PART XVI.

"Have I not in my time heard lions roar? Have I not heard the sea, puft up with wind, Rage like an angry boar chafed with sweat? Have I not heard great ordnance in the field, And Heaven's artillery thunder in the skies? Have I not in the pitched battle heard Loud 'larums, neighing steeds, and trumpets clang?"

SHAKSPEARE.

The insurrection had broken out; there could now be no scepticism on the subject. Some hundreds of armed men were already crowding the grounds in front of the mansion; and from the shouts which rose in every quarter, and still more from the fires which blazed on every hill round the horizon, the numbers of the insurgents must have amounted to thousands. It was evident that we were in a pitfall, and that resistance was only the protraction of a fate which was now inevitable. The shrieks of the females and the despondency of the men, who naturally thought that their last hour was come, were enough to dishearten all resolution. For a few minutes, the only orders which I could give were to bar the doors and close the windows. The multitude, new to hostile enterprises, had till now kept at some distance, warned by their losses in the skirmish with the yeomanry, and probably expecting the arrival of troops. But the sight of our precautions, few and feeble as they were, gave them new courage; and discharges of musketry began to drop their bullets into the midst of our startled assemblage. It is only justice to the national intrepidity to say, that every measure which I proposed for defence was unhesitatingly adopted; and that one of my chief difficulties was to prevent rash sallies, which must have only terminated in loss of life. The short interval now allowed to us was employed in barricading the mansion, which was built almost with the strength of a fortress, and posting every man who could handle a musket or pistol, at the windows. Still I knew that this species of defence could not last long; and my only hope for our lives was, that the firing might bring some of the troops who patrolled the country to our assistance. But the discharges became closer and heavier, and still no sound of succour was to be heard. My situation became more anxious every moment; all looked up to me for their guidance; and though my garrison were brave and obedient, as became the high-spirited sons of Ireland, there seemed the strongest probability that the night would end in a general massacre. Yet there was no faint-heartedness under the roof; our fire was stoutly kept up whenever the assailants came within range; and as I hurried from chamber to chamber to ascertain the condition of our defence and give directions, I found all firm. Still the terrors of the females--the sight of the first women of the province flying for refuge to every corner where they might escape the balls, which now poured into every window; the actual wounds of some, visible by the blood streaming down their splendid dresses; the horror-stricken looks of the groups clinging to each other for hopeless protection; and the actual semblance of death in others fainting on the sofas and floors, and all this under an incessant roar of musketry--made me often wish that I could give way to the gallant impatience of my friends within the mansion, and take the desperate hazard of plunging into the midst of the multitude.

But a new danger awaited us; a succession of shrieks from one of the upper apartments caught my ear, and on rushing to the spot, and forcing my way through a crowd of women half frantic with alarm, I saw some of the outbuildings, immediately connected with the mansion, wrapped in a sheet of fire. The insurgents had at last found out the true way to subdue our resistance; and we obviously had no alternative but to throw ourselves on their mercy, or die with arms in our hands. Yet, to surrender was perhaps only to suffer a more protracted death, degraded by shame; and when I looked round me on the helplessness of the noble and beautiful women around me, and thought of the agony which must be felt by us on seeing them thrown into the power of the assassins who were now roaring with triumph and vengeance, I dismissed all thoughts of submission at once, and determined to take the chances of resistance while any man among us had the power to draw a trigger. In rushing through the mansion, to make its defenders in the front aware of the new misfortune which threatened us, I happened to pass through the ball-room, where the corpse of its noble and brave master was. One figure was standing there, with his back to me, and evidently gazing on the body. All else was solitary. Of all the friends, guests, and domestics, not one had remained. Loud as were the shouts outside, and constant as was the crashing of the musketry, I could hear a groan, which seemed to come from the very heart of that lonely bystander. I sprang towards him; he turned at the sound of my step, and, to my surprise, I saw the face of the man whose share in the insurrection I had so singularly ascertained. I had a loaded musket in my hand, and my first impulse, in the indignation of the moment, was to discharge its contents through his heart. But he looked at me with a countenance of such utter dejection, that I dropped its muzzle to the ground, and demanded "What had brought him there at such a time?" "This!" he exclaimed, pointing to the pallid form on the sofa. "To that man I owed every thing. To his protection, to his generosity, to his nobleness of heart, I owed my education, my hopes, all my prospects in life. I should have died a thousand deaths rather than see a hair of his head touched--and now, there he lies." He sank upon his knees, took the hand of the dead, and wept over it in agony.

But I had no leisure to wait upon his remorse; the volleys were pouring in, and the glare of the burning buildings showed me that the flames were making fearful progress. "This," said I, "is your work. This murder is but the first-fruits of your treason; probably every life in this house is destined to butchery within the hour." He sprang on his feet. "No, no," he cried, "we are not murderers. This is the frenzy of the populace. Regeneration must not begin by massacre."

The thought suddenly struck me that I might make his fears, or his compunctions, at the moment available.

"You are at my mercy," said I. "I might justly put you to death at the instant, as a rebel, in the fact; or I might deliver you up to the law, when your fate would be inevitable. I can make no compromise. But, if you would make such atonement to your own conscience as may be found in undoing a part of the desperate wrong which you have done, go out to those robbers and murderers who are now thirsting for our blood, and put a stop to their atrocities if you can; save the lives of those in the house; or, if you cannot, die in the only attempt which can retrieve your memory."

He looked at me with a lacklustre eye for a moment, and uttered a few wild words, as if his mind was wandering. I sternly repeated my demand, and at length he agreed to try his influence with the multitude. I threw open the door, and sent him out, adding the words--"I shall have my eye upon you. If I find you swerve, I shall fire at you, in preference to any other man in the mob. We shall die together." He went forth, and I heard his recognition by the rebels, in their loud shouts, and their heavier fire against our feeble defences. But, after a few moments, the shouting and the fire ceased together. There was a pause; from its strangeness after the tumult of the last hour, scarcely less startling than the uproar. They appeared to be deliberating on his proposition. But while we remained in this suspense, another change came; loud altercations were heard; and the pause was interrupted by a renewed rush to the assault. We now looked upon all as hopeless, and expected only to perish in the flames, which were rolling in broad sheets over the roof of the mansion. There was no symptom of faint-heartedness among us; but our ammunition was almost exhausted, and every countenance was pale with despair; another half hour, and our fate must be decided. In this extremity, with every sense wound up to its utmost pitch, I thought that I heard the distant trampling of cavalry. It came nearer still. There was evident confusion among the rebels. At length a trumpet sounded the charge, and a squadron of horse rushed into the lawn, sabring and firing among the multitude. The struggle was fierce, but brief; and before we could unbar the doors, and burst out to take a part in the _melee_, all was done; the rebels had fled, the grounds were cleared, and the dragoons were gathering their prisoners.

All was now congratulation; and I received thanks from gallant lips, and from bright eyes, which might have flattered one fonder of flattery. All imputed their safety to the address with which I had employed the feelings of the rebel leader. But for the pause produced by his presence, all must have perished. It had given time for the cavalry to come up; they having been bewildered in crossing the country, and floundering through the wretched by-roads which then formed the disgrace of Ireland. Life is a chapter of accidents; and even their arrival had been a matter of accident. An aide-de-camp of the viceroy had been sent in search of me with despatches: the officer in command at the next town had persuaded him, much against his will, to take as his escort one of the night patroles of horse; and thus were saved a hundred and fifty lives of the first personages of the province. By morning the mansion, and all within it, would probably have been embers.

The aide-de-camp's despatches were sufficiently alarming. The lord-lieutenant had received from England details of the intended insurrection. The privy council had been summoned, and the usual commands issued to keep the troops throughout the country on the alert; but the information was still so imperfect, the skill of the conspirators was so adroitly exerted in keeping their secret, and the outcry of the powerful parliamentary Opposition was so indignant and contemptuous at the remotest hint of popular disaffection, that the Government was virtually paralysed.

But the question was now decided; the scene which I had just witnessed unhappily left no room for doubt, and I determined to set off for the metropolis without delay. I had no sooner expressed my intention, than I was assailed on all hands with advice, and even with entreaties, to postpone my journey until the flight of the rebels was fully ascertained, or at least till daylight gave me a better chance of personal safety. But every moment now seemed to me more precious than the last; and, breaking through a circle of the noble and the fair, I threw myself on my horse, and with the aide-de-camp and a couple of dragoons for my escort, soon left the whole scene of entreaty and terror, sorrow and triumph, behind.

We rode hard through the night, observing frequent signs of the extended insurrection, in fires on the mountains, and the gatherings of peasantry on the roads--sometimes compelled to turn out of our way, by the evidence of their being armed and in military organization; and at others dashing through the groups, and taking them by surprise. A few shots fired at random, or the rage and roar of the crowd as we scattered them right and left in our gallop, were all that belonged to personal adventure; and when the dawn showed us from one of the hills round the capital the quiet city glittering in the first sunshine, all looked so lovely and so tranquil, that it required the desperate recollections of the night to believe in the existence of a vast and powerful combination, prepared to cover the land with burning and blood.

Within a few hours after my arrival, the privy council assembled; my intelligence was received as it deserved; it decided the wavering, and gave increased determination to the bold. Still, our sitting was long and anxious. The peril was now undeniable, but the extent, the object, and the remedy, were alike obscure. It is not, of course, within my purpose to reveal the secrets of councils, in which all is transacted under the deepest bond of confidence; but it may be fairly told, that our deliberations often completely reversed the proverb, that "In the multitude of councillors there is safety," if by safety is meant either promptitude or penetration.

But there was one man among them, who would have distinguished himself in any council upon earth. He was a lawyer, and holding the highest office of his profession. But his ambition was still higher than his office, and his ability was equal to his ambition. Bold by nature, and rendered bolder by the constant success of his career, he would have been a matchless minister in a despotic government. Living under the old regime of France, the laurels of a Richelieu or a Mazarin might have found a formidable competitor in this man of daring and decision. He wanted but their scale of action, to have exhibited all their virtues, and perhaps all their vices.

At the bar, his career had been one of unexampled rapidity. He had scarcely appeared, when he burst through the crowd, and took the stand to which all the dignities of the profession seem the natural inheritance. He had scarcely set his foot on the floor, before he overtopped the bench. But the courts of justice were too narrow for him. It was in Parliament that he found the true atmosphere for his loftiness of flight, and keenness of vision. At that time the study of public speaking had become a fashion, and the genius of the country, singularly excitable, always ardent, and always making its noblest efforts under the spell of public display, exhibited the most brilliant proofs of its title to popularity. But in the very blaze of those triumphs, the Attorney-general showed that there were other weapons of public warfare, not less original and not less triumphant. No orator, and even no rhetorician, he seemed to despise alike the lustre of imagination and the graces of language. But he substituted a force, that often obtained the victory over both. Abrupt, bold, and scornful, his words struck home. He had all the power of plain things. He brought down no lightning from the heaven of invention, he summoned no flame from below; but the torch in his hand burned with withering power, and he wielded it without fear of man. By constitution haughty, his pride actually gave him power in debate. Men, and those able men too, often shrank from the conflict with one whose very look seemed to warn them of their temerity. But to this natural faculty of overthrow he added remarkable knowledge of public life, high legal repute, and the incomparable advantage of his early training in a profession which opens out the recesses of the soul, habitually forces imposture into light, and cross-examines the villain into reluctant veracity. There never was in Parliament a more remorseless or more effectual hand, in stripping off the tinsel of political pretension. His logic was contemptuous, and his contempt was logical. His blows were all straightforward. He wasted no time in the flourish of the sword; he struck with the point. Even to the most powerful of his opponents this assault was formidable. But with the inferior ranks of Opposition, he threw aside the sword and assumed the axe. Obviously regarding them as criminals against common sense and national polity, he treated them as the executioner might treat culprits already bound to the wheel, measuring the place for his blows with the professional eye, and crushing limb after limb at his leisure. The imperfect reports of debating in his day, have deprived parliamentary recollection of the most memorable of those great displays. But their evidence is given in the fact, that with the most numerous, powerful, and able Opposition of Ireland in his front, and the feeblest Ministerial strength behind him, the Attorney-general governed the parliament until the hour when its gates were closed for ever--when its substance was dissipated into thin air, and all but its memories sank into the returnless grave.

In the House of Lords, as chancellor, he instantly became the virtual viceroy. It is true, that a succession of opulent and accomplished noblemen, every two or three years, were transmitted from Whitehall to the Castle, to pillow themselves upon a splendid sinecure, rehearse an annual King's speech, exhibit the acknowledged elegance of noble English life, and, having given the destined number of balls and suppers, await the warrant of a secretary's letter to terminate their political existence. But the chancellor was made of "sterner stuff." His material was not soluble by a blast of ministerial breath. Not even the giant grasp of Pitt would have dared to pluck the sceptre from his hand. If struck, he might have answered the blow as the flint answers, by fire. But the premier had higher reasons for leaving him in the possession of power; he was pure. In all the uproar of public calumny, no voice was ever heard impeaching his integrity; with the ten thousand arrows of party flying round him from every quarter, none ever found a chink in his ministerial mail. He loved power, as all men do who are worthy of it. He disdained wealth, as all men do who are fitted to use it. He scorned the popularity of the day, as all men do who know the essential baseness of its purchase; and aspiring after a name in the annals of his country, like all men to whom it is due--like them, he proudly left the debt to be discharged by posterity.

The chancellor was not without his faults. His scorn was too palpable. He despised too many, and the many too much. His haughtiness converted the perishable and purchasable malice of party, into the "study of revenge, immortal hate." When he struck down an opponent in the fair strife of Parliament, his scorn was like poison in the wound, and the blow was never forgotten but in the grave. But as a statesman, his chief and unconquerable misfortune was the narrowness of his scene of action. He was but the ruler of a province, while his faculties were fitted for the administration of an empire. His errors were the offspring of his position. He was the strong man within four walls; by the very length of his stride striking against them at every step, and bruised by the very energy of his impulse against his hopeless boundaries.

At length a time of desperate trial arose. The Rebellion of 1798 burst out. He had foreseen it. But the men of the Castle, lolling on their couches, would not believe in its possibility. The men of the populace, stirring up the rabble with the point of the dagger, derided him as a libeller of the people; and even the Government of England--too anxiously engaged in watching the movements of the French legions from the heights of Dover, to have time for a glance at disturbers behind the Irish Channel--for a time left him to his fate. But he was equal to the emergency. He had been scoffingly called "the Cassandra of the aristocracy;" but he had neither the fortunes nor the failures of a Cassandra; he had not forfeited his virtues for his gift, and his prophecy was too soon and too terribly realized to be disbelieved. Of such times it is painful to speak, but of the men by whom such times are met, it is dishonourable not to speak with homage. Almost abandoned by authority, assailed almost by a nation, with the ground shaking under his feet, and the whole frame of Government quivering at every roar of the multitude in arms, he stood the shock, and finally restored the country. Language like this has not been the first tribute to the memory of this ardent, vigorous, and unshrinking statesman. But its chief use, and the noblest use of all tributes to the tomb of civil heroism, is, to tell others by what strength of principle, and by what perseverance of purpose, the rescue of nations is alone to be achieved. In the midst of alarm excited by the extent of the revolt, of ignorance from the novelty of the crisis, and of indecision from the dread of responsibility, he stood firm. The original intrepidity of his nature was even strengthened by the perils of the time; and with the whole storm of unpopularity roaring round him, he sternly pursued his course, and combated the surge, until it sank, and the state vessel neared, if it did not yet enter, the harbour.

It is the natural fate of such men, in such times, to be misunderstood, and to be maligned. The libel which cast every stone within its reach at his living name, long continued to heap them on his grave. But all this has passed away, and the manlier portion of his countrymen now appeal to the administration of the "Great Chancellor," in proof of the national capacity for the highest trusts of empire.

Why has not the history of this man, and of his day, been written? Why has not some generous spirit, impelled alike by a sense of justice and a sense of patriotism, adopted this argument for the intellectual opulence and moral energy which may still exist in the Irish mind? Is there no descendant to claim the performance of a duty, which would reflect a lustre on himself from the light which his filial piety planted on the sepulchre? Or why are the recollections of rebels to be taken down from the gibbet, and embalmed in history, while the name of him who smote the rebellion is suffered to moulder away?

I am not writing a panegyric. He had his infirmities; his temper was too excitable, and his measures were too prompt for prudence. But his heart was sound, and his spirit was made for the guidance of a state in the hour of its danger. If a feebler mind had then presided in the public councils, Ireland, within a twelvemonth, would have been a republic; and in every hour since, would have been agonizing under the daggers of rival factions, or paying the fearful price of her frenzy in indissoluble chains.

If this were the single act of his life, it was sufficient for fame. It is enough to inscribe on the mausoleum of any man, that "he rescued his country from a DEMOCRACY!"

The first news of the revolt which reached England, produced a formidable effect on the legislature. Even the sagacity of the premier had been deceived, and his cabinet evidently staggered on the effect of the surprise. Opposition had been equally startled, and were still more perplexed in their decision. Dealing for years in all the high-sounding topics of national wrong and national difficulty, they were astonished at the first actual realization of popular revenge. The Englishman had heard of wars as the child hears of spectres--none had seen them, and the narratives served only to excite the imagination. But the tremendous novelty of revolt was now at their doors. Whether the Irish revolters acted in concert with the undying hostility of France, or with the factions reform of England; the danger in either case assumed a shape of the most appalling magnitude. Opposition, in the very prospect of power, shrank from possession; as the stormers of a fortress might start back when they saw the walls rolling down before them in some sudden convulsion of nature. They had predicted every casualty which could befall a country, ruled by a cabinet inexorably closed against themselves. But when their predictions had changed their character from the fantastic and remote into the substantial and immediate--when the clouds which they so often predicted to be advancing over the prosperity of the land, seemed to have suddenly rushed forward, and condensed and darkened with the full freight of national havoc; they as suddenly flew to shelter in utter inaction, and left the minister to meet the storm. Pitt was soon equal to the crisis. The orders which he dispatched to Ireland were stamped with all the considerate vigour of his matchless ability. I had sent him all the information which could be obtained of the progress and purposes of the revolt, with the suggestions arising from the contingency. His remarks on my communication were brief, but incomparably clear, direct, and decided. Their tenor was, that I should distinguish accurately between the deluded and the deluders--that I should assure the loyal of the unhesitating support of England--and that, in all instances, I should cultivate the national loyalty, reward the generous obedience, and sympathize with all the gallant and generous qualities of a people with whom every thing was to be done, by taking an interest in their feelings. These principles were so entirely my own, that I acted upon them with double zeal, and with complete success. The loyalty of Ireland rapidly exhibited itself in the most willing sacrifices; all ranks of opinion coincided in the necessity of bold and instant action; and from day to day, party, absorbed in the sense of the national exigency, disappeared, and patriotism rose. The leading men of both sides of the House ranged themselves in the ranks of the voluntary corps which came forward to assist in the public defence, and the fine metaphor which had once made the senate thunder with applause--"The serpent's teeth, sown in the ground, sprang up armed men,"--was now amply, but more fortunately, realized. The bitternesses and schisms of public opinion were hidden in the earth, and the harvest was a brave and spontaneous armament of men prepared to undergo all hazards for the sake of their country.

"Happy," says the French wit, "the land which has nothing for history." This happiness has never belonged to Ireland. Her annals are a romance. But the period of which I speak exhibited her senatorial strength with an energy, almost compensating for her popular misfortunes. While Parliament in England languished, parliament in Ireland started into sudden power. It was aroused by the visible presence of the public peril. Ireland was the outpost, while England was the camp; there the skirmish was at its height, while the great English brigade moved up slowly from the rear. The ardour and activity of the national temperament were exercised in perpetual conflict, and every conflict produced some new champion.

The actual construction of the senate house stimulated the national propensity for display. The House of Commons was an immense circular hall, surmounted with a lofty dome. A gallery supported by columns was formed round the base of the dome, with seats for seven hundred persons, but on crowded occasions capable of containing more; the whole highly ornamented, and constituting a rotunda, uniting grandeur with remarkable architectural elegance. Thus every member acted in the sight of a large audience, however thin might be the assemblage below; for the curiosity attached to the debates was so powerful, that the spacious gallery was generally full. But the nature of that audience excited the still stronger temptation to the bold extravagances of the Irish temperament. The chief portion of this auditory were females, and those the most distinguished of Ireland; women of wit, beauty, and title, the leaders of fashion, and often the most vivid and zealous partizans in politics--of all audiences, the most hazardous to the soberness of public deliberation. As if with the express purpose of including every element adverse to the calmness of council, the students of the neighbouring university possessed the privilege of _entree_ to the gallery; and there, with the heated imaginations of youth, and every feeling trained by the theories of Greek and Roman Republicanism, they sat, night after night, watching the ministerial movements of a harassed monarchy.

What must be the condition of a minister, rising before such an audience, to pronounce the grave doctrines of public prudence; to oppose argument to brilliant declamation; to proclaim regulated obedience, in the midst of spirits fantastic as the winds; and to lay restraints, essential to the public peace, on a population proud of their past defiances, and ready to welcome even civil war? I was not conscious of any natural timidity; nor have I ever found occasion to distrust my nerve on any great demand; but I must acknowledge, that when in some of the leading debates of that most absorbing and most perilous period, I rose to take the initiative, the sight of the vast audience to whom I raised my eyes, was one of the severest trials of my philosophy. The members round me excited no alarm; with them I was prepared to grapple; it was a contest of argument; I had facts for their facts, answers for their captiousness, and a fearless tongue for their declamation. But the gallery thus filled was beyond my reach; its passions and prejudices were inaccessible by any logic of mine; and I stood before them, less as in the presence of a casual auditory than of a tribunal, and at that tribunal, less as an advocate than as a culprit on the point of being arraigned.

Another peculiar evil resulted from the admission of this crowd, and of its composition. Every casual collision of debate became personal. The most trivial play of pleasantry was embittered into an insult; the simplest sting of passing controversy was often to be healed only by a rencounter in the field. For the whole was acted on a public stage, with the _elite_ of the nation looking down on the performance. The hundreds of bright eyes glancing down from the gallery, were critics whose contempt was not to be resisted; and no public assembly, since the days of the Polish pospolite, ever settled so many points of debate in the shape of points of honour.

At length Opposition rallied, and resolved to make a general assault upon the Administration. Like their English friends, they had been stunned for a while by the suddenness of the outbreak. But as the Turkish populace, in a conflagration or the plague, no sooner recover from their first fright than they discover the cause in the government, and march to demand the head of the vizier; the popular orators had no sooner found leisure to look round them, than they marshalled their bands, and demanded the dismissal of all antagonist authority. _I_ was first to be torn down. _I_ stood in the gate, and while I held the keys, there was no entrance for expectant ambition. _I_ waved the flag in the breach, and until the banner was swept away, the storm was ineffectual. Yet this turning the whole weight of party vindictiveness on my head, gave me a new courage, the courage of passion, the determination which arises from a sense of injury, and which magnifies with the magnitude of the trial. In other times, I might have abandoned the struggle; but, with the eyes of a nation thus brought upon me, and all the ablest men of the opposite benches making my overthrow the very prize of their victory, I determined "to stand the hazard of the die."

The eventful night came at last; for days before, every organ of public opinion was in the most feverish activity; lampoons, pamphlets, and letters to the leading journals, the whole machinery of the paragraph-world was in full work round me; and even the Administration despaired of my being able to resist the uproar--all but one, and that one the noblest and the most gifted of them all, my friend the chancellor. I had sat long past midnight with him on the eve of the coming struggle; and I received his plaudits for my determination. He talked with all his usual loftiness, but with more than his usual feeling.

"Within the next twenty-four hours," said he, "your fate will be decided. But, in public life, the event is not the dishonour; it is the countenance with which we meet it, that makes all the difference between success and shame. If you fall, you will fall like a man of character. If you triumph, your success will be unalloyed by any baseness of purchase." I told him sincerely, that I saw in the vigour and resolution of his conduct a model for public men. "However the matter may turn out in the debate," said he, rising and taking his leave, "there shall be no humiliation in the conduct of government, even if we should be defeated. Persevere to the last. The world is all chances, and ten to one of them are in favour of the man who is resolved not to be frightened out of any thing. Farewell."

Still, the crisis was a trying one, and my occupation during the day was but little calculated to smooth its anxieties. The intelligence from the county announced the increased extent of the revolt; and the intercepted correspondence gave startling proof of an organization altogether superior to the rude tumults of an angry peasantry. Several sharp encounters had taken place with the soldiery, and in some of them, the troops, scattered in small detachments and unprepared, had suffered losses. Insurrectionary proclamations had been issued, and the revolt was already assuming a military form; camps were collected on the mountains, and the arming of the population was become general. My day was occupied in writing hurried despatches to the magistrates and officers in command of the disturbed districts; until the moment when the debate was expected to begin. On my way to the House, every thing round me conspired to give a gloomy impression to my mind, weary and dark as it was already. Public alarm was at its height and the city, with the usual exaggerations of undefined danger, presented the appearance of a place about to be taken by storm. The streets were crowded with people hurrying in search of news, or gathered in groups retailing what they had obtained, and evidently filled with the most formidable conceptions of the public danger. The armed yeomanry were hurrying to their stations for the night, patrols of cavalry were moving out to scour the environs, and the carriages of the gentry from the adjoining counties were driving to the hotels, crowded with children and domestics; while waggons loaded with the furniture of families resident in the metropolis, were making their way for security into the country. All was confusion, hurry, and consternation. The scene of a great city in alarm is absolutely inconceivable but by those who have been on the spot. It singularly harassed and exhausted me; and at length, for the purpose of escaping the whole sight and sensation together, I turned from the spacious range of streets which led to the House; and made my way along one of the narrow and obscure lanes which, by a libel on the national taste, were still suffered to remain in the vicinity of an edifice worthy of the days of Imperial Rome.

My choice was an unlucky one, for I had scarcely gone a hundred yards, when I found my passage obstructed by a crowd evidently waiting with some sinister purpose. A signal was given, and I was called on to answer. I had no answer to make, but required that I should be suffered to pass on. "A spy, a spy! down with him!" was the exclamation of a dozen voices. A rush was made upon me, and notwithstanding my struggle to break through, I was overwhelmed, grasped by the arms, and hurried into the entrance of a house in utter darkness. I expected only a dagger in my heart, and from the muttered tones and words which escaped my captors, not one of whom could I discern, I seemed evidently about to encounter the fate of the spy which they deemed me. But, convinced that nothing was to be gained by submission, I loudly demanded by what right I was seized, declared myself a member of Parliament, and threatened them with the especial vengeance of the law, for obstructing me in the performance of my duty.

This announcement evidently had its effect, at least in changing the subject of their consultation; and, after another whisper, one of their number stepped up to me, and said that I must follow him. My refusal brought the group again round me, and I was forced down the stairs, and through a succession of airless and ruined vaults, until we reached a massive door. There a signal was given, and was answered from within; but the door continued closed.

My emotions during all this period were agonizing. I might not have felt more than others that fear of death which belongs to human nature; but death, in darkness, without the power of a struggle, or the chance of my fate being ever accounted for; death by the hands of assassins, and in a spot of obscure butchery, was doubly appalling. But an hour before, I had been the first man in the country, and now what was I? an unhappy object of ruffian thirst of blood, destined to die in a charnel, and be tossed among the rubbish of ruffian hands, to moulder unknown. Without condescending to implore, I now strongly attempted to reason with my captors on the atrocity of offering violence to a stranger, and on the certainty that they would gain more by giving me my liberty, than they could possibly do by burying their knives in my bosom. But all was in vain. They made no reply. One conception alone was wanting to the torture of the time; and it came. I heard through the depth of the vaults the sound of a church clock striking "eight." It was the very hour which had been agreed on for commencing the debate of the night. What must be thought of my absence? What answer could be made to any enquiry for my presence? What conceivable escape could my character as a minister have, from the charge of scandalous neglect, or more scandalous pusillanimity; from treachery to my friends, or from an utter insensibility to personal name and official honour in myself? The thought had nearly deprived me of my senses. The perspiration of mental torment ran down my face. I stamped the ground, and would have dashed my forehead against the wall, had not the whole group instantly clung round me. A few moments more of this wretchedness, and I must have died; but the door at length was cautiously opened, and I bounded in.

At a long narrow table, on which were a few lights, and several books and rolls of paper, sat about twenty men, evidently of the lower order, though one or two exhibited a marked superiority to the rest. A case of pistols lay on the table, which had probably been brought out on the signal of my arrival; and in the corners of the room, or rather vault, were several muskets and other weapons piled against the wall. From the obvious disturbance of the meeting, I was clearly an unwelcome guest; and, after a general sweep of the papers off the table, and a whisper which communicated to the chairman the circumstances of my capture, I was asked my name, and "why I had intruded on their meeting?" To the latter question my reply was an indignant demand, "why my liberty had been infringed on?" To the former, I gave my name and office at full length, and in a tone of authority. No announcement could have been more startling. The president actually bounded from his chair; others plucked out knives and pistols; all looked pallid and thunderstruck. With the first minister of the realm in this cavern of conspirators, every life of whom was in peril of the axe; my presence among them was like the dropping of a shell into a powder magazine.

But the dismay soon passed; their native daring returned, and I saw that my fate hung once more on the balance. After a brief consultation, and many a gloomy glance at their prisoner, the president summed up the opinion of the board. "You must be sensible, sir," said he, addressing me; "that in times like the present, every man must be prepared to make sacrifices for his cause. The call of Ireland has summoned us here--that call is irresistible; and whatever may be our feelings, for you, sir, who have been brought into this place wholly without our desire, the interests of a great country, determined to be free, must not be put in competition with the life of any individual, be his rank what it may." He paused, but a general murmur of applause showed the full approval of his grim auditory. "You, sir," he continued, with the solemnity of a judge passing sentence, "are one great obstacle to the possession of our public rights. You are a man of talents and courage, and so much the more dangerous to the patriot cause. You would disdain our folly, if we threw away the chance which fortune has put into our hands;--you must die. If we were in your power, the scaffold would be our portion. You are now in ours, and the question between us is decided." I felt, from his tone, that all remonstrance was useless; and I scorned to supplicate. "Do as you will," I indignantly exclaimed. "I make but one request. It is, that no imputation shall be suffered to rest on my memory; that the manner of my death shall be made known; and that no man shall ever be suffered to believe that I died a coward or a traitor." "It shall be done," slowly pronounced the president. I heard the click of a trigger, and looking up at the sound, saw one of the sitters at this board of terror, without moving from his place, deliberately levelling it at my head. I closed my eyes. In the next instant, I heard a scuffle; the pistol was knocked out of his hand, and a voice hurriedly exclaimed, "Are you all mad? For what purpose is this butchery? Whom are you about to murder? Do you want to bring a curse upon our cause?" All rose in confusion; but the stranger made but one spring to the spot where I stood, and fixing his eyes on me with astonishment, loudly repeated my name. As the light fell on him, I recollected at once, though his hat was deeply drawn over his eyes, and a huge cloak was wrapped round him, palpably for the purpose of concealment, the rebel leader whom I had so strangely met before. He turned to the table. "And is it in this infamous way," he fiercely exclaimed, "that you show your love of liberty? Is it in blood that you are to dip your charter; is it in making every man of common sense despise, and every man of humanity abhor you, that you are to seek for popular good-will? Down with your weapons! The first man who dares to use them, I declare a traitor to his country!" His energy made an impression; and giving me his hand, which, even in that anxious moment, I could perceive to be as cold as stone, he pronounced the words, "Sir, you are free!" But for this they were not prepared; and some exclamations rose, in which they seemed to regard him as false to the cause, and the words--"sold," and "traitor"--were more than once audible. He flamed out at the charge, and passionately demanded proofs. He then touched another string. "Now listen to what I have to tell you, and then call me traitor, if you will. You are in the jaws of ruin. I have but just discovered that Government has obtained knowledge of your meeting; and that within five minutes every man of you will be arrested. I flew to save you; now judge of my honour to the cause. You have only to make your escape, and thank the chance which has rescued your lives." Still my safety was not complete. There were furious spirits among them, who talked of revenge for the blood already shed, and graver spirits who insisted on my being kept as a hostage. But my protector declaimed so powerfully on the folly of exacting terms from me under duress; on the wisdom of appealing to my generosity in case of reverses; and, above all, on the certainty of their falling into the hands of authority, if they wasted their time in quarrelling as to my disposal; that he again brought them to a pause. A loud knocking at the door of one of the distant vaults, and a sound like the breaking down of the wall, gave a sudden success to his argument, and the meeting, snatching up their papers and weapons, glided away as silently as so many shadows.

I naturally attempted to thank my protector, but he put his finger to his lip and pointed to the quarter from which the police were apparently forcing their way into the subterranean. This was clearly a time of peril for himself as well as his associates, and I followed him silently through the windings of this hideous locale. We shortly reached the open air, and I cannot describe the solemn and grateful sense with which I saw the sky above my head, the lights glimmering in the windows, and felt that I was once more in the land of the living. My conductor led me within sight of the door of the House of Commons, and, with a slight pressure of the hand, turned from me, and was lost among the crowd. I rushed in, exhausted, overpowered, sinking with apprehension of the evil which might have been done in my absence, and blushing at the shame which probably awaited me.

But I was fortunately disappointed. By some means, which I could never subsequently ascertain, a rumour of my seizure had reached the House; and the strongest alarm was excited by the dread of my assassination. The commencement of the debate was suspended. Opposition, with the dignified courtesy which distinguished their leaders, even proposed the adjournment of their motion; the messengers of the House were dispatched in all directions to bring some tidings of me; and I had afterwards the satisfaction to find that none imputed my absence to any motive unbecoming my personal and official honour. Thus, when I entered the House, nervous with apprehension, I was received with a general cheer; my colleagues crowded round me with enquiries and congratulations; members crossed from the opposite benches to express their welcome. The galaxy of the living and the lovely in the gallery, which the expectation of the great debate had filled with all the fashionable portion of the capital, chiefly, too, in full dress, as was the custom of the time, glanced down approvingly on me; and, when at last I took my seat, I felt myself flattered by being the centre of one of the most splendid and interesting assemblies in the world.

The House was at length hushed, and Grattan rose. I cannot revert to the memory of that extraordinary man, without a mixture of admiration and melancholy--admiration for his talents, and melancholy for the feeling that such talents should expire with the time, and be buried in the common dust of the sepulchre. As a senatorial orator, he was incontestably the greatest whom I have ever heard. With but little pathos, and with no pleasantry, I never heard any man so universally, perpetually, and powerfully, command the attention of the House. Thee was the remarkable peculiarity in his language, that while the happiest study of others is to conceal their art, his simplicity had the manner of art. It was keen, concentrated, and polished, by nature. His element was grandeur; the plainest conception in his hands, assumed a loftiness and power which elevated the mind of his hearers, as much as it convinced their reason. As it was said of Michael Angelo, that every touch of his chisel was life, and that he struck out features and forms from the marble with the power of a creator, Grattan's mastery of high conceptions was so innate, that he invested every topic with a sudden magnitude, which gave the most casual things a commanding existence to the popular eye. It was thus, that the grievance of a casual impost, the delinquencies of a police, the artifices of an election, or the informalities of a measure of finance, became under his hand historic subjects, immortal themes, splendid features, and recollections of intellectual triumph. If the Pyramids were built to contain the dust of nameless kings and sacrificed cattle, his eloquence erected over materials equally transitory, memorials equally imperishable.

His style has been criticised, and has been called affected and epigrammatic. But, what is style to the true orator? His triumph is effect--what is to him its compound? What is it to the man who has the thunderbolt in his hands, of what various, nay, what earthly--nay, what vaporous, material it may be formed? Its blaze, its rapidity, and its penetration, are its essential value; and smiting, piercing, and consuming, it is the instrument of irresistible power.

But Grattan was an orator by profession, and the only one of his day. The great English speakers adopted oratory simply as the means of their public superiority. Pitt's was the oratory of a ruler of empire; with Fox, oratory was the strong, massive, and yet flexible instrument of a leader of party. But with Grattan it was a faculty, making a portion of the man, scarcely connected with external things, and neither curbed nor guided by the necessities of his political existence. If Grattan had been born among the backwoodsmen, he would have been an orator, and have been persuasive among the men of the hatchet and the rifle. Wherever the tongue of man could have given superiority, or the flow and vigour of conception could have given pleasure, he would have attained eminence and dispensed delight. If he had not found an audience, he would have addressed the torrents and the trees; he would have sent forth his voice to the inaccessible mountains, and have appealed to the inscrutable stars. It is admitted, that in the suffering condition of Ireland, he had a prodigious opportunity; but, among thousands of bold, ardent, and intellectual men, what is his praise who alone rushes to their front, and seizes the opportunity? The English rule over the sister country has been charged sometimes as tyranny, which was a libel; and sometimes as injustice, which was an error; but it had an unhappy quality which embraced the evils of both--it was invidious. The only map of Ireland which lay before the English cabinet of the eighteenth century, was the map of the sixteenth--a chart spotted with the gore of many battles, not the less bloody that they were obscure; and disfigured with huge, discoloured spaces of barbarism. They forgot the lapse of time, and that time had since covered the graves of the past with a living race, and was filling up the swamps of the wilderness with the vigour and the passions of a new and glowing people. They still governed on the guidance of the obsolete map, and continued to administer a civilized nation with the only sceptre fit for barbarism--the sword. By a similar misconception, while they declared the islands one indivisible empire, they governed them on the principle of eternal separation. No Irishman was ever called across the narrow strait between the two countries, to take a share in the offices, or enjoy the honors of England. Irish ambition, thwarted in its own country, might wander for ever, like Virgil's unburied ghosts, on the banks of the Irish Channel, without a hope of passing that political Styx. The sole connexion of the islands was between Whitehall and the Castle--between power and placemen--between cabinets and viceroys. It never descended to the level of the nation. It was a slight and scarcely visible communication, a galvanic wire, significant only at the extremities, instead of a public language and human association--instead of a bond of heart with heart--an amalgamation of people with people. Posterity will scarcely believe that the neglect of unity should have so nearly approached to the study of separation. Even the coin of the two countries was different in impress and in value--the privileges of trade were different--the tenure of property was different--the regulations of the customs (things which penetrate through all ranks) were different--and a whole army of revenue officers were embodied to carry on those commercial hostilities. The shores of the "Sister Islands" presented to each other the view of rival frontiers, and the passage of a fragment of Irish produce was as impracticable as if it had been contraband of war.

It was Grattan who first broke down this barrier, and he thus rendered the mighty service of doubling the strength of the empire; perhaps rendered the still mightier service of averting its separation and its ruin. As the nation had grown strong, it had grown sullen; its disgust was ripening into wrath; and its sense of injury might speedily have sought its relief in national revenge. And yet it is only justice to acknowledge that this evil arose simply from negligence on the part of England; that there was no design of tyranny, none of the capriciousness of superiority, none of the sultan spirit in the treatment of the rayah. But no minister had yet started up in English councils capable of the boldness of throwing open the barrier; none of intellectual stature sufficient to look beyond the old partition wall of the countries; no example of that statesmanlike sagacity which discovers in the present the shape of the future, and pierces the mists, which, to inferior minds, magnify the near into giant size, while they extinguish the distant altogether. But no man can ever write the annals of England, without a growing consciousness that magnanimity has been the instinct of her dominion; that she has been liberal on principle, and honest by nature; that even in the chillest and darkest hour of her sovereignity, this influence has existed unimpaired, and like gravitation on the globe, that it has accompanied and impelled her, day and night alike, through the whole circuit of her proud and powerful career.

This was the glorious period of Grattan's public life. His task, by universal confession, was the noblest that could be enjoined on man, and he sustained it with powers fitted to its nobleness. On the later portion of his history I have no desire to touch. The most hazardous temptation of early eminence is the fondness which it generates for perpetual publicity. The almost preternatural trial of human fortitude is, to see faction with its vulgar and easy triumph seizing the fame, which was once to be won only by the purest and rarest achievements of patriotism. When the banner which had flamed at the head of the nation on their march to Right, and which was consigned to the hand of Grattan as its legitimate bearer, was raised again, in a day threatening the subversion of every throne of Europe; he exhibited a jealousy of his obscure competitors, unworthy of his renown. But he did not join in their procession. He was unstained. If he felt the avarice of ambition, he exhibited no decay of that original dignity of nature, which, in his political nonage, had made him the leader of bearded men, and a model to the maturity of his country's virtue.

On this night he spoke with remarkable power, but in a style wholly distinct from his former appeals to the passions of the House. His accents, usually sharp and high, were now lingering and low; his fiery phraseology was solemn and touching, and even his gesture, habitually wild, distorted, and pantomimical, was subdued and simple. He seemed to labour under an unavowed impression of the share which the declamatory zeal of his party had to lay to its charge in the national peril. But I never saw more expressive evidence of his genius, than on this night of universal consternation. His language, ominous and sorrowful, had the force of an oracle, and was listened to like an oracle. No eye or ear strayed from him for a moment, while he wandered dejectedly among the leading events of the time, throwing a brief and gloomy light over each in passing, as if he carried a funeral lamp in his hand, and was straying among tombs. This was to me a wholly new aspect of his extraordinary faculties. I had regarded rapidity, brilliancy, and boldness of thought, as his inseparable attributes; but his speech was now a magnificent elegy. I had seen him, when he furnished my mind almost with the image of some of those men of might and mystery, sent to denounce the guilt, and heap coals of fire on the heads of nations. He now gave me the image of the prophet, lamenting over the desolation which he had once proclaimed, and deprecating less the crimes than the calamities of the land of his nativity. I never was more struck with the richness and variety of his conceptions, but their sadness was sublime. Again, I desire to guard against the supposition, that I implicitly did homage to either his talents or his political views. From the latter, I often and deeply dissented; in the former I could often perceive the infirmity that belongs even to the highest natural powers He was no "faultless monster." I am content to recollect him as a first-rate human being. He had enemies and may have them still. But all private feelings are hourly more and more extinguished in the burst of praise, still ascending round the spot where his dust is laid. Time does ultimate justice to all, and while it crumbles down the fabricated fame, only clears and separates the solid renown from the common level of things. The foibles of human character pass away. The fluctuations of the human features are forgotten in the fixed majesty of the statue; and the foes of the living man unite in carrying the memorial of the mighty dead to its place in that temple, where posterity comes to refresh its spirit, and elevate its nature, with the worship of genius and virtue.

BETHAM'S ETRURIA CELTICA.

Herodotus has this amusing story of a philological experiment made by the Egyptian king Psammetichus, who may, not inappropriately, be termed the James the First of his dynasty:--

"The Egyptians, before the reign of Psammetichus, considered themselves the oldest of mankind; but, after the reign of Psammetichus, enquiry having been made as to whether that were the case, thenceforth they considered the Phrygians to be their elders, themselves being next in seniority. For Psammetichus, finding no satisfactory solution to his enquiry on this subject, devised the following plan: He took two infant boys, born of humble parents, and committed them to the care of a shepherd, to be educated in this manner--that he should not permit any one to utter a sound in their hearing, but should keep them by themselves in a lonely house, admitting only she-goats at stated times to suckle them, and rendering them the other requisite services himself. So he did so; and Psammetichus directed him, as soon as the infants should cease their inarticulate cries, that he should carefully note what word they should first utter. And so it was, that, after the lapse of two years, both infants, with outstretched hands, running to meet their attendant the shepherd, as he entered one day, cried out, 'becco.' Of which the shepherd at first made no report, but hearing them reiterate the same, as often as he went to visit them, he informed his lord, and, by his commands, brought the boys and exhibited them; whereupon Psammetichus, as soon as he heard them, enquired 'what nation they were who called any thing by the name of _becco_?' to which enquiry he learned for answer, that the Phrygians call _bread_ by that name. So the Egyptians being convinced by that argument, conceded the point, that the Phrygians had existed before them. 'All which,' says the father of history, 'I learned from the priests of Vulcan at Memphis.'"

This story, after exciting the smiles of the learned for about two thousand years, fell, in an evil hour for the peace of mind of modern philologers, into the hands of John Goropius Becan, a man of letters at Antwerp, who, recollecting that _bec_ has a like signification in Dutch, (_bec_ in that language meaning bread, and _becker_, as in our own, a baker,) immediately jumped to the conclusion, that Dutch must have been the language of the Phrygians, and that the Dutch were consequently the most ancient of mankind. This insane proposition he puts forward as the sole foundation of his two great folios, entitled, "_Origines Antwerpianae, sive Cimmeriorum Beceselana_," printed at Antwerp in 1569, in which he derives all the nations of antiquity from the Dutch, and makes all the names of gods, demigods, heroes, and places of the Old World, to have their only proper and characteristic signification in that language. The grave precision with which he lays the first and only foundation-stone of this monstrous superstructure, is sufficiently entertaining. "The Phrygians spoke the Scythic (_i. e._ the High-Dutch) tongue; and the Egyptians allowed the Phrygian language to be the primitive one. For when their king had ascertained that bec was a word of the original language of mankind, and could not understand it, he was informed that, among the Phrygians, it signified bread; whereupon he adjudged that language to be of all others the first in which _bec_ hath that meaning; which _bec_ being, at this day, our word for bread, and _becker_ ("baker") for bread-maker, it stands, consequently, confessed, on this most ancient testimony of Psammetichus, that our language is, of all others, the first and oldest." From so extravagant a commencement, nothing but the most fantastical results could be expected, and the reader will not be surprised to find Goropius making Adam and Eve a Dutchman and a Dutchwoman, as one of the very first corollaries from his fundamental proposition; the Patriarchs follow; then the Gentile gods, goddesses, and heroes; the Titans, the Cyclops, the pigmies, griffins, and

"Gorgons, and hydras, and chimeras dire,"--

nations, tribes, territories, seas, rivers, lakes, mountains, valleys, cities, and villages--all are drawn into this vast vortex of nonsense, set agoing originally by the single syllable _bec_, which, after all, if this story of the priests of Vulcan have any foundation in fact, was, most probably, nothing more than an imitation of the peculiar cry of the goats by which the infants had been suckled. Goropius's book was published at a time when the learned world were in no humour to tolerate such absurdities; and therefore, although exhibiting a considerable amount of learning in its own mad way, and a proportionate and characteristic degree of ingenuity, it called forth one of the severest reproofs that literary presumption has ever brought down, from the pen of Joseph Scaliger, whose condemnation was re-echoed by all the literary men of note of the day. It being part of Goropius's system that the ancient Gauls were Dutch, and the task of showing all the known words of the old Gaulish language to be significant in Dutch, being, consequently, incumbent on him as a first step to his bolder speculations on the unexplained names of men and places, he had, among others, given some ridiculous Dutch equivalents from the word _ambactus_, which, as we are informed by Festus, meant a slave or retainer in the old Gaulish tongue. Scaliger, shortly after, editing Festus, with annotations, and coming to the word in question, took that opportunity to administer to Goropius the following castigation--"I am unable to restrain my laughter," he says, "at what this singularly audacious and impudent person has written against Turnebus on this word. But, as all his books exhibit nothing else than a most impudent confidence in himself, so I reject his opinion on this matter as utterly impertinent and nonsensical. Never have I read greater absurdities; never have I seen, neither heard of greater or more audacious temerity, seeking, as he does, to derive all languages from his own barbarous dialect, so as to make the Hebrew itself inferior to the Dutch; nay, even reprehending Moses for taking the names of the patriarchs from his native Hebrew. Unlucky patriarchs and fathers, that were born Philistines of Palestine, and not Dutchmen of Antwerp!" Abrahan Mylius, another great scholar, though not of so extended a reputation as either of the Scaligers, soon after expressed much the same sentiments. "I am not," he says, "so full of wantonness as to be able to crack his insufferably absurd jokes with Becan, and give the palm of antiquity to the language of Flanders in preference to the Hebrew, making it the parent tongue not only of all other languages, but of the Hebrew itself." Schrevelius, the lexicographer, gave vent to his contempt in verse:--

"Quis tales probet oscitationes! Quis has respectat meras chimeras! Non Judaeus Apella de proseucha, Non qui de Solymis venit perustis, Aut quisquam de grege Tabatariorum Queis phoeni cophinique cura major: Cimmerii denique non puto probabunt Et si prognatos Japhet putantur Gomoroque parente procreati."

Our own Cambden, about the same time commencing his great work on British Antiquities, began by a protestation against being supposed "insaniam Becani insanire." Justus Lipsius alone, of all the learned men of the day, restrained the expression of positive indignation. "We often speak of Becan and his book about our language," he says, writing to Schottius, "and have frequent jokes on the subject. He, as you know, would have it not only to be an elegant and polished tongue, but the primitive one, and mother of all the rest. But we

'Stupuimus omnes tentamina tanta Conatusque novos.'

And, indeed, many of us laugh heartily. What do I? I love the man himself, and I admire his quick, keen, and happy wit; happy, indeed, if he would turn it to some other subject-matter. But these speculations of his, what credit can we give to them, or what advantage expect from them? Whom shall I persuade that our language is thus supremely ancient--thus pregnant with mysterious meanings? That we here, next the Frozen Pole, are the earliest of mankind? that we alone preserve our language unadulterate and free from foreign admixture? Such assertions challenge laughter, not opposition." Goropius did not live to make any reply, dying shortly after in 1572; but his etymological mantle descended on a worthy successor, in the person of his countryman Adrien Von Scrieck, lord of Rodorn, who followed up the subject, on a slightly modified plan, in three-and-twenty books of _Celtic and Belgic Origins_, published at Ypres A.D. 1614. Scrieck adopted as the principle of his investigation this position from the _Cratylus_ of Plato. "All things possess some quality which is the proper reason of their respective names; and those words which express things as they exist, are the true names, whereas those that give a contrary meaning are spurious." Nothing can be truer than this, provided only we knew the existing characteristics of each object, as the original namers had them in view when imposing their nomenclature; but when this clue is wanting, no labyrinth can lead an adventurer into more hopeless error. All articulate sounds necessarily resemble one another, and there is no name, either of a place or of a person, in any articulate language, that may not be constrained to bear some resemblance in sound to some words of any other given language. These, it is true, will seldom make sense, and never be truly appropriate; yet, with a little sleight-of-hand, dropping a letter here and adding one there, substituting a mute for a liquid or a liquid for a mute, and so forth, the ingenious etymologist will sometimes produce an equivalent, sounding not unlike the original, and making some sort of sense not altogether inapplicable to the subject-matter. As, for instance, if any one, impressed with the conviction that our own language is the mother tongue of mankind, were to derive Crotona from "Crow-town," he would produce an equivalent, sounding much the same, and having a meaning which might possibly have been quite applicable to Crotona, though 'tis pretty certain that it was not as "a city of kites and crows" that place originally obtained its designation. So Swift's "All-eggs-under-the-grate" sounds very nearly identical with the name of the Macedonian conqueror, though it by no means follows that the son of Philip either was partial to poached eggs, or named accordingly.

Absurd and ridiculous as these instances may appear, they hardly exceed the folly of some of Becan's and Scrieck's derivations from the Dutch. Thus Goropius makes [Greek: Apollos] _Af-hol-los_, ("off-hole-loose,") _i. e._ "_ex antro libera_," or "I _loose_ (the rays of light) off, or out of, the _hole_ or cavern (of darkness!") and thus Scrieck derives Sequana (the river Seine) from _see gang_, _i. e._ "_via maris_," or the "_gang_-way to the _sea_!" and Cecrops from _sea-crops_, _i. e._ "_a marina gula_," because, we suppose, the Cecropidae came to Greece with their _crops_ full, (or empty, as the case might be,) after their _sea_ voyage from Egypt.

The indignation and contempt of the learned world seem to have spent themselves on Goropius; and Scrieck's preposterous labour appears only to have excited laughter. The most illustrious writers in every department of erudition had just ceased to occupy the stage. Scrieck, coming out with his thousand folios of puerilities among a public familiar with the works of the two Scaligers, of Cassaubon, Lipsius, Cluver, Cambden, and the other great lights of learning that shed such a lustre on the latter end of the sixteenth century, was regarded much as Beau Coates may have been in latter days, presenting himself in the character of Romeo before audiences accustomed to the highest histrionic efforts of the Kembles. And as Coates, not satisfied with convulsing his audience by dying before them in the regular course of the play, would sometimes die over and over again for their entertainment; so Scrieck, not content with torturing all the names of men and places in Chaldea, Phoenicia, Egypt, Greece, Italy, Spain, and Gaul, into Dutch equivalents, through the three-and-twenty books of his first impression, followed up his fantasy, in 1615, by an additional essay, in which whatever was extravagant before, became, if possible, still more transcendently nonsensical. Perhaps no part of the entire work is more characteristic of the vanity and blindness of the writer than his preface to this second part, where he gravely takes his guide, Goropius, to task for founding so large a work as the _Becceselana_ on so small a foundation as the "_bec_" of Psammetichus, and regrets that his predecessor did not confine himself to etymons more consistent with the local and personal characteristics of his several subjects. For his own part the ground he goes upon is this, that the names of men and places among the Chaldeans, Egyptians, Greeks, and Latins, as also among the Scythians, Celts, Etruscans, and Belgae, (which latter, he says, are all Celts,) are properly significant in that Scythic tongue which the Belgae and Dutch to this day preserve; whence it follows, says he, "as an argument superior to all exception, that not only the Chaldaic, Egyptian, Greek, and Latin tongues (he does not mention the Hebrew, which he concedes to be the language of Paradise) are inferior and posterior to the tongue now used by the Belgae and Dutch; but also that the same Belgae and Dutchmen are extracted from a more ancient people, and a higher original, than the said Chaldeans, Egyptians, Greeks, or Romans."

And that this may appear by sufficient proofs, he proceeds to show that the chief names of men and places in each of these counties are rightly significant in Dutch, and not in their respective proper languages: as, for example--

"ADAM--_Scythice Ad-ham_, sive _Haid-am_, ens conjunctivum, 'a united entity.' The Chaldeans," says he, "interpreted Adam to mean 'red,' for what reason I cannot see. It doth not appear a name of sufficient dignity for the first and most perfect and absolute of men. 'Tis much more to the purpose that he should have got the name of an united entity, from the first institution of marriage by his Creator.

"EVA--_i. e. heve_, significat _praegnans_ vel _elevata_, ab _elevatione_ ventris; than which nothing could be said more _in rem_.

"NOE--_N'hohe_, that is, _altus_, _celsus_; as Noah was at the head of time after the deluge. The Chaldeans interpret it _cessatio_, _quies_; but Noah," says he, "had neither _rest_ nor _quiet_ during the deluge.

"MOSES--_mos-es_, that is, the 'mud of the waters;' being, when an infant, exposed and raised out of the mud and slime of the river Nile. The Chaldeans interpret his name 'raised,' simply according to the mere circumstance of his being taken up; but the Celtic (_i. e._ the Dutch) signification denotes the whole fact.

"DAVID--_D'af-heid_, that is to say, 'lowness,' 'humility.' For David was not only of a low stature, but, above all, low and humble in his mind, as appears from 1 Kings," &c. &c.

After Teutonising the Hebrew in this manner, he next proceeds to the Egyptian.

"AEGYPTOS--_haeg-up-t'hos_, that is 'sylvae supra altitudines,' 'the woody heights above.' (How this is exactly applicable he does not inform us.)

"NILUS--_N'hil-ho_, that is, the 'high descent,' to wit, of waters; for the Nile descends from the Mountains of the Moon, which are very high.

"SEBENUTICUM--(a town of the Delta,) _Seben-vuyticum_, that is, 'the _seven_-fold _outcome_;' for the Nile is seven-fold, and hath seven mouths or outlets.

"PHAROS--_Phaer-ho_, signifying _adnavigatio alti_, or the navigation towards the high places; for Pharos is an island with a lofty tower," &c. &c.

Then he takes his course into Greece and Latium, but it would be idle to follow him through a hundredth part of these vagaries. In not a single instance does he pay the least attention to what the Greeks and Romans themselves thought or taught on these subjects, except, indeed, in the solitary case of the Peloponnesus, which he admits _may_ possibly have had its name from Pelops, though he thinks it more likely that it expresses the more appropriate Scythic phrase _Pfel-op-on-es_--"Campus superior ad aquas," or the _fell_ or plain _up_, _on_, or _above_ the water.

Coming in the course of his peregrinations to Etruria, and being equally successful in making all the ancient names of men and places there significant in Dutch, he boldly attempts the interpretation of the Eugubian tablets. These singular remains of the extinct language of Etruria, had already exercised the skill of some of the best scholars of the 16th century, but none of them had succeeded in bending this new bow of Ulysses. To the insane all things are easy. Scrieck made no more of the task than did Ulysses--

"When the wary hero wise, His hand now familiar with the bow, Poising it and examining--at once; As when in harp and song adept, a bard Unlabouring strains the chord to a new lyre, The twisted entrails of a sheep below With fingers nice inserting, and above-- With such facility Ulysses bent His own huge bow, and with his right hand play'd The nerve, which in its quick vibration sung Clear as a swallow's voice."

With equal confidence Scrieck addresses himself to decipher the tablets of Gubbio. "That the Dutch was the language of Etruria," he says, "appears not only from these unquestionably Celtic (_i. e._ Dutch) names of the most ancient places in Italy, but also by that extraordinary monument of antiquity, the Etruscan inscription, which, Gruter writes me, was found some years back at Eugubio (Gubbio) in Etruria, on eight brazen tablets: the first written in inverted Greek letters, and the rest in Latin characters." These, upon examination, he pronounces to be clearly Dutch, and as a specimen adds some sentences of the sixth table, beginning--SERVERENT: PEMIMUMS: SERVERENT: DEITU: ETAIS EUO: PRIMATER, &c.; and containing, according to his account, near the end the following passage: SERBA MARTIA EPUSTOTE SERFIA SERFIR MARTIA TENSA SERFIR SARFER MARTIA FUTUTO. Of which he gives the following version, premising that the 's' in his copy has an additional stroke, which makes it sound ST. STERVE MAR TIE EVVERSTOTE STERFTE STERVER MAER TIER DUERSAFT STERTE STERVER MAR TIER VUT-VUTE; _i. e._ "Let him only die the death who is an extern; let them only die the death who are externs; let them only die the death who are outer externs;" being, as he says, a deprecation merely of the evils of mortality, and a prayer for their infliction on strangers, as Horace says--

Hinc bellum lacrymosum, hinc miseram famem Pestemque a populo et principe Caesare, in Persas atque Britannos, Vestra motus aget prece."

Having rendered this and the incantation for the cure of sprains, given in Cato, "De Re Rustica," into the old Dutch, of which we have had so many specimens, he closes this summary of his labours with the declaration, that whoever, after these proofs, will assert that the Etruscan language was other than the Dutch, cannot be considered otherwise than as _non compos mentis_.

We had little expectation, when laughing at these vagaries of Scrieck and Becan, many years ago, that it would yet be our lot to see the same follies revived in our own time, and among ourselves. But follies are like fashions, which, having once prevailed in the metropolis, usually run the round of the provinces. And so this fantastic trick of interpreting the names of antiquity by modern equivalents, spreading from the schools of Antwerp and Ypres, still shows itself occasionally in the outskirts of the republic of letters, and has here lately had a new Avatar, fully as absurd as any of its prior exhibitions, among those Jupiters Stators of every exploded folly of the Continent--the English writers on the antiquities of Ireland.

This new Irish Becceselana is entitled "Etruria-Celtica. Etruscan Literature and Antiquities investigated, or the language of that ancient and illustrious people compared and identified with the Iberno-Celtic, and both shown to be Phoenician, by Sir William Betham, Ulster King-at-Arms, Vice-President of the Royal Dublin Society, F.S.A., M.R.I.A., &c. &c."[6] This title exhibits a design in no respect different from that of Goropius and Scrieck, except in the substitution of the Iberno-Celtic, by the Irish writer, for the Belgico-Celtic equivalents of the Dutch. If there were sufficient reason to suppose that the vice-president of the Royal Dublin Society was acquainted with the Greek and Latin writers who concur in establishing the non-identity of these nations, we would say that he exhibits as culpable a contempt for their authority as his Batavian precursors; but Sir William Betham appears scarcely to have read on the subject at all; and what was wilful presumption on their part, may be the innocence of mere want of knowledge on his; for both Scrieck and Becan were perfectly aware that, in identifying so many nations of antiquity with their own, they were flying in the face of all authority; but Betham Hibernicizes all the nations from Taprobana to Thule, apparently unconscious of any recorded reason against their universal identity.

That the Etruscans spoke Irish, he concludes just as Goropius concluded that the Phrygians spoke Dutch, from the coincidence of a single word having, as he alleges, the same sound and meaning in each; and as a single passage from Herodotus was the sole foundation for the vast inverted pyramid of nonsense piled up by Goropius on that individual point, (and kept from toppling over only by sheer force of impudence,) so the single well-known passage from Suetonius, ascertaining the Etruscan _Aesar_ to be a designation of the Deity, (_Aesar_ being also, as it is said, Irish for the same,) gives the only ground on which Betham rests his extravagant assertion, that the Eugubian inscriptions contain an account of the discovery of Ireland by the Etruscan navigators, and with a pretended version of which, through the medium of Irish, as he alleges, he has filled the whole first volume of his book.

"In reading in Suetonius the life of Augustus," he says, "I found that _Aesar in the Etruscan tongue_ signified _God_. The import in Irish being the same, it struck me forcibly that this might not be accidental, but that the Etruscan language might be essentially Celtic, and therefore capable of interpretation by the Irish. On examination, the conjecture proved well-founded. The results of the investigation, consequent on the discovery of this clue, will be found in the following pages."

It is true the Etruscan _Aesar_ is said to have a like meaning with an alleged Irish word, coined and spelled by Vallancy _aosfhear_; but it has also an identical meaning with the Indian _eswara_, and the Egyptian _osiris_, and the Islandic _aesae_, which makes _aesar_ in the plural; and it would be just as reasonable to infer, that therefore the Etruscans spoke the Hindostanee, or the Coptic, or the Islandic language, as that they spoke Irish.

All the nations of Christendom give God the name Christ; but he would be justly deemed insane who would argue, that therefore English is the proper medium of interpretation for a Russian ukase.

Common sense, without any further learning, might have told Sir William Betham, that till he stood on some surer ground than the coincidence of a single word, even supposing that word a genuine one, it would be the excess of folly to venture on such an application of a modern language; and further learning (if he had possessed it) would have confirmed the suggestion of common sense. With a moderate amount of learning, he would have known that, besides the names of known deities--_Kupra_, _Nyrtia_, _Mantus_, _Aukelos_, _Camillus_, corresponding to the heathen Juno, Fortuna, Pluto, Aurora, Mercury--there are also several other Etruscan words of which we know the meanings, such as _faland_, the heavens; _andras_, the north wind; _lucumo_, a king; _drouna_, a kingdom or principality; _damnos_, a horse; _capra_, a goat; _agalletor_, a youth; _verse_, fire; _ites_, the ides of a month; _hister_, a stage-player; _subulo_, a trumpeter; _italos_, a bull; _arimoi_, monkeys, _antar_, an eagle; _arakos_, a lark; _gnis_, a crane; _capys_, a falcon; _gapos_, a chariot; _burros_, a bowl; _atarin_, a wine-cruet; _nanos_, a wanderer; _mantissa_, an increase or addition; _turseis_, a space enclosed with walls; and several others, not one of which bears the remotest resemblance to any Irish or Celtic word of equivalent meaning.

Further learning, also, would have taught him the hopelessness of reconciling the Etruscan with any of the languages of Europe known as spoken languages immediately before the Christian era--Dionysius of Halicarnassus having expressly declared, that neither in language nor in customs were the Etruscans of his time similar to any other known nation; and Dionysius was well acquainted with both Celts and Phoenicians.

Besides, the Phoenician equivalents for most of the Etruscan words in the list we have just enumerated, are known, and ought to have been known to any writer undertaking an investigation of either language; and if known to Sir William Betham, ought at once to have deterred him from this preposterous attempt. Thus the Phoenician equivalent of aesar is _aloni_ or _alonim_; of kypra, _astarte_; of nyrtia, _god_; of mantus, _much_; of faland, _samen_; of andras, _carbon_; of lucumo _malaho_; of damnos, _rackabe_, &c. &c., in none of which, except _samen_, does there appear the least similarity, either with the Etruscan or the Irish words of like signification. So also in respect of a number of Gaulish words, the meanings of which have come down to us, and of which no one pretending competency to such enquiries ought to be ignorant, but of the existence of which this vice-president of a leading literary society of Ireland seems utterly unconscious. But fools will rush in where angels fear to tread, and Ignoramus walks with confidence where Eruditus fears to take a step. Reader, do not think that Christopher is too severe! For what but condemnation and contempt can any rational mind conceive, for a writer so incapable of dealing with even the rudiments of his subject, and yet so presumptuous in the temerity of his ignorance, as to declare that "till _now_ not a scintilla of light has appeared on the subject of Etruscan antiquities?" We can pardon learned trifling, but when a man wholly unlearned, on a subject of the greatest interest to the learned world, presumes to dogmatize in this manner, we strip him in an instant, and have no mercy in exposing to both learned and simple the nakedness of his pretensions.

Still facts are facts, and if the fact be, that the tablets of Gubbio are written in the Irish language, and that Sir William Betham, though as ignorant of his subject as was the boy who invented the safety-valve of the steam-engine, has happened in any way, by skill or by chance, learnedly or unadvisedly, modestly or arrogantly, on the truth, let him, together with the condemnation, have the credit he deserves, if not as a Columbus of a new world of letters, at least as a Madoc or a Thorfinn.

The first line of the first table, reading from right to left, he reads thus: we say _he_, for the very form of some of the letters are still doubtful:--PUNE: CARNE: SPETURIE: ATUERIE: ABIECATI: NAROCLUM. Is this Irish? If so, we would expect some six Irish words to be adduced, of corresponding sound, and having a grammatical dependence and sensible meaning among themselves. Instead of this, Betham professes to find the equivalent expressions in _twenty-four_ Irish, or _quasi_-Irish words, which have neither grammatical relation to one another, nor any coherent meaning in their united senses--viz. _Pune car na is be tur i e at i i er i e a bi e ca ta na ra ac lu am_; i. e. "Phoenician to Carne (the turn) it is night voyage in it likewise in knowledge great in it the being away how it is the going with water on the ocean." And this he tells us, being interpreted, signifies, "O Phoenicians, this is a statement of the night voyage to Carne, (the turn,[7]) and of the manner of going such great seawise over by the waters of the ocean!"

The only glimmering of any thing like meaning in this string of unconnected verbiage, appears in the detached phrases "night voyage," "the being away," and "going with water on the ocean." But the syllable _be_, which he renders "night," (on what authority Night and Chaos only know,) is not found in the original; and "being away," depends for its meaning wholly on the certainty that _e_ means "away" in that collocation of words, and not "it," as in the phrases immediately preceding; and there is no suggestion of any reason why it should not here have the same signification as above, or why it should not mean "of" or "from," in both of which senses the writer employs it in the subsequent sentences. "Going with water on the ocean," owes its only pretension to meaning, however absurd, to "going" and "ocean;" but there is no _am_ for "ocean" in the original, and the "ra" which he interprets "going" and "moving," is wholly a coinage of his own brain.

The same may be observed throughout the endless rigmarole of "moon," "stars," "steering," "ocean," "night," "day," "knowledge," "science," and "O Phoenician!" that succeed one another in monotonous repetition for the next 200 pages. Wherever there appears the least symptom of connected meaning or applicable language, (admitting the preposterous supposition that these tables are the records of early voyagers to Ireland,) we invariably find that either the original is departed from, or that the alleged equivalents belong to no known language of articulately-speaking men.

Taking the same liberty of arbitrary division, any one of moderate ingenuity might turn these inscriptions into a jargon just as readable in any language of the world. Divide any sentence of any articulate language into syllables, and apply these alleged Irish words used by Betham as their equivalents, and you may make it an equally authentic record of a voyage to Ireland or to the moon, or a recipe for the toothache, or any thing else you please, with the greatest facility.

Curious reader, tell us, pray, which is the more readable jargon--this,

"God to knowledge agreeable it is quick and water lonely star indeed the to it in day the month this in knowledge with is from the sea very solitary being water with the water the voyage always the coast steering being throughout moon to knowledge in water God indeed the water to danger this the in knowledge with with altogether to night the man from current the being water the to cause knowledge steering water by Ocean the north."

Or this?

"Was which security day and night inform Phoenician from night means in defence by skill throughout the means being also water means voyage from the means as indeed the voyage in it far away people water of the sea in gentle inward it is by wisdom day and night in it is gentle indeed the sea by science which by night in the will be to will be means of the star it far away Phoenician far away steering night and day and then to whence is in the ocean night sailing happy."

We believe most of our readers will incline to say that the one is about as insane gibberish as the other; or if they discover a distinction, will give the palm of a less degree of incoherency to the first. The first is our own; the second is Betham's--being his literal version of the first three sentences of the second table, and in no material respect different from his version of any other three sentences of any of the rest of the series.[8] The other is our own literal version, on the same principle, of a sentence of his own, marked in italics in the following extracts, in which he defends his arbitrary division of the Etruscan text into monosyllables, though the punctuation of the original plainly divides it into many-syllabled words.

In defence of this unjustifiable corruption of the original, he alleges these excuses--

"In the chapter on language, p. 52, &c., are a few remarks upon the division of the words in these inscriptions, in answer to the criticism of the learned Committee of the Royal Irish Academy, who charged me with 'having made alterations' in the text unwarrantably, 'especially in the division of the words.' The charge of having made any alterations is altogether groundless, I might add unjust, uncourteous, and uncalled for. I have not altered a single letter. I have added a letter here and there in the Irish, when, by the genius and character of that language, it was justifiable, as (when) the addition of a word was required to make sense, and when in the original the sound did not require it to be expressed; but this is fully answered and explained in the chapter alluded to. The 'division of the words' requires a few brief observations here.

"It will be observed that in the first five tables there are divisions marked with colons, thus (:); in the sixth and seventh tables, and in the Perugian inscription, the divisions are marked with a single period (.)

"In the first few lines of the first table it appears, that, although these divisions generally include perfect syllables and words, yet the same words are differently divided. In the fifth line, the second division contains JUBEBATREBUMPERACNE, and in the fourth division PERAKNE stands alone. The first division of this fifth line contains SAKRE:--in the next line it is worded thus, UNUERIETUSAKRE; this same variation of division pervades all the tables, and indeed almost every line of each table; the same may be observed on the Perugian inscription. The hypercriticism of the learned committee was therefore altogether erroneous, and their observations not borne out.[9] These marks are evidently not intended as divisions of words, but of sentences, and they are not sufficiently precise even in that respect to constitute an accurate guide. The syllabic division, however, is governed by rule, is precise, uniform, fixed, and consistent, and may therefore be acted on with some degree of certainty. Instances occur where three or four consonants follow each other, and vowels are altogether omitted; but a little exertion of sagacity, after some practice and study, enables us to judge of this and supply the omissions."--(Vol. i. p. 369.)

And again, in the passage referred to at p. 53,

"Whether I was arbitrary and unauthorized in the division of the words, will now appear by comparison, as the columns stand in juxtaposition, and all are able to judge. _The division is merely made into syllables, which, so far from being an unnatural or arbitrary division, is the only division which could be reasonably and fairly adopted._"

That is to say _Hibernice_, or rather _Bethamice_--_The ti fis e on is mear i lu om a do an do is i la bil se i i ac is o bar bro om be en go_ (we only "add a letter here and there in the Irish, when, by the genius and character of that language, it is justifiable, as when the addition of a vowel is required to make sense, and when in the original the sound does not require it to be explained,") _an en na tur al ur ar bi tre re ti fis i en is the an lu ti fis si an i i ac co al do be re as a ra be lu an do fa i ar lu a taob tuait_.

But _are_ these singular-looking syllables Irish? They certainly are neither sense nor grammar; but we take them all _as_ they appear, with their alleged meanings in English, from that copious store of ungrammatical nonsense called Irish, collected in those pretended versions of the tables of Gubbio; and the reader has already seen what a characteristic jargon they make when rendered by their English equivalents.

His fatuity and presumption appear almost incredible. Knowing but a single Etruscan word, and that a word of two syllables, and finding it, as he alleges, identical with an Irish word also of two syllables, he concludes that the Etruscan and Irish languages are the same, and both _monosyllabic_. Had he known all that men of ordinary learning know upon the subject, he would have known that of the remaining two or three-and-thirty ascertained Etruscan words, some are of two--some of three--some of four syllables--but not one of them all a monosyllable. Yet thus ignorant even of the commonest rudiments of learning on his subject, he takes it upon him to talk of men of real learning in the following strain--

"That the language of Etruria has hitherto defied the laborious investigations of the learned of Italy, is now on all hands admitted. Passavi, Gori, and Landsi, have done something to obscure, but little if any thing towards its elucidation. Nor have the German investigators been more successful. Dr Lepsius has lately given an account of the Eugubian tables, and Dr Grotefend a work on the rudiments of the Umbrian tongue, and still the subject is as much at sea as ever. These profound scholars have made no real impression--no light has been elicited--the meaning of a single word has not been obtained with any certainty. The solemn, learned, trifling, and absurd speculations of Passavi, Gori, and Landsi, and their followers, are now treated with deserved contempt. This is an age of critical enquiry; commonplace twaddling, inane generalities, and magniloquent essays and lectures, even if delivered by professors who enjoy the happiness of presiding over Roman colleges, only excite derision. Learned savans must now put forth reasonable and intelligible postulates, and opinions must be supported by facts, or they will only expose themselves to deserved contempt."--(Vol. i. p. 22.)

Swift himself could not hit the style of the literary quack more perfectly. "I have considered the gross abuse of astrology in this kingdom," says Mr Bickerstaff, "and upon debating the matter with myself, I could not possibly lay the fault upon the art, but upon those gross impostors who have set up to be the artists. I know several learned men have contended that the whole is a cheat; and whoever hath not bent his studies that way, may be excused for thinking so, when he sees in how wretched a manner that noble art is treated by a few mean illiterate traders between us and the stars; who import a yearly stock of nonsense, lies, folly, and impertinence, which they offer to the world as genuine from the planets, though they descend from no greater height than their own brains. I intend in a short time to publish a large and rational defence of this art; and therefore shall say no more in its justification at present." But here, indeed, the comparison falls; for while Bickerstaff postpones his proofs for another occasion, Betham proudly displays his "reasonable and intelligible postulate," in his one fact, that the dissyllable _Aesar_ is God alike in Etruscan and in Irish. Whence he concludes that Etruscan and Irish are, therefore, the same language, and that both consist of words of one syllable each. "The discovery," he says, (Vol. ii. page 286,) "if 'wonderful' was also accidental, at least the first clue to it was the solitary fact mentioned in Vol. i. p. 33, of the passage in Suetonius' life of Augustus, where _Aesar_ is said to mean, in the Etruscan language, _God_. So small a spark lighted up the large fire." We are irresistibly reminded of Goropius and his "consequenter fatendum est antiquissima hoc Psammetichi sententia."

The translation of the Eugubian tablets, however, is but a part of the huge mass of absurdity piled up on these two little syllables, _Ae-sar_. There is a second volume, in which all the topographical extravagances of Scrieck are played over again, _praeconis ad fastidium_, with this difference, however, that where Scrieck, in his interpretations, gave genuine Dutch, Betham, in his, gives spurious Irish; for he owns himself, that "if a sentence be formed of these obsolete monosyllabic words, the translation in English making good sense, the original, if read to the best Irish scholar of the day, will appear to him an unknown tongue." He begins first with Sanconiathan, which he makes the name of the book, not of the author, _sean cead na than_; i. e. "the old beginning of time," when the gods spoke in monosyllabic Irish, and called chaos _cead-os_, "the first intelligence." And here it must be admitted that the Dutchmen are outdone: for neither Becan nor Scrieck went above Adam. But Betham is as much at home on Olympus as either of the Dutchmen was in Paradise; and with the aid of his monosyllabic glossary, transmutes the celestials into Teagues and Oonahs as fast as his sybilline syllables can be put together. Apollo is _ab ol lo_, "the mighty lord of the waters;" (this is hardly as good as the _off-hole-loose_ of Goropius:) Minerva is _Ma na er ar fad_, (a terribly long recipe for a name this,) or "the good, the illustrious guiding wisdom." Hermes is _tur-mees_, "the messenger of the wind." Hercules is _er cu lais_, "the illustrious hero of light;" but he seems to be sadly at sea for a derivation for Neptune, whom he is obliged to turn into a Tyrrhenian catamaran or Irish currow, _Naebh tonn_ "the ship of the sea." Jupiter (not being an Etruscan, he is not here allowed the _pas_) _iudh bit er_, "day being great," (which is a very dark saying.) Bacchus, _bac aois_, "the sustainer of time." Mercury, _meer cu re_, "the swift champion of the moon"--really this is mere lunacy. Any one might, with equal plausibility, derive the whole Pantheon from the English, as Apollo, "aye follow," because day always follows night, and Apollo always followed pretty girls, Daphne in particular; Mercury, "mirk hurry," because Mercury hurried the ghosts down through the mirk or murky darkness to the Styx. Hercules, "he reckless," because Hercules was a great daredevil. Venus, "vain is," because a pretty woman is too often vain of her good looks. Juno, "do now," because people were in the habit of making their requests to her, or, perhaps, because Jupiter used to say so when he wished her to give him a kiss. Jupiter, "stupider," because it was natural that Juno should say he was the stupider of the two when they happened to differ; or, _pace viri tanti_, "you pitier," when poor mortals raised their sorrowful supplications to him.

Scrieck's foundation for all his extravagant topographical derivations was the passage from Plato. Doctor Johnson seems to have been the Plato of these new etymological rambles; but we apprehend that neither the Greek nor the British philosopher would be much edified by the philological excursions of the Irish disciple. Nothing can be more perfect in its way than the dogmatic audacity with which he assigns his derivations; it is in the true vein of Bickerstaff, and a model to quacks of all classes.

"Before we commence our examination into the geographical divisions of Italy, it is necessary to say something of that portion of the world with which the Phoenicians became for the first time acquainted after their settlements in Syria, since called _Europe_, by an accident as trivial and unlikely to happen as that by which the new world in modern times was denominated _America_, that is, by a blunder of the Greeks. The fable of the rape of Europa, &c., was a mere national allegory, of which the following is the substance. When the Phoenician Homeritae had discovered the Mediterranean, &c.--they sent out vessels to explore it, _e_, 'it,' _u_, 'from,' _ro_, 'to go,' _ba_, 'was,' _tur_, 'voyage,' _ros_, 'to the promontory;' I. E. _it was to go from a voyage to (Italy) the promontory_. This was, as usual of the Greeks taking sound for sense, made into a _lady_ and a _bull_--_tur ros_ must be the Greek [Greek: tauros], and the Lady Europa was to ride the bull to Crete, which was one of the first discoveries and settlements. Of the _children or results_, Minos has been already explained as _mian_, 'minis,' nos, 'knowledge,' or 'the art of mining.' Rhadamanthus means nothing more than that the voyage to Crete was the first great result of discoveries on this sea: _ra_, 'going,' _ad_, 'illustrious,' _am_, 'great sea,' _en_, 'the,' _tus_, 'first.' So simple is the explanation!--(Vol. ii. p. 244.)

Scrieck had some remains of the modesty of learning, which prevent his becoming a complete master of this style. The Peloponnesus might perhaps possibly, he owned, have been derived from Pelops; though 'twas more likely it should come from _Pfel-op-on_, &c. &c. That admission was ill-judged: he ought to have denied that Pelops ever existed, and laughed at the blundering Greeks. But the Irishman is a deacon of his craft, and settles the point like an adept. "PELOPONNESUS, according to the Greek, the island of Pelops. But the name was of much greater antiquity than Greek civilization, and was, like all others, given by the Phoenicians. Pelops was an imaginary character. The meaning of the word is, _the promontory of the courteous people_; _bel_, 'mouth,' _aiobh_, 'courteous,' _a_, 'the', _neas_, 'promontory,' _aos_, 'community, race of people.'"--(Vol. ii. p. 254.)

When Partridge, the almanack-maker, had overlived the fatal day assigned for his decease by Bickerstaff, he intimated as much to his friends and the public, assuring them that he was not only then alive, but had also been alive on the very 29th March, when the wise astrologer had foretold he should die.

"Now," says Bickerstaff in reply, "I will plainly prove him to be dead out of his own almanack for this year, and from the very passage which he produceth to make us think him alive. He says, _he is not only now alive, but was alive upon that very 29th of March which I foretold he should die on_; by this he declares his opinion that a man may be alive now who was not alive a twelvemonth ago. And, indeed, there lies the sophistry of his argument. He dares not assert that he was alive ever since that 29th of March, but that he _is now alive, and was so on_ that day. I grant the latter, for he did not die till night, as appears by the printed account of his death in a _letter to a lord_, and whether he since revived I leave the world to judge. This, indeed, is perfect cavilling; and I am ashamed to dwell any longer upon it."

So if the shade of Pelops will receive our counsel, we advise him to abstain from vouching any of the family of Tantalus to testify to the reality of his existence; for he has to deal with a Bickerstaff, by whom it has been demonstrated that Tantalus is nothing but _tain tal ais_, "water receding backwards," or an incarnation of those fabulous times when water was supposed to run uphill, whence it appears that the whole race of Atreus is a mere series of non-existences. It is true we take this latter derivation from an extract from another of this judicious discriminator's labours, in the Transactions of his Academy, where, among other etymological curiosities, we have that very Irish youth Narcissus, a beautiful youth, who, seeing his _own_ image reflected in a stream, became enamoured of it, thinking it the _nymph_ of the water. _Naobh ceas as_--"the sight of a nymph in the stream." Pythia, "the priestess of Apollo at Delphos. She _always_ delivered her oracles in hexameter verses, and with musical intonation--_pitead_, 'music,' from whence the name."[10]

Sanconiathon, no longer the "old beginning of time," appears here as _san_, "holy," _con_, "understanding, sense, or wise men," _niod_, "real," _tain_, "of the country"--"the sacred writer or wise recorder of the events of his country." Pygmalion, _big_, "little," _mallein_, "mule," the _little mule_, or person of a low stature and obstinate disposition. This is hardly so good as Swift's _pigmy lion_. "Pasiphae, _ba sabas_, 'the propensity, fancy, or disposition of a cow;' and, _proh pudor_, Venus, 'herself,' _bhean_, 'the woman,' _aois_, 'of the community'--pronounced _vanus_, 'the ---- or _woman of the town_!'"

But to come back to the geographical division of the Levant, to which _e u ro ba tur ros_, which the foolish Greeks construed Europa and the bull, were only preparatory, we have another luculent example of the Bickerstaff style in _Gallia Togata_.

"It is said the country was called _Togata_ by the Romans, because they wore the Roman _toga_ or gown. This seems doubtful, for when a country became a Roman province, the same reason for the name should apply universally. We must therefore seek a more satisfactory derivation for that name, to be found in the circumstances of the country. Gallia Togata consists of the plain country intersected by the Po and its numerous tributaries, and surrounded on the north and west by the high ranges of the Alps, on the south by the Apennines, and on the east by the Adriatic. It is, perhaps, the best-watered and most fertile country in Europe, enjoying a delightful climate. Its name, Togata, says all this, _togh_, _it is the chosen land_, or, to use an English idiom, _choice land, the most desirable and delightful country_; _togh a ta_, literally _the chosen spot or place_. Sound, not sense, suggested the Roman derivation."

Of course Gallia _Braccata_ and Gallia _Comata_ had just as little to say to "long hair," or a "pair of breeches," as Gallia Togata to a Roman gown, and the application of _gens togata_ to the inhabitants of Italy, as contradistinguished from the transalpine and other provinces, was altogether a blunder of the ancients.

"We have before us again CRETA, the largest of the Greek islands. Its name is derived by some from the Curetes, who are said to have been its first inhabitants; by others from the nymph Crete, daughter of Hesperus; and by others from Creos, a son of Jupiter, and the nymph Idoea. These are private conceits. It derives its name from its shape and external appearance from the sea; and had such an island been discovered in modern times by English navigators, it would have been called _the ridge_ island, the precise meaning of its name in Celtic _creit a_, "the ridge," putting the article last, in conformity to idiom."

CYTHERA, "one of the Ionian Islands. Like all the other names for which the Greeks had no known origin, they derived it from an individual called _Cytherus_. It is subject to _heavy showers_, from which the name _cith_, showers, _er_, great, _a_, the,--that is, _the island of heavy showers_."

ZACYNTHUS.--"A small island to the south of Cephalonia, (_ce fal ia_; _i. e._ the fruitful plains country.) The Greeks say the island was named from a companion of Hercules, who, dying from the bite of a serpent, was buried there. It was so called, because a strong current is there first felt by the mariner coming from the east, _za cing thus_, current, strong, first."

We really find some difficulty in believing that it is not Swift's _Essay on the Antiquity of the English Language_ that we have before us.

"My present attempt is to assert the antiquity of our English tongue, which, as I shall undertake to prove by invincible arguments, hath varied very little for these two thousand six hundred and thirty-four years past. And my proof shall be drawn from etymology, wherein I shall use my matter much better than Skinner, Verstegan, Cambden, and many other superficial pretenders have done; for I will put no force upon the words, nor desire any more favour than to allow for the usual accidents of composition, or the avoiding a _cacophonia_.

"I will begin with the Grecians, among whom the most ancient are the Greek leaders on both sides at the siege of Troy. For it is plain, from Homer, that the Trojans spoke Greek, as well as the Grecians. Of these latter _Achilles_ was the most valiant. This hero was of a restless, unquiet nature, and therefore, as Guy of Warwick was called a _Kill-care_, and another terrible man a _Kill-Devil_, so this general was called a _Kill-Ease_, or destroyer of ease, and at length by corruption _Achilles_.

"Hector, on the other side, was the bravest among the Trojans. He had destroyed so many of the Greeks by _hacking_ and _tearing_ them, that his soldiers, when they saw him fighting, would cry out, 'Now the enemy will be _hackt_--now he will be _tore_.' At last, by putting both words together, the appellation was given to their leader under the name of _Hack-tore_, and, for the more commodious sounding, _Hector_.

"The next I shall mention is _Andromache_, the famous wife of Hector. Her father was a Scottish gentleman of a noble family still subsisting in that ancient kingdom; but being a foreigner in Troy, to which city he led some of his countrymen in the defence of Priam, as _Dictys Cretensis_ learnedly observes, Hector fell in love with his daughter, and the father's name was _Andrew Mackay_. The young lady was called by the same name, only a little softened to the Greek accent."

And now, and as no Irish antiquary can be well supposed to write a complete book without giving his own theory of the round towers of that country, we come to the chapter on these singular structures, in which, of course, all former enquirers are proved to have been egregiously wrong, and a new theory established on incontrovertible evidence; viz. that the round towers were monuments erected over different incarnations of the god Buddho. As usual, there is the alleged mistake of sound for sense to account for the reason why their common appellation of _clogteach_, or "bell house," should not truly express their use.

"I shall remark upon a _vulgar error_ which has had great currency among Irish antiquarians, who have asserted that they were called _clogteach_, 'steeples, belfries.' Bells are of comparatively recent introduction into Ireland, and _clock_, from which the word has evidently been derived, still more modern. The blunder has arisen from ignorance of the language. I have a memorandum in an Irish MS., that they were called by the people _leactaidh_, that is, _monuments of the dead_, the sound of which has been mistaken by those who but imperfectly knew the language. Many writers have been mistaken by this."

The memorandum in the Irish MS. looks very like Bickerstaff's _Letter to a Lord_. We could wager our crutch against the baton of the Ulster king, that the memorandum is in his own or his scribe's handwriting, and the language in which it is imagined, a variety of that new dialect in which Mr Silk Buckingham declares that his Irish friends converse with the Phoenician aborigines of Mount Atlas. But the proof of the pudding is the eating of it, and it seems that under one of the towers they have found Buddho himself, body and bones, which puts the matter beyond controversy; for if Buddho be buried under the tower, the tower itself must needs be Buddho's monument. At p. 210, (Vol. ii.,) we have a representation of the Indian divinity (how comes it that Buddho is not made an Etruscan?) lying buried in the basement of the tower at a place called Ardmore. There seems to be no question that a skeleton was got in the bottom of this tower, and another in another; and the discoverers of the fact deserve credit for their addition to the slight stock of knowledge that the Irish antiquarians seem to possess of those which are perhaps the most singular monuments in their country; but that the bones are those of a Buddho! really this exceeds our largest estimate of human fatuity.

But for the communications announcing these discoveries, the two volumes would be altogether destitute of a single fact, or even useful hint, bearing on the diversified subjects which their prodigiously ignorant and audacious author has presumed to handle. How far the fact of these skeletons being found in such a situation, may affect the rational investigation of the question, we do not pretend to judge. We would merely observe, that human interments are found under most ecclesiastical foundations, and that their occurrence under the "turres ecclesiasticae" of Cambrensis, seems at present no more wonderful than their occurrence in the vaults of an ordinary church.

But we really were surprised, after our long familiarity with "the holy illustrious guiding one of the sea"--"the mighty lord of the waters"--"the swift champion of the moon," and the other moonstruck pseudo deities of the Eugubian tables, to find the chief place and honour in the island of their own discovery and adoption taken from them, and bestowed on the Indian Buddho. The "swift champion of the moon" seems to have been sensible of the affront, and to have made his indignation perceptible in the suggestion of an argument that can hardly have descended from any but the lunar sphere; viz. that because the Buddhists of the east raise monumental dagobas over the relics of their deity, and the Irish round towers, as is alleged, (by a nameless interpolation in a nameless Irish MS.,) have been called by a name arguing monumental purposes, that therefore the Irish towers are dagobas, and any bones that may be found in or about their foundations are relics of Buddho. The dagobas of Ceylon and India are buildings of a totally different character from these towers; they do strongly resemble the pyramidal structures of Yucatan, but bear not the remotest likeness to any round tower either in Ireland or elsewhere. Such facts might furnish grounds for arguing an identity between Buddho and Quaccalcoatle, (and such an identity appears by no means improbable;) but thence to attempt the deduction of any argument applicable to the round towers in Ireland or Great Britain, only shows the illogical constitution of the arguer's mind.

We have given the book and the subject more space than we intended, and certainly much more than the former, by itself, is worth; but the subject is one that, whether magnified into an undue importance by having been repeatedly treated by men of note and learning or not, does, in the present state of European literature, stand high among the loftiest marks aimed at by human intellect; and any one singling himself from the crowd of lookers-on, and addressing himself to hit it, makes himself, for the moment, the observed of the whole learned world, and by his success or his failure acquires honour, or brings down reproach upon his country. We cannot permit British literature to be scandalized by the failure of one from our ranks who is manifestly inadequate to the task even of handling his piece, much less of bringing down the popinjay, without condemning the rashness of the attempt, and exonerating ourselves from any charge of participating in it.

SUSPIRIA DE PROFUNDIS: BEING A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.