CHAPTER III.

Mildred was at this moment checked in her current of observation, and reduced to play something more than the part of spectator. Her ear caught a voice, heard only once before, but not forgotten; she turned, and saw the stranger who had surprised her when, in her girlish days, she was sitting in the minster tower. He immediately introduced himself by asking her to dance.

"I do not dance," she said, but in a manner which did not seem to refuse conversation. The stranger appeared very well satisfied with the compromise; and some pleasant allusion to the different nature of the scene in which they last met, put them at once upon an easy footing.

"You say you _do_ not dance--that is, of course, you _will_ not. I shall not believe," he continued, "even if you had just stepped from your high tower of wisdom, but that you can do any thing you please to do. Pardon so blunt a speech."

"Oh, I _can_, I think," she replied. "My uncle, I believe, would have taught me the broad-sword exercise, if any one had suggested its utility to him."

And saying this, she turned to her uncle, to give him an opportunity, if he pleased, of joining the conversation. It was an opportunity which Mr Bloomfield, who had heard a foreign language chattered in his ear all the evening, would have gladly taken; but the patience of that gentleman had been for some time nearly exhausted; he had taken his sister under his arm, and was just going to propose to Mildred to leave the room.

The stranger escorted them through the crowd, and saw the ladies into their carriage.

"Can we set you down any where?" said Mr Bloomfield, who, though impatient to be gone, was disposed to be very cordial towards his fellow-countryman. "We are at the _Hotel de l'Europe_."

"And I opposite at the _Hotel de Flandres_--I will willingly accept your offer;" and he took the vacant seat in their carriage.

"How do you like Brussels?" was on the lips of both gentlemen at the same time.

"Nay," said the younger, "I have been here, I think, the longest; the question is mine by right of priority of residence."

Mr Bloomfield was nothing loath to communicate his impression of all that he had seen, and especially to dilate upon a grievance which, it seemed, had sorely afflicted him.

"As to the town, old and new, and especially the Grande Place, with its Hotel de Ville, I have been highly interested by it; but, my dear sir, the torture of walking over its horrid pavement! Only conceive a quiet old bachelor, slightly addicted to the gout, accustomed to take his walk over his well-rolled paths, or on his own lawn, (if not too damp,) suddenly put down amongst these cruel stones, rough and sharp, and pitched together in mere confusion, to pick his way how he can, with the chance of being smashed by some cart or carriage, for one is turned out on the same road with the horses. I am stoned to death, with this only difference, that I fall upon the stones instead of the stones falling upon me. And when there is a pavement--_a trottoir_, as they call it--it is often so narrow and slanting, and always so slippery, and every now and then broken by some step put there purposely, it would seem, to overthrow you, that it is better to bear the penance at once of the sharp footing in the centre of the street. _Trottoirs_, indeed! I should like to see any one trot upon them without breaking his neck! A spider or a black beetle, or any other creature that crawls upon a multitude of legs, and has not far to fall if he stumbles, is the only animal that is safe upon them. I go moaning all the day about these jogged pointed stones, that pitch me from one to the other with all the malice of little devils; and, would you believe it? my niece there only smiles, and tells me to get thick shoes! They cannot hurt her; she walks somehow over the tops of them as if they were so many balls of Indian rubber, and has no compassion for her gouty uncle."

"Oh, my dear uncle"----

"No, none at all; indeed you are not overburdened with that sentiment at any time for your fellow-travellers. You bear all the afflictions of the road--your own and other people's--very calmly."

"Don't mind him, my dear," said Miss Bloomfield, "he has been exclaiming again and again what an excellent traveller you make; nothing puts you out."

"That is just what I say--nothing does put her out. In that she is a perfect Mephistophiles. You know the scene of confusion on board a steamer when it arrives at Antwerp, and is moored in under the quay on a hot day, with its full complement of passengers. There you are baked by the sun and your own furnaces; stunned by the jabber around you, and the abominable roar over your head made by the escape of the steam; the deck strewed with baggage, which is then and there to be publicly examined--turned over by the revenue officers, who leave you to pack up your things in their original compass, if you can. Well, in all this scene of confusion, there sat my niece with her parasol over her little head, looking quite composedly at the great cathedral spires, as if we were not all of us in a sort of infernal region there."

"No, uncle, I looked every now and then at our baggage, too, and watched that interesting process you have described of its examination. And when the worthy officer was going to crush aunt's bonnet by putting your dressing-case on the top of it, I rose, and arrested him. I had my hand upon his arm. He thought I was going to take him prisoner of war, for he was about to put his hand to his sword; but a second look at his enemy reassured him."

"Oh, you did squeak when the bonnets were touched," cried the uncle, "I am glad of that: it shows that you have some human, at least some feminine, feeling in your composition."

"But _àpropos_ of the pavement," said the young stranger, who could not join the uncle in this banter on his niece, and was therefore glad to get back to some common ground. "I took up, in a reading-room, the other day, a little pamphlet on phrenology, by _M. Victor Idjiez_, _Fondateur du Musée Phrenologique_ at Brussels. It might as well have been entitled, on animal magnetism, for he is one of those who set the whole man in motion--mind and body both--by electricity. Amongst other things, he has discovered that that singular strength which madmen often display in their fits, is merely a galvanic power which they draw (owing, I suppose, to the peculiar state of their nerves,) from the common reservoir the earth, and which, consequently, forsakes them when they are properly isolated. In confirmation of this theory, he gives a singular _fact_ from a Brussels journal, showing that _asphalte pavement_ will isolate the individual. A madman had contrived to make his escape from confinement, having first thrown all the furniture of his room out of the window, and knocked down and trampled upon his keeper. Off he ran, and no one would venture to stop him. A corporal and four soldiers were brought up to the attack: he made nothing of them; after having beaten the four musketeers, he took the corporal by the leg and again ran off, dragging him after upon the ground. A crowd of work-people emerging from a factory met him in full career with the corporal behind him, and undertook his capture. All who approached him were immediately thrown down--scattered over the plain. But his triumph was suddenly checked; he lighted upon a piece of asphalte pavement. The moment he put his foot upon it, his strength deserted him, and he was seized and taken prisoner. The instant, however, he stepped off the pavement, his strength revived, and he threw his assailants from him with the same ease as before. And thus it continued: whenever he got off the pavement, his strength was restored to him; the moment he touched it, he was again captured with facility. The asphalte had completely isolated him."

"Ha! ha!" cried Mr Bloomfield; "the fellow, after all, was not quite so mad as not to know what he was about. A Brussels pavement, asphalte or not, is no place for a wrestling match. Isolated, indeed! Oh, doubtless, it would isolate you most completely--at least the soles of your feet--from all communication with the earth. But does Mr--what do you call him?--proceed to theorise upon such _facts_ as these?"

"You shall have another of them. Speaking of animal magnetism or electricity, he says--'There are certain patients the iron nails of whose shoes will fly out if they are laid in a direction due north.'"[41]

[41] "Il existe des malades dont les clous jai'lissent des chaussures quand ils sont étendus dans la direction du nord."

"But you are quoting from Baron Munchausen."

"Not precisely."

Miss Bloomfield, who had been watching her opportunity, here brought in her contribution. "Pray, sir, do you believe the story they tell of the architect of the Hotel de Ville--that he destroyed himself on finding, after he had built it, that the tower was not in the centre?"

"That the architect should not discover that till the building was finished, is indeed _too good a story to be true_."

"But, then, why make the man kill himself? Something must have happened; something must be true."

"Why, madam, there was, no doubt, a committee of taste in those days as in ours. They destroyed the plan of the architect by cutting short one of his wings, or prolonging the other; and he, out of vexation, destroyed himself. This is the only explanation that occurs to me. A committee of taste is always, in one sense at least, the death of the artist."

"Yes, yes," said Mildred; "the artist can be no longer said to exist, if he is not allowed, in his own sphere, to be supreme."

This brought them to the door of the hotel. They separated.

The next morning, on returning from their walk, the ladies found a card upon their table which simply bore the name of "Alfred Winston." The gentleman who called with it, the waiter said, had left word that he regretted he was about to quit Brussels, that evening, for Paris.

Mildred read the name several times--Alfred Winston. And this was all she knew of him--the name upon this little card!

There were amongst the trio several discussions as to who or what Mr Alfred Winston might be. Miss Bloomfield pronounced him to be an artist, from his caustic observations on committees of taste, and their meddling propensities. Mr Bloomfield, on the contrary, surmised he was a literary man; for who but such a one would think of occupying himself in a reading-room with a pamphlet on phrenology, instead of the newspapers? And all ended in "wondering if they should fall upon him again?"

THE LAW AND ITS PUNISHMENTS.

It is no uncommon boast in the mouth of Englishmen, that the system of jurisprudence under which they have the happiness to live, is the most perfect the world has ever seen. Having its foundation in those cabalistic words, "Nullus liber homo," &c., engraved with an iron pen upon the tablets of the constitution by the barons of King John, the criminal law, in their estimation, has been steadily improved by the wisdom of successive ages, until, in the present day, it has reached a degree of excellence which it were rashness to suppose can by any human sagacity be surpassed. Under its protecting influence, society reposes in security; under its just, but merciful administration, the accused finds every facility for establishing his innocence, and is allowed the benefit of every doubt that ingenuity can suggest to rebut the probability of guilt; before its sacred tribunals, the weak and the powerful, the poor and the rich, stand in complete equality; under its impartial sentence, all who merit punishment are alike condemned, without respect of any antecedents of rank, wealth, or station. In such a system, no change can take place without injury, for it is (not to speak irreverently) a system of perfection.

This is the dream of many--for we must characterise it rather as a dream than a deliberate conviction. Reason, we fear, has but little to do with the opinions of those who hold that English jurisprudence has no need of reform.

The praises which are so lavishly bestowed upon our criminal law may be, to a great extent, just; but it is to be doubted whether they are altogether judicious. It is true, that in no other system of jurisprudence throughout the civilised world, or among the nations of antiquity, has there existed, or is there so tender a regard for the rights of the accused. In Germany, the wretch who falls under suspicion of the law is subjected to a tedious and inquisitorial examination, with a view to elicit from his own lips the proof, and even the confession of guilt. This mental torture, not to speak of the imprisonment of the body, may be protracted for years, and even for life. In France, the facts connected with an offence are published by authority, and circulated throughout the country, to be greedily devoured by innumerable lovers of unwholesome excitement; and not the simple facts alone, but a thousand incidental circumstances connected with the transaction, together with the birth, parentage, and education, and all the previous life of the supposed offender, making in the whole a romance of considerable interest, and possessing an attraction beyond the ordinary tales which fill the _feuilleton_ of a newspaper. In England, the position of the accused is widely different. We avoid the errors and the tyranny of our neighbours; but have we not fallen into the opposite extreme? Our magistrates scrupulously caution prisoners not to say any thing that may criminate themselves. Every thing that authority can effect by means of advice, which, under the circumstances, is equivalent to command, is carefully brought forward to prevent a confession. And if, in spite of checks, warnings, and commands, the accused, overcome by the pangs of conscience, and urged by an irresistible impulse to disburden his soul of guilt, should perchance confess, the testimony is sometimes rejected upon some technical point of law, which would seem to have been established for the express purpose of defeating the ends of justice. Indeed, the technicalities which surround our legal tribunals have been, until very lately, and are still, in too many instances, most strangely favourable to the escape of criminals. The idlest quibbles, most offensive to common sense, and utterly disgraceful in a court of criminal investigation, have at various times been allowed as valid pleas in defence of the most palpable crimes. Many a thief has escaped, on the ground of some slight and immaterial misdescription of the stolen article, such as a horse instead of a mare, a cow instead of an ox, a sheep for a ewe, and so on. True, these absurdities exist no longer; but others still remain, less ridiculous perhaps, but not less obstructive of the course of justice, and quite as pernicious in their example. Great and beneficial changes have been effected in the criminal code, and too much praise cannot be bestowed upon Sir Robert Peel for his exertions in this behalf. To her Majesty's commissioners, also, some thanks are due for the labour they have expended with a view to the consolidation and subsequent codification of the various statutes. Their labours, however, have not hitherto been very largely productive. The excellent object of simplifying our criminal laws still remains to be accomplished, and so long as it does so, so long will it be obnoxious to the censures which are not unsparingly heaped upon it.

But if our jurisprudence be in one respect too favourable to the criminal, in another, as it appears to us, the balance is more than restored to its equilibrium. If, in the process of investigation, justice leans too much to the side of mercy, the inquiry once over, she quickly repents of her excessive leniency, and is careful to justify her ways by a rigorous severity. The accused, if he is not lucky enough to avail himself of the thousand avenues of escape that are open during the progress of his trial, must abandon all hope of further consideration, and look to undergo a punishment, of which the full extent cannot be estimated by any human sagacity. Once condemned, he ceases to be an object of care or solicitude, except so far as these are necessary to preserve his life and restrain his liberty. Through crime he has forfeited all claim upon the fostering care of the state. He is an alien and an outcast, and has no pretence for expecting any thing but misery.

Surely there is something vindictive in all this--something not quite consistent with the calm and unimpassioned administration of justice. The first impressions of any man of ordinary humanity must be very much against a system which fosters and encourages such a state of things. We believe that those first impressions would be confirmed by inquiry; and it is our purpose in the present article briefly to state the reasons for our belief.

The treatment of criminals under sentence of imprisonment must now be well known to the public. Repeated discussion and innumerable writings have rendered it familiar to every body. A man is condemned to undergo, let us say, three years' incarceration in a jail. A portion of the time is to be spent in hard labour. He commences his imprisonment with no other earthly object than to get through it with the least possible amount of suffering. Employment, which might, under better circumstances, be a pleasant resource, is distasteful to him because it is compulsory, and because it is productive of no benefit to himself. The hours that are unemployed are passed in company with others as bad as, or worse than, himself. They amuse themselves by recounting the history of their lives, their hairbreadth escapes, their successful villanies. Each profits by the experience of the whole number, and stores it in his memory for future guidance. Every good impulse is checked, and every better feeling stifled in the birth. There is no room in a jail for the growth of virtue; the atmosphere is not congenial to its development. The prisoner, however well disposed, cannot choose but listen to the debasing talk of those with whom he is compelled to associate. Should he resist the wicked influence for a while, he can hardly do so long. The poison will work. By little and little it insinuates itself into the mind, and vitiates all the springs of good. In the end, he yields to the irresistible force of continued bad example, and becomes as bad as the worst.

But let us believe, for an instant, that one prisoner has resisted the ill effects of wicked association--let us suppose him to have escaped the contamination of a jail, to have received no moral hurt from bad example, to be untainted by the corrupting atmosphere of congregated vice--in short, to return into the world at the end of his imprisonment a better man than he was at its commencement. Let us suppose all this, although the supposition, it must be confessed, is unsupported by experience, and directly in the teeth of probability. He sallies forth from his prison, full of good resolutions, and determined to win the character of an honest man. Perhaps he has a small sum of money, which helps him to reach a part of the country most distant from the scene of his disgrace. He seeks for work, and is fortunate enough to obtain it. For a short time, all goes well with him. He is industrious and sober, and gains the good-will of his employer. He is confirmed in his good intentions, and fancies that his hopes of regaining his position in society are about to be realised. Vain hopes! Rumour is busy with his name. His fellow-labourers begin to look coldly on him. The master does not long remain in ignorance. The discharged convict is taxed with his former degradation, and made to suffer again the consequences of a crime he has well and fully expiated. His brief hour of prosperity is over. He is cast forth again upon the world, denied the means of gaining an honest livelihood, with nothing before him but starvation or a jail. What wonder should he choose the latter! Goaded by despair, or stimulated by hunger, he yields to the first temptation, and commits a crime which places him again within prison walls. It is his second conviction. He is a marked man. He were more than mortal if he escaped the deteriorating effects of repeated association with the hardened and the vicious. His future career is certain. He falls from bad to worse, and ends his life upon the scaffold.

We have imagined, for the sake of argument, a case which, in one of its features, is unfortunately of very rare occurrence. Criminals seldom, perhaps never, leave a jail with the slightest inclination to a course of honesty. Their downward progress, when they have once been exposed to the contamination of a prison life, may be calculated almost with certainty. No sooner is the term of their imprisonment expired, than they step forth into the world, eager to recommence the old career of systematic villany. Good intentions, and the desire of doing well, are almost always strangers to their breasts. But should they, perchance, be alive to better things, and be moved by wholesome impulses, what an awful responsibility rests upon those who, by individual acts, or by a pernicious system, check and render abortive the efforts of a dawning virtue! In the case we have supposed, there is doubtless much that must be laid to the score of human nature. Men will not easily be persuaded, that he who has once made a grievous lapse from the path of honesty, will not be ever prone to repeat the offence. None but the truly charitable (an infinitesimal portion of every community) will expose themselves to the risk of employing a discharged convict. But whilst this much evil is justly attributed to the selfish cruelty of society, a much larger share of blame attaches to the system which affords too plausible a pretext for such uncharitable conduct. It is not merely because a man has offended against the laws, and been guilty of what, in legal parlance, may be a simple misdemeanour, that he is regarded with suspicion and treated with ignominy; but much more, because he has been confined in a jail, and exposed to all the pernicious influences which are known to be rife within its walls. It is deemed a thing incredible, that a man can issue from a hot-bed of corruption, and not be himself corrupt. To have undergone a term of imprisonment, is very generally thought to be equivalent to taking a degree in infamy. On the system, therefore, rests much of the blame which would otherwise attach to the world's cold charity; to its account must be charged every subject who might have been saved, and who, through despair, is lost to the service of the state.

The evils we have described are patent and notorious; the only question, therefore, that arises is, whether they are inevitable and inherent in the nature of things, or whether they may be avoided by greater care and an improved system. Before entering upon this question, it may be well to notice briefly the various opinions that are entertained concerning the proper end and aim of criminal punishment. We take for granted, that in every community, under whatever political constitution it may exist and be associated, the sole object of criminal _law_ is the peace and security of society. With regard to the means by which this object may be best attained, or, in other words, with regard to the whole system of jurisprudence, from a preventive police down to the discipline of jails and the machinery of the scaffold, a great diversity of sentiment must naturally be expected. The pure theorist and the subtle disciple of Paley, maintain that the proper, nay, the sole object of punishment should be the prevention of crime. The philanthropic enthusiast, and the man of strict religious feeling, reject all other motives save only that of reforming the criminal. The dispassionate inquirer, the practical man, and he who has learned his lessons in the school of experience, take a middle course, though inclining a little to the theory of Paley. They hold that, whilst the amount, and to some extent the quality, of punishment should be settled and defined chiefly with a view to prevent the increase of crime by the deterring effect of fear, yet the details ought, if possible, to be so managed as in the end to bring about the reformation of the prisoner. We have no hesitation in avowing, that this last opinion is our own. There is an argument in its favour, which the most rigid disciple of the pure "prevention" theory must recognise immediately as one of his own most valued weapons. The "peace and security of society" are his watchwords. They are ours also. But whilst, in his opinion, the only way to produce the desired result is by a system of terrorism, such as will deter from the perpetration of crime, we believe that a careful solicitude concerning the moral conduct of the criminal during his imprisonment, and an anxious endeavour to instruct and improve his mind, by enforcing good habits, and taking away bad example, would be found equally powerful in their operation upon the well-being of society. For although it is a lamentable fact, that the number of our criminals is always being kept up to its full complement, by the addition of juvenile offenders, so that it would be vain to indulge a hope, without cutting off the feeding-springs, of materially diminishing our criminal population; yet it is equally true that the most desperate and dangerous offenders are they who have served their apprenticeship in jails, and there accomplished themselves in all the various devices of ingenious wickedness. It is these who give the deepest shade to the calendar of crime, and work incalculable mischief both in and out of prison, by instructing the tyros in all the most subtle varieties of villany. To reform such men may seem an arduous, perhaps an impossible task; but it is far less arduous, and certainly not impossible, to prevent their becoming the hardened ruffians which we have, without exaggeration, described them.

The truth must be told. The system of secondary punishments (as they are called, though why we know not) is radically wrong. There is something radically wrong in the discipline and regulations of our jails. The details of imprisonment are faulty and imperfect. Surely this is proved, when it is shown that men are invariably rendered worse, instead of better, by confinement in a jail. Even though it be admitted, for the sake of argument, that the state lies under no obligation to attempt the reformation of its criminals, the admission serves no whit to support a system under which criminals are confirmed and hardened in their vicious courses. The state may refuse to succour, but it has no right to injure. This, as it seems to us, is the strong point against our present system. It does not so much punish the body as injure the mind of the criminal; and, in so doing, it eventually endangers rather than secures the peace of society.

Many remedies have been proposed, but all, with an exception that will presently be mentioned, are rather palliative than corrective. Solitary confinement, for instance, is an undoubted cure for the diseases engendered by bad example and evil communications; but it breeds a host of other diseases, peculiar to itself, and in many cases worse than those it cures. Not to speak of the indulgence which so much idleness allows for vicious thoughts and recollections, the chief objection to solitary confinement is, that, if continued for any length of time, it unfits a man wholly for subsequent intercourse with the world. He leaves his prison with a mind prostrated to imbecility, and a body reduced to utter helplessness; yet he retains, perhaps, the cunning of the idiot, and just sufficient use of his limbs to serve him for a bad purpose. On these painful considerations, however, it is unnecessary to dwell at length. Solitary confinement, without occupation and without intervals of society, was an experiment upon the human animal. It has been tried in this country and elsewhere, and has signally failed. At this moment, we believe, it has few or no supporters.

The plan which has most largely and most deservedly attracted public attention, is that of Captain Maconochie, known by the name of the "Mark System." Captain Maconochie was superintendent of the penal establishment at Norfolk Island, where he had constantly about 2000 prisoners under his command. This office he held for eight years, and had, consequently, the most favourable opportunity of observing the practical working of the old system. Finding it to be defective, and injurious in every particular, he tried, with certain unavoidable modifications, a plan of his own, which, as he asserts, succeeded beyond his expectation. Having thus proved its practicability in Norfolk Island, and satisfied himself of its advantages, he wishes now to introduce it into England; and, with a view of obtaining a favourable hearing and efficient support, he has procured it to be referred to a committee of the "Society for Promoting the Amendment of the Law." The committee have reported in its favour; and their report, which is said to have been drawn up by the learned Recorder of Birmingham, contains so concise and clear a statement of the Captain's plan, that we take leave to extract a portion of it:--

"Captain Maconochie's plan," says Mr M. D. Hill, "had its origin in his experience of the evil tendency of sentences for a time certain, and of fixed gratuitous jail rations of food. These he practically found opposed to the reformation of the criminal. A man under a time-sentence looks exclusively to the means of beguiling that time. He is thereby led to evade labour, and to seek opportunities of personal gratification, obtained, in extreme cases, even in ways most horrible. His powers of deception are sharpened for the purpose; and even, when unable to offend in act, he seeks in fancy a gratification, by gloating over impure images. At the best, his life stagnates, no proper object of pursuit being presented to his thoughts. And the allotment of fixed gratuitous rations, irrespective of conduct or exertion, further aggravates the evil, by removing even the minor stimulus to action, furnished by the necessity of procuring food, and by thus directly fostering those habits of improvidence which, perhaps even more than determined vice, lead to crime.

"In lieu of sentences to imprisonment or transportation, measured thus by months or years, Captain Maconochie recommends sentences to an amount of labour, measured by a given number of marks, to be placed to the debit of the convict, in books to be kept for the purpose. This debit to be from time to time increased by charges made in the same currency, for all supplies of food and clothing, and by any fines that may be imposed for misconduct. The duration of his sentence will thus be made to depend on three circumstances. _First_, The gravity of the original offence, or the estimate made by the judge of the amount of discipline which the criminal ought to undergo before he is restored to liberty. This regulates the amount of the original debit. _Second_, The zeal, industry, and effectiveness of his labour in the works allotted to him, which furnish him with the means of payment, or of adding from time to time to the credit side of his account. And, _Third_, His conduct in confinement. If well conducted, he will avoid fines; and if economical in food, and such other gratifications as he is permitted to purchase with his marks, he will keep down the amount of his debits.

"By these means, Captain Maconochie contends, that a term of imprisonment may be brought to bear a close resemblance to adversity in ordinary life, which, being deeply felt, is carefully shunned; but which, nevertheless, when encountered in a manful spirit, improves and elevates the character. All the objects of punishment will be thus attained. There will be continued destitution, unless relief is sought by exertion, and hence there will be labour and suffering; but, with exertion, there will be not only the hope, but the certainty of recovery--whence there will be improvement in good habits, and right thinking. And the motives put into operation to produce effort and economy, being also of the same character with those in ordinary life, will advantageously prepare the prisoner for their wholesome action on him after his discharge.

"The only other very distinctive feature in Captain Maconochie's system is, his proposal that, after the prisoner has passed through a term of probation, to be measured not by lapse of time, but by his conduct as indicated by the state of his account, he shall be advanced from separate confinement into a social state. For this purpose, he shall become a member of a small class of six or eight, these classes being capable of being separated from each other, just as individuals are separated from individuals during the earlier stage, the members of each class to have a common interest, the marks earned or lost by each to count to the gain or loss of his party, not of himself exclusively. By this means, Captain Maconochie thinks prisoners will be rescued from the simply gregarious state of existence, which is, in truth, a selfish one, now incident to imprisonment in those jails to which the separate system is not applied, and will be raised into a social existence. Captain Maconochie is convinced, by experience, that much good feeling will be elicited among them in consequence of this change. Indolence and vice, which either prevent the prisoner from earning, or compel him to forfeit his marks, will become unpopular in the community; and industry and good conduct, as enabling him to acquire and preserve them, will, on the contrary, obtain for him its approbation. On much experience, he asserts that no portion of his _modus operandi_ is more effective than this, by which, even in the depraved community of Norfolk Island, he succeeded, in a wonderfully short time, in giving an upward direction to the public opinion of the class of prisoners themselves."

This brief outline of the Mark System undoubtedly presents to view one of the boldest projects of reform that ever proceeded from a private individual. It seeks to root up and utterly annihilate the whole system of secondary punishments, and necessarily involves a radical change in the criminal law. To a plan of so sweeping a character, a thousand objections will of course be made. Some will deny the necessity of so fundamental a change. Many will be startled by the magnitude of the innovation alone, and refuse at the very outset to accept a proposition which, whatever be its intrinsic merits, presents itself to their imagination surrounded with incalculable perils. Others will shake their heads, and doubt the possibility of working out a problem, which, from the beginning of time, has baffled the ingenuity of man. A few there may be, who will regard the new system with a favourable eye, albeit on no other ground than because it offers a prospect of escape from evils which exist, and are increasing, and which can hardly be exchanged for worse. For want of better companions, we shall take our position in the last-mentioned class; confessing that there is much in Captain Maconochie's system which seems at present Utopian, and savours too strongly of an enthusiasm which can see none but its own colours, but deeply impressed, at the same time, with the plausibility of his general theory. It is vain to hope that the unaided efforts of the chaplain will ever reform the inmates of a jail. No man was ever yet preached into good habits, except by a miracle. It is vain to hope that a discipline (if such it can be called) which enforces sometimes idleness, and sometimes useless labour, providing at the same time for all the wants of the body, with an abundance never enjoyed beyond the prison walls, will ever make men industrious, or frugal, or any thing else than dissolute and idle. In short, it is vain to hope, in the present state of things, that the criminal population of these kingdoms will ever be diminished, or even checked in its steady tendency to increase. If, then, all these hopes, which are exactly such as a philanthropist may reasonably indulge, be vain and futile, no man would be open to a charge of folly, should he embrace any, even the wildest proposition that holds out the prospect of improvement.

Captain Maconochie's system may be divided into two distinct and very different parts; namely, the general principles and the details. Concerning the latter, we are unwilling to hazard an opinion, deeming them peculiarly a matter of experiment, and incapable of proof or refutation by any other test than experience. But principles are universal, and, if true, may always be supported by argument, and strengthened by discussion; those of the Mark System, we think, will bear the application of both. No one possessed of the smallest experience of the human mind, will deny that it is utterly impossible to inculcate and fix good habits by a process which is continually distasteful to the patient. With regard to labour, which is compulsory and unproductive, the labourer, so far from becoming habituated to it, loathes it the more the longer he is obliged to continue it. Such labour, moreover, has no good effect upon the mind; it produces nothing but disgust and discontent. A similar result is produced upon the body under similar circumstances. Exercise is only beneficial when taken with a good will, and enjoyed with a zest: a man who should walk but two or three miles, grumbling all the way, would be as tired at the end as though he had walked twenty in a more contented mood. What, then, will some one say, are prisoners not to be punished at all? Is every thing to be made easy to them, and ingenuity taxed for devices to render their sentences agreeable, and to take the sting from imprisonment? The answer is ready. The law is not vindictive, and does not pretend to inflict suffering beyond what is necessary for the security of society. The thief and the homicide cannot be allowed to go at large. They must either be sent out of the country, or shut up within it. By some means or other, they must be deprived of the power of inflicting further injury upon their fellow-creatures. But how long are they to be cut off from the world? For a time fixed and irrevocable, and irrespective of subsequent good conduct, or reformation of character, or any other consideration than only the magnitude of the original offence? Surely neither reason nor humanity can approve such a doctrine; for does it not, in fact, involve the very principle which our law repudiates, namely, the principle that its punishments are vindictive? If a man who steals a horse, and is condemned to three years' imprisonment, be compelled to undergo the whole sentence, without reference to his conduct under confinement, this surely is vengeance, and not, what it assumes to be, a punishment proportioned to the necessity of the case. It is, no doubt, proper that a criminal should be condemned to suffer some loss of liberty, more or less, according to the nature of his delinquency, and a minimum should always be fixed; but it seems equally proper, and consistent with acknowledged principles, that a power should reside somewhere of diminishing the maximum, and where more advantageously than in the criminal himself? If the motives which govern the world at large, and operate upon men in ordinary life, to make them frugal and industrious, and to keep them honest, can be brought to bear upon the isolated community of a jail, why should they not? The object is humane; not injurious, but, on the contrary, highly beneficial to society; and not opposed to any established rule of law or general policy. We can conceive no possible argument against it, save that which we have already noticed, and, we trust, satisfactorily.

It is worthy of notice, as being calculated to satisfy the scruples of those who may be alarmed at the introduction of what they imagine a novel principle into our criminal jurisprudence, that this, the main feature of the Mark System, is not new. It is sanctioned by long usage in our penal settlements. In the Australian colonies, a man under sentence of transportation for years or for life may, by his own conduct, both shorten the duration and mitigate the severity of his punishment. By industry, by a peaceable demeanour, by the exercise of skill and ingenuity acquired in better times, he may obtain advantages which are not accorded to others. By a steady continuance in such behaviour, he may acquire the privilege of working for himself, and enjoying the produce of his labour. In the end, he may even be rewarded by a free pardon. If all these things may be done in Australia, why not also in England? Surely there is more to be said on behalf of convicts sentenced to imprisonment than for those sentenced to transportation. If our sympathy, or, to speak more correctly, our mercy, is to be inversely to the enormity of the offence, then the English prisoner is most entitled to our regard. It is possible that the transportation system may be wrong, but, at least, let us be consistent.

It is not necessary that Captain Maconochie's plan should be adopted _in extenso_, to the immediate and active subversion of the ancient system. We may feel our way. There is no reason why a single prison should not be set apart, or, if necessary, specially constructed, for the purpose of applying the test of practice to the new theory. A short act might be passed, empowering the judges to inflict labour instead of time-sentences--of course, within a certain limit as to number. Captain Maconochie himself might be entrusted with the superintendence of the experiment, in order to avoid the possibility of a suspicion that it had not received a fair trial. If, with every reasonable advantage, the scheme should eventually prove impracticable, then, of course, it will sink into oblivion, and be consigned to the limbo of impossible theories. The country will have sustained no loss, save the insignificant expense of the model machinery.

Considering the whole subject--its importance, its difficulty, the novelty of the proposed amendments, and their magnitude--we are disposed to agree with the learned Recorder of Birmingham, that "the plan is highly deserving of notice." Objections, of course, might be made in abundance, over and above those we have thought proper to notice. These, however, may be all reduced to one, namely, that the scheme is impracticable. That it may prove so, we do not deny; nor could any one, with a grain of prudence, venture to deny it, seeing how many promising projects are daily failing, not through their own intrinsic defects, but through miscalculation of opposing forces. The test of the Mark System, we repeat, must be experience. All that we seek to establish in its favour is the soundness of its principles. Of these we do not hesitate to avow a perfect approval; and, in doing so, we do not fear being classed among the disciples of the new school of pseudo-philanthropy, whose academy is Exeter Hall, and whose teachers are such men as Lord Nugent and Mr Fox. It is quite possible to feel compassion for the guilty, and a solicitude for their temporal as well as eternal welfare, without elevating them into the dignity of martyrs, and fixing one's attention upon them, to the neglect of their more honest and less protected neighbours. It is no uncommon thing to hear comparisons drawn between the conditions of the prisoner and the pauper--between the abundant nourishing food of the former, and the scanty meagre rations of the latter! There is no doubt that better fare is provided in a jail than in a workhouse. Good reasons, perhaps, may be given for the distinction, but in appearance it is horribly unjust. No system which proposed to encourage it would ever receive our approbation. The Mark System is adverse to the pampering of criminals. It seeks to enforce temperance and frugality, both by positive rewards, and by punishing gluttony and indulgence. Its object is the improvement, not of the physical, but the moral condition of the prisoner. His mind, not his body, is its especial care--a prudent, humane, we will even say, a pious care! Visionary it may be, though we think not--absurd it can never be, except in the eyes of those to whom the well-being of their fellow-creatures is matter of indifference, and who, too frivolous to reflect, or too shallow to penetrate the depths of things, seek to disguise their ignorance and folly under cover of ridicule. To such we make no appeal. But to the many really humane and sensible persons who are alive to the importance of the subject, we recommend a deliberate examination of the Mark System.

M.

LAYS AND LEGENDS OF THE THAMES.

Never was there such a summer on this side of the Tropics. How is it possible to exist, with the thermometer up to boiling point! London a vast caldron--the few people left in its habitable parts strongly resembling stewed fish--the aristocratic portion of the world flying in all directions, though there are three horticultural fetes to come--the attachés to all the foreign embassies sending in their resignations, rather than be roasted alive--the ambassadors all on leave, in the direction of the North Pole--the new governor of Canada congratulated, for the first time in national history, on his banishment to a land where he has nine months winter;--and a contract just entered into with the Wenham Lake Company for ten thousand tons of ice, to rescue the metropolis from a general conflagration.

--Went to dine with the new East India Director, in his Putney paradise. Sir Charles gives dinners worthy of the Mogul, and he wants nothing of the pomps and pleasures of the East but a harem. But, in the mean time, he gathers round him a sort of human menagerie; and every race of man, from the Hottentot to the Highlander, is to be found feeding in his Louis Quatorze saloons.

This certainly variegates the scene considerably, and relieves us of the intolerable topics, of Parliament, taxes, the last attempt on Louis Philippe, the last adventure of Queen Christina, or the last good thing of the last great bore of Belgrave Square; with the other desperate expedients to avoid the inevitable yawn. We had an Esquimaux chief, who, however, dwelt too long on the luxury of porpoise steaks; a little plump Mandarin, who indulged us with the tricks of the tea trade; the sheik Ben Hassan Ben Ali, who had narrowly escaped hanging by the hands of the French; and a New Zealand chief, strongly suspected of habits inconsistent with the European _cuisine_, yet who restricted himself on this occasion to every thing at the table.

At length, in a pause of the conversation, somebody asked where somebody else was going, for the dog-days. The question engaged us all. But, on comparing notes, every Englishman of the party had been everywhere already--Cairo, Constantinople, Calcutta, Cape Horn. There was not a corner of the world, where they had not drunk tea, smoked cigars, and anathematised the country, the climate, and the constitution. Every thing was _usé_--every soul was _blasé_. There was no hope of novelty, except by an Artesian perforation to the centre, or a voyage to the moon.

At last a curious old personage, with a nondescript visage, and who might, from the jargon of his tongue and the mystery of his costume, have been a lineal descendant of the Wandering Jew, asked, had any one at table seen the Thames?

The question struck us all at once. It was a grand discovery; it was a flash of light; it was the birth of a new idea; it was an influx of brilliant inquiry. It was ascertained, that though we had all steamed up and down the Thames times without number, not one of us had seen the river. Some had always steamed it in their sleep; some had plunged at once into the cabin, to avoid the passengers on deck; some had escaped the vision by the clouds of a cigar; some by a French novel and an English dinner. But not one could recollect any thing more of it than it flowed through banks more or less miry; that it was, to the best of their recollection, something larger than the Regent's Canal; and some thought that they had seen occasional masts and smoke flying by them.

My mind was made up on the spot. Novelty is my original passion--the spring of all my virtues and vices--the stimulant of all my desires, disasters, and distinctions. In short, I determined to see the Thames.

* * * * *

Rose at daybreak--the sky blue, the wind fragrant, Putney throwing up its first faint smokes; the villa all asleep. Leaving a billet for Sir Charles, I ordered my cab, and set off for the Thames. "How little," says Jonathan Swift, "does one-half of the world know what the other is doing." I had left Putney the abode of silence, a solitary policeman standing here and there, like the stork which our modern painters regularly put into the corner of their landscapes to express the sublime of solitude--no slipshod housemaid peeping from her window; no sight or sound of life to be seen through the rows of the flower-pots, or the lattices of the suburb gardens.

But, once in London, what a contrast. From the foot of London bridge what a rush of life; what an incursion of cabs; what a rattle of waggons; what a surge of population; what a chaos of clamour; what volcanic volumes of everlasting smoke rolling up against the unhappy face of the Adelaide hotel; what rushing of porters, and trundling of trunks; what cries of every species, utterable by that extraordinary machine the throat of man; what solicitations to trust myself, for instant conveyance to the remotest shore of the terraqueous globe!--"For Calais, sir? Boat off in half-an-hour."--"For Constantinople? in a quarter."--"For Alexandria? in five minutes."--"For the Cape? bell just going to ring." In this confusion of tongues it was a thousand to one that I had not jumped into the boat for the Niger, and before I recovered my senses, been far on my way to Timbuctoo.

In a feeling little short of desperation, or of that perplexity in which one labours to decypher the possible purport of a maiden speech, I flung myself into the first steamer which I could reach, and, to my genuine self-congratulation, found that I was under no compulsion to be carried beyond the mouth of the Thames.

I had now leisure to look round me. The bell had not yet chimed: passengers were dropping in. Carriages were still rolling down to the landing-place, laden with mothers and daughters, lapdogs and bandboxes, innumerable. The surrounding scenery came, as the describers say, "in all its power on my eyes."--St Magnus, built by Sir Christopher Wren, as dingy and massive as if it had been built by Roderic the Goth; St Olave's, rising from its ruins, as fresh as a fairy palace of gingerbread; the Shades, where men drink wine, as Bacchus did, from the bunghole; the Bridge of Bridges, clambered over and crowded with spectators as thick as hiving bees!

But--prose was never made for such things. I must be Pindaric.

LONDON BRIDGE.

_"My native land, good-night!"_

Adieu, adieu, thou huge, high bridge A long and glad adieu! I see above thy stony ridge A most ill-favour'd crew. The earth displays no dingier sight; I bid the whole--Good-night, good-night!

There, hang between me and the sky She who doth oysters sell, The youth who parboil'd shrimps doth cry, The shoeless beau and belle, Blue-apron'd butchers, bakers white, Creation's lords!--Good-night, good-night!

Some climb along the slippery wall, Through balustrades some stare, One wonders what has perch'd them all Five hundred feet in air. The Thames below flows, ready quite To break their fall.--Good-night, good-night!

What visions fill my parting eyes! St Magnus, thy grim tower, _Almost_ as black as London skies! The Shades, which are no bower; St Olave's, on its new-built site, In flaming brick.--Good-night, good-night!

The rope's thrown off, the paddles move, We leave the bridge behind; Beat tide below, and cloud above;-- Asylums for the blind, Schools, storehouses, fly left and right; Docks, locks, and blocks--Good-night, good-night!

In distance fifty steeples dance. St Catherine's dashes by, The Customhouse scarce gets a glance, The sounds of Bowbell die. With charger's speed, or arrow's flight, We steam along.--Good-night, good-night!

The Tower seems whirling in a waltz, As on we rush and roar. Where impious man makes Cheltenham salts, We shave the sullen shore; Putting the wherries all in fright, Swamping a few.--Good-night, good-night!

We brave the perils of the Pool; Pass colliers chain'd in rows; See coalheavers, as black and cool As negroes without clothes, Each bouncing, like an opera sprite, Stript to the skin.--Good-night, good-night!

And now I glance along the deck Our own live-stock to view-- Some matrons, much in fear of wreck; Some lovers, two by two; Some sharpers, come the clowns to bite; Some plump John Bulls.--Good-night, good-night!

A shoal of spinsters, book'd for France, (All talking of Cheapside;) An old she-scribbler of romance, All authorship and pride; A diner-out, (timeworn and trite,) A _gobe-mouche_ group.--Good-night, good-night!

A strolling actor and his wife, Both going to "make hay;" An Alderman, at fork and knife, The wonder of his day! Three Earls, without an appetite, Gazing, in spleen.--Good-night, good-night!

Ye dear, delicious memories! That to our midriffs cling As children to their Christmas pies, (So, all the New-School sing; In collars loose, and waistcoats white,) All, all farewell!--Good-night, good-night!

The charming author of that most charming of all brochures, _Le Voyage autour de ma Chambre_, says, that the less a man has to write about, the better he writes. But this charming author was a Frenchman; he was born in the land where three dinners can be made of one potato, and where moonshine is a substantial part of every thing. He performed his voyage, standing on a waxed floor, and making a circuit of his shelves; the titles of his books had been his facts, and the titillations of his snuff the food of his fancy. But John Bull is of another style of thinking. His appetite requires solid realities, and I give him docks, wharfs, steam-engines, and manufactures, for his powerful mastication.--But, what scents are these, rising with such potentiality upon the morning breeze? What sounds, "by distance made more sweet?" What a multitude of black, brown, bustling beings are crushing up that narrow avenue, from these open boats, like a new invasion of the pirate squadrons from the north of old. Oh, Billingsgate!--I scent thee--

----"As when to them who sail Beyond the Cape of Hope, and now are past Mozambic, far at sea the north winds blow Sabæan odours from the spicy shore Of Araby the Blest. With such delay Well-pleased, they slack their course, and many a league, Cheer'd with the grateful smell, old Ocean smiles."

The effect was not equally rapturous in the Thames; but on we flew, passing groups of buildings which would have overtopped all the castles on the Rhine, had they but been on fair ground; depots of wealth, which would have purchased half the provinces beyond the girdle of the Black Forest; and huge steamers, which would have towed a captive Armada to the Tower.

The TOWER! what memories are called up by the name! How frowning are those black battlements, how strong those rugged walls, how massive those iron-spiked gates! Every stone is historical, and every era of its existence has been marked by the mightiest changes of men, monarchs, and times; then I see the fortress, the palace and the prison of kings!

But, let me people those resounding arches, dim passages, and solemn subterraneans, with the past. Here, two thousand years ago, Julius Cæsar kept his military court, with Quæstors, Prefects, and Tribunes, for his secretaries of state; Centurions for his chamberlains; and Augurs for his bishops. On this bank of the stately river, on which no hovel had encroached, but which covered with its unpolluted stream half the landscape, and rolled in quiet majesty to meet the ocean; often stood the man, who was destined to teach the Republican rabble of Rome that they had a master. I leave antiquarians to settle the spot trodden by his iron sandal. I disdain the minute meddling of the men of _fibulæ_ and _frustums_ of pitchers. But I can see--"in my mind's eye, Horatio"--the stately Roman casting many an eager glance eastward, and asking himself, with an involuntary grasp of his hilt, and an unconscious curl of his lip, how long he was to suffer the haranguers of the populace, the pilferers of the public, the hirelings of Cinna and Sylla, and of every man who would hire them, the whole miry mass of reformers, leaguers, and cheap-bread men, to clap their wings like a flight of crows over the bleeding majesty of Rome.

Then the chance sound of a trumpet, or the tread of a cohort along the distant rampart, would make him turn back his glance, and think of the twenty thousand first-rate soldiers whom a wave of his finger would move across the Channel, send through Gaul, sacking Lutetia, darting through the defiles of the Alps, and bringing him in triumph through the Janiculum, up to the temple of the Capitoline Jove. Glorious dreams, and gloriously realised! How vexatious is it that we cannot see the past, that we cannot fly back from the bustle of this blacksmith world, from the jargon of public life, and the tameness of private toil; into those majestic ages, when the world was as magnificent as a theatre; when nations were swallowed up in the shifting of a scene; when all were fifth acts, and when every catastrophe broke down an empire!

But, what sounds are these? The steamer had shot along during my reverie, and was now passing a long line of low-built strong vessels, moored in the centre of the river. I looked round, and here was more than a dream of the past; here was the past itself--here was man in his primitive state, as he had issued from the forest, before a profane axe had cropped its brushwood. Here I saw perhaps five hundred of my fellow-beings, no more indebted to the frippery of civilisation than the court of Caractacus.--Bold figures, daring brows, Herculean shapes, naked to the waist, and with skins of the deepest bronze. Cast in metal, and fixed in a gallery, they would have made an incomparable rank and file of gladiatorial statues.

The captain of the steamer explained the phenomenon. They were individuals, who, for want of a clear perception of the line to be drawn between _meum_ and _tuum_, had been sent on this half-marine half-terrestrial service, to reinforce their morals. They were now serving their country, by digging sand and deepening the channel of the river. The scene of their patriotism was called the "hulks," and the patriots themselves were technically designated felons.

Before I could give another glance, we had shot along; and, to my surprise, I heard a chorus of their voices in the distance. I again applied to my Cicerone, who told me that all other efforts having failed to rectify their moral faculties; a missionary singing-master had been sent down among them, and was reported to be making great progress in their conversion.

I listened to the sounds, as they followed on the breeze. I am not romantic; but I shall say no more. The novelty of this style of reformation struck me. I regarded it as one of the evidences of national advance.--My thoughts instinctively flowed into poetry.

SONG FOR THE MILLION.

_"Mirth, admit me of thy crew."_

Song, admit me of thy crew! Minstrels, without shirt or shoe, Geniuses with naked throats, Bare of pence, yet full of _notes_. Bards, before they've learn'd to write, Issuing their notes at _sight_; Notes, to tens of thousands mounting, Careless of the Bank's discounting. Leaving all the world behind, England, in thy march of Mind.

Now, the carter drives his cart, Whistling, as he goes, Mozart. Now, a shilling to a guinea, Dolly cook, _sol-fas_ Rossini. While the high-soul'd housemaid, Betty, Twirls her mop to Donizetti. Or, the scullion scrubs her oven To thy Runic hymns, Beethoven. All the sevants' hall combined, England, in thy march of Mind.

Now, may maidens of all ages Look unharm'd on pretty _pages_. Now, may paupers "_raise the wind_," Now, may _score_ the great undined. Now, unblamed, may tender pairs Give themselves the tenderest _airs_. Now, may half-pay sons of Mars Look in freedom through their _bars_, Though upon a _Bench_ reclined, England, in thy march of Mind.

Soon we'll hear our "London cries" Dulcified to harmonies; Mackerel sold in canzonets, Milkmen "calling," in duets. Postmen's bells no more shall bore us, When their clappers ring in chorus. Ears no more shall start at, Dust O! When the thing is done with _gusto_. E'en policemen grow refined, England, in thy march of Mind.

Song shall settle Church and State, Song shall supersede debate. Owlet Joe no more shall screech, We shall make him sing his speech. Even the Iron Duke's "sic volo" Shall be soften'd to a _solo_. Discords then shall be disgrace, Statesmen shall play _thorough base_; Whigs and Tories intertwined, England, in thy march of Mind.

Sailors, under canvass stiff, Now no more shall dread a _cliff_. From Bombay to Coromandel, The Faqueers shall chorus Handel. Arab sheik, and Persian maiden, Simpering serenades from Haydn. Crossing then the hemisphere, Jonathan shall chant Auber, All his love of pelf resign'd, England, to thy march of Mind.

--Still moving on, still passing multitudinous agglomerations of brick, mortar, stone, and iron, rather than houses.--Docks crowded with masts, thicker than they ever grew in a pine forest, and echoing with the sounds of hammers, cranes, forges and enginery, making anchors for all the ships of ocean, rails for all the roads of earth, and chain-cables for a dozen generations to come. In front of one of those enormous forges, which, with its crowd of brawny hammerers glaring in the illumination of the furnace, gave me as complete a representation of the Cyclops and their cave, as any thing that can be seen short of the bowels of Ætna; stood a growing church, growing of iron; the walls were already half-way grown up. I saw them already pullulating into windows, a half-budded pulpit stood in the centre, and a Gothic arch was already beginning to spread like the foliage of a huge tree over the aisle. It was intended for one of the colonies, ten thousand miles off.

As the steamer is not suffered in this part of the river to run down boats at the rate of more than five miles an hour; I had leisure to see the operation. While I gazed, the roof had _leaved_; and my parting glance showed me the whole on the point of flourishing among the handsomest specimens of civic architecture.

In front of another forge stood a lighthouse; it was consigned to the West Indies. Three of its stone predecessors had been engulfed by earthquakes, a fourth had been swept off by a hurricane. This was of iron, and was to defy all the chances of time and the elements, by contract, for the next thousand years. It was an elegant structure, built on the plan of the "Tower of the Winds." Every square inch of its fabric, from the threshold to the vane, was iron! "What will mankind come to," said George Canning, "in fifty years hence? The present age is impudent enough, but I foresee that the next will be all _Irony_ and _Raillery_."

But all here is a scene of miracle. In our perverseness we laugh at our "Lady of Loretto," and pretend to doubt her house being carried from Jerusalem on the backs of angels. But what right have I to doubt, where so many millions are ready to take their oaths to the fact? What is it to us how many angels might be required for the operation? or how much their backs may have been galled in the carriage? The result is every thing. But here we have before our sceptical eyes the very same result. We have St Catherine's hospital, fifty times the size, transported half-a-dozen miles, and deposited in the Regent's Park. The Virgin came alone. The hospital came, with all its fellows, their matrons, and their master. The virgin-house left only a solitary excavation in a hillside. The hospital left a mighty dock, filled with a fleet that would have astonished Tyre and Sidon, buildings worthy of Babylon, and a population that would have sacked Persepolis.

But, what is this strangely shaped vessel, which lies anchored stem and stern in the centre of the stream, and bearing a flag covered over with characters which as we pass look like hieroglyphics? The barge which marks the Tunnel. We are now moving above the World's Wonder! A thousand men, women, and children, have marched under that barge's keel since morning; lamps are burning fifty feet under water, human beings are breathing, where nothing but the bones of a mammoth ever lay before, and check-takers are rattling pence, where the sound of coin was never heard since the days of the original Chaos.

What a field for theory! What a subject for a fashionable Lecturer! What a topic for the gossipry of itinerant science, telling us (on its own infallible authority) how the globe has been patched up for us, the degenerated and late-born sons of Adam! How glowingly might their fancy lucubrate on the history of the prior and primitive races which may now be perforating the interior strata of the globe--working by their own gas-light, manufacturing their own metals, and, from their want of the Davy-lamp, (and of an Act of Parliament, to make it burn,) producing those explosions which _we_ call earthquakes, while our volcanoes are merely the tops of their chimneys!

I gave the Tunnel a parting aspiration--

THE TUNNEL.

Genii of the Diving-bell! Sing Sir Is-mb-rt Br-n-l, Whether ye parboil in steam, Whether float in lightning's beam, Whether in the Champs Elysés Dance ye, like Carlotta Grisi. Take your trumps, the fame to swell, Of Sir Is-mb-rt Br-n-l.

Phantoms of the fiery crown! Plunged ten thousand fathoms down In the deep Pacific's wave, In the Ocean's central cave, Where the infant earthquakes sleep, Where the young tornadoes creep. Chant the praise, where'er ye dwell, Of Sir Is-mb-rt Br-n-l.

What, if Green's Nassau balloon (Ere its voyage to the moon) 'Twixt Vauxhall and Stepney plies, Straining London's million eyes, Dropping on the breezes bland, (Good for gazers,) bags of sand; Green's a blacksmith to a belle, To Sir Is-mb-rt Br-n-l.

Great magician of the Tunnel! Earth bows down before thy funnel, Darting on through swamp and crag, Faster than a Gaul can brag; All Newmarket's tip-top speed, To thy stud is broken-knee'd; Zephyr spavin'd, lightning slow, To thy fiery rush below.

Ships no more shall trust to sails, Boats no more be swamp'd by whales, Sailors sink no more in barks, (Built by contract with the sharks,) Though the tempest o'er us roar; Flying through thy Tunnel's bore, What care we for mount or main, What can stop the Monster-Train?

There let Murchison and Lyell Of our Tunnel make the trial. We shall make them cross the Line, Fifty miles below the brine-- Leaving blockheads to discuss Paving-stones with Swiss or Russ, Or in some Cathedral stall, Still to play their cup and ball.

What, if rushes the Great Western Rapid as a racer's pastern, At each paddle's thundering stroke, Blackening hemispheres with smoke, Bouncing like a soda-cork; Raising consols in New York, E'er the lie has time to cool, Forged in bustling Liverpool.

Yet, a river to a runnel, To the steamer is the Tunnel; Screw and sail alike shall lag, To the "Rumour" in thy bag. While _she_ puffs to make the land, Thou shalt have the Stock in hand, Smashing bill-broker and banker Days, before she drops her anchor.

Then, if England has a foe, We shall rout him from below. Through our Ocean tunnel's arch, Shall the bold battalions march, Piled upon our flying waggons, Spouting fire and smoke like dragons; Sweeping on, like shooting-stars, Guardsmen, rifles, and hussars.

We shall _tunnelize_ the Poles, Bringing down the cost of coals; Making Yankees sell their ice At a Christian sort of price; Making China's long-tail'd Khan Sell his Congo as he can, In our world of fire and shade, Carrying on earth's grand "Free Trade."

We shall bore the broad Atlantic, Making every grampus frantic; Killing Jonathan with spite, As the Train shoots up to light. Mexico her hands shall clap, Tahiti throw up her cap, Till the globe one shout shall swell To Sir Is-mb-rt Br-n-l.

But this scene is memorable for more ancient recollections. It was in this spot, that once, every master of a merchant ship took off his hat in reverence to the _genius loci_; but never dared to drop his anchor. It was named the Pool, from the multitude of wrecks which had occurred there in the most mysterious manner; until it was ascertained that it was the chief resort of the mermen and mermaids, who originally haunted the depths of the sylvan Thamesis.

There annually, from ages long before the Olympiads, the youths and maidens came, to fling garlands into the stream, and inquire the time proper for matrimony. It was from one of their chants, that John Milton borrowed his pretty hymn to the presiding nymph--

"Listen, where thou art sitting, Under the glassy, cool, translucent wave, In twisted braids of lilies knitting The loose trains of thy amber-dropping hair. Listen, for dear honour's sake, Goddess of the Silver Lake, Listen and save!"

On the coast of Norway there is another Pool, entitled the Maelstrom, where ships used to disappear, no one knew why. But the manner was different; they no sooner touched the edge of the prohibited spot than they were swept with the fury of a hurricane into the centre, where they no sooner arrived than they were pulled down, shattered into a thousand fragments, and never heard of more. This was evidently the work of the mermen, who however, being of Northern breed, had, like the usual generation of that wild and winterly region, tempers of indigenous ferocity. But the tenants of the Thames, inheriting the softer temper of their clime, were gentler in their style of administering justice, which they administered effectually, notwithstanding. Every unlucky vessel which stopped upon the exclusive spot, quietly sank. The operation regularly took place in the night. By morning the only remnant of its existence was discoverable among the huts along the shore, exhibiting foreign silks, Dutch drams, French brandy, and other forbidden articles, which, somehow or other, had escaped from the bosom of the deep.

The legend goes on to say, that from those fatalities the place was cautiously avoided, until, about a hundred and fifty years ago, one fine evening in May, a large merchantman came in full sail up the river, and dropped her anchor exactly in the spot of peril. All the people of the shore were astounded at this act of presumption, and numberless boats put off to acquaint the skipper with his danger. But, as the legend tells, "he was a bold vain man, with a huge swaggering sword at his side, a purse in his girdle, and a pipe in his mouth. Upon hearing of the aforesaid tale, he scoffed greatly, saying, in most wicked and daring language, that he had came from the East Indian possessions of the Dutch republic, where he had seen jugglers and necromancers of all kinds; but he defied them all, and cared not the lighting of his meerscham for all the mermaids under the salt seas." Upon the hearing of which desperate speech all the bystanders took to their boats, fearing that the good ship would be plucked to the bottom of the river without delay.

But at morning dawn the good ship still was there, to the surprise of all. However, the captain was to have a warning. As he was looking over the stern, and laughing at the story, the steersman saw him suddenly turn pale and fix his eyes upon the water, then running by at the rate of about five knots. The crew hurried forward, and lo and behold! there arose close to the ship a merman, a very respectable-looking person, in Sunday clothes and with his hair powdered, who desired the captain to carry his vessel from the place, because "his anchor had dropt exactly against his hall door, and prevented his family from going to church."

The whole history is well known at Deptford, Rotherhithe, and places adjacent; and it finishes, by saying, that the captain, scoffing at the request, the merman took his leave with an angry expression on his countenance, a storm came on in the night, and nothing of captain, crew, or ship, as ever heard of more.

But the spot is boundless in legendary lore. A prediction which had for centuries puzzled all the readers of Mother Shipton, was delivered by her in the small dwelling whose ruins are still visible on the Wapping shore. The prophecy was as follows:--

Eighteene hundred thirty-five, Which of us shall be alive? Many a king shall ende his reign; Many a knave his ende shall gain; Many a statesman be in trouble; Many a scheme the worlde shall bubble; Many a man shall selle his vote; Many a man shall turne his coat. Righte be wronge, and wronge be righte, By Westminster's candle-lighte. But, when from the top of Bow Shall the dragon stoop full low. When from church of holy Paul Shall come down both crosse and ball. When all men shall see them meete On the land, yet by the Fleet. When below the Thamis bed Shall be seen the furnace red; When its bottom shall drop out, Making hundreds swim about, Where a fishe had never swum, Then shall doleful tidings come. Flood and famine, woe and taxe, Melting England's strength like waxe; Till she fights both France and Spain, Then shall all be well again!

I shall have an infinite respect for Mother Shipton in future. All was amply verified. The repairs of St Paul's, in the year stated, required that the cross and ball should be taken down, which was done accordingly. Bow Church, whose bells are supposed to thrill the _intima præcordia_ of every Londoner's memory in every part of the globe, happening to be in the same condition, the dragon on the spire was also taken down, and cross, ball, and dragon, were sent to a coppersmith's, in Ludgate Hill, beside the Fleet prison, where they were to be seen by all the wondering population, lying together. The third feature of the wisdom of Mother Shipton was fulfilled with equal exactitude. The Thames Tunnel had been pushed to the middle of the river's bed, when, coming to a loose portion of the clay, the roof fell in; the Thames burst through its own bottom, the Tunnel was instantly filled, and the workmen were forced to swim for their lives. The remainder of the oracle, partly present, is undeniable while we have an income tax, and the _finale_ may be equally relied on, to the honour of the English Pythonness.

RECENT ROYAL MARRIAGES.

At this dull season, the long vacation of legislators, when French deputies and English members, weary of bills and debates, motions and amendments, take their autumnal ramble, or range their well-stocked preserves, and when newspapers are at their wits' end for subjects of discussion, a topic like the Spanish marriages, intrinsically so important, in arrival so opportune, has naturally monopolised the attention of the daily press. For some time previously, the English public had paid little attention to Spanish affairs. Men were weary of watching the constant changes, the shameless corruption, the scandalous intrigues, from which that unfortunate country and its unquiet population have so long suffered; they had ceased in great measure to follow the thread of Peninsular politics. The arbitrary and unconstitutional influences employed at the last elections, and the tyranny exercised towards the press, deprived foreigners of the most important data whence to judge the real state of public feeling and opinion south of the Pyrenees. The debates of Cortes elected under circumstances of flagrant intimidation, and whose members, almost to a man, were creatures of a _Camarilla_, were no guide to the sentiments of a nation: journalists, sorely persecuted, writing in terror of bayonets, in peril of ruinous fine and arbitrary imprisonment, dared not speak the voice of truth, and feared to echo the wishes and indignation of the vast but soldier-ridden majority of their countrymen. Thus, without free papers or fair debates to guide them, foreigners could attain but an imperfect perception of the state of Spanish affairs. The view obtained was vague--the outline faint and broken--details were wanting. Hence the Spanish marriages, although so much has been written about them, have in England been but partially understood. Much indignation and censure have been expended upon those who achieved them; many conjectures have been hazarded as to their proximate and remote consequences; but one very curious point has barely been glanced at. Scarcely an attempt has been made to investigate the singular state of parties, and strange concurrence of circumstances, that have enabled a few score persons to overbalance the will of a nation. How is it that a people, once so great and powerful, still so easy to rouse, and jealous of its independence, has suffered itself to be fooled by an abandoned Italian woman, and a wily and unscrupulous foreign potentate--by a corrupt _Camarilla_, and a party that is but a name? How is it that Spain has thus unresistingly beheld the consummation of an alliance so odious to her children, and against which, from Portugal to the Mediterranean, from Gibraltar's straits to Cantabria's coast, but one opinion is held, but one voice heard--a voice of reprobation and aggrieved nationality?

Yes, within the last few weeks, wondering Europe has witnessed a strange spectacle. A queen and her sister, children in years and understanding, have been wedded--the former completely against her inclinations, the latter in direct opposition to the wishes and interests of her country, and in defiance of stern remonstrance and angry protest from allied and powerful states--to most unsuitable bridegrooms. The queen, Isabella of Spain, has, it is true, a Spaniard for her husband; and him, therefore, her jealous and suspicious subjects tolerate, though they cannot approve. Feeble and undecided of character, unstable in his political opinions--if, indeed, political opinions he have other than are supplied to him, ready formed, by insidious and unworthy advisers--Don Francisco de Assis is the last man to sit on the right hand of a youthful queen, governing an unsettled country and a restless people, to inspire her with energy and assist her with wise counsels. It redounds little to the honour of the name of Bourbon, that if it was essential the Queen should marry a member of that house, her present husband was, with perhaps one exception, as eligible a candidate as could be selected. That marriage decided upon, however, it became doubly important to secure for the Infanta Luisa--the future Queen of Spain should her sister die without issue--a husband in all respects desirable; and, above all, one agreeable to the Spanish nation. Has this been done? What advantages does the husband of the girl of fourteen, of the heir-presumptive to the Spanish crown, bring to Spain, in exchange for the rich dowery of his child-bride--for the chance, not to say the probability, of being a queen's husband--and for an immense accession of influence to his dynasty in the country where that dynasty most covets it? The advantages are all of a negative kind. By that marriage, Spain, delivered over to French intrigues, exposed to the machinations and vampire-like endearments of an ancient and hereditary foe, becomes _de facto_ a vassal to her puissant neighbour.

The question of the Queen of Spain's marriage was first mooted within a very few days after her birth. In the spring of 1830, Queen Christina found herself with child for the first time; and her husband, Ferdinand VII., amongst whose many bad and unkingly qualities want of foresight could not be reckoned, published the Pragmatic Sanction that secured the crown to his offspring should it prove a girl. A girl it was; and scarcely had the infant been baptised, when her father began to think of a husband for her. "She shall be married," he said, "to a son of my brother Francisco." By and by Christina bore a second daughter, and then the King said--"They shall be married to the two eldest sons of my brother Francisco."

Ferdinand died; and, as he had often predicted--comparing himself to the cork of a bottle of beer, which restrains the fermented liquor--at his death civil war broke out. Isabella was still an infant; the first thing to be done was to secure her the crown; and for the time, naturally enough, few thought about her marriage. Queen Christina was an exception. She apparently remembered and respected her husband's wishes; and in her conversations and correspondence with her sister, Luisa Carlota, wife of the Infante Don Francisco de Paulo, she frequently referred to them, and expressed a strong desire for their fulfilment. In the month of June of the present year, a Madrid newspaper, the _Clamor Publico_, published a letter of hers, written most strongly in that sense. It bears date the 23d of January 1836, and is the reply to one from Doña Luisa Carlota, in which reference was made to conversations between the two sisters and Ferdinand, respecting the marriage of his daughters to the sons of Don Francisco. "The idea has always flattered my heart," Christina wrote, "and I would fain see its realisation near at hand; for it was the wish and will of the beloved Ferdinand, which I will ever strive to fulfil in all that depends on me. * * * Besides which, I believe that the national representation, far from opposing, will approve these marriages, as advantageous not only to our family, but to the nation itself, your sons being Spanish princes. I will not fail to propose it when the moment arrives." Notwithstanding these fair promises, and her respect for the wishes of Ferdinand the well-beloved, we find Christina, less than two years later, negotiating for her royal daughter a very different alliance. Irritated, on the one hand, against the Liberal party, to whose demands she had been compelled to yield; and alarmed, upon the other, at the progress of the Carlist armies, which were marching upon Madrid, then defended only by the national guards, she treated with Don Carlos for a marriage between the Queen and his eldest son. The Carlists were driven back to their mountain strongholds, and, the pressing danger over--although the war still continued with great fury--that project of alliance was shelved, and another, a very important one, broached. It was proposed to marry the Queen of Spain to an archduke of Austria, who should command the Spanish army, and to whom Christina expressed herself willing to give a share of the Regency, or even to yield it entirely. This was the motive of the mission of Zea Bermudez to Vienna. That envoy stipulated, as an indispensable condition of the success of his negotiations, that they should be kept a profound secret from the King of the French. The condition was not observed. Christina herself, it is said, unable to keep any thing from her dear uncle, told him all, and Bermudez had to leave Vienna almost before the matter in hand had been entered upon. Thereupon the queen-mother reverted to the marriage with a son of Don Carlos. The Conde de Toreno, for a moment weak enough to enter into her views, endeavoured to prepare the public for their disclosure, by announcing in the Cortes, that wars like the one then devastating Spain could only be terminated by a compromise--meaning a marriage. The Cortes thought differently, and, by other means, the war was brought to a close.

The year 1840 witnessed the expulsion of Christina from Spain, and the appointment of Espartero to the Regency. During his three years' sway, that general refused to make or meddle in any way with the Queen's marriage. He said, that as she was not to marry till her majority, and as he should then no longer be Regent, his government had no occasion to busy itself with the matter. The friends of Spain have reason to wish that the Duke de la Victoria had shown himself less unassuming and reserved with respect to that most important question. Whilst it was thus temporarily lost sight of at Madrid, the queen-mother, in her retirement at Paris, took counsel with the most wily and far-sighted sovereign of Europe, and from that time must doubtless be dated the plans which Christina and Louis Philippe have at last so victoriously carried out. They had each their own interests in view--their own objects to accomplish--and it so chanced that those interests and objects were easily made to coincide. Concerning those of Christina, we shall presently speak at some length; those of the French king are now so notorious, that it is unnecessary to do more than glance at them. His first plan--a bold one, certainly--was to marry the Queen of Spain to the Duke d'Aumale. To this, Christina did not object. Her affection for her daughter--since then grievously diminished--prompted her to approve the match. The duke was a fine young man, and very rich. To a tender mother--which she claimed to be--the temptation was great. Doubtless, also, she received from Louis Philippe, as price of her concurrence, an assurance that certain private views and arrangements of her own should not to be interfered with--certain guardianship accounts and unworthy peculations not too curiously investigated. Of this, more hereafter. The result of the intrigues and negotiations between the Tuileries and the Hotel de Courcelles, was the diplomatic mission of M. Pageot, who was sent to London and to the principal continental courts, to announce, on the part of the King of the French, that, considering himself the chief of the Bourbon family, he felt called upon to declare that, according to the spirit of the treaty of Utrecht, the Queen of Spain could marry none but a Bourbon prince. The success of this first move, intended as a feeler to see how far he could venture to put forward a son of his own, was not such as to flatter the wishes of the French monarch. The reply of the British government was, that, according to the constitution of Spain, the Cortes must decide who was to be the Queen's husband and that he whom the Cortes should select, would, for England, be the legitimate aspirant. Without being so liberal in tone, the answers given by the cabinets of Vienna and Berlin were not more satisfactory; and the spleen of the French king manifested itself by the mouth of M. Guizot, who, with less than his usual prudence, went so far as to menace Spain with a war, if the Queen married any but a Bourbon. This occurred in March 1843.

In the following June, Espartero, in his turn, was driven from power and from his country. Well known as it was, that French manoeuvres and French gold had, by deluding the nation, and corrupting the army, powerfully contributed to the overthrow of the only conscientious and constitutional ruler with whom Spain had for a long period been blessed, it was expected that Christina and her friends would do their utmost to bring about the immediate marriage of the Queen and the Duke d'Aumale. Then occurred the long projected and much talked of visit of Queen Victoria to the castle of Eu, where the question of Isabella's marriage was made the subject of a conference between the sovereigns of France and England, assisted by their ministers for foreign affairs, M. Guizot and Lord Aberdeen. It was shortly afterwards known that the King of the French had given the most satisfactory pledges, which were communicated to the principal foreign courts, that he not only would not strive to effect a marriage between the Queen of Spain and a son of his, but that he would positively refuse his consent to any such union. Further that if a marriage should be arranged between the Duke of Montpensier and the Infanta Luisa, it should not take place till Isabella was married and had issue. As an equivalent to these concessions, the English minister for foreign affairs had to declare, that without entering into an examination of the Treaty of Utrecht, or recognising any right contrary to the complete independence of the Spanish nation, it was desirable that the Queen should wed a descendant of Philip the Fifth, provided always such marriage was brought about conformably with the rules prescribed by the constitution of Spain.

Compelled to abandon the design of marrying Isabella to a French prince, Louis Philippe, like a wary and prudent general, applied himself to improve the next best position, to which he had fallen back, and where he determined to maintain himself. Aumale could not have the Queen, but Montpensier should have the Infanta; and the aim must now be to increase the value of prize No. 2, by throwing prize No. 1 into the least worthy hands possible. In other words, the Queen must be married to the most incapable and uninfluential blockhead, who, being of Bourbon blood, could possibly be foisted upon her and the Spanish nation. To this end Count Trapani was pitched upon; and the first Narvaez ministry--including Señor Pedal and other birds of the same disreputable feather--which succeeded the one presided over by that indecent charlatan Gonzales Bravo, did all in its power to forward the pretensions of the Neapolitan prince, and accomplish his marriage with the Queen. To this end it was absolutely necessary to dispense with the approbation of the Cortes, required by the constitution. For although those Cortes had been chosen without the concurrence of the Progresista party--whose chiefs were all in exile, in prison, or prevented by the grossest intimidation from voting at the elections--on the question of the Trapani marriage they were found indocile. This profound contempt and marked antipathy with which Spaniards view whatever comes from Naples, and the offence given to the national dignity by the evident fact, that this candidate was imposed upon the country by the French government, convinced the latter, and that of Spain, which was its instrument, that even the Cortes they themselves had picked and chosen, lacked baseness or courage to consent to the Trapani alliance. Then was resolved upon and effected the constitutional REFORM, suppressing the article that required the approbation of the Cortes, and replacing it by another, which only rendered it compulsory to _announce_ to them the husband chosen by the Queen. But the manoeuvres of France were too clumsy and palpable. It was known that Christina had promised the hand of the Infanta to the Duke of Montpensier; Louis Philippe's object in backing Trapani was easily seen through; and so furious was the excitement of the public mind throughout Spain, so alarming the indications of popular exasperation, that the unlucky Neapolitan candidate was finally thrown overboard.

Here we must retrace our steps, and consider Queen Christina's motives in sacrificing what remained to her of prestige and popularity in her adopted country, to assist, through thick and thin, by deceit, subterfuge, and treachery, the ambitious and encroaching views of her French uncle. There was a time--it is now long past--when no name was more loved and respected by the whole Spanish nation, excluding of course the Carlist party, than that of Maria Christina de Borbon. She so frankly identified herself with the country in which marriage fixed her lot, that in becoming a Spanish queen she had apparently become a Spanish woman; and, in spite of her Neapolitan birth, she speedily conquered the good-will of her subjects. Thousands of political exiles, restored to home and family by amnesties of her promotion, invoked blessings on her head: the great majority of the nation, anxious to see Spain governed mildly and constitutionally, not despotically and tyrannically, hailed in her the good genius who was to accord them their desires. Her real character was not yet seen through; with true Bourbon dissimulation she knew how to veil her vices. She had the credit also of being a tender and unselfish parent, ever ready to sacrifice herself to the interests of her children. Her egotism was as yet unsuspected, her avarice dormant, her sensuality unrevealed; and none then dreamed that a day would come, when, impelled by the meanest and most selfish motives, she would urge her weeping daughter into the arms of a detested and incompetent bridegroom.

By her _liaison_ with Muñoz, the first blow was given to Christina's character and popularity. This scandalous amour with the son of a cigar-seller at Tarançon, a coarse and ignorant man, whose sole recommendations were physical, and who, when first noticed by the queen, occupied the humble post of a private garde-de-corps, commenced, in the belief of many, previously to the death of Ferdinand. Be that true or not, it is certain that towards the close of the king's life, when he was helpless and worn out by disease, the result of his reckless debaucheries, she sought the society of the stalwart lifeguardsman, and distinguished him by marks of favour. It was said to be through her interest that he was promoted to the rank of cadet in the body-guard, which gave him that of captain in the army. Ferdinand died, and her intrigue was speedily manifest, to the disgust and grief of her subjects. In time of peace her degrading devotion to a low-born paramour would doubtless have called forth strong marks of popular indignation; but the anxieties and horrors of a sanguinary civil war engrossed the public attention, and secured her a partial impunity. As it was, her misconduct was sufficiently detrimental to her daughter's cause. The Carlists taunted their opponents with serving under the banner of a wanton; and the Liberals, on their part, could not but feel that their infant queen was in no good school or safe keeping.

The private fortune of Ferdinand the Seventh was well known to be prodigious. Its sources were not difficult to trace. An absolute monarch, without a civil list, when he wished for money he had but to draw upon the public revenue for any funds the treasury might contain. Of this power he made no sparing use. Then there was the immense income derived from the Patrimonia Real, or Royal Patrimony, vast possessions which descend from one King of Spain to another, for their use and benefit so long as they occupy the throne. The whole of the town of Aranjuez, the estates attached to the Pardo, La Granja, the Escurial, and other palaces, form only a portion of this magnificent property, yielding an enormous annual sum. Add to these sources of wealth, property obtained by inheritance, his gains in a nefariously conducted lottery, and other underhand and illicit profits, and it is easy to comprehend that Ferdinand died the richest capitalist in Europe. The amount of his savings could but be guessed at. By some they were estimated at the incredibly large sum of eight millions sterling. But no one could tell exactly, owing to the manner in which the money was invested. It was dispersed in the hands of various European bankers; also in those of certain American ones, by whose failure great loss was sustained. No trifling sum was represented by diamonds and jewels. It was hardly to be supposed that the prudent owner of all this wealth would die intestate, and there is scarcely a doubt that he left a will. To the universal astonishment, however, upon his decease, none was forthcoming, and his wole property was declared at sixty millions of francs, which, according to the Spanish law, was divided between his daughters. No one was at a loss to conjecture what became of the large residue there unquestionably was. It was well understood, and her subsequent conduct confirmed the belief, that the lion's share of the royal spoils was appropriated by the young widow, whose grief for the loss of the beloved Ferdinand was not so violent and engrossing as to make her lose sight of the main chance. After so glorious a haul, it might have been expected that she would hold her hand, and rest contented with the pleasing consciousness, that should she ever be induced or compelled to leave Spain, she had wherewithal to live in queenly splendour and luxury. But her thirst of wealth is not of those that can be assuaged even by rivers of gold. Though the bed of the Manzanares were of the yellow metal, and she had the monopoly of its sands, the mine would be all insufficient to satiate her avarice. After appropriating her children's inheritance, she applied herself to increase her store by a systematic pillage of the Queen of Spain's revenues. As Isabella's guardian, the income derived from the Patrimonio Real passed through her hands, to which the gold adhered like steel-dust to a loadstone. Whilst the nation strained each nerve, and submitted to the severest sacrifices, to meet the expenses of a costly war--whilst the army was barefoot and hungered, but still stanch in defence of the throne of Isabella--Christina, with her mouth full of patriotism and love of Spain, remitted to foreign capitalists the rich fruits of her peculations, provision for the rainy day which came sooner than she anticipated, future fortunes for Muñoz's children. The natural effect of her disreputable intrigue or second marriage, whichever it at that time was to be called, was to weaken her affection for her royal daughters, especially when she found a second and numerous family springing up around her. To her anxiety for this second family, and to the influence of Muñoz, may be traced her adherence to the King of the French, and the cruel and unmotherly part she has recently acted towards the Queen of Spain.

Previously to Christina's expulsion from the Regency in the year 1840, little was seen or known of her children by Muñoz. During her three years' residence at Paris, a similar silence and mystery was observed respecting them, and they lived retired in a country-house near Vevay, upon the Lake of Geneva, whither those born in the French capital were also dispatched. This prudent reserve is now at an end, and the grandchildren of the Tarançon tobacconist sit around, almost on a level with, the throne of the Spanish Queen. Titles are showered upon them, cringing courtiers wait upon their nod, and the once proud and powerful grandees of Spain, descendants of the haughty warriors who drove the Saracens from Iberian soil, and stood covered in the presence of the Fifth Charles, adulate the illegitimate progeny of a Muñoz and a Christina. Subtile have been the calculations, countless the intrigues, shameful the misdeeds that have led to this result, so much desired by parents of the ennobled bastards, so undesirable for the honour and dignity of Spain. It is obvious that, with the immense wealth, whose acquisition has been already explained, Christina would have had no difficulty in portioning off her half-score children, and enabling them to live rich and independent in a foreign county. But this arrangement did not suit her views; still less did it accord with those of the Duke of Rianzares. He founded his objections upon a patriotic pretext. He wished his children, he said, to be Spanish citizens, not aliens--to hold property in their own country--to live respected in Spain, and not as exiles in a foreign land. It may be supposed there was no obstacle to their so doing, and that in Spain, as elsewhere, they could reckon at least upon that amount of ease and consideration which money can give. But here came the sticking-point, the grand difficulty, only to be got over by grand means and great ingenuity. Christina had been the guardian of the Queen and Infanta during their long minority: guardians, upon the expiration of their trust, are expected to render accounts; and this the mother of Isabel was wholly unprepared to do, in such a manner as would enable her to retain the plunder accumulated during the period of her guardianship. She had certainly the option of declining to render any--of taking herself and her wealth, her husband and her children, out of Spain, and of living luxuriously elsewhere. But it has already been seen, that neither she nor Muñoz liked the prospect of such banishment, however magnificent and numerous the appliances brought by wealth to render it endurable. What, then, was to be done? It was quite positive that the husbands of the Queen and Infanta would demand accounts of their wives' fortune and of its management during their minority. How were their demands to be met--how such difficulties got over? It was hard to say. The position resembled what the Yankees call a "fix." The cruel choice lay between a compulsary disgorgement of an amount of ill-gotten gold, such as no moral emetic could ever have induced Christina to render up, and the abandonment of Muñoz's darling project of making himself and his children lords of the soil in their native land. The only chance of an exit from this circle of difficulties, was to be obtained by uniting the Queen and her sister to men so weak and imbecile, or so under the dominion and influence of Christina, that they would let bygones be bygones, take what they could get and be grateful, without troubling themselves about accounts, or claiming arrears. To find two such men, who should also possess the various qualifications essential to the husbands of a Queen and Infanta of Spain, certainly appeared no easy matter--to say nothing of the odious selfishness and sin of thus sacrificing two defenceless and inexperienced children. But Christina's scruples were few; and, as to difficulties, her resolution rose as they increased. Had she not also a wise and willing counsellor in the most cunning man in Europe? Was not her dear uncle and gossip at hand to quiet her qualms of conscience, if by such she was tormented, and to demonstrate the feasibility--nay, more, the propriety of her schemes? To him she resorted in her hour of need, and with him she soon came to an understanding. He met her half-way, with a bland smile and words of promise. "Marry one of your daughters," was his sage and disinterested advice, "to a son of mine, and be sure that my boys are too well bred to pry into your little economics. We should prefer the Queen; but, if it cannot be managed, we will take the Infanta. Isabella shall be given to some good quiet fellow, not over clever, who will respect you far too much to dream of asking for accounts. Of time we have plenty; be stanch to me, and all shall go well." What wonder if from the day this happy understanding, this real _entente cordiale_, was come to, Christina was the docile agent, the obedient tool, of her venerable confederate! No general in the jaws of a defile, with foes in front and rear, was ever more thankful to the guide who led him by stealthy paths from his pressing peril, than was the daughter of Naples to her wary adviser and potent ally. And how charming was the union of interest--how touching the unanimity of feeling--how beautifully did the one's ambition and the other's avarice dovetail and coincide! The King's gain was the Queen's profit: it was the slaughter with one pebble of two much-coveted birds, fat and savoury mouthfuls for the royal and politic fowlers.

In the secret conclave at the Tuileries, "all now went merry as a marriage bell." In the ears of niece and uncle resounded, by anticipation, the joyous chimes that should usher in the Montpensier marriage, proclaim their triumph, drown the cries of rage of the Spanish nation, and the indignant murmurs of Europe;--not that the goal was so near, the prize so certain and easy of attainment. Much yet remained to do; a false step might be ruinous--over-precipitation ensure defeat. The King of the French was not the man to make the one, or be guilty of the other. With "slow and sure" for his motto, he patiently waited his opportunity. In due season, and greatly aided by French machinations, the downfall of the impracticable and incorruptible Espartero was effected. But the government of Spain was still in the hands of the Progresistas. For it will be remembered that the immediate cause of Espartero's fall was the opposition of a section of his own party, which, united now in their adversity, unfortunately tunately knew not, in the days of their power, how to abstain from internal dissensions. The Lopez ministry held the reins of government. It was essential to oust it. As a first step, a _Camarilla_ was organised, composed of the brutal and violent Narvaez, the daring and disreputable Marchioness of Santa Cruz, and a few others of the same stamp, all ultra-Moderados in politics, and fervent partisans of Christina. So successfully did they use their backstairs influence, and wield their weapons of corruption and intrigue, that, within four months, and immediately after the accelerated declaration of the Queen's majority, Lopez and his colleagues resigned. Olozaga succeeded them; but he, too, was a Progresista and an upholder of Spanish nationality; there was no hope of his giving in to the plans of Christina the Afrancesada. Moreover, he was hated by the _Camarilla_, and especially detested by the Queen-mother, whose expulsion from Paris he had demanded when ambassador there from Espartero's government. She determined on a signal vengeance. The Palace Farce, that strange episode in the history of modern Spanish courts, must be fresh in every one's memory. An accusation, as malignant as absurd, was trumped up against Olozaga, of having used force, unmanly and disloyal violence, to compel Isabella to sign a decree for the dissolution of the Cortes. No one really believed the ridiculous tale, or that Salustiano de Olozaga, the high-bred gentleman, the uniformly respectful subject, could have afforded by his conduct the shadow of a ground for the base charge. Subsequently, in the Cortes, he nobly faced his foes, and, with nervous and irresistible eloquence, hurled back the calumny in their teeth. But it had already served their turn. To beat a dog any stick will do; and the only care of the _Camarilla_ was to select the one that would inflict the most poignant wound. Olozaga was hunted from the ministry, and sought, in flight, safety from the assassin's dagger. Those best informed entertained no doubt that his expulsion was intimately connected with the marriage question. With him the last of the Progresistas were got rid of, and all obstacles being removed, the Queen-mother returned to Madrid.

Were the last crowning proof insufficient to carry conviction, it would be easy to adduce innumerable minor ones of Christina's heartless selfishness--of her disregard to the happiness, and even to the commonest comforts, of her royal daughter. We read in history of a child of France, the widow of an English king, who, when a refugee in the capital of her ancestors, lacked fuel in a French palace, and was fain to seek in bed the warmth of which the parsimony of a griping Italian minister denied her the fitting means. It is less generally known, that only six years ago, the inheritress of the throne of Ferdinand and Isabella was despoiled of the commonest necessaries of life by her own mother, a countrywoman of the miserly cardinal at whose hands Henrietta of England experienced such shameful neglect. When Christina quitted Spain in 1840, she not only carried off an enormous amount of national property, including the crown jewels, but also her daughter's own ornaments; and, at the same time, even the wardrobe of the poor child was mysteriously, but not unaccountably, abstracted: Isabella was left literally short of linen. As to jewels, it was necessary immediately to buy her a set of diamonds, in order that she might make a proper appearance at her own court. Such was the considerate and self-denying conduct of the affectionate mother, who, in the winter of 1843, resumed her place in the palace and counsels of the Queen of Spain. In her natural protector, the youthful sovereign found her worst enemy.

Persons only superficially acquainted with Spanish politics commonly fall into two errors. They are apt to believe, first, that the two great parties which, with the exception of the minor factions of Carlists and Republicans, divide Spain between them, are nearly equally balanced and national; secondly, that Moderados and Progresistas in Spain are equivalent to Conservatives and Radicals in other countries. Blunders both. Eccentric in its politics, as in most respects, Spain cannot be measured with the line and compass employed to estimate its neighbours. It is impossible to conceal the fact, that to-day the numerous and the national party in Spain is that of the Progresistas. The tyranny of Narvaez, the misconduct of Christina, and, above all, the French marriage, have greatly strengthened their ranks and increased their popularity. Their principles are not subversive, nor their demands exorbitant: they aim at no monopoly of power. Three things they earnestly desire and vehemently claim: the freedom of election guaranteed by the existing constitution of Spain, but which has been so infamously trampled upon by recent Spanish rulers, liberty of the press, and the preservation of Spain from foreign influence and domination.

Let us examine the composition and conduct of the party called Moderado. This party, now dominant, is unquestionably the most split up and divided of any that flourish upon Spanish soil. It is not deficient in men of capacity, but upon none of the grave questions that agitate the country can these agree. When the Cortes sit, this is manifest in their debates. Although purged of Progresistas, the legislative chambers exhibit perpetual disagreement and wrangling. At other times, the dissensions of the Moderados are made evident by their organs of the press. In some of these appear articles which would not sound discordant in the mouths of Progresistas; in others are found doctrines and arguments worthy of the apostles of absolutism. Between Narvaez and Pacheco the interval is wider than between Pacheco and the Progresistas. The first, in order to govern, sought support from the Absolutists; the second could not rule without calling the Liberals to his aid. Subdivided into fractions, this party, whose nomenclature is now complicated, relies for existence less upon itself than upon extraneous circumstances, foreign support, and the equilibrium of the elements opposed to it. The anarchy to which it is a prey, has been especially manifest upon the marriage question. Whilst one of its organs shamelessly supported Trapani, others cried out for a Coburg; and, again, others insisted that a Spanish prince was the only proper candidate--thus coinciding with the Progresistas. In fact, the Moderados, afraid, perhaps, of compromising their precarious existence had no candidate of their own; and in their fluctuations between foreign influence and interior exigencies, between court and people, between their wish to remain in power and the difficulty of retaining it, they left, in great measure, to chance, the election in which they dared not openly meddle. This will sound strange to the many who, as we have already observed, imagine the Moderado party to be the Conservative one of England or France; but not to those aware of the fact, that it is a collection of unities, brought together rather by accidental circumstances than by homogeneity of principles, united for the exclusion of others, and for their own interests, not by conformity of doctrines and a sincere wish for their country's good.

Such was the party, unstable and unpatriotic, during whose ascendancy Christina and her royal confederate resolved to carry out their dishonest projects. The Queen-mother well knew that the mass of the nation would be opposed to their realisation; but she reckoned on means sufficiently powerful to render indignation impotent, and frustrate revolt. She trusted to the adherence of an army, purposely caressed, pampered, and corrupted; she felt strong in the support of a monarch, whose interest in the affair was at least equal to her own; she observed with satisfaction the indifferent attitude assumed by the British government with respect to Spanish affairs. A Progresista demonstration in Galicia, although shared in by seven battalions of the army--an ugly symptom--was promptly suppressed, owing to want of organisation, and to the treachery or incapacity of its leader. The scaffold and the galleys, prison and exile, disposed of a large proportion of the discontented and dangerous. Arbitrary dismissals, of which, for the most part, little was heard out of Spain, purified the army from the more honest and independent of its officers, suspected of disaffection to the existing government, or deemed capable of exerting themselves to oppose an injurious or discreditable alliance. Time wore on; the decisive moment approached. Each day it became more evident that the Queen's marriage could not with propriety be much longer deferred. Setting aside other considerations, she had already fully attained the precocious womanhood of her country; and it was neither safe nor fitting that she should continue to inhale the corrupt atmosphere of the Madrid court without the protection of a husband. At last the hour came; the plot was ripe, and nothing remained but to secure the concurrence of the victim. One short night, a night of tears and repugnance on the one hand, of flatteries, of menaces and intimidation, on the other decided the fate of Isabella. With her sister less trouble was requisite. It needed no great persuasive art to induce a child of fourteen to accept a husband, as willingly as she would have done a doll. It might have been thought necessary to consult the will of the Spanish nation, fairly represented in freely elected Cortes. Such, at least, was the course pointed out by the constitution of the country. It would also have been but decorous to seek the approval and concurrence of foreign and friendly states, to establish beyond dispute, that the proposed marriages were in contravention of no existing treaties; for, with respect to one of them, this doubt might fairly be raised. But all such considerations were waived; decency and courtesy alike forgotten. The double marriage was effected in the manner of a surprise; and, if creditable to the skill, it most assuredly was dishonourable to the character of its contriver. Availing himself of the moment when the legislative chambers of England, France, and Spain, had suspended their sittings; although, as regards those of the latter country, this mattered little, composed, as they are, of venal hirelings--the French King achieved his grand stroke of policy, the project on which, there can be little doubt, his eyes had for years been fixed. His load of promises and pledges, whether contracted at Eu or elsewhere, encumbered him little. They were a fragile commodity, a brittle merchandise, more for show than use, easily hurled down and broken. Striding over their shivered fragments, the Napoleon of Peace bore his last unmarried son to the goal long marked out by the paternal ambition. The consequences of the successful race troubled him little. What cared he for offending a powerful ally and personal friend? The arch-schemer made light of the fury of Spain, of the discontent of England, of the opinion of Europe. He paused not to reflect how far his Machiavelian policy would degrade him in the eyes of the many with whom he had previously passed for wise and good, as well as shrewd and far-sighted. Paramount to these considerations was the gratification of his dynastic ambition. For that he broke his plighted word, and sacrificed the good understanding between the governments of two great countries. The monarch of the barricades, the _Roi Populaire_, the chosen sovereign of the men of July, at last plainly showed, what some had already suspected, that the aggrandisement of his family, not the welfare of France, was the object he chiefly coveted. Conviction may later come to him, perhaps it has already come, that _le jeu ne valoit pas la chandelle_, the game was not worth the wax-lights consumed in playing it, and that his present bloodless victory must sooner or later have sanguinary results. That this may not be the case, we ardently desire; that it will be, we cannot doubt. The peace of Europe may not be disturbed--pity that it should in such a quarrel; but for poor Spain we foresee in the Montpensier alliance a gloomy perspective of foreign domination and still recurring revolution.

A word or two respecting the King-consort of Spain, Don Francisco de Assis. We have already intimated that, as a Spanish Bourbon, he may pass muster. 'Tis saying very little. A more pitiful race than these same Bourbons of Spain, surely the sun never shone upon. In vain does one seek amongst them a name worthy of respect. What a list to cull from! The feeble and imbecile Charles the Fourth; Ferdinand, the cruel and treacherous, the tyrannical and profligate; Carlos, the bigot and the hypocrite; Francisco, the incapable. Nor is the rising generation an improvement upon the declining one. How should it be, with only the Neapolitan cross to improve the breed? Certainly Don Francisco de Assis is no favourable specimen, either physically or morally, of the young Bourbon blood. For the sake of the country whose queen is his wife, we would gladly think well of him, gladly recognise in him qualities worthy the descendant of a line of kings. It is impossible to do so. The evidence is too strong the other way. If it be true, and we have reason to believe it is, that he came forward with reluctance as a candidate for Isabella's hand, chiefly through unwillingness to stand in the light of his brother Don Enrique, partly perhaps through consciousness of his own unfitness for the elevated station of king-consort, this at least shows some good feeling and good sense. Unfortunately, it is the only indication he has given of the latter quality. His objections to a marriage with his royal cousin were overruled in a manner that says little for his strength of character. When it was found that his dislike to interfere with his brother's pretensions was the chief stumbling-block, those interested in getting over it set the priests at him. To their influence his weak and bigoted mind was peculiarly accessible. Their task was to persuade him that Don Enrique was no better than an atheist, and that his marriage with the Queen would be ruinous to the cause of religion in Spain. This was a mere fabrication. Enrique had never shown any particularly pious dispositions, but there was no ground for accusing him of irreligion, no reason to believe that, as the Queen's husband, he would be found negligent of the church's forms, or setting a bad example to the Spanish nation. The case, however, was made out to the satisfaction of the feeble Francisco, whose credulity and irresolution are only to be equalled in absurdity by the piping treble of the voice with which, as a colonel of cavalry, he endeavoured to convey orders to his squadrons. Sacrificing, as he thought, fraternal affection to the good of his country, he accepted the hand reluctantly placed in his, became a king by title, but remained, what he ever must be, in reality a zero.

It was during the intrigues put in practice to force the Trapani alliance upon Spain, that the Spanish people turned their eyes to Don Francisco de Paulo's second son, who lived away from the court, following with much zeal his profession of a sailor. Not only the Progresistas, but that section of the Moderados whose principles were most assimilated to theirs, looked upon Don Enrique as the candidate to be preferred before all others. For this there were many reasons. As a Spaniard he was naturally more pleasing to them than a foreigner; in energy and decision of character he was far superior to his brother. Little or nothing was known of his political tendencies; but he had been brought up in a ship and not in a palace, had lived apart from _Camarillas_ and their evil influences, and might be expected to govern the country constitutionally, by majorities in the Cortes, and not by the aid and according to the wishes of a pet party. The general belief was, that his marriage with Isabella would give increased popularity to the throne, destroy illegitimate influences, and rid the Queen of those interested and pernicious counsellors who so largely abused her inexperience. These very reasons, which induced the great mass of the nation to view Don Enrique with favour, drew upon him the hatred of Christina and her friends. He was banished from Spain, and became the object of vexatious persecutions. This increased his popularity; and at one time, if his name had been taken as a rallying cry, a flame might have been lighted up in the Peninsula which years would not have extinguished. The opportunity was inviting; but, to their honour be it said, those who would have benefited by embracing it, resisted the temptation. It is no secret that the means and appliances of a successful insurrection were not wanting; that money wherewith to buy the army was liberally forthcoming; that assistance of all kinds was offered them; and that their influence in Spain was great; for in the eyes of the nation they had expiated their errors, errors of judgment only, by a long and painful exile. But, nevertheless, they would not avail themselves of the favourable moment. So long as a hope remained of obtaining their just desires by peaceable means, by the force of reason and the _puissante propagande de la parole_, they refused again to ensanguine their native soil, and to re-enter Spain on the smoking ruins of its towns, over the lifeless bodies of their mistaken countrymen.

By public prints of weight and information, it has been estimated, that during Don Enrique's brief stay at Paris, he indignantly rejected certain friendly overtures made to him by the King of the French. The nature of these overtures can, of course, only be conjectured. Perhaps, indeed, they were but a stratagem, employed by the wily monarch to detain his young cousin at Paris, that the apparent good understanding between them might damp the courage of the national party in Spain, and win the wavering to look with favour upon the French marriage. There can be little question that in the eyes of Louis Philippe, as well as of Christina, Don Francisco is a far more eligible husband for the Queen than his brother would have been, even had the latter given his adhesion to the project of the Montpensier alliance. Rumour--often, it is true, a lying jade--maintained that at Paris he firmly refused to do so. She now whispers that at Brussels he has been found more pliant, and that, within a brief delay, the happy family at Madrid will be gratified by the return of that truant and mutinous mariner, Don Enrique de Borbon, who, after he has been duly scolded and kissed, will doubtless be made Lord High Admiral, or rewarded in some equally appropriate way for his tardy docility. We vouch not for the truth of this report; but shall be noway surprised if events speedily prove it well founded. Men there are with whom the love of country is so intense, that they would rather live despised in their own land than respected in a foreign one. And when, to such flimsy Will-o'-the-wisp considerations as the esteem and love of a nation, are opposed rank, money, and decorations, a palace to live in, sumptuous fare, and a well-filled purse, and perhaps, ere long, a wealthy bride, who would hesitate? If any would, seek them not amongst the Bourbons. Loath indeed should we be to pledge ourselves for the consistency and patriotism of a man whose uncle and grandfather betrayed their country to a foreign usurper. The fruit of a corrupt and rotten stem must ever be looked upon with suspicion. It is the more prized when perchance it proves sound and wholesome.

Of the Duke of Montpensier, previously to his marriage, little was heard, and still, little is generally known of him, except that his exterior is agreeable, and that he had been rapidly pushed through the various military grades to that of general of artillery. That any natural talents he may be endowed with, have been improved to the utmost by careful education, is sufficiently guaranteed by the fact of his being a son of Louis Philippe. We are able to supply a few further details. The Infanta's husband is a youth of good capacity, possessing a liberal share of that mixture of sense, judgment, and wit, defined in his native tongue by the one expressive word _esprit_. His manners are pleasant and affable; he is a man with whom his inferiors in rank can converse, argue, even dispute--not a stilted Spanish Bourbon, puffed up with imaginary merit, inflated with etiquette, and looking down, from the height of his splendid insignificance and inane pride, upon better men then himself. He is one, in short, who rapidly makes friends and partisans. Doubtless, during his late brief visit to Spain, he secured some; hereafter he will have opportunities of increasing their number; and the probabilities are, that in course of time he will acquire a dangerous influence in the Peninsula. The lukewarm and the vacillating, even of the Progresista party, will be not unlikely, if he shows or affects liberalism in his political opinions, to take him into favour, and give him the weight of their adherence; forgetting that by so doing they cherish an anti-national influence, and twine more securely the toils of France round the recumbent Spanish lion. On the other hand, there will always be a powerful Spanish party, comprising a vast majority of the nation, and by far the largest share of its energy and talent, distinguished by its inveterate dislike of French interlopers, repulsing the duke and his advances by every means in their power, and branding his favourers with the odious name of AFRANCESADOS. To go into this subject, and enlarge upon the probable and possible results of the marriage, would lead us too far. Our object in the present article has rather been to supply FACTS than indulge in speculations. For the present, therefore, we shall merely remind our readers, that jealousy of foreign interference is a distinguishing political characteristic of Spaniards; and that, independently of this, the flame of hatred to France and Frenchmen still burns brightly in many a Spanish bosom. Spain has not yet forgiven, far less forgotten, the countless injuries inflicted on her by her northern neighbours: she still bears in mind the insolent aggressions of Napoleon--the barbarous cruelties of his French and Polish legions--the officious interference in '23. These and other wrongs still rankle in her memory. And if the effacing finger of Time had begun to obliterate their traces, the last bitter insult of the forced marriage has renewed these in all their pristine freshness.

We remember to have encountered, in a neglected foreign gallery, an ancient picture of a criminal in the hands of torturers. The subject was a painful one, and yet the painting provoked a smile. Some wandering brother of the brush, some mischievous and idly-industrious TINTO, had beguiled his leisure by transmogrifying the costumes both of victim and executioners, converting the ancient Spanish garb into the stiff and unpicturesque apparel of the present day. The vault in which the cruel scene was enacted, remains in all its gloomy severity of massive pillars, rusty shackles, and cobwebbed walls; the grim unshapely instruments of torture were there; the uncouth visages of the executioners, the agonised countenance of the sufferer, were unaltered. But, contrasting with the antique aspect and time-darkened tints of these details, were the vivid colouring and modern fashions of Parisian _paletots_, trim pantaloons, and ball-room waistcoats. We have been irresistibly reminded of this defaced picture by the recent events in Spain. They appear to us like a page from the history of the middle ages transported into our own times. The daring and unprincipled intrigue whose _dénoûment_ has just been witnessed, is surely out of place in the nineteenth century, and belongs more properly to the days of the Medicis and the Guise. A review of its circumstances affords the elements of some romantic history of three hundred years ago. At night, in a palace, we see a dissolute Italian dowager and a crafty French ambassador coercing a sovereign of sixteen into a detested alliance. The day breaks on the child's tearful consent; the ambassador, the paleness of his vigil chased from his cheek by the flush of triumph, emerges from the royal dwelling. Quick! to horse!--and a courier starts to tell the diplomat's master that the glorious victory is won. A few days--a very few--of astonishment to Europe and consternation to Spain, and a French prince, with gay and gallant retinue, stands on the Bidassoa's bank and gazes wistfully south-wards. Why does he tarry; whence this delay? He waits an escort. Strange rumours are abroad of ambuscade and assassination; of vows made by fierce guerillas that the Infanta's destined husband shall never see Madrid. At last the escort comes. Enclosed in serried lines of bayonets and lances, dragoons in van, artillery in rear, the happy bridegroom prosecutes his journey. What is his welcome? Do the bright-eyed Basque maidens scatter flowers in his path and Biscay's brave sons strain their stout arms to ring peals in his honour? Do the poor and hardy peasantry of Castile line the highway and shout _vivas_ as he passes? Not so. If bells are rung and flowers strewn, it is by salaried ringers and by women hired, not to wail at a funeral, but to celebrate a marriage scarcely more auspicious. If hurrahs, few and faint, are heard, those who utter are paid for them. Sullen looks and lowering glances greet the Frenchman, as, guarded by two thousand men-at-arms, he hurries to the capital where his bride awaits him. In all haste, amidst the murmurs of a deeply offended people, the knot is tied. Not a moment must be lost, lest something should yet occur to mar the marriage feast. And now for the rewards, shamefully showered upon the venal abettors of this unpopular union. A dukedom and grandeeship of Spain for the ambassador's infant son; titles to mercenary ministers; high and time-honoured decorations, once reserved as the premium for exalted valour and chivalrous deeds--to corrupt deputies; diamond snuff-boxes, jewels and gold, to the infamous writers of prostituted journals; Christina rejoices; her _Camarilla_ are in ecstasies; Bresson rubs his hands in irrepressible exultation; in his distant capital the French monarch heaves a sigh of relief and satisfaction as his telegraph informs him of the _fait accompli_. Then come splendid bullfights and monster _pucheros_, to dazzle the eyes and stop the mouths of the multitude. _Pan y toros--panisac circenses_--to the many-headed beast. And in all haste the prince hurries back to Paris with his bride, to receive the paternal benediction, the fraternal embrace, and the congratulations of the few score individuals, who alone, in all France, feel real pleasure and profit in his marriage. And thus, by foreign intrigue and domestic treachery, has the independence of Spain been virtually bought and sold.

ST MAGNUS', KIRKWALL.

See yonder, on Pomona's isle-- Where winter storms delight to roam; But beaming now with summer's smile-- The Sainted Martyr's sacred dome!

Conspicuous o'er the deep afar It sheds a soft and saving ray, A landmark sure, a leading star, To guide the wanderer on his way.

It tells the seaman how to steer Through swelling seas his labouring bark It helps the mourner's heart to cheer, And speeds him to his heavenly mark.

With joy of old this northern sky Saw holy men the fabric found, To lift the Christian Cross on high, And spread the Healer's influence round.

By beauty's power they sought to raise Rude eyes and ruder hearts to Heaven: They sought to speak their Maker's praise With all the skill His grace had given.

And now, where passions dark and wild Were foster'd once at Odin's shrine, A people peaceful, just, and mild, Live happy in that light divine.

Preserved through many a stormy age, Let pious zeal the relic guard: Nor Time with slow insidious rage Destroy what fiercer foes have spared.

THE GAME LAWS.

From our youth upwards we have entertained a deep feeling of affection for the respectable fraternity of the Quakers. Our love, probably, had its date and origin from very early contemplation of a print, which represented an elderly pot-bellied individual, with a broad-brimmed hat and drab terminations, in the act of concluding a treaty with several squatting Indians, only redeemed from a state of nature by a slight garniture of scalps and wampum. Underneath was engraved a legend which our grand-aunt besought us to treasure in our memory as a sublime moral lesson. It ran thus:--THE BLOODLESS TRIUMPH, OR PENN'S TREATY WITH THE CHIEFS; and we were told that the fact thereby commemorated was one of the most honourable achievements to be found in the pages of general history. With infantine facility we believed in the words of the matron. No blood or rapine--no human carcasses or smoking wigwams, deformed the march of the Quaker conqueror. Beneath a mighty tree, in the great Indian wilderness, was the patriarchal council held; and the fee-simple of a territory, a good deal larger than an average kingdom, surrendered, with all its pendicles of lake, prairie, and hunting-ground, to the knowing philanthropist, in exchange for some bales of broad-cloth, a little cutlery, a liberal allowance of beads, and a very great quantity, indeed, of adulterated rum and tobacco. Never, we believe, since Esau sold his birth-right, was a tract of country acquired upon terms so cheap and easy. Some faint idea of this kind appears to have struck us at the time; for, in answer to some question touching the nature of the goods supposed to be contained in several bales and casks which were prominently represented in the picture, our relative hastily remarked, that she did not care for the nature of the bargain--the principle was the great consideration. And so it is. William Penn unquestionably acted both wisely and well: he brought his merchandise to a first-rate market, and left a valuable legacy of acuteness to his children and faithful followers. Our grand-aunt--rest her soul!--died in the full belief of ultimate Pennsylvanian solvency. She could not persuade herself, that the representatives of the man who had acquired a principality at the expense of a ship-load of rubbish, would prove in any way untrue to their bonds; and by her last will and testament, whereof we are the sole executor, she promoted us to the agreeable rank of a creditor on the Pennsylvanian government. If any gentleman is desirous to be placed in a similar position, with a right to the new stock which has been recently issued in lieu of a monetary dividend, he may hear of an excellent investment by an early application to our brokers. We also are most firm believers in the fact of American credit, and we shall not change our opinion--at least until we effect the sale.

All this, however, is a deviation from our primary purpose, which was to laud and magnify the Brotherhood. We repeat that we loved them early, and also that we loved them long. It is true that some years ago a slight estrangement--the shadow of a summer cloud--disturbed the harmony which had previously existed between Maga and the Society of Friends. A gentleman of that persuasion had been lost somewhere upon the skirts of Helvellyn, and our guide and father, Christopher, in one of those sublime prose-poeans which have entranced and electrified the world, commemorated that apotheosis so touchingly, that the whole of Christendom was in tears. Unfortunately, some passing allusion to the garments of the defunct Obadiah, grated uncomfortably on the jealous ear of Darlington. An affecting picture of some ravens, digging their way through the folds of the double-milled kerseymere, was supposed to convey an occult imputation upon the cloth, and never, since then, have we stood quite clear in the eyes of the offended Conventicle. Still, that unhappy misunderstanding has by no means cooled our attachment. We honour and revere the Friends; and it was with sincere pleasure that we saw the excellent Joseph Pease take his seat and lift up his voice within the walls of Parliament. Had Pease stood alone, we should not now, in all human probability, have been writing on the subject of the game laws.

We are, however, much afraid that a great change has taken place in the temper and disposition of the Society. Formerly a Quaker was considered most essentially a man of peace. He was reputed to abhor all strife and vain disputation--to be laconic and sparing in his speech--and to be absolutely crapulous with humanity. We would as soon have believed in the wrath of doves as in the existence of a cruel Quaker; nor would we, during the earlier portion of our life, have entrusted one of that denomination with the drowning of a superfluous kitten. Barring a little absurd punctilio in the matter of payment of their taxes--at all times, we allow, a remarkably unpleasant ceremony--the public conduct of our Friends was blameless. They seldom made their voices heard except in the honourable cause of the suffering or the oppressed; and with external politics they meddled not at all, seeing that their fundamental ideas of a social system differed radically from those entertained by the founders of the British constitution. Such, and so harmless, were the lives of our venerated Friends, until the demon of discord tempted them by a vision of the baleful hustings.

Since then we have remarked, with pain, a striking alteration in their manner. They are bold, turbulent, and disputatious to an almost incredible extent. If there is any row going on in the parish, you are sure to find that a Quaker is at the bottom of it. Is there to be a reform in the Police board--some broad-brimmed apostle takes the chair. Are tithes obnoxious to a Chamber of Commerce--the spokesman of the agitators is Obadiah. Indeed, we are beginning to feel as shy of a quarrel with men of drab as we formerly were with the militant individuals in scarlet. We are not quite so confident as we used to be in their reliance upon moral force, and sometimes fear the latent power which lurks in the physical arm.

Of these champions, by far the most remarkable is Mr John Bright, who, in the British House of Commons, represents the town of Durham. The tenets of his peaceful and affirmative creed, are, to say the least of it, in total antagonism to his character. Ever since he made his first appearance in public, he has kept himself, and every one around him, in perpetual hot-water. In the capacity of Mr Cobden's bottle-holder, he has displayed considerable pluck, for which we honour him; and he is not altogether unworthy to have been included in that famous eulogy which was passed by the late Premier--no doubt to the cordial satisfaction of his friends--upon the Apostle of cotton and free-trade. The name of John is nearly as conspicuous as that of Richard in the loyal annals of the League; and we are pleased to observe, that, like his great generalissimo, Mr Bright has preferred his claim for popular payment, and has, in fact, managed to secure a few thousands in return for the vast quantity of eloquence which he has poured into the pages of Hansard. We are not of that old-fashioned school who object to the remuneration of our reformers. On the contrary, we think that patriotism, like every other trade, should be paid for; and with such notable examples, as O'Connell in Ireland, and the Gamaliel of Sir Robert in the south, we doubt not that the principle hereafter will be acted upon in every case. The man who shall be fortunate enough to lead a successful crusade against the established churches, and to sweep away from these kingdoms all vestiges both of the mitre and the Geneva gown, will doubtless, after sufficient laudation by the then premier, of the talent and perseverance which he has exhibited throughout the contest, receive from his liberated country something of an adequate douceur. What precise pension is due to him who shall deliver us from the thraldom of the hereditary peerage, is a question which must be left to future political arithmetic. In the mean time, there are several minor abuses which may be swept away on more moderate scavenger wages; and one of these which we fully expect to hear discussed in the ensuing session of Parliament, is the existence of the Game laws.

Mr Bright, warned by former experience, has selected a grievance for himself, and started early in his expedition against it. The part of jackal may be played once, but it is not a profitable one; and we can understand the disappointed feelings of the smaller animal, when he is forced to stand by an-hungered, and behold the gluttonous lion gorging himself with the choicest morsels of the chase. It must be a sore thing for a patriot to see his brother agitator pouching his tens and hundreds of thousands; whilst he, who likewise has shouted in the cause, and bestowed as much of his sweet breath as would have served to supply a furnace, must perforce be contented with some stray pittances, doled hesitatingly out, and not altogether given without grudging. No independent and thoroughgoing citizen will consent, for a second time, to play so very subsidiary a part; therefore he is right in breaking fresh ground, and becoming the leader of a new movement. It may be that his old monopolising ally shall become too plethoric for a second contest. Like the desperate soldier who took a castle and was rewarded for it, he may be inclined to rest beneath his laurels, count his pay, and leave the future capture of fortalices to others who have less to lose. A hundred thousand pounds carry along with them a sensation of ease as well as dignity. After such a surfeit of Mammon, most men are unwilling to work. They unbutton their waistcoats, eschew agitation, eat, drink, are merry, and become fat.

Your lean Cassius, on the contrary, has all the pugnacity of a terrier. He yelps at every body and every thing, is at perpetual warfare with the whole of animated nature, and will not be quieted even by dint of much kicking. The only chance you have of relieving yourself from his everlasting yammering and impertinence, is to throw him an unpicked bone, wherewith he will retreat in double-quick time to the kennel. And of a truth the number of excellent bones which are sacrificed to the terriers of this world, is absolutely amazing. Society in general will do a great deal for peace; and much money is doled out, far less for the sake of charity, than as the price of a stipulated repose.

It remains, however, to be seen whether Mr Bright, under any circumstances, will be quiet. We almost doubt it. In the course of his stentorial and senatorial career, he has more than once, to borrow a phrase from _Boxiana_, had his head put into chancery; and some of his opponents, Mr Ferrand for example, have fists that smite like sledge-hammers. But Friend John is a glutton in punishment; and though with blackened eyes and battered lips, is nevertheless at his post in time. The best pugilists in England do not know what to make of him. He never will admit that he is beaten, nor does he seem to know when he has enough. It is true that at every round he goes down before some tremendous facer or cross-buttock, or haply performs the part of Antæus in consequence of the Cornish hug. No matter--up he starts, and though rather unsteady on his pins, and generally groggy in his demeanour, he squares away at his antagonist, until night terminates the battle, and the drab flag, still flaunting defiance, is visible beneath the glimpses of the maiden moon.

At present, Mr Bright's senatorial exertions appear to be directed towards the abolition of the Game laws. Early in 1845, and before the remarkable era of conversion which must ever render that year a notorious one in the history of political consistency, he moved for and obtained a select committee of the House to inquire into the operation of these laws. Mr Bright's speech upon that occasion was, in some respects, a sensible one. We have no wish to withhold from him his proper meed of praise; and we shall add, that the subject which he thus virtually undertook to expiscate, was one in every way deserving of the attention of the legislature. Of all the rights of property which are recognised by the English law, that of the proprietor or occupier of the land to the _feræ naturæ_ or game upon it, is the least generally understood, and the worst defined. It is fenced by, and founded upon, statutes which, in the course of time, have undergone considerable modification and revision; and the penalties attached to the infringement of it are, in our candid opinion, unnecessarily harsh and severe. Further, there can be no doubt, that in England the vice of poaching, next to that of habitual drinking, has contributed most largely to fill the country prisons. Instances are constantly occurring of ferocious assault, and even murder, arising from the affrays between gamekeepers and poachers; nor does it appear that the statutory penalties have had the effect of deterring many of the lower orders from their violent and predatory practices. On these points, we think an inquiry, with a view to the settlement of the law on a humane and equitable footing, was highly proper and commendable; nor should we have said a single word in depreciation of the labours of Mr Bright, had he confined himself within proper limits. Such, however, is not the case.

An abridgement of, or rather extracts from, the voluminous evidence which was taken before that select committee, has been published by a certain Richard Griffiths Welford, Esq., barrister at law, and member of the Royal Agricultural Society of England. With this gentleman hitherto, it is our misfortune or our fault that we have had no practical acquaintance; and judging from the tone, humour, and temper of the text remarks which are scattered throughout the volume, and the taste of the foot-notes appended, we do not see any reason to covet exuberant intimacy for the future. The volume is prefaced by a letter from Mr John Bright to the Tenant Farmers of Great Britain, which is of so remarkable a nature that it justly challenges some comment. The following extract is the commencement of that address:-- "I am invited by my friend Mr Welford, the compiler of the abstract of the evidence given before the committee on the Game laws, to write a short address to you on the important question which is treated of in this volume. I feel that an apology is scarcely necessary for the liberty I am taking; the deep interest I have long felt in the subject of the Game laws, my strong conviction of its great importance to you as a class, and the extensive correspondence in reference to it which I have maintained with many of your respected body in almost every county of England and Scotland, seem to entitle me to say a few words to you on this occasion.

"From the perusal of this evidence--and it is but a small portion of that which was offered to the committee--you will perceive that, as capitalists and employers of labour, _you are neither asserting your just rights, nor occupying your proper position_. By long-continued custom, which has now obtained almost the force of law, when you became tenants of a farm, you were not permitted to enjoy the advantages which pertain to it so fully as is the case with the occupiers of almost every other description of property. A farmer becomes the tenant of certain lands, which are to be the basis of his future operations, and the foundation of that degree of prosperity to which he may attain. To secure success, it is needful that capital should be invested, and industry and skill exercised; and in proportion as these are largely employed, in order to develop to the utmost extent the resources of the soil, will be the amount of prosperity that will be secured. The capital, skill, and industry, will depend upon the capacity of the farmer; but the reward for their employment will depend in no small degree upon the free and unfettered possession of the land--of its capabilities, of all that it produces, and of all that is sustained upon its surface. There is a mixture of feudalism and of commercial principles in your mode of taking and occupying land, which is in almost all cases obstructive, and in not a few utterly subversive, of improvement. You take a farm on a yearly tenantry, or on a lease, with an understanding, or a specific agreement, that the game shall be reserved to the owner; that is, you grant to the landlord the right to stock the farm--for which you are to pay him rent for permission to cultivate, and for the full possession of its produce--with pheasants, partridges, hares, and rabbits, to any extent that may suit his caprice. There may be little game when you enter upon the farm; but in general you reserve to yourselves no power to prevent its increase, and it may and often does increase so, as to destroy the possibility of profit in the cultivation of the farm. You plough, and sow, and watch the growing crops with anxiety and hope; you rise early, and eat the bread of carefulness; rent-day comes twice a-year with its inexorable demand; and yet you are doomed too frequently to see the fertility which Providence bestows and your industry would secure, blighted and destroyed _by creatures which would be deemed vermin_, but for the sanction which the law and your customs give to their preservation, and which exist for no advantage to you, and for no good to the public, but solely to afford a few day's amusement in the year to the proprietors of the soil. The seed you sow is eaten by the pheasants; your young growing grain is bitten down by the hares and rabbits; and your ripening crops are trampled and injured by a live stock which yields you no return, and which you cannot kill and take to market. No other class of capitalists are subjected to these disadvantages--no other intelligent and independent class of your countrymen are burdened with such impositions."

We pity the intelligence of the reader who does not behold in these introductory paragraphs the symbol of the cloven foot. The sole object of the volume, for which Mr Bright has the assurance to stand as sponsor, is to sow the seeds of discord between the landowners and the tenants of England, by representing the former to the latter in the light of selfish monopolists, who, for the sake of some little sport or yearly battue, or, it may be, from absolute caprice, make havoc throughout the year, by proxy, of the farmers' property, and increase their stock of game whenever they have an opportunity, at his expense, and sometimes to his actual ruin. Such is the tendency of this book, which is compiled for general circulation; and which, we think, in many respects is calculated to do a deal of harm. As a real treatise or commentary upon the Game laws, it is worthless; as an attack upon the landed gentry, it will doubtless be read in many quarters with extreme complacency. Already, we observe, a portion of the press have made it a text-book for strong political diatribes; and the influence of it will no doubt be brought to bear upon the next general election. As we ourselves happen to entertain what are called very liberal opinions upon this subject of the Game laws, and as we maintain the principle that in this, as in every other matter, the great interests and rights of the community must be consulted, without reference to class distinctions--as we wish to see the property of the rich and the liberties of the poor respected--as we consider the union and cordial co-operation between landlord and tenant the chief guarantee which this country yet possesses against revolution, and the triumph of insolent demagogues--our remarks upon the present subject may not be ill-timed, or unworthy of the regard of those who think with us, that, in spite of recent events, there yet may be something to preserve.

But, first, let us consider who this gentleman is that comes forward, unsolicited, to tender his advice, and to preach agitation to the tenantry of Great Britain. He is one of those persons who rose with the League--one of those unscrupulous and ubiquitous orators who founded and reared their reputation upon an avowed hostility to the agricultural interests of the country. Upon this point there can be no mistake. John Bright, member for Durham, is a child of the corn, or rather the potato revolution, as surely as Anacharsis Clootz was the _enfant trouvé_ of the Reign of Terror. With the abstract merits of that question we have nothing to do at present. It is quite sufficient for us to note the fact, that he, in so far as his opportunities and his talents went, was amongst the most clamorous of the opponents to the protection of British agriculture; and that fact is a fair and legitimate ground for suspicion of his motives, when we find him appearing in the new part of an agricultural champion and agitator. It is not without considerable mistrust that we behold this slippery personage in the garb and character of Triptolemus. He does not act it well. The effects of the billy-roller are still conspicuous upon his gait--he walks ill on hobnails--and is clearly more conversant with devil's-dust and remnants than with tares. Some faint suspicion of this appears at times to haunt even his own complacent imagination. He is not quite sure that the farmers--or, in the elegant phraseology of the League, the hawbucks and chawbacons--whom he used to denounce as a race of beings immeasurably inferior in intellectual capacity to the ricketty victims of the factories, will believe all at once in the cordiality and disinterestedness of their adviser; and therefore he throws out for their edification a specious bit of pleading, which, no doubt, will be read with conflicting feelings by some of those who participated in the late conversion. "You have been taught to consider me, and those with whom I have acted, as your enemies. You will admit that we have never deceived you--that we have never TAMELY SURRENDERED that which we have taught you to rely upon as the basis of your prosperity--that we have not pledged ourselves to a policy you approved, and then abandoned it; and as you have found me persevering in the promotion of measures, which many of you deemed almost fatal to your interests, but which I thought essential to the public good, so you will find me as resolute in the defence of those rights, which your own or your country's interests alike require that you should possess."

All this profession, however, we hope, will fail to persuade the farmers that their late enemy has become their sudden friend; and they will doubtless look with some suspicion upon the apocryphal catalogue of grievances which Mr Bright has raked together, and, with the aid of his associate, promulgated in the present volume. It is not our intention at present to extract or go over the evidence at large. We have read it minutely, and weighed it well. A great part of it is utterly irrelevant, as bearing upon questions of property and contract with which the legislature of no country could interfere, and which even Mr Bright, though not over scrupulous in his ideas of parliamentary appropriation, has disregarded in framing the conclusions of the rejected report which he proposed for the adoption of the committee. That portion, however, we shall not pass over in silence. It is but right that the country at large should see that this volume has been issued, not so much for the purpose of obtaining a revision of the law, as of sowing discord amongst the agriculturists themselves; and it is very remarkable that Mr Bright, throughout the whole of his inflammatory address, _takes no notice whatever of the Game laws_, or their prejudicial effect, or their possible remedy by legislative enactment, but confines himself to denunciation of the landlords as a class antagonistic to the tenantry, and advice to the latter to combine against the game-preserving habits of the gentry.

Now this question between landlord and tenant has nothing to do with the Game laws. The man who purchases an estate, purchases it with every thing upon it. He has, strictly speaking, as much right to every wild animal which is bred or even lodges there--if he can only catch or kill them--as he has to the trees, or the turf, or any other natural produce. The law protects him in this right, in so far, that by complying with certain statutory regulations--one of which relates to revenue, and requires from him a qualification to sport, and another prescribes a period or rotation for shooting--he may, within his own boundaries, take every animal which he meets with, and may also prevent any stranger from interfering with or encroaching upon that privilege. We do not now speak of penalties for which the intruder may be liable. That is a separate question; at present we confine ourselves to the abstract question of right.

But neither game nor natural produce constitute that thing called RENT, without which, since the days of forays have gone by, a landowner cannot live. Accordingly, he proposes to let a certain portion of his domains to a farmer, whose business is to cultivate the soil, and to make it profitable. He does so; and unless a distinct reservation is made to the contrary, the right to take the game upon the farm so let, passes to the tenant, and can be exercised by him irrespective of the wish of the landlord. If, on the contrary, the landlord refuses to part with that right which is primarily vested in his person, and which, of course, he is at full liberty either to reserve or surrender, the proposing tenant must take that circumstance into consideration in his offer of rent for the farm. The game then becomes as much a matter of calculation as the nature of the soil, the necessity of drainage, or the peculiar climate of the farm. The tenant must be guided by the principles of ordinary prudence, and make such a deduction from his offer as he considers will compensate him for the loss which his crop may sustain through the agency of the game. If he neglects to do this, he has no reasonable ground for murmuring--if he does it, he is perfectly safe. Such is the plain simple nature of the case, from which one would think it difficult to extract any clamant grievance, at least between the landlord and the tenant. No doubt the tenantry of the country individually and generally may, if they please, insist in all cases on a complete surrender of the game; and if they do, it is far more than possible that their desire will be universally complied with. But, then, they will have to pay higher rents. The landlord is no gainer in respect of game, nay, he is a direct loser; for the fact of his preservation and reserval of it reduces the amount of rent which he otherwise would receive, and, besides this, he is at much expense in preserving. Game is his hobby which he insists upon retaining: he does so, and he actually pays for it. Therefore, when a tenant states that he has lost so much in a particular year in consequence of the game upon his farm, that statement must be understood with a qualification. His crop may indeed have suffered to a certain extent; but then he has been paid for that deterioration already, the payment being the difference of rent, fixed between him and the landlord for the occupation of a game farm, less than what he would have offered for it had there been no game there, or had the right to kill it been conceded.

"O but," says Mr Bright, or some other of the _soi-disant_ friends of the farmer, "there is an immense competition for land, and the farmers will not make bargains!" And whose fault is that? We recollect certain apothegms rather popular a short while ago, about buying in the cheapest and selling in the dearest market, and so forth, and we have always understood that the real price of an article is determined by the demand for it. If any farm is put up to auction under certain conditions, there is no hardship whatever in exacting the rent from the highest successful competitor. The reservation of the right to kill game is as competent to the proprietor as the fixing the rotation of the crops, or the conditions against scourging the soil. The landlord, when he lets a farm, does not by any means, as Mr Bright and his legal coadjutor appear to suppose, abandon it altogether to the free use of the tenant. He must of necessity make conditions, because he still retains his primary interest in the soil; and if these were not made, the land would in all probability be returned to him after the expiry of the lease, utterly unprofitable and exhausted, it being the clear interest of the tenant to take as much out of it as possible during the currency of his occupation. Now all these conditions are perfectly well known to the competing farmer, and if he is not inclined to assent to them, he need not make an offer for the land. Does Mr Bright mean to assert that the competition for land is so great, that the tenant-farmers are absolutely offering more than the subjects which they lease are worth? If so, the most gullible person on the face of this very gullible earth would not believe him. To aver that any body of men in this country, are wilfully and avowedly carrying on a trade or profession at a certain loss, is to utter an absurdity so gross as to be utterly unworth a refutation. And if Mr Bright does not mean this, we shall thank him to explain how the competition for land is a practical grievance to the farmer.

Nevertheless, we are far from maintaining that the system of strict game preservation is either wise or creditable, and we shall state our arguments to the contrary hereafter. At present let us proceed with Mr Welford.

About one-half, or even more, of this volume, is occupied with evidence to prove that the preservation of game upon an estate is more or less detrimental to the crops. Who denies it? Pheasants, though they may feed a great deal upon wild seeds and insects, are unquestionably fond of corn--so are partridges; and hares and rabbits have too good taste to avoid a field of clover or of turnips. And shall this--says Mr Bright, having recourse to a late rhetoric--shall this be permitted in a Christian or a civilised country? Are there not thousands of poor to whom that grain, wasted upon mere vermin, would be precious? Are our aristocracy so selfish as to prefer the encouragement of brute animals to the lives of their fellow men? &c. &c; to all of which eloquent bursts the pious Mr Welford subjoins his ditto and Amen. For our own part, we can see no reason why hares, and pheasants, and partridges, should not be fed as well as Quakers. While living they are undoubtedly more graceful creatures, when dead they are infinitely more valuable. When removed from this scene of transitory trouble, Mr Bright, except in an Owhyhean market, would fetch a less price than an ordinary rabbit. Our taste may be peculiar, but we would far rather see half-a-dozen pretty leverets at play in a pasture field of an evening, than as many hulking members of the Anti-Corn-Law League performing a ponderous saraband. Vermin indeed! Did Mr Bright ever see a Red-deer? We shrewdly suspect not; and if, peradventure, he were to fall in with the monarch of the wilderness in the rutting season, somewhere about the back of Schehallion or the skirts of the moor of Rannoch, there would be a yell loud enough to startle the cattle on a thousand hills, and a rapid disparition of the drab-coloured integuments into the bosom of a treacherous peat-bog. But a Red-deer, too, will eat corn, and often of a moonlight night his antlers may be seen waving in the crofts of the upland tenant; therefore, according to Mr Bright, he too is vermin, and must be exterminated accordingly.

And this brings us to Mr Welford's grand remedy, which is abundantly apparent from the notes and commentaries interspersed throughout the volume. This gentleman, in the plenitude of his consideration for the well-being of his country, is deliberately of opinion that game should be exterminated altogether! Here is a bloody-minded fellow for you with a vengeance!

"What! all my pretty chickens and their dam! Did you say all?"

What! shall not a single hare, or pheasant, or partridge, or plover, or even a solitary grouse, be spared from the swoop of this destroying kite? Not one. Richard Griffiths Welford, Esquire, Barrister-at-law, has undertaken to rouse the nation from its deadly trance. Yet a few years, and no more shall the crow of the gorcock be heard on the purple heath, or the belling of the deer in the forest, or the call of the landrail in the field. No longer shall we watch at evening the roe gliding from the thicket, or the hare dancing across the lawn. They have committed a crime in a free-tradeland--battened incontinently upon corn and turnips--and, therefore, they must all die! Grain, although our ports are to be opened, has now become a sacred thing, and is henceforward to be dedicated to the use of man alone. Therefore we are not without apprehension that the sparrows must die too, and the thrushes and blackbirds--for they make sad havoc in our dear utilitarian's garden--and the larks, and the rooks, and the pigeons. Voiceless now must be our groves in the green livery of spring. There shall be no more chirping, or twittering, or philandering among the branches--no cooing or amorous dalliance, or pairing on the once happy eve of St Valentine. All the _fauna_ of Britain--all the melodists of the woods--must die! In one vast pie must they be baked, covered in with a monumental crust of triumphant flour, through which their little claws may appear supplicantly peering upwards, as if to implore some mercy for the surviving stragglers of their race. But stragglers there cannot be many. Timber, according to our patriotic Welford, is, "next to game, the farmer's chief enemy!" What miserable idiots our infatuated ancestors must have been! They thought that by planting they were conferring a boon upon their country; and in Scotland in particular they strove most anxiously to redeem the national reproach. But they were utterly wrong: Welford has said it. Timber is a nuisance--a sort of vegetable vermin, we suppose--so down must go Dodona and her oaks; and the pride of the forests be laid for ever low. Nothing in all broad England--and we fear also with us--must hereafter overtop the fields of wheat except the hedgerows! Timber is inimical to the farmer; therefore, free be the winds to blow from the German ocean to the Atlantic, without encountering the resistance of a single forest--no more tossing of the branches or swaying of the stems--or any thing save the steeples, fast falling in an age of reason into decay, the bulk of some monstrous workhouse, as dingy and cheerless as a prison, and the pert myriads of chimney-stalks of the League belching forth, in the face of heaven, their columns of smoke and of pollution! Happy England, when these things shall come to pass, and not a tree or a bush be left as a shelter for the universal vermin! No--not quite universal, for a respite will doubtless be given to the persecuted races of the badger, the hedgehog, the polecat, the weasel, and the stoat. All these are egg-eaters or game-consumers, and so long as they keep to the hedgerows and assist in the work of extermination, they will not only be spared but encouraged. Let them, however, beware. So soon as the last egg of the last English partridge is sucked, and the last of the rabbits turned over in convulsive throes, with the teeth of a fierce little devil inextricably fastened in its jugular--so soon as the rage of hunger drives the present Pariahs of the preserve to the hen-roost--human forbearance is at an end, and their fate also is sealed. The hen-harrier and the sparrowhawk, so long as they quarter the fields, pounce upon the imprudent robin, or strike down the lark while caroling upon the verge of the cloud, will be considered in our new state of society, as sacred animals as the Ibis. But let them, after having fulfilled their mission, deviate from the integrity of their ways, and come down upon a single ginger-pile, peeping his dirty way over the shards of a midden, towards his scrauching and be-draggled mother--and the race will be instantly proscribed. A few years more, and, according to the system of Messrs Bright and Welford, not a single wild animal--could we not also get rid of the insects?--will be found within the confines of Great Britain, except the gulls who live principally upon fish; and possibly, should there be a scarcity of herring, it may be advisable to exterminate them also.

Here is a pretty state of matters! First, there is to be no more sporting. That, of course, in the eyes of Messrs Bright and Welford, who know as much about shooting as they do of trigonometry, is a very minor consideration; but even there we take leave to dissent. Gouty and frail as we are, we have yet a strong natural appetite for the moors, and we shall wrestle to the last for our privilege with the sturdiest broadbrim in Quakerdom. Our boys shall be bred as we were, with their foot upon the heather, in the manliest and most exhilarating of all pastimes; and that because we wish to see them brought up as Christians and gentlemen, not as puzzle-pated sceptics or narrow-minded utilitarian theorists. We desire to see them attain their full development, both of mind and body--to acquire a kindly and a keen relish for nature--to love their sovereign and their country--to despise all chicanery and deceit--and to know and respect the high-minded peasantry and poor of their native land. We have no idea that they shall be confined in their exercise or their sports to the public highway. We do not look upon this earth or island as made solely to produce corn for the supply of Mr Bright and his forced population. We wish that the youth of our country should be taught that God has created other beings besides the master and the mechanic--that the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air have a value in their Maker's eye, and that man has a commisson to use them, but not to exterminate and destroy. "My opinion is," says Mr Bright, speaking with a slight disregard to grammar, of the sporting propensities of the landed gentry--"my opinion is, that there are other pursuits which it will better become them to follow, and which it will be a thousand times better for the country if they turn their attention to them." For Mr Bright's opinion, we have not the smallest shadow of respect. We can well believe that, personally, he has not the slightest inclination to participate in the sports of the field. We cannot for a moment imagine him in connexion with a hunting-field, or toiling over moor or mountain in pursuit of his game, or up to his waist in a roaring river with a twenty-pound salmon on his line, making its direct way for the cataract. In all and each of these situations we are convinced that he would be utterly misplaced. We can conceive him, and no doubt he is, much at home in the superintendence of the gloomy factory--in the centre of a hecatomb of pale human beings, who toil on day and night in that close and stifling atmosphere, as ceaselessly and almost as mechanically as the wheels which drone and whistle and clank above and around them--in the midst of his stores of calico, and cotton, and corduroy--in the midnight councils of the grasping League, or the front of a degraded hustings. But from none of these situations whatever, has he any right to dictate to the gentlemen of Britain what they should do, or what they should leave undone. He has neither an eye for nature, nor a heart to participate in rural amusements. And a very nice place an English manor-house would be under his peculiar superintendence and the operation of the new regime! In the morning we should meet, ladies and gentlemen, in the breakfast-room, all devoutly intent upon the active demolition of the muffins. Tea and coffee there are in abundance--but not good, for the first has the flavour of the hedges, and the second reminds us villanously of Hunt's roasted corn. There are eggs, however, and on the sideboard rest a large round of beef, with a thick margin of rancid yellow fat, and a ham which is literal hog's-lard. There are no fish. The trouting stream has been turned from its natural course to move machinery, and now rolls to the shrinking sea, not in native silver, but in alternate currents of indigo, ochre, or cochineal, according to the hue most in request for the moment at the neighbouring dye-work. In vain you look about for grouse-pie, cold partridge, snipe, or pheasant. You might as well ask for a limb of the ichthyosaurus as for a wing of these perished animals. Deuce a creature is there in the room except bipeds, and they are all of the manufacturing breed. You recollect the days of old, when your entry into the breakfast-room used to be affectionately welcomed by terrier, setter, and spaniel, and you wonder what has become of these ancient inmates of the family. On inquiry you are informed, that--being non-productive animals, and mere consumers of food which ought to be reserved for the use of man alone--they have one and all of them been put to death: and your host points rather complacently to the effigy of old Ponto, who has been stuffed by way of a specimen of an extinct species, and who now glares at you with glassy eyes from beneath the shelter of the mahogany sideboard. Tired of the conversation, which is principally directed towards the working of the new tariff, the last improvement in printed calicoes, and the prices of some kind of stock which appears to fluctuate as unaccountably as the barometer, you rise from table and move towards the window in hopes of a pleasant prospect. You have it. The old park, which used to contain some of the finest trees in Britain--oaks of the Boscobel order, and elms that were the boast of the country--is now as bare as the palm of your hand, and broken up into potato allotments. The shrubbery and flower parterres, with their elegant terrace vases and light wire fences, have disappeared. There is not a bush beyond a few barberries, evidently intended for detestable jam, nor a flower, except some chamomiles, which may be infused into a medicinal beverage, and a dozen great stringy coarse-looking rhubarbs, enough to give you the dyspepsia, if you merely imagine them in a tart. At the bottom of the slope lies the stream whereof we have spoken already, not sinuous or fringed with alders as of yore; but straight as an arrow, and fashioned into the semblance of a canal. It is spanned on the part which is directly in front of the windows, by a bridge on the skew principle, the property of a railway company; and at the moment you are gazing on the landscape in a sort of admiring trance, an enormous train of coal and coke waggons comes rushing by, and a great blast of smoke and steam rolling past the house, obscures for a moment the utilitarian beauty of the scene. That dissipated, you observe on the other side of the canal several staring red brick buildings, with huge chimney-stalks stinking in the fresh, frosty morning air. These are the factories of your host, the source of his enviable wealth; and yonder dirty village which you see about half a mile to the right, with its squab Unitarian lecture room, is the abode of his honest artisans. Nevertheless, you see nobody stirring about. How should you? The whole population is comfortably housed, for the next twelve hours at least, within brick, and assisting the machinery to do its work. No idleness now in England. Had you, indeed, risen about five or six in the morning, when the clatter of a sullen bell roused you from your dreams of Jemima, you might have seen some scores of lanterns meandering like glow-worms along the miry road which leads from the village to the factories, until absorbed within their early jaws. That is the appointed time for the daily emigration, and until all the taskwork is done, no straggling whatever is permitted. The furthest object in view is a parallelogram Bastile on the summit of a hill, once wooded to the top, and well known to the rustics as the place where the fullest nuts and the richest May-flowers might be gathered, but now in turnips, and you are told that the edifice is the Union Workhouse.

Breakfast over, you begin to consider how you shall fill up the dreary vacuum which still yawns between you and dinner. Of course you cannot shoot, unless you are inclined to take a day at the ducks and geese, which would be rather an expensive amusement. You covet a ride, and propose a scamper across the country. Our dear sir, it is as much as your life is worth! What with canals and viaducts, and railways and hedgerows, you could not get over a mile without either being plunged into water, or knocked down by tow ropes, or run into by locomotives, or pitched from embankments, or impaled alive, or slain by a stroke of electricity from some telegraphic conductor! Recollect that we are not now living in the days of steeple-chasing. Then as to horses, are you not aware that our host keeps only two--and fine sleek, sturdy Flanders brutes they are--for the purpose of conveying Mrs Bobbins and her progeny to the meeting-house? There is no earthly occasion for any more expensive stud. The railway station is just a quarter of a mile from the door, and Eclipse himself could never match our new locomotives for speed. But you may have a drive if you please, and welcome. Where shall we go to? There used to be a fine waterfall at an easy distance, with rocks, and turf, and wildflowers, and all that sort of thing; and though the season is a little advanced, we might still make shift under the hazels and the hollies; could we not invite the ladies to accompany us, and extemporise a pic-nic? Our excellent friend! that waterfall exists no longer. It was a mere useless waste; has been blown up with gun-cotton; and the glen below it turned into a reservoir for the supply of a manufacturing town. The hazels are all down, and the hollies pounded into birdlime. And that fine old baronial residence, where there were such exquisite Claudes and Ruysdaels? Oh! that estate was bought by Mr Smalt the eminent dyer, from the trustees of the late Lord--the old mansion has been pulled down, a cottage _ornée_ built in its place, and the pictures were long ago transferred to the National Gallery. And is there nothing at all worth seeing in the county? Oh yes! There is Tweel's new process for making silk out of sow's ears, and Bottomson's clothing mills, where you see raw wool put into one end of the machinery, and issue from the other in the shape of ready-made breeches. Then a Socialist lecture on the sin and consequences of matrimony will be delivered in the market-town at two o'clock precisely, by Miss Lewdlaw--quite a lady, I assure you--whom you will afterwards meet at dinner. Or you may, if you please, attend the meeting of the Society for the Propagation of a Natural Religion, at which the Rev. Mr Scampson will preside; or you may go down to the factories, or any where else you please, except the village, for there is a great deal of typhus fever in it, and we are a little apprehensive for the children! You decline these tempting offers, and resolve to spend the morning in the house. Is there a billiard room? How can you possibly suppose it? Time, sir, is money; and money is not to be made by knocking about ivory balls. But there is the library if you should like to study, and plenty material within it. Delighted at the prospect of passing some congenial though solitary hours, you enter the apartment, and, disregarding the models upon the table, which are intended to elucidate the silk and sow's-ear process, you ransack the book-shelves for some of your ancient favourites. But in vain you will search either for Shakspeare or Scott, Milton or Fielding, Jeremy Taylor or Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine: all these are proscribed antiquities. Instead of these you will find Essays by Hampden, junior, and Ethics by Thistlewood, senior, Paine's Age of Reason, Jeremy Bentham's Treatises, Infanticide Vindicated, by Herod Virginius Cackell, Esq., Member of the Literary Institute of Owenstown, Cobden's Speeches, Wheal's Exposition of the Billy-roller, Grubb's Practical Deist, Welford's Influences of the Game Laws, and much more such profitable reading. What would you not give for a volume by Willison Glass! Disgusted with this literary miscellany, you chuck the Practical Deist into the fire, and walk up-stairs to rejoin the ladies. You find them in the drawing-room hard at work upon cross-stitch and pincushions for the great Bazar which is shortly to be opened under the auspices of the Anti-Christian League, and you feel for a moment like an intruder. But Emily Bobbins, a nice girl, who will have thirty thousand pounds when her venerated sire is conveyed to the Mausoleum of the Bobbinses, and who has at this present moment a very pretty face, trips up and asks you for a contribution to her yearly album. Yearly?--the phrase is an odd one, and you crave explanation. The blooming virgin informs you that she edits an annual volume, popular in certain circles, for the Society for the Abolition of all Criminal Punishment, she being a corresponding Member; and she presents you with last year's compilation. You open the work, and find some literary _bijouterie_ by the disciples of the earnest school, poems on the go-a-head principle, and tales under such captivating titles as the Virtuous Poacher, Theresa, or the Heroine of the Workhouse, and Walter Truck, an Easy Way with the Mechanic. There are also sundry political fragments by the deep-thinkers of the age, from which you discover that Regicide is the simplest cure for "Flunkeyism, Baseness, and Unveracity," and that the soundest philosophers of the world are two gentlemen, rejoicing in the exotic names of Sauerteig and Teufelsdröckh. You, being a believer in the Book of Common Prayer, decline to add your contribution to the Miscellany, and make the best of your way from the house for a stroll upon the public highway. For some hours you meander through the mud, between rows of stiff hedges; not a stage-coach, nor even a buggy is to be seen. You sigh for the old green lanes and shady places which have now disappeared for ever, and you begin to doubt whether, after all, regenerated England is the happiest country of the universe. It appears an absolute desert. At a turn of a road you come in sight of a solitary venerable crow--the sole surviving specimen of his race still extant in the county--whose life is rendered bitter by a system of unceasing persecution. He mistakes you for Mr Richard Griffiths Welford, and, with a caw of terror, takes flight across a Zahara of Swedish turnips. On your way home you meet with three miserable children who are picking the few unwithered leaves from the hedges. You cross-question them, and ascertain that they receive a salary of twopence a-day from the owner of the truck-shop at the factory, in return for their botanical collections. You think of China, with a strong conviction of the propriety of becoming a Mandarin.

At dinner you are seated betwixt Miss Lewdlaw and the Rev. Mr Scampson. The appearance of the lady convinces you that she has excellent reasons for her deep-rooted hatred of matrimony--for what serpent (in his senses) would have tempted that dropsical Eve? The gentleman is a bold, sensual-lipped, pimply individual, attired in a rusty suit of black, the very picture of a brutal Boanerges. He snorts during his repast, clutches with his huge red fingers, whereof the nails are absolute ebony, at every dish within his reach, and is constantly shouting for a dram. The dinner is a plentiful one, but ill-cooked and worse served; and the wines are simply execrable. Very drearily lags the time until the ladies rise to retire, a movement which is greeted by Mr Scampson with a coarse joke and a vulgar chuckle. Then begin the sweets of the evening. Old Bobbins draws your especial attention to his curious old free-trade port, at eighteen shillings the dozen; and very curious, upon practical examination, you will find it. After three glasses, you begin to suspect that you have swallowed a live crab unawares, and you gladly second Mr Scampson in his motion for something hot. The conversation then becomes political, and, to a certain extent, religious. Bobbins, who has a brother in Parliament, is vehement in his support of the Twenty Hours' Labour Bill, and insists upon the necessity of a measure for effectually coercing apprentices. Bugsley, his opposite neighbour, can talk of nothing but stock and yarn. But Scampson, in right of his calling, takes the lion's share of the conversation. He denounces the Church, not yet dis-established--hopes to see the day when every Bishop upon the Bench shall be brought to the block--and stigmatises the Universities as the nests of bigotry and intolerance. With many oaths, he declares his conviction that Robespierre was a sensible fellow--and as he waxes more furious over each successive tumbler, you wisely think that there may be some danger in contradicting so virulent a champion, and steal from the room at the first convenient opportunity. In the drawing-room you find Miss Lewdlaw descanting upon her favourite theories. She is expounding to Emily Bobbins her rights as a socialist and a woman, and illustrating her lecture by some quotations from the works of Aurora Dudevant. The sweet girl, evidently under the magnetic influence of her preceptress, regards you with a humid eye and flushed cheek as you enter; but having no fancy to approach the charmed circle of the Lewdlaw, you keep at the other end of the room, and amuse yourself with an illustrated copy of Jack Sheppard. In a short time, Bobbins, Bugsley, and Scampson, the last partially inebriated, make their appearance; and an animated erotic dialogue ensues between the gentleman in dubious orders, and the disciple of Mary Wolstonecraft. You begin to feel uncomfortable, and as Bugsley is now snoring, and Bobbins attempting to convince his helpmate of the propriety of more brandy and water, you desert the drawing-room, bolt up-stairs, pack your portmanteau, and go to bed with a firm resolution to start next morning by the earliest train; and as soon as possible to ascertain whether Jemima will consent to accompany you to Canada or Australia, or some other uncivilised part of the world where trees grow, waters run, and animals exist as nature has decreed, and where the creed of the socialist and jargon of the factory are fortunately detested or unknown.

Such, gentle reader, is the England which the patriots of the Bright school are desirous to behold; and such it may become if we meekly and basely yield to revolutionary innovations, and conciliate every demagogue by adopting his favourite nostrum. We have certainly been digressing a good deal further than is our wont; but we trust you will not altogether disapprove of our expedition to the new Utopia. We hope that your present, and a great many future Christmasses may be spent more pleasantly; and that, in your day at least, peace may never be effected at the expense of a virtual solitude. Let us now consider what alterations may properly and humanely be made upon the present existing Game laws.

On the whole, we are inclined to agree with the resolutions adopted by the committee. These appear to recognise the principle of a qualified right of property in game, and that this property is now vested in the _occupier_ of the soil. By this rule which may if necessary be declared by enactment, the tenant has at all times the power to secure the game to himself, unless he chooses to part with that right by special bargain. It is of course inconsistent with this qualified right of property, that any person should kill game upon lands which he is not privileged to enter; and the committee are therefore of opinion, that the violation of that right should still continue to be visited with legal penalties. But they think--and in this we most cordially agree with them--that considerable alteration should be made in the present penal code, and that, in particular, cumulative penalties for poaching should be abolished. It is monstrous that such penalties, to which the poorer classes in this country are most peculiarly liable, should be any longer allowed to exist, while the offence which these are intended to punish is in every proper sense a single one. We are inclined to get rid of every difficulty on this head by an immediate discontinuance of the certificates. The amount of revenue drawn from these is really insignificant, and in many cases it must stand in the way of a fair exercise of his privilege by the humbler occupant of the soil. If a poor upland crofter, who rents an acre or two from a humane landlord, and who has laid out part of it in a garden, should chance to see, of a clear frosty night, a hare insinuate herself through the fence, and demolish his winter greens--it is absolute tyranny to maintain, that he may not reach down the old rusty fowling-piece from the chimney, take a steady vizzy at puss, and tumble her over in the very act of her delinquency, without having previously paid over for the use of her gracious Majesty some four pounds odds; or otherwise to be liable in a penalty of twenty pounds, with the pleasant alternative of six months' imprisonment! In such a case as this the man is not sporting; he is merely protecting his own, is fairly entitled to convert his enemy into wholesome soup, and should be allowed to do so with a conscience void of offence towards God or man. We must have no state restrictions or qualifications to a right of property which may be enjoyed by the smallest cotter, and no protective laws to debar him from the exercise of his principle. And therefore it is that we advocate the immediate abolition of the certificate.

What the remaining penalty should be is matter for serious consideration. It appears evident that the common law of redress is not sufficient. Game is at best but a qualified property; for your interest in it ceases the moment that it leaves your land; but still you _have_ an interest, may be a considerable pecuniary loser by its infringement, and therefore you are entitled to demand an adequate protection. But then it is hardly possible, when we consider what human nature with all its powerful instincts is, to look upon poaching in precisely the same light with theft. By no process of mental ratiocination can you make a sheep out of a hare. You did not buy the creature, it is doubtful whether you bred it, and in five minutes more it may be your neighbour's property, and that of its own accord. You cannot even reclaim it, though born in your private hutch. Now this is obviously a very slippery kind of property; and the poor man--who knows these facts quite as well as the rich, and who is moreover cursed with a craving stomach, a large family, and a strong appetite for roast--is by no means to be considered, morally or equitably, in the same light with the ruffian who commits a burglary for the sake of your money, or carries away your sheep from the fold. It ought to be, if it is not, a principle in British law, that the temptation should be considered before adjudging upon the particular offence. The schoolboy--whose natural propensity for fruit has been roused by the sight of some far too tempting pippins, and who, in consequence, has undertaken the hazard of a midnight foray--is, if detected in the act, subjected to no further penalty than a pecuniary mulct or a thrashing, especially if his parents belong to the more respectable classes of society. And yet this is a theft as decided and more inexcusable, than if the nameless progeny of a vagrant should, hunger-urged, filch a turnip or two from a field, and be pounced upon by some heartless farmer, who considers that he is discharging every heavenly and earthly duty if he pays his rent and taxes with unscrupulous punctuality. It is a crying injustice that any trifling piccadillo on the part of the poor or their children, should be treated with greater severity than is used in the case of the rich. This is neither an equitable nor a Christian rule. We have no right to subject the lowest of the human family to a contamination from which we would shrink to expose the highest; and the true sense of justice and of charity, which, after all, we believe to be deeply implanted in the British heart, will, we trust, before long, spare us the continual repetition of class Pariahs of infant years brought forward in small courts of justice for no other apparent reason than to prove, that our laws care more leniently for the rich than they do for the offspring of the poor.

While, therefore, we consider it just that game should be protected otherwise than by the law of trespass, we would not have the penalty made, in isolated cases, a harsh one. A trespass in pursuit of game should, we think, be punished in the first instance by a fine, not so high as to leave the labourer no other alternative than the jail, or so low as to make the payment of it a matter of no importance. Let Giles, who has intromitted with a pheasant, be mulcted in a week's wages, and let him, at the same time, distinctly understand the nature and the end of the career in which he has made the incipient step. Show him that an offence, however venial, becomes materially aggravated by repetition; for it then assumes the character of a daring and wilful defiance of the laws of the realm. For the second of offence mulct him still, but higher, and let the warning be more solemnly repeated. These penalties might be inflicted by a single justice of the peace. But if Giles offends a third time, his case becomes far more serious, and he should be remitted to a higher tribunal. It is now almost clear that he has become a confirmed poacher, and determined breaker of the laws--it is more than likely that money is his object. Leniency has been tried without success, and it is now necessary to show him that the law will not be braved with impunity. Three months' imprisonment, with hard labour, should be inflicted for the purpose of reclaiming him; and if, after emerging from prison, he should again offend, let him forthwith be removed from the country.

Some squeamish people may object to our last proposal as severe. We do not think it so. The original nature of the offence has become entirely changed; for it must be allowed on all hands, that habitual breach of the laws is a very different thing from a casual effraction. It would be cruelty to transport an urchin for the first handkerchief he has stolen; but after his fourth offence, that punishment becomes an actual mercy. Nor should the moral effect produced by the residence of a determined poacher in any neighbourhood be overlooked. A poacher can rarely carry on his illicit trade without assistance: he entices boys by offering them a share in his gains, introduces them to the beer and the gin shop, and thus they are corrupted for life. It is sheer nonsense to say that poaching does not lead to other crimes. It leads in the first instance to idleness, which we know to be the parent of all crime; and it rapidly wears away all finer sense of the distinction between _meum_ and _tuum_. From poacher the transition to smuggler is rapid and easy, and your smuggler is usually a desperado. With all deference to Mr Welford, his conclusion, that poaching should be prevented by the entire extermination of game, is a most pitiable instance of calm imperturbable imbecility. He might just as well say that the only means of preventing theft is the total destruction of property, and the true remedy for murder the annihilation of the human race.

We agree also with the committee, that some distinction must be made between cases of simple poaching, and those which are perpetrated by armed and daring gangs. To these banditti almost every instance of assault and murder connected with poaching is traceable, and the sooner such fellows are shipped off to hunt kangaroos in Australia the better. But we think that such penalties as we have indicated above, would in most cases act as a practical detention from this offence, and would certainly remove all ground for complaint against the unnecessary severity of the law.

With regard to the destruction of crops by game, especially when caused by the preserves of a neighbouring proprietor, the committee seems to have been rather at a loss to deal. And there is certainly a good deal of difficulty in the matter. For on the one hand, the game, while committing the depredation, is clearly not the property of the preserver, and may of course be killed by the party to whose ground it passes: on the other hand, it usually returns to the preserve after all the damage has been done. This seems to be one of the few instances in which the law can afford no remedy. The neighbouring farmer may indeed either shoot in person, or let the right of shooting to another; and in most cases he has the power to do so--for if his own landlord is also a preserver, it is not likely that the damage will be aggravated--and he has taken his farm in the full knowledge of the consequences of game preservation. Still there must always remain an evil, however partial, and this leads us to address a few words to the general body of the game-preservers.

Gentlemen, some of you are not altogether without fault in this matter. You have given a handle to accusations, which your enemies--and they are the enemies also of the true interests of the country--have been eager and zealous in using. You have pushed your privileges too far, and, if you do not take care, you will raise a storm which it may be very difficult to allay. What, in the name of common sense, is the use of this excessive preserving? You are not blamed, nor are you blamable, for reserving the right of sporting in your own properties to yourselves; but why make your game such utterly sacred animals? Why encourage their over-increase to such a degree as must naturally injure yourselves by curtailing your rent; and which, undoubtedly, whatever be his bargain, must irritate the farmer, and lessen that harmony and good-will which ought to exist betwixt you both? Is it for sport you do these things? If so, your definition of sport must be naturally different from ours. The natural instinct of the hunter, which is implanted in the heart of man, is in some respects a noble one. He does not, even in a savage state, pursue his game, like a wild beast of prey, merely for the sake of his appetite--he has a joy in the strong excitement and varied incidents of the chase. The wild Indian and the Norman disciple of St Hubert, alike considered it a science; and so it is even now to us who follow our pastime upon the mountains, and who must learn to be as wary and alert as the creatures which we seek to kill. The mere skill of the marksman has little to do with the real enjoyment of sport. That may be as well exhibited upon a target as upon a living object, and surely there is no pleasure at all in the mere wanton destruction of life. The true sportsman takes delight in the sagacity and steadiness of his dogs--in seeking for the different wild animals each in its peculiar haunt--and his relish is all the keener for the difficulty and uncertainty of his pursuit. Such at least is our idea of sport, and we should know something about it, having carried a gun almost as long as we can remember. But it is possible we may be getting antiquated in our notions. Two months ago we took occasion to make some remarks upon the modern murders on the moors, and we are glad to observe that our humane doctrine has been received with almost general acquiescence. We must now look to the doings at the Manor House, at which, Heaven be praised, we never have assisted; but the bruit thereof has gone abroad, and we believe the tidings to be true.

We have heard of game preserved over many thousands of acres, not waste, but yellow corn-land, with many an intervening belt of noble wood and copse, until the ground seems actually alive with the number of its animal occupants. The large, squat, sleek hares lie couched in every furrow; each thistle-tuft has its lurking rabbit; and ceaseless at evening is the crow of the purple-necked pheasant from the gorse. The crops ripen, and are gathered in, not so plentifully as the richness of the land would warrant, but still strong and heavy. The partridges are now seen running in the stubble-fields, or sunning themselves on some pleasant bank, so secure that they hardly will take the trouble to fly away as you approach, but generally slip through a hedge, and lie down upon the other side. And no wonder; for not only has no gun been fired over the whole extensive domain, though the autumn is now well advanced; but a cordon of gamekeepers extends along the whole skirts of the estate, and neither lurcher nor poacher can manage to effect an entrance. Within ten minutes after they had set foot within the guarded territory, the first would be sprawling upon his back in the agonies of death, and the second on his way to the nearest justice of peace, with two pairs of knuckles uncomfortably lodged within the innermost folds of his neckcloth. The proprietor, a middle-aged gentleman of sedentary habits, does not, in all probability, care much about sporting. If he does, he rents a moor in Scotland, where he amuses himself until well on in October, and then feels less disposed for a tamer and a heavier sport. But in November he expects, after his ancient hospitable fashion, to have a select party at the manor-house, and he is desirous of affording them amusement. They arrive, to the number, perhaps, of a dozen males, some of then persons of an elevated rank, or of high political connexion. There is considerable commotion on the estate. The staff of upper and under keepers assemble with a large train of beaters before the baronial gateway. They bring with them neither pointers nor setters--these old companions of the sportsman are useless in a battue; but there are some retrievers in the leash, and a few well-broken spaniels. It is quite a scene for Landseer--that antique portico, with the group before it, and the gay and sloping uplands illuminated by a clear winter's sun. The guests sally forth, all mirth and spirits, and the whole party proceed to an appointed cover. Then begins the massacre. There is a shouting and rustling of beaters: at every step the gorgeous pheasant whirs from the bush, or the partridge glances slopingly through the trees, or the woodcock wings his way on scared and noiseless pinion. Rabbits by the hundred are scudding distractedly from one pile of brushwood to another. Loud cries of "Mark!" are heard on every side, and at each shout there is the explosion of a fowling-piece. No time now to stop and load. The keeper behind you is always ready with a spare gun. How he manages to cram in the powder and shot so quickly is an absolute matter of marvel; for you let fly at every thing, and have lost all regard to the ordinary calculations of distance. You had better take care of yourself, however, for you are getting into a thicket, and neither Sir Robert, who is on your right, nor the Marquis, who is your left-hand neighbour, are remarkable for extra caution, and the Baronet, in particular, is short-sighted. We don't quite like the appearance of that hare which is doubling back. You had better try to stop her before she reaches that vista in the wood. Bang!--you miss, and, at the same moment, a charge of number five, from the weapon of the Vavasour, takes effect upon the corduroys of your thigh, and, though the wound is but skin-deep, makes you dance an extempore fandango.

And so you go on from cover to cover, for five successive hours, through this rural poultry-yard, slaying, and, what is worse, wounding without slaying, beyond all ordinary calculation. You have had a good day's amusement, have you? Our dear sir, in the estimation of any sensible man or thorough sportsman, you might as well have been amusing yourself with a ride in the heart of Falkirk Tryst, or assisting at one of those German Jagds, where the deer are driven into inclosures, and shot down to the music of lute, harp, cymbal, dulcimer, sackbut, and psaltery. In fact, between ourselves, it is not a thing to boast of, and the amusement is, to say the least of it, an expensive one. For the sake of giving you, and the Marquis, and Sir Robert, and a few more, two or three days' sport, your host has sacrificed a great part of the legitimate rental of his estate--has maintained, from one end of the year to the other, all those personages in fustian and moleskin--and has, moreover, made his tenantry sulky. Do you think the price paid is in any way compensated by the value received? Of course not. You are a man of sense, and therefore, for the future, we trust that you will set your face decidedly against the battue system: shoot yourself, as a gentleman ought to do--or, if you do not care about it, give permission to your own tenantry to do so. Rely upon it, they will not abuse the privilege.

The fact is, there never should be more than two coveys in one field, or half-a-dozen hares in each moderate slip of plantation. That, believe us, with the accession you will derive from your neighbours, is quite sufficient to keep you in exercise during the season, and to supply your table with game. No tenant whatever will object to find food for such a stock. If you want more exciting sport, come north next August, and we shall take you to a moor which is preserved by a single shepherd's herd, where you may kill your twenty brace a-day for a month, and have a chance of a red-deer into the bargain. But, if you will not leave the south, do not, we beseech you, turn yourself into a hen-wife, and become ridiculous as a hatcher of pheasants' eggs. The thing, we are told, has been done by gentlemen of small property, for the purpose of getting up an appearance of game: it would be quite as sane a proceeding to improve the beauty of a prospect by erecting cast-iron trees. Above all things, whatever you do, remember that you are the denizen of a free country, where individual rights, however sacred in themselves, must not be extended to the injury of those around you.

To say the truth, we have observed with great pain, that a far too exclusive spirit has of late manifested itself in certain high places, and among persons whom we regard too much to be wholly indifferent to their conduct. This very summer the public press has been indignant in its denunciation of the Dukes of Atholl and Leeds--the one having, as it is alleged, attempted to shut up a servitude road through Glen Tilt, and the other established a cordon for many miles around the skirts of Ben-na-Mac-Dhui, our highest Scottish mountain. We are not fully acquainted with the particulars; but from what we have heard, it would appear that this wholesale exclusion from a vast tract of territory is intended to secure the solitude of two deer-forests. Now, we are not going to argue the matter upon legal grounds--although, knowing something of law, we have a shrewd suspicion that both noble lords are in utter misconception of their rights, and are usurping a sovereignty which is not to be found in their charters, and which was never claimed or exercised even by the Scottish Kings. But the churlishness of the step is undeniable, and we cannot but hope that it has proceeded far more on thoughtlessness than from intention. The day has been, when any clansman, or even any stranger, might have taken a deer from the forest, tree from the hill, or a salmon from the river, without leave asked or obtained: and though that state of society has long since passed away, we never till now have heard that the free air of the mountains, and their heather ranges, are not open to him who seeks them. Is it indeed come to this, that in bonny Scotland, the tourist, the botanist, or the painter, are to be debarred from visiting the loveliest spots which nature ever planted in the heart of a wilderness, on pretence that they disturb the deer! In a few years we suppose Ben Lomond will be preserved, and the summit of Ben Nevis remain as unvisited by the foot of the traveller as the icy peak of the Jungfrau. Not so, assuredly, would have acted the race of Tullibardine of yore. Royal were their hunting gatherings, and magnificent the driving of the Tinchel; but over all their large territory of Atholl, the stranger might have wandered unquestioned, except to know if he required hospitality. It is not now the gate which is shut, but the moor; and that not against the depredator, but against the peaceful wayfaring man. Nor can we as sportsmen admit even the relevancy of the reasons which have been assigned for this wholesale exclusion. We are convinced, that in each season not above thirty or forty tourists essay the ascent of Ben-na-Mac-Dhui, and of that number, in all probability, not one has either met or startled a red deer. Very few men would venture to strike out a devious path for themselves over the mountains near Loch Aven, which, in fact, constitute the wildest district of the island. The Quaker tragedy of Helvellyn might easily be re-enacted amidst the dreary solitudes of Cairn Gorm, and months elapse before your friends are put in possession of some questionable bones. Nothing but enthusiasm will carry a man through the intricacies of Glen Lui, the property of Lord Fife, to whom it was granted at no very distant period of time out of the forfeited Mar estates, and which is presently rented by the Duke of Leeds; and nothing more absurd can be supposed, than that the entry of a single wanderer into that immense domain, can have the effect of scaring the deer from the limits of so large a range. This is an absurd and an empty excuse, as every deer-stalker must know. A stag is not so easily frightened, nor will he fly the country from terror at the apparition of the Cockney. Depend upon it, the latter will be a good deal the more startled of the two. With open mouth and large gooseberry eyes, he will stand gazing upon the vision of the Antlered Monarch; the sketch-book and pencil-case drop from his tremulous hands, and he stands aghast in apprehension of a charge of horning, against which he has no defence save a cane camp-stool, folded up into the semblance of a yellow walking-stick. Not so the Red-deer. For a few moments he will regard the Doudney-clad wanderer of the wilds, not in fear but in surprise; and then, snuffing the air which conveys to his nostrils an unaccustomed flavour of bergamot and lavender, he will trot away over the shoulder of the hill, move further up the nearest corrie, and in a quarter of an hour will be lying down amidst his hinds in the thick brackens that border the course of the lonely burn.

We could say a great deal more upon this subject; but we hope that expansion is unnecessary. Throughout all Europe the right of passage over waste and uncultivated land, where there never were and never can be inclosures, appears to be universally conceded. What would his Grace of Leeds say, if he were told that the Bernese Alps were shut up, and the liberty of crossing them denied, because some Swiss seigneur had taken it into his head to establish a chamois preserve? The idea of preserving deer in the way now attempted is completely modern, and we hope will be immediately abandoned. It must not, for the sake of our country, be said, that in Scotland, not only the inclosures, but the wilds and the mountains are shut out from the foot of man; and that, where no highway exists, he is debarred from the privilege of the heather. Whatever may be the abstract legal rights of the aristocracy, we protest against the policy and propriety of a system which would leave Ben Cruachan to the eagles, and render Loch Ericht and Loch Aven as inaccessible as those mighty lakes which are said to exist in Central Africa, somewhere about the sources of the Niger.

INDEX TO VOL. LX.

Abd-el-Kader, sketches of, 348.

Adelaide, Queen, anecdote of, 584.

Advice to an intending Serialist, 590.

Affghanistan, sketch of the recent history of, 540.

Agave Americana, the, 266.

Agriculture in Mexico, 266.

Aird, Thomas, a summer day by, 277.

Aire, siege of, 529.

Algeria, 534.

America, effects of the discovery of, 261.

Americans and Aborigines, the, a tale of the short war--Part Last, 45.

Anhalt, Prince of, 529.

Annals and antiquities of London, 673.

Anti-corn-law league, the, 250.

Arabs, sketches of the, 341.

Army, the, 129 --present defects in, and their improvement, 131 --punishments, 133 --rewards, 136 --sale of commissions, 137 --education, 138 --dress, 142.

Arras, siege of, 527.

Ascherson, Herr, 101.

Badger, habits of the, 497.

Barrados, General, defeat of, 274.

Barrett, Miss, poems by, 488.

Bautzen, battle of, 579.

Ben Douda, an Arab chief, 341.

Bethune, capture of, 528.

Blanco, General, 2.

Blidah, town of, 339.

Bocca di Cattaro, the, 431.

Bona, town of, 344.

Boston, town of, 474.

Bouchain, siege of, 537.

Bright, Mr, on the game laws, 757.

British Association, remarks on the, 640.

Burnes, Sir Alexander, murder of, 553.

Bustamente, president of Mexico, 274.

Cabanero, General, 302.

Cabellos' life of Cabrera, 295.

Cabrera, sketch of the career of, 293.

Callao, fort of, 3.

Canada, sketches of, 464.

Carbunculo of Peru, the, 193.

Carlist war, sketches of the, 293.

Carnicer, Colonel, 293, 294.

Carnival in Peru, the, 9.

Castel Fuerte, viceroy of Peru, 7.

Cathedral of Mexico, the, 269.

Cattaro, town of, 431.

Cerro de Parco, silver mines of, 182.

Change on Change, 492.

Charles Russell, the gentleman commoner, Chap. I., 145 --Chap. II., 309.

Chili, war of, with Peru, 2.

Christina of Spain, notices of, 741.

Coco-tree of Peru, the, 189.

Columbus, from Schiller, 333.

Commissions, sale of, in the army, 137.

Condé, Prince of, 704.

Conde's Daughter, the, 496.

Condor, the, 3.

Cookery and Civilisation, 238.

Cordilleras of Peru, the, 181.

Corn-law repeal, on the, 249.

Cortes, armour of, 270 --conquest of Mexico by, 272.

Coursing, passion for, in Peru, 15.

Creoles of Peru, the, 8.

Criminal law, on the, 721.

Dance, the, from Schiller, 480.

Dead Rose, a, by E. B. Barrett, 491.

Death of Zumalacarregui, the, 56.

Dedomenicis, Signor, 103.

Dejazet the actress, 413.

Denmark, sketches of, 645.

Diseases of Peru, the, 179, 181.

Ditmarschers, the, 646.

Dost Mohammed, sketch of the life of, 540.

Douay, siege of, 525.

Drama, the romantic, 161.

Dramatic mysteries in Peru, 187.

Dress of the army, the, 143.

Dudevant, Madame, 423.

Dumas, Alexander, notices of, 417.

Earthquakes in Lima, 13.

Education of the soldier, on the, 138.

Elinor Travis, a tale, Chap. II., 83. --Chapter the Last, 444.

England in the new world, 464.

English Hexameters, letters on, --Letter I., 19 --Letter II., 327 --Letter III., 477.

English Poor laws, operation of the, 555.

Epic poem, on the, 163.

Espartero, General, 301.

Espinoza, Major, anecdote of, 303.

Esteller, death of, 303.

Eugene, Prince, 34, 698.

Fergusson's notes of a professional life, review of, 129.

Fishes of Peru, the, 18.

Flogging in the army, on, 133.

France, state of criminal procedure in, 721.

Free trade, on, 249.

Frieslanders, the, 651.

From Schiller, 333.

Game laws, on the, 754.

Gaming, prevalence of, in Mexico, 267.

Germany, state of criminal law in, 721.

Ghent, capture of, by Marlborough, 23.

Girardin, M., 420.

Gomez, General, 299.

Guano deposits in Peru, the, 17.

Gutzkow's Paris, review of, 411.

Hanging bridges of Peru, the, 182.

Hector in the garden, by Elizabeth B. Barrett, 493.

Heron, habits of the, 397.

Hexameters, English, letters on --Letter I., 19. --Letter II., 327. --Letter III., 477.

Hidalgos, insurrection of, in Mexico, 272.

Highland wild sports, 389.

Historical romance, on the, 162.

Hochelaga, or England in the New World, review of, 464.

Holsche, Lieutenant, anecdotes of, 587, 588.

Holstein, sketches of, 645.

Honour to the Plough, 613.

Horses of Algeria, the, 345 --of Peru, 11.

How I became a Yeoman--Chap. I., 358 --Chap. II., 362 --Chap. III., 366 --Chap. IV., 371. --Chap. V., 374.

How to build a house and live in it--No. II., 349.

Howden, Lord, death of Zumalacarregui by, 56.

Hydropathy, on, 376.

Ignazio, 102.

Imprisonment as a punishment, on, 722.

Indians of Peru, the, 183, 185.

Inns of Peru, the, 181.

Inquisition in Peru, the, 7.

Isabella of Spain, marriage of, 740.

Iturbide, rise and fall of, 273.

Jalapa, city of, 265.

Jamaica, Metcalfe's government of, 662.

Janin, Jules, 421.

Jesuits, expulsion of the, from Peru, 6.

Jews in Algiers, the, 344.

Juan Fernandez, island of, 3.

Juan Santos, insurrection of, 190.

Kabyles, the, 345.

Kennedy's Algeria, review of, 334.

Kingston, town of, 470.

Kleist, General, 579.

Kohl in Denmark and the Marshes, review of, 645.

Kulm, battle of, 581.

Lal, Mohan, Life of Dost Mahommed by, 539.

Last recollections of Napoleon, 110.

Late and present Ministry, the, 249.

Lays and legends of the Thames, 729.

Law, the, and its punishments, 721.

Letters and impressions from Paris, 411.

Letters on English Hexameters --Letter I., 19. --Letter II., 327. --Letter III., 477.

Life at the water cure, review of, 376.

Lille, siege and citadel of, 22.

Lima, town of, 5.

Lodge, A., the Minstrel's Curse, by, 177.

London, annals and antiquities of, 673.

London Bridge, 730.

Louis XIV., character of, 517 --contrasted with William III., 522.

Louis Philippe and the Spanish marriages, 742.

Lowe, Sir Hudson, 122, 126.

Luigia de Medici, 614.

Lutzen, battle of, 578.

Maconochie, Captain, on punishment, 725.

Malplaquet, battle of, 33.

Man's requirements, by Elizabeth B. Barrett, 489.

Marey, General, 340.

Market of Lima, the, 12.

Marlborough's Dispatches, 1708, 1709, 22 --1710, 1711, 517 --1711, 1712, 690 --his death and character, 702.

Marshall's Military Miscellany, review of, 129.

Maude's Spinning, by E. B. Barrett, 490.

Medeah, town of, 340.

Mesmeric mountebanks, 223.

Metcalfe, Lord, government of Jamaica by, 662.

Mexico, its history and people, 261 --valley and city of, 269.

Mildred, a tale--Part I., chapter I., 709 --chapter II., 713 --chapter III., 718.

Military Education in Prussia, 573.

Mine, forest, and cordillera, the, 172.

Minstrel's Curse the, from Uhland, 177.

Mohan Lal in Affghanistan, 539.

Monasteries of Spain, state of, when suppressed, 295.

Mons, siege of, 31.

Montalban, siege of, 305.

Montenegro, visit to the Vladika of, 428.

Montesquieu, Marshal, 525.

Montholon's Napoleon, review of, 110.

Montpensier, Duke of, 751.

Montreal, town of, 470.

More Rogues in Outline--the sick antiquary, 101 --Signor Dedomenicis, 103 --Scaling a coin, 107.

Moreau, death of, 580.

Morella, capture of, by Cabrera, 301.

Morellos, insurrection of, 272.

Moriamur pro Rege Nostro--Chap. I., 194 --Chap. II., 201 --Chap. III., 210 --Chap. IV., 216 --Conclusion, 221.

Morning and other poems, review of, 62.

Mules of Peru, the, 12.

Museum of Mexico, the, 270.

My College Friends--No. IV., Charles Russell, the gentleman commoner --Chap. I., 145 --Chap. II., 309.

Napoleon and Louis XIV., parallel between, 520 --last recollections of, 110.

Negro carnival in Peru, the, 17.

Negroes of Peru, the, 9.

Niagara, Falls of, 471.

Nogueras, General, 297.

North America, features of, 262.

New Scottish Plays and Poems, 62.

New Sentimental Journey, a--At Moulins, 481 --Clermont, 484 --on a stone, 606 --the Philosopher, 608 --a Shandrydan, 611.

Newspapers, on, 629.

Odysseus, from Schiller, 333.

Ogilvy's Highland Minstrelsy, review of, 62.

Old Ignazio, 102.

Opera in Paris, state of the, 415.

Operation of the English Poor-laws, 555.

Orizaba, mountain of, 265.

Palace of Mexico, the, 269.

Pardinas, General, defeat and death of, 303.

Paredes, General, 275.

Paris, letters and impressions from, 411.

Peel, Sir Robert, policy of, 249 --his financial system, 252.

Pellicer, Colonel, cruelties of, 306.

Perote, town of, 265.

Peru, 1 --the mine, forest, and cordillera, 179.

Poaching in the Highlands, 403.

Poems by Elizabeth Barrett Barrett --a woman's shortcomings, 488 --a man's requirements, 489 --Maude's spinning, 490 --a dead rose, 491 --change on change, 492 --a reed, ib. --Hector in the garden, 493.

Poetry--The minstrel's curse, 177 --a summer day, by Thomas Aird, 277 --Columbus, &c., from Schiller, 333 --the Dance, from Schiller, 480 --poems by Miss Barrett, 488 --honour to the plough, 613 --London Bridge, 730 --Song for the million, 733 --Thames Tunnel, 736 --St Magnus', Kirkwall, 753.

Poor-Law, operation of the, 555.

Prussian military memoirs, 572.

Puebla, city of, 268.

Pulque, manufacture of, 266.

Puna of Peru, the, 186.

Punishment, state of, under the English law, 722 --objects of, 724.

Punishments in the army, 134 --of the law, 721.

Quebec, city of, 465.

Quesnoy, capture of, 694.

Quinté, bay of, 470.

Rachel the actress, 413.

Rahden's wanderings of a soldier, review of, 572.

Raven, anecdotes of the, 402.

Recent royal marriages, on 740.

Red deer, habits of the, 408.

Reed, a, by Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, 492.

Reichenbach, count, anecdote of, 577, 584.

Requiera, Padre, 15.

Rewards for the army, on, 136.

Roads of Peru, the, 80.

Robbers of Mexico, the, 267 --of Peru, 14.

Romantic drama, the, 161.

Russell minstry, the, 257.

St John's wild sports of the Highlands, review of, 389.

St John's, town of, 464.

St Juan D'Ulloa, fort of, 265.

St Magnus', Kirkwall, 753.

St Marie's Algeria, review of, 334.

St Venant, capture of, 529.

Salcedo silver mine, the, 184.

San Jose silver mine, 185.

Sand, George, 423.

Santa Anna, rise of, 273.

Santa Cruz, protector of Peru, 2.

Santos, Juan, 190.

Scaling a coin, 107.

Schiller, translations from, 333, 480.

Scorpion eaters among the Arabs, 342.

Scottish plays and poems, 62.

Seal, habits of the, 401.

Segura, destruction of the town of, 304.

Serialist, advice to an intending, 590.

Shark, combat with a, 3.

Short enlistments, advantages of, 132.

Shujah, Shah, sketches of, 541.

Sick antiquary, the, 101.

Signor Dedomenicis, 103.

Silver mines of Mexico, the, 271 --of Peru, 182.

Smith, Hannibal, letter to, 590.

Smith's antiquarian ramble in the streets of London, review of, 673.

Solitary confinement, on, 725.

Song for the million, 733.

South America, features of, 262.

Soyer's cookery, review of, 238.

Spanish marriage, on the, 631-740.

Steffens, Professor, anecdote of, 577.

Storms of Peru, the, 182.

Summer day, a, by Thomas Aird, 277.

Superstitions of Mexico, the, 275.

Surville, defence of Tournay by, 29.

Swan, wild, habits of the, 398.

Thames, Lays and Legends of the, 729 --tunnel, 735.

Things in general, 625.

Tournay, siege of, 28.

Tower of London, the, 732.

Tschudi's Peru, review of, 1, 179.

Tupac Amaru, 191.

Turenne, Marshal, 704.

Uhland, the minstrel's curse by, 177.

United States, sketches of the, 471.

Utrecht, peace of, 693.

Valparaiso, town of, 3.

Vampire bat of Peru, the, 192.

Vandamme, General, 581.

Vera Cruz, town of, 263.

Vigo, General, death of, 304.

Villars, Marshal, 33, 526.

Visit to the Vladika of Montenegro, a, 428.

Von Rahden's wanderings of a soldier, review of, 575.

Water cure, the, 376.

Waterloo, Napoleon on, 123.

Welford's evidence on the game laws, 757.

West Indies, recent history of the, 662.

White's Earl of Gowrie, &c., review of, 62.

Wild Sports and Natural History of the Highlands, 389.

Wild swan, habits of the, 398.

William III., parallel between, and Louis XIV., 522.

Woman's shortcomings, by E. B. Barrett, 488.

Woods of Peru, the, 192.

Yanez, colonel, death of, 268.

Yca, province of, 17.

Yussuf, an Arab leader, 347

Zettinié, city of, 439

Zumalacarregui, death of, 56.

_Edinburgh: Printed by Ballantyne and Hughes, Paul's Work, Canongate._

* * * * *

Transcriber's note:

Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note. Irregularities and inconsistencies in the text have been retained as printed.

Mismatched quotes are not fixed if it's not sufficiently clear where the missing quote should be placed.

The cover for the eBook version of this book was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

Page 727: "that a ower should reside somewhere" ... the transcriber has added the missing "p" in "power".

Page 734: "All the sevants' hall combined," ... the transcriber has added "r" to read "servants'".