we find ourselves able very heartily to approve of the proposal

of Mr. Fox. It would remedy the defects of the existing system with the

least possible jar to existing prejudices. With nothing heretofore set

on foot for the promotion of educational purposes would it in any way

meddle--being addressed simply to the remedy of notorious defects, and

for that purpose using and strengthening the machinery at present

employed by government. It is on every account desirable that a fair and

earnest consideration should be given to the second reading of this

bill. It has been mixed up with other educational projects lately set on

foot, and not a very correct impression prevails respecting it.

For here we must be allowed to remark, in passing, that of all the

caviling and vexatious obstructions which the committee of council have

had to encounter, the most ungracious and indefensible appear to have

been those offered by advocates of unsectarian education less reasonable

and considerate than Mr. Fox. We are not going to challenge any

particular respect for the feelings of men in office. It is the

well-understood fate of those who undertake reforms to be criticised

sharply and unreflectingly; such unsparing treatment helps to harden

them for the discharge of unpalatable duties; and even the most captious

objections may be suggestive of improved arrangements. But making every

allowance on this score, it remains incontrovertible that men

entertaining sound abstract views respecting unsectarian education, and

the importance of intrusting to the local public a large share in the

control of educational institutions, like the members of the Lancashire

School Association and others, have not only refused to make due

allowance for the obstructions opposed to the committee of council on

education by the prepossessions of the general public, but, by assuming

an attitude of jealous opposition to it, have materially increased the

difficulties with which it has had to labor. These gentlemen think no

reform worth having unless it accord precisely with their preconceived

notions; and are not in the least contented with getting what they wish,

unless they can also have it in the exact way they wish it. Other and

even more factious malcontents have been found among a class of very

worthy but not very wise persons, who, before government took any charge

of education, had exerted themselves to establish Sunday and other

schools; and have now allowed the paltry jealousy lest under a new and

improved system of general education their own local and congregational

importance may be diminished, to drive them into a virulent opposition

to any scheme of national education under the auspices or by the

instrumentality of government. But all this parenthetically. Our

immediate object is to comment upon an opposition experienced in

carrying out the scheme of operations which the state of public opinion

has compelled government to adopt, coming from the very parties who were

most instrumental in forcing that scheme upon it.

The committee of council, finding it impossible, in the face of

threatened resistance from various religious bodies, to institute

schools by the unaided power of the secular authorities, yielded so far

as to enter into arrangements with the existing societies of promoters

of schools, with a view to carry out the object through their

instrumentality. The correspondence commenced in 1845 under the

administration of Sir Robert Peel, and the arrangements were concluded

under the ministry of Lord John Russell in 1846. It was agreed that

money should be advanced by government to assist in founding and

supporting schools in connection with various religious communions, on

the conditions that the schools should be open to the supervision of

government inspectors (who were, however, to be restrained from all

interference "with the religious instruction, or discipline, or

management of the schools"), and that certain "management clauses,"

drawn up in harmony with the religious views of the respective

communions, should be adhered to. On these terms arrangements were

concluded with the National Society, representing the promoters of

Church of England schools; with the British and Foreign School Society;

with the Wesleyan body; and with the Free Church of Scotland. A

negotiation with the Poor-school Committee of the Roman Catholic Church

is still pending.

With the exception of the National Society all the bodies who entered

into these arrangements with the Committee of Council have co-operated

with it in a frank and fair spirit, and to good purpose. A majority of

the National Society, on the other hand, have made vehement efforts to

recede from the very arrangements which they themselves had proposed;

and have at length concluded a tedious and wrangling attempt to cajole

or bully the committee on education to continue their grants, and yet

emancipate them from the conditions on which they were made, by passing,

on the 11th of December last, a resolution which virtually suspends all

co-operation between the society and government. The state of the

controversy may be briefly explained.

The "management clauses" relating to Church of England schools are few

in number. They relate, first, to the constitution of the managing

committee in populous and wealthy districts of towns; second, to the

constitution of the committee in towns and villages having not less than

a population of five hundred, and a few wealthy and well-educated

inhabitants; third, to its constitution in very small parishes, where

the residents are all illiterate, or indifferent to education; and,

fourth, to its constitution in rural parishes having a population under

five hundred, and where, from poverty and ignorance, the number of

subscribers is limited to very few persons. There are certain provisions

common to all these clauses. The master, mistress, assistant teachers,

managers, and electors, must all be _bona fide_ members of the church;

the clergyman is _ex-officio_ chairman of the committee, with power to

place his curate or curates upon it, and with a casting vote; the

superintendence of the religious and moral instruction is vested

exclusively in the clergyman, with an appeal to the bishop, whose

decision is final; the bishop has a veto on the use of any book, in

school hours, which he deems contrary to the doctrines of the church; in

matters not relating to religious and moral instruction, an appeal lies

to the president of the council, who refers it to one of the inspectors

of schools nominated by himself, to another commissioner nominated by

the bishop of the diocese, and to a third named by the other two

commissioners. It must be kept in mind as bearing on the composition of

such commissions, that the concurrence of the archbishop of the province

is originally requisite in appointing inspectors of church schools, and

that the third commissioner must be a magistrate and member of the

church. We now come to the points of difference in these "management

clauses." They relate exclusively to the constitution of the local

school committees. In the first class of schools, the committee is

elected by annual subscribers; in the second, it is nominated by the

promoters, and vacancies are supplied by election; in the third it is

nominated, as the promotions and vacancies are filled up, by the

remaining members, till the bishop may direct the election to be thrown

open to subscribers; in the fourth no committee is provided, but the

bishop may order one to be nominated by the clergyman from among the

subscribers.

The management clauses, thus drawn, were accepted by the National

Society. The provisions for appeal, in matters of moral and religious

instruction, had been proposed by themselves, and were in a manner

forced by them on the committee of council. Let us now look at the

claims which the society has since advanced, and on account of the

refusal of which it has suspended, if not finally broken off, its

alliance with the committee.

The National Society required: 1st, that a free choice among the several

clauses be left to the promoters of church schools; 2d, that another

court of appeal be provided, in matters not relating to religious and

moral instruction; and 3d, that all lay members of school committees

shall qualify to serve, by subscribing a declaration not merely to the

effect that they are members of the church, but that they have for three

years past been communicants. And because demur is made to these

demands, the committee of the society have addressed a letter to the

committee of council, in which they state that they "deeply regret the

resolution finally adopted by the committee of council to exclude from

all share in the parliamentary grant for education, those church schools

the promoters of which are unwilling to constitute their trust deeds on

the model prescribed by their lordships."

It is a minor matter, yet, in connection with considerations to be

hereafter alluded to, not unworthy of notice, that this statement is

simply untrue. The committee of council have only declined to

contribute, in the cases referred to, to the building of schools; they

have not absolutely declined to contribute to their support when built.

They have refused to give public money to build schools without a

guarantee for their proper management; but they have not refused to give

public money to support even such schools as withhold the guarantee, so

long as they _are_ properly conducted.

The object of the alterations in the management clauses demanded by the

National Society is sufficiently obvious. It is asked that a free choice

among the several clauses be left to the promoters of church schools.

This is a Jesuitical plan for getting rid of the co-operation and

control of lay committee-men. The fourth clause would uniformly be

chosen, under which no committee is appointed, but the bishop may

empower the clergyman to nominate one. It is asked that another court of

appeal be provided in matters relating to the appointment, selection,

and dismissal of teachers and their assistants. By this means the

teachers would be placed, in all matters, secular as well as religious,

under the despotic control of the clergy instead of being amenable, in

purely secular matters, to a committee principally composed of laymen,

with an appeal to lay judges. The third demand also goes to limit the

range of lay interference with, and control of church schools. The sole

aim of the demands of the National Society, however variously expressed,

is to increase the clerical power. Their desire and determination is to

invest the clergy with absolute despotic power over all Church of

England Schools.

In short, the quarrel fastened by the National Society on the committee

on education is but another move of that clerical faction which is

resolute to ignore the existence of laymen as part of the church, except

in the capacity of mere passing thralls and bondsmen of the clergy. It

is a scheme to further their peculiar views. It is another branch of the

agitation which preceded and has followed the appeal to the judicial

committee of the privy council in the Gorham case. It is a trick to

render the church policy and theories of Philpotts omnipotent. The

equivocation to evade the arrangement investing a degree of control over

church schools in lay contributors to their foundation and support, by

insisting upon liberty to choose an inapplicable "management clause," is

transparent. So is the factious complaint against the court of appeal

provided in secular matters, and the allegation that Nonconformists have

no such appeal, when the complainants know that this special arrangement

was conceded at their own request. The untrue averment that the

committee of council have refused to contribute to the support of

schools not adopting the management clauses is in proper keeping with

these equivocations. Let us add that the intolerant, almost blasphemous

denunciations of the council, and of all who act with it, which some

advancers of these falsehoods and equivocations have uttered from the

platform, are no more than might have been expected from men so lost to

the sense of honesty and shame.

The position of the committee of council on education is, simply and

fairly, this: They have yielded to the religious sentiment of an

overwhelming majority in the nation, and have consented to the

experiment of conducting the secular education of the people by the

instrumentality of the various ecclesiastical associations into which

the people are divided. But with reference to the church, as to all

other communions, they insist upon the laity having a fair voice in the

administration of those schools which are in part supplied by the public

money, and which have in view secular as well as religious instruction.

The clergy of only two communions seek to thwart them in this object,

and to arrogate all power over the schools to themselves. The conduct of

the ultra-High Church faction in the Anglican establishment we have

attempted to make clear. The conduct of the Roman Catholic clergy has

been more temperate, but hardly less insincere or invidious. Their

poor-school committee declare that their prelates would be unwilling "to

accept, were it tendered to them, an appellate jurisdiction over schools

in matters purely secular;" but at the same time they claim for their

"ecclesiastical authorities" the power of deciding what questions do or

do not affect "religion and morals." The committee of the council, on

the one hand, are exerting themselves to give effect to the desire of a

great majority of the English public, that religious and moral shall be

combined with intellectual education; and, on the other, to guard

against their compliance with this desire being perverted into an

insidious instrument for enabling arrogant priesthoods to set their feet

on the necks of the laity.

We challenge for public men thus honorably and usefully discharging

important duties a more frank and cordial support than it has yet been

their good fortune to obtain. Several ornaments of the church,

conspicuous for their learning and moderation--such men as the Bishop of

Manchester, Archdeacon Hare, and the Rev. Henry Parr Hamilton--have

already borne direct and earnest testimony to the temper and justice, as

well as straightforward, honesty of purpose, displayed by the committee

of council. It is to be hoped that the laity of the church will now

extend to them the requisite support; and that the Nonconformists and

educational enthusiasts, who, by their waywardness, have been playing

the game of the obscurantist priests, may see the wisdom of altering

this very doubtful policy.