CHAPTER VI.

Lord L'Estrange threw himself on a sofa, and leant his cheek on his hand thoughtfully. Audley Egerton sate near him, with his arms folded, and gazed on his friend's face with a soft expression of aspect, which was very unusual to the firm outline of his handsome features. The two men were as dissimilar in person as the reader will have divined that they were in character. All about Egerton was so rigid, all about L'Estrange so easy. In every posture of Harley's there was the unconscious grace of a child. The very fashion of his garments showed his abhorrence of restraint. His clothes were wide and loose; his neckcloth, tied carelessly, left his throat half bare. You could see that he had lived much in warm and southern lands, and contracted a contempt for conventionalities; there was as little in his dress as in his talk of the formal precision of the north. He was three or four years younger than Audley, but he looked at least twelve years younger. In fact, he was one of those men to whom old age seems impossible--voice, look, figure, had all the charm of youth; and, perhaps it was from this gracious youthfulness--at all events, it was characteristic of the kind of love he inspired--that neither his parents, nor the few friends admitted into his intimacy, ever called him, in their habitual intercourse, by the name of his title. He was not L'Estrange with them, he was Harley; and by that familiar baptismal I will usually designate him. He was not one of those men whom author or reader wish to view at a distance, and remember as "my Lord"--it was so rarely that he remembered it himself. For the rest, it had been said of him by a shrewd wit--"He is so natural that every one calls him affected." Harley L'Estrange was not so critically handsome as Audley Egerton; to a commonplace observer he was, at best, rather goodlooking than otherwise. But women said that he had "a beautiful countenance," and they were not wrong. He wore his hair, which was of a fair chestnut, long, and in loose curls; and instead of the Englishman's whiskers, indulged in the foreigner's moustache. His complexion was delicate, though not effeminate: it was rather the delicacy of a student, than of a woman. But in his clear grey eye there was wonderful vigour of life. A skilful physiologist, looking only into that eye, would have recognised rare stamina of constitution--a nature so rich that, while easily disturbed, it would require all the effects of time, or all the fell combinations of passion and grief, to exhaust it. Even now, though so thoughtful, and even so sad, the rays of that eye were as concentred and steadfast as the light of the diamond.

"You were only, then, in jest," said Audley, after a long silence, "when you spoke of this mission to Florence. You have still no idea of entering into public life."

"None."

"I had hoped better things when I got your promise to pass one season in London. But, indeed, you have kept your promise to the ear to break it to the spirit. I could not presuppose that you would shun all society, and be as much of a hermit here as under the vines of Como."

"I have sate in the Strangers' Gallery, and heard your great speakers; I have been in the pit of the opera, and seen your fine ladies; I have walked your streets, I have lounged in your parks, and I say that I can't fall in love with a faded dowager, because she fills up her wrinkles with rouge."

"Of what dowager do you speak?" asked the matter-of-fact Audley.

"She has a great many titles. Some people call her fashion, you busy men, politics: it is all one--tricked out and artificial. I mean London life. No, I can't fall in love with her, fawning old harridan!"

"I wish you could fall in love with something."

"I wish I could, with all my heart."

"But you are so _blasé_."

"On the contrary, I am so fresh. Look out of the window--what do you see?"

"Nothing!"

"Nothing--"

"Nothing but houses and dusty lilacs, my coachman dozing on his box, and two women in pattens crossing the kennel."

"I see none of that where I lie on the sofa. I see but the stars. And I feel for them as I did when I was a schoolboy at Eton. It is you who are _blasé_, not I--enough of this. You do not forget my commission, with respect to the exile who has married into your brother's family?"

"No; but here you set me a task more difficult than that of saddling your cornet on the War Office."

"I know it is difficult, for the counter influence is vigilant and strong; but, on the other hand, the enemy is so damnable a traitor that one must have the Fates and the household gods on one's side."

"Nevertheless," said the practical Audley, bending over a book on the table, "I think that the best plan would be to attempt a compromise with the traitor."

"To judge of others by myself," answered Harley with spirit, "it were less bitter to put up with wrong than to palter with it for compensation. And such wrong! Compromise with the open foe--that may be done with honour; but with the perjured friend--that were to forgive the perjury!"

"You are too vindictive," said Egerton; "there may be excuses for the friend, which palliate even"--

"Hush! Audley, hush! or I shall think the world has indeed corrupted you. Excuse for the friend who deceives, who betrays! No, such is the true outlaw of Humanity; and the Furies surround him even while he sleeps in the temple."

The man of the world lifted his eyes slowly on the animated face of one still natural enough for the passions. He then once more returned to his book, and said, after a pause, "It is time you should marry, Harley."

"No," answered L'Estrange, with a smile at this sudden turn in the conversation--"not time yet; for my chief objection to that change in life is, that all the women now-a-days are too old for me, or I am too young for them. A few, indeed are so infantine that one is ashamed to be their toy; but most are so knowing that one is a fool to be their dupe. The first, if they condescend to love you, love you as the biggest doll they have yet dandled, and for a doll's good qualities--your pretty blue eyes, and your exquisite millinery. The last, if they prudently accept you, do so on algebraical principles; you are but the X or the Y that represents a certain aggregate of goods matrimonial--pedigree, title, rent-roll, diamonds, pin-money, opera-box. They cast you up with the help of mamma, and you wake some morning to find that _plus_ wife _minus_ affection equals--the Devil!"

"Nonsense," said Audley, with his quiet grave laugh. "I grant that it is often the misfortune of a man in your station to be married rather for what he has, than for what he is; but you are tolerably penetrating, and not likely to be deceived in the character of the woman you court."

"Of the woman I _court_?--No! But of the woman I _marry_, very likely indeed. Woman is a changeable thing, as our Virgil informed us at school; but her change _par excellence_ is from the fairy you woo to the brownie you wed. It is not that she has been a hypocrite, it is that she is a transmigration. You marry a girl for her accomplishments. She paints charmingly, or plays like St Cecilia. Clap a ring on her finger, and she never draws again--except perhaps your caricature on the back of a letter, and never opens a piano after the honeymoon. You marry her for her sweet temper; and next year, her nerves are so shattered that you can't contradict her but you are whirled into a storm of hysterics. You marry her because she declares she hates balls and likes quiet; and ten to one but what she becomes a patroness at Almacks, or a lady in waiting."

"Yet most men marry, and most men survive the operation."

"If it were only necessary to live, that would be a consolatory and encouraging reflection. But to live with peace, to live with dignity, to live with freedom, to live in harmony with your thoughts, your habits, your aspirations--and this in the perpetual companionship of a person to whom you have given the power to wound your peace, to assail your dignity, to cripple your freedom, to jar on each thought and each habit, and bring you down to the meanest details of earth, when you invite her, poor soul, to soar to the spheres--that makes the to be, or not to be, which is the question."

"If I were you, Harley, I would do as I have heard the author of _Sandford and Merton_ did--choose out a child and educate her yourself after your own heart."

"You have hit it," answered Harley seriously. "That has long been my idea--a very vague one, I confess. But I fear I shall be an old man before I find even the child.

"Ah!" he continued, yet more earnestly, while the whole character of his varying countenance changed again--"ah! if indeed I could discover what I seek--one who with the heart of a child has the mind of a woman; one who beholds in nature the variety, the charm, the never feverish, ever healthful excitement that others vainly seek in the bastard sentimentalities of a life false with artificial forms; one who can comprehend, as by intuition, the rich poetry with which creation is clothed--poetry so clear to the child when enraptured with the flower, or when wondering at the star! If on me such exquisite companionship were bestowed--why, then"--He paused, sighed deeply, and, covering his face with his hand, resumed, in faltering accents,--

"But once--but once only, did such vision of the Beautiful made human rise before me--rise amidst 'golden exhalations of the dawn.' It beggared my life in vanishing. You know only--you only--how--how"--

He bowed his head, and the tears forced themselves through his clenched fingers.

"So long ago!" said Audley, sharing his friend's emotion. "Years so long and so weary, yet still thus tenacious of a mere boyish memory."

"Away with it, then!" cried Harley, springing to his feet, and with a laugh of strange merriment. "Your carriage still waits: set me home before you go to the House."

Then laying his hand lightly on his friend's shoulder, he said, "Is it for you, Audley Egerton, to speak sneeringly of boyish memories? What else is it that binds us together? What else warms my heart when I meet you? What else draws your thoughts from blue-books and beer-bills, to waste them on a vagrant like me? Shake hands. Oh, friend of my boyhood! recollect the oars that we plied and the bats that we wielded in the old time, or the murmured talk on the moss-grown bank, as we sate together, building in the summer air castles mightier than Windsor. Ah! they are strong ties, those boyish memories, believe me! I remember as if it were yesterday my translation of that lovely passage in Persius, beginning--let me see--ah!--

"Quum primum pavido custos mihi purpura cessit,"

that passage on friendship which gushes out so livingly from the stern heart of the satirist. And when old ---- complimented me on my verses, my eye sought yours. Verily, I now say as then,

"Nescio quod, certe est quod me tibi temperet astrum."[2]

[2] "What was the star I know not, but certainly some star it was that attuned me unto thee."

Audley turned away his head as he returned the grasp of his friend's hand; and while Harley, with his light elastic footstep, descended the stairs, Egerton lingered behind, and there was no trace of the worldly man upon his countenance when he took his place in the carriage by his companion's side.

Two hours afterwards, weary cries of "Question, question!" "Divide, divide!" sank into reluctant silence as Audley Egerton rose to conclude the debate--the man of men to speak late at night, and to impatient benches: a man who would be heard; whom a Bedlam broke loose would not have roared down; with voice clear and sound as a bell, and form as firmly set on the ground as church-tower. And while, on the dullest of dull questions, Audley Egerton thus, not too lively himself, enforced attention, where was Harley L'Estrange? Standing alone by the river at Richmond, and murmuring low fantastic thoughts as he gazed on the moonlit tide.

When Audley left him at home, he had joined his parents, made them gay with his careless gaiety, seen the old-fashioned folks retire to rest, and then--while they, perhaps, deemed him once more the hero of ball-rooms and the cynosure of clubs--he drove slowly through the soft summer night, amidst the perfumes of many a garden and many a gleaming chestnut grove, with no other aim before him than to reach the loveliest margin of England's loveliest river, at the hour the moon was fullest and the song of the nightingale most sweet. And so eccentric a humourist was this man, that I believe, as he there loitered--no one near to cry "How affected!" or "How romantic!"--he enjoyed himself more than if he had been exchanging the politest "how-d'ye-do's" in the hottest of London drawing-rooms, or betting his hundreds on the odd trick with Lord De R---- for his partner.

TRANSATLANTIC TOURISTS.[3]

[3] _Lettres sur l'Amérique._ Par X. MARMIER. 2 volumes. Paris, 1851. _The United States and Cuba._ By JOHN GLANVILLE TAYLOR. London, 1851.

Books of European travel beyond the Atlantic, of rare appearance only a few years ago, bid fair to become plentiful as snags in the Mississippi or buffaloes on the prairies of the West. Emigration, Californian gold, and the perfection of steam-navigation, have brought America to our door. The falls of Niagara now behold as many European visitors as did those of Schaffhausen half a century since; and Broadway is as familiar a word as were the Boulevards before the Peace. Even amidst her own revolutions, embroilments, and alarms, the eyes of Europe have of late been fixed with unusual attention upon the New World. Mexico, California, Cuba--aggrandising wars, treasure-seeking enterprise, piratical aggression--in turn have filled the columns of our newspapers and occupied a large share of our thoughts.

Mr X. Marmier is a French gentleman who has devoted his life to wandering in foreign lands, and writing narratives of his peregrinations. North and south, east and west, nothing is too hot or too cold for him. To-day, in frozen Iceland, he studies Scandinavian history; to-morrow, on Algerine sands, he rambles in the footsteps of Bugeaud. Behold him, in the sweet springtime, strolling beneath blossoms on the sunny banks of Rhine: autumn comes, and he pensively roams by the mystical waters of Nile. Russia, Sweden and Holland, Lapland and Poland, have in turn had the happiness to possess him. Europe, to him, is thrice-trodden ground, and Asia bears the print of his foot. His travels are reckoned by thousands of leagues, his writings by dozens of volumes. No wonder that his erratic tastes have at last driven him across the Atlantic. There he adheres to his magnificent contempt of space. His is no limited excursion to Boston and New York, Washington and New Orleans: the St Lawrence and the Mississippi are boundaries too narrow for his aspiring soul and many-leagued boots. One vast continent is insufficient to satisfy his craving after locomotion. North America explored, Cuba visited, he pauses and hesitates. The quay of the Havana is the last place where a professed wanderer can be expected to cut short his rambles and go home. There sea and sky are both so bright and calm, that recollections of past tempests and less hospitable shores fade into indistinctness. There, too, are facilities of departure for almost any part of the globe. "Thence," says M. Marmier, in an ecstasy of perplexity, "sail the English packets which coast, in their rapid course, the whole emerald chain of the Antilles; thence, the American steamers, transporting to Chagres the legions of pilgrims attracted by the worship of gold to the Californian shrine; thence, French and English vessels, which in a few weeks convey their passengers to the noble city of Nantes or the spacious harbour of Cadiz." Beset by so many seductions, M. Marmier could not be expected to choose the nearest way to Paris. Nor did he; and therefore is it that, upon the title-page of his book, Rio de la Plata succeeds the names of Canada, United States, Havana.

Mr John Glanville Taylor is a traveller of a very different stamp. No amateur wanderer, in quest of novelty or with a view to a book, he crossed the Atlantic (in the spring of 1841) when a lad of eighteen, to seek his fortune--as appears from his own account of the matter--but with mining more particularly in view. Finding nothing to do in the States, he proceeded, after a short sojourn, to Cuba, to investigate the prospects of a newly-discovered gold-vein. This proving unproductive, he entered into partnership with a planter and slave-owner, was ruined by the drought and famine of 1843-4, served as overseer of a sugar plantation, and, finally, after upwards of three years' residence in the island, returned to England _via_ New York. The volume containing such portions of his adventures and observations, during his absence from this country, as he has deemed worth recording, is manly in tone, tolerably interesting in substance, and contains, here and there, scraps of useful information, although the author's opinions are sometimes crude and hastily formed--the fault of a young writer, and yet younger traveller. His downright matter-of-fact views often contrast amusingly with those of the more experienced and literary Frenchman. As a traveller sentimental rather than adventurous--as a writer we have usually found M. Marmier facile rather than fascinating, and oftener insipid than graphic. In his books of European travel there is a lack of the vivid and lively; and his style, correct and not ungraceful, has yet a monotony that acts somniferously on the reader. His work on America is an improvement on his previous publications. The nine hundred pages might perhaps have been compressed, with advantage, into two-thirds of the space; but still, amidst a superabundance of words, we find pointed and interesting passages, and occasionally an original view of men and things Transatlantic.

Frenchmen are very apt to express great sympathy with, and admiration of, the people of the United States. This arises from various causes. Some are smitten with their democratic institutions; some exult in American independence as a triumph over England; others assume a share in that triumph, on account of French auxiliaries in the American War; whilst others, again, suffer their imaginations to be captivated by the wonderfully rapid rise and prodigious development of American wealth and power. It does not require any great amount of sentiment and fancy to get up this kind of love-at-a-distance. Many of our readers remember Miss Edgeworth's clever tale of _L'Amie Inconnue_, where a romantic young lady conceives a violent attachment for the authoress of a sentimental novel, corresponds with her under the name of Araminta, makes a pilgrimage to Wales to seek her in a cottage amidst honeysuckles, and finally has her illusions destroyed by discovering her in a two-pair-back at Bristol, putting brandy in her tea, and bullying a lover named Nathaniel. This is exactly the sort of disenchantment in store for those Frenchmen who, after picturing to themselves the United States as a democratic Utopia, the very paradise of the worshippers of Liberty, have occasion to visit the unseen land of their affections. On arrival in the States, nineteen out of twenty of them find themselves about as comfortable as a cat in a kennel of terriers. They are not spitefully worried, certainly, but unintentionally they are most awfully annoyed. In fact, no two characters can be more antagonistic than those of the Frenchman and American. However strong his predetermination, the former finds it impossible to be pleased in the country where he had fondly anticipated so much gratification. The most he can do is to laud Yankee energy and enterprise, and to pass lightly over the details of manners and customs that jar with all his notions of propriety and enjoyment of life.

"Before I put foot on shore," says M. Marmier, "I felt disposed to love that American land whose mere aspect makes so many hearts beat, and gives birth to so many hopes." He may love the land, but he very soon lets us see that he does not much like the dwellers upon it. After sketching their busy habits and feverish activity, their unremitting pursuit of lucre and contempt of an intellectual _far niente_, he thus continues his epistle to the unknown lady-correspondent to whom all the _Lettres sur l'Amérique_ are addressed:

"It would be false to say that such vigorous commercial faculties, and such habits, constitute an amiable people; and truly I would not wish you to live amongst them, nor do I imagine that they will ever leave in my heart one of those tender memories which I still retain of the dear natives of Germany and Scandinavia, and even of the Turks, who are such worthy people."

M. Marmier, we may here observe, is constitutionally tender. A pensive softness is the general characteristic of his writings. He is addicted to moonlight; the sight of a wooden hut in a sunny nook of the Hudson sets him dreaming about love in a cottage, and quoting Tom Moore with indifferent orthography; in his moments of melancholy he loves to muse by the river-side, and repeat to himself a certain ditty about roses, rivulets, and nightingales, which he picked up in Canada. With such gentle tastes, something more than a trifle is needed to betray him into wrath and sarcasm. On the other hand, the delicacy of his organisation evidently makes him peculiarly liable to be shocked by certain Yankee qualities and habits. One of the first annoyances he experiences is from the curiosity of his fellow-passengers on board a Hudson steamboat. He feels it the more that he has just suffered from their taciturnity, and found it impossible to obtain from them other than monosyllabic replies to his questions concerning the places they pass.

"With a phlegm, compared to which British phlegm is jovial vivacity, the American combines an inquisitiveness worthy of a savage; and the attention which was denied me when I sought a few details concerning the scenes we traversed, was soon fixed upon me, to my great discomfort, by various parts of my dress. One of them took hold of my watch-chain, without the least ceremony, turned and twisted it about between his dirty fingers, then, satisfied with the examination, walked away without uttering a word. Another, seated beside me, suddenly exclaimed--'_You have got a Paris hat_,' and forthwith took it off my head, closed and opened the springs, showed it to one of his neighbours, and, when they had both looked at it inside and out, gave it back into my hands. A moment later, having to pay my bill to the steward, I was so unfortunate as to open my purse--a beautiful little purse of cherry-coloured silk and gold. Forthwith an American fell violently in love with it, pulled out a horrible knitted bag, and proposed a barter. I laughed in his face. I hid my purse, but he still persecuted me. At last I ground between my teeth, Yankee fashion, a d----, which made him step back a pace or two. To avoid being thus beset, I put my hat into its box, and covered my head with a cap; I put my watch-chain into my pocket, buttoned my waistcoat over my breast-pin, and, thanks to these precautions, I could at last walk about and sit on deck without being exposed to stupid importunity."

It may be said that M. Marmier is hardly indulgent enough to the honest Yankees, to whose curiosity the sight of a live Frenchman, in trinkets and a Gibus hat, and 'fresh as imported,' was doubtless a strong stimulant. A countrywoman of his (by connections, habits, and residence, although not by birth) has described, in a very charming work,[4] similar traits in a more tolerant tone. She also was in a steamboat on the Hudson, when she suddenly found herself surrounded, or rather assailed, by a crowd of women, who wonderingly contemplated an embroidery in brilliant colours with which she was occupied.

[4] _La Havane._ Par Madame la Comtesse MERLIN.

"After an examination of some minutes' duration," says Madame de Merlin, "they seized upon the tapestry without looking at me or making the least apology, as if the knees on which it rested had been the tray of a work-box; then alternately taking possession of wools, scissors, thimble, they passed them from hand to hand without taking the slightest heed of the person to whom they belonged. At last the boldest amongst them carried off the embroidery and disappeared. I begged my companion to follow her, and ascertain what she meant to do with it. In a few minutes she brought it back, after showing it to her friends, who were below in the cabin. Soon a second group of women accosted me; one of them, without the slightest preamble or polite preface, asked me if I were French. On my reply in the affirmative,--'We never see your countrywomen in these parts,' said she; 'you please us. Do all Frenchwomen resemble you?' Then she ran to fetch her husband, and planted him before me like a sentry, showing me to him as she might have done a curious bird. What think you of this savage curiosity of the women of the West, of these strange manners and artless avowals? They have something confiding and primitive which pleases me."

Lenient to the deficiencies of American women, the amiable and accomplished Countess Merlin expresses plainly and forcibly her disgust at the manners of the men. M. Marmier echoes her complaints. Not so Mr Taylor, who visited America at an age when all that is novel pleases, and who can see no fault in the natives. He reluctantly admits their dress to be a little precise, and their manners rather graver than he likes; in their cities and societies he complains of a lack of cordiality, and of the scarcity of dinner-parties. He thinks tobacco-chewing a nasty habit, although he doubts not that to others it may seem just the reverse. But he totally denies that Americans are at all inquisitive, and refutes, quite to his own satisfaction, the rash assertions of those European travellers who have declared the bulk of them to be coarse and gluttonous feeders. In the enthusiasm of his vindication, he says that, "far from being guilty of gluttony, they appear to eat _merely_ to live, and may be blamed rather for seeming to care _too little_ for the good things of this life." The Englishman, according to Mr Taylor, is the exact opposite of the American in this respect, and the Spaniard has hit the happy medium. Here is what M. Marmier says upon the subject:--

"Whilst I thus gossip with you, as if I were seated in an arm-chair at your chimney corner, I forget the dining-room already noted, the bill of fare printed on vellum paper, the smart waiters in round jackets and white aprons, exactly like those at Vefour's. My fellow-travellers, are far from a similar forgetfulness of one of the chief enjoyments of the steamer. Some of them, as soon as they came on board, paid it a long visit, and soon returned thither for the second time. Is it not Brillat-Savarin who has said--'Elsewhere men eat, at Paris only do they know how to dine.' Had he seen this country, he would have said--'Here men do not eat, they devour.' The word is hardly expressive enough. Better to understand the full force I wish to give it, please to refer to Buffon under the heading _Pike and Shark_. You will then, perhaps, have some idea of American voracity. Here is the usual order of the daily meals in the United States:--Between seven and eight o'clock in the morning, a bell, a gong, or some other noisy instrument, announces breakfast. This consists of joints of roast-beef, ox-tongues, ducks, and fowls, accompanied with potatoes, bread and butter, and other light dishes. The Americans rush to table like starving animals. It is really the only suitable comparison. Heedless of his neighbours, careless of the most ordinary rules of European politeness, each man draws towards himself every dish within his reach, and piles upon one or two plates enormous pyramids of meat, butter, and vegetables. Then he works away with hands and teeth, as if his moments were numbered, without speaking, almost without drawing breath, but following with haggard eyes the dishes that travel away from him, and harpooning them as soon as they come within reach, to seize upon a fresh supply.

This first operation finished, the American lights a cigar; goes to the place where spirits are sold, which is here called the bar-room; tosses off a glass of whisky or Madeira, and sets himself to ruminate till the hour of noon. Noon is very far off, and many are unable to get through this mortal interval of four hours without a second and third visit to the dear bar-room, after which they ruminate again. The bell announces luncheon, consisting of soup, a box of sardines, cold meat, butter, and a lump of cheese. At three o'clock, another tap on the tom-tom--the best, the most desired of all; it proclaims dinner, of which the two preceding repasts were but the modest preface. This time the table is covered from one end to the other with vast dishes, containing enormous roasted joints, highly-spiced sauces, prodigious puddings. The same appetite as at breakfast, the same universal silence. No sounds but the clatter of knife and fork, and the crunching of bones between impatient jaws. So great is the hurry in which this third repast is got through, that the diners do not even think of wiping their knives before plunging them into the salt or butter, and napkins are habitually thrown aside, for the manifest reason that the use of the napkin entails a loss of time. Yet these people laugh at Turks for using neither spoons nor forks at their meals. I remember to have eaten a few dinners with Turks, and I declare that they were models of cleanliness compared to those at which I have been compelled to assist in American hotels and steamers.

Dinner over, the rest of the day is long to get through. Accordingly, towards seven o'clock, you hear, for the fourth time, the blessed bell inviting the inmates of the building to a cup of tea or coffee, accompanied by cold game or salted meats, after which visits to the bar-room may be recommenced _ad libitum_.

To see these men of business thus rush to table, and stow away a whole cargo of miscellaneous viands in less time than a Spaniard takes to imbibe a single cup of chocolate, one might imagine that they consider every minute passed in the dining-room as so much time lost, and that they are in desperate haste to return to their counting-house, and bury themselves in ledgers and day-books. Unfortunately, as on leaving the eating-room I have almost invariably found every man of them with his body on one chair, and his feet, raised to a level with his head, on the back of another, I am bound to conclude that it is not business, but an unparalleled voracity, which induces them to feed at steeple-chase pace.

Many travellers who here, in the States, are considered very impertinent, but who nevertheless write with the most amiable intentions, attribute the cold taciturnity of Americans to their preoccupation with commercial combinations or political affairs. I believe that, without doing them injustice, one might very often attribute it to the labour of the digestive organs, put four times a-day to a severe task, and which frequently, in their fatigue, require the employment of soda-water, and almost continually the acrid and hideous mastication of a roll of tobacco. The fact is, that in general the American is much more silent than the Turk. There is also this difference between them--the Turk, seated on a carpet, with his silken vest, his long beard, his large turban, appears nobly indolent or gently meditative, and the stranger's eye may rest with pleasure on his calm and benevolent physiognomy; the silence of the American, on the contrary, is gloomy and uneasy, dry and hard, (_sec et dur_.) His countenance is _pointed_, his movements are stiff and angular. His repose is not the happy placidity of the Oriental, or of the southern European--the enjoyment of _kief_, the pleasure of the siesta; it is a sort of prostration, agitated from time to time by a feverish movement."

The following sketch is certainly not very flattering. After laying down the rather novel proposition, that man is one of the ugliest of created animals, M. Marmier proceeds to prove the American the ugliest of all civilised races of men:--

"Picture to yourself, if you please, a lean figure with bony wrists, feet of dimensions that would for ever tarnish the scutcheon of a gentleman, a hat stuck upon the back of the head, straight hair; a cheek swollen, not by an accidental cold, but from morning till night by a lump of tobacco; lips stained yellow by the juice of the same plant; a black coat with narrow skirts, a tumbled shirt, the gloves of a gendarme,[5] trousers in harmony with the rest of the equipment, and you will have before you the exact portrait of a thoroughbred Yankee."

[5] Thick clumsy buckskin gloves.

All this would shock Mr Taylor. Substantially, however, it is true enough. Sealsfield, himself a naturalised American, and a warm admirer of the institutions of his adopted country, has sketched scenes very similar to M. Marmier's delineations of hotel and steamboat life--life in those places of resort being pretty equally divided between the dining-table, the bar, and the spittoon. Hamilton, Marryat, Mrs Trollope, and other keen observers and able writers,[6] have enabled us to dispense with the accounts of foreign travellers in the States. But still the verdict passed upon the citizens of the Great Republic by an educated and intelligent Frenchman must always possess weight and interest. Were M. Marmier an irritable or grumbling traveller, one might think it right to receive his impressions with caution; but, on the contrary, in all his previous books that we have seen, he has shown himself so indulgent and easy to please, that it is impossible to refuse him credit when he adopts a different tone, and abandons his habitual suavity for such severity of sarcasm as he may have at command. We have seen him annoyed and disgusted on board the steamers; presently we find him put to the torture in an American stage:--

[6] Amongst these, Professor James Johnston now takes honourable rank. His valuable _Notes on North America_ reached us too late for notice in the present article--admitting even that they could with propriety have been included in a review of works of a lighter and more ephemeral character. His volumes, which address themselves particularly to the agriculturist and emigrant, are replete with useful information, and we shall take an early opportunity of drawing attention to their instructive and interesting contents.

"The railway left me at Cumberland, and handed me over to the stage-coach. Probably you do not know what a stage-coach is in this country. It is a wooden box placed on four wheels, and intended to convey travellers along roads which the locomotive has not yet favoured with its visits. But what a box, and what a road! We were nine, packed together like herrings in a barrel, jolting through the ruts and bounding over the stones as if we had been afflicted with St Vitus's dance. Add to these comforts the delightful society of seven graceful Americans, chewing, spitting, and (in order to be more at their ease) _taking off their boots_. A timid, delicate young girl, seated in one of the corners of this infamous box, suffered in silence, and the next morning we found her in a swoon. For my part, I passed the night in tossing to one side or the other an enormous dirty body which constantly fell back upon me, and two enormous legs which seemed determined to crush mine. Assuredly, if a severe penance can, according to expiatory dogmas, cleanse us from our sins, my soul ought, after these twenty-four hours of coaching, to be as pure as that of the newborn child; and if ever I meet an Indian fakeer in quest of a new torture wherewith to propitiate the goddess Siwa, I will send him to America, to travel by the Cumberland stage."

Madame de Merlin, certainly a very amiable and hardy traveller, slow to feel small annoyances or to censure foreign habits, is unable to conceal her disgust at some of the practices which so shocked M. Marmier. She went out to New York in the same vessel with Fanny Elssler, and was present at her first appearance in that city.

"The enthusiasm," she says, "was immense; I thought myself at Rome, and had difficulty in recognising the nation that talks by measure and walks by springs. But soon these men, with hat on head and coat off, lying down upon their seats, and who, after placing their heavy-nailed shoes on the ground, carelessly rested their woollen-stockinged feet on the back of their neighbours' chairs, reminded me that I was in the United States."

On entering the railway between New York and Philadelphia, the Countess found it--

"Full of men and newspapers, the former carrying the latter. There were sixty-five travellers. When I went in, every place seemed full, and no one stirred. I had a right to my place, for which I had paid beforehand. The conductor addressed a few words to one of the occupants of a bench intended for four persons, but which was then occupied but by three. The traveller continued to read, and paid not the least attention to what was said to him. Second appeal, same insensibility. Then the conductor pushed him. He yielded to this third and energetic summons, but without raising his head from his newspaper, and as if he had been displaced by a jolt of the carriage. This passenger was the only one who wore gloves. One must see this nation to form an idea of its manners. Here a man lets himself be pushed, elbowed, hustled, and suffers his toes to be trodden upon, without wincing; what is still more astonishing, he sees people lean upon his wife before his eyes, and endures all these insults with stoical tranquillity--the contrary would appear absurd or ridiculous.... During the journey, my neighbour thought proper to rest his back against my shoulder. I gently told him of it. He took no heed, and preserved his position--not with any impertinent intention, but because he found himself comfortable. At sight of this, my young companion, a Spaniard by blood, a Frenchman by education, turned red and pale alternately; his lips were compressed, his eyes flashed. I was frightened; but suddenly, assuming an air of calmness, he extended his hands, placed them on the back of my boorish neighbour, and pushed him quietly into his place.

'If I had put myself in a passion with him,' he afterwards said to me, 'he would never have understood why.'

'And you would have been wrong,' added Mr W--n; 'how can one be angry with people who would think it quite natural that you should behave in the same way to their wives and daughters?'"

It is not surprising that Mr Taylor, at his age, and in his superficial glance at the United States, should have overlooked a point of American character which particularly strikes M. Marmier, the poet and dilettante, and Madame de Merlin, the high-bred and intellectual woman. This is, the general sacrifice, to the positively and materially useful, of those pursuits and refinements which are the grace, and embellishment of human existence. The neglect of the fine arts, the absence of feeling for the beautiful, are there the result of the ardour for speculation and the all-absorbing pursuit of dollars.

"The artist," says Madame de Merlin, "is assimilated to the artisan, and art is measured by the yard, like merchandise. They do not cultivate music or painting, or even flowers. Do you wish to inhale the perfume of a flower? you must buy it at a high price: it is an article of trade, and only to be found at the nurseryman's. I am not aware of a single picture in the United States, unless it be in the Pantheon, where several memorable epochs of the American Revolution are rudely represented upon some old panels of wall. In this country, all that is beautiful is forbidden: the beautiful is not useful. The grace of the human form, music, poetry, painting, flowers, are blessings vouchsafed by Providence to man to soften the bitterness of his days of mourning, to alleviate the burthen of his chains; they are gleams of joy amidst long years of struggle, brilliant flashes through the gloom of night; they are the luxury of human life."

Less elegant and eloquent than Madame de Merlin, M. Marmier resumes in greater detail, but with equal force, nearly the same idea:--

"The Americans may say to me, 'We are not a polite people it is true; we seek not to be affable or attentive, it must be owned; and the foreigner who comes amongst us may well be shocked by our coldness. But if we disdain, as frivolous, the elegant habits of European society, we have an audacity of enterprise, and a rapidity of action, which must astonish Europe. To start from the spot where we now are (on the Hudson.) In less than forty years, we have covered this desert river with steamers and vessels of every kind, we have cleared and peopled its banks, converted its hamlets into flourishing cities, dug harbours and canals, laid down railroads, given life, movement, and commercial prosperity to the whole district. Before us is Albany, which, in the seventeenth century, was a mere fort, and which now has a population of forty-two thousand souls; and down yonder is the commercial metropolis of New York, the first in the world after Liverpool. Nothing equals the spring of our activity and the boldness of our conceptions. Things that you in France take years to combine, and which you lengthily discuss in the tribune and the newspapers, we accomplish in a turn of the hand. In a couple of months we shall establish a line of steamers to Havre, and another to England. Already we have similar communication with Germany by the port of Bremen, with the Antilles and the Pacific Ocean. Not a corner of the globe is there where our flag does not wave. How many projects have there not been elaborated in your old Europe for cutting through the Isthmus of Panama? England and France sent thither their engineers, who published long reports--reports which were examined by councils of ministers, submitted to commissions, and finally shelved in public offices. At New York, two or three merchants formed an association, which decided, in two or three days, that the Isthmus of Panama should be crossed by a railroad. No sooner said than done. Already the workmen are on the ground; another year, and the United States' steam-engine will connect the two oceans.'

I recognise," says M. Marmier, "the justice of such reasoning, and I bow my head before this power of human genius applied to the wonders of industry. But, O worthy Yankees, Scripture says that '_man shall not live by bread alone_,'--the heart and the mind have other requirements. Unless our mind be absorbed in the movements of a high-pressure steam-engine, and our heart changed into a bank-note, there will always remain to us pleasing reveries, thoughts of art and poetry, the enjoyments of social life and of expansive affections, which all the efforts of your courage and the success of your toil can never replace."

Appositely to Madame de Merlin's slighting mention of the pictures of Revolutionary scenes, comes in a passage from M. Marmier's first volume, relating to the Americans' exaggerated estimate of their military glories.

"At Plattsburg, situated where the Saranac enters Lake Champlain, there is a chance that the American, who has passed whole hours without heeding you, and who has hitherto received your advances like a dog in a bad humour, will suddenly embellish his metallic physiognomy with a jovial smile, and approach you with a complaisant air. For he longs to tell you of the victory gained near this town by the Americans, in the year 1814, commanded by Commodore Macdonough, over the English troops; and he narrates the story with so many details, and such an emphasis, that you at last wish he would relapse into his habitual silence.

The Americans, like the Russians, have a national pride surpassing all expression. They cannot, like the Russians, talk of their old traditions; nor have they, like them, ancient monuments of a venerable character, and modern ones of grand aspect. They have not, like the soldiers of Suwarrow and Alexander, conquered a valiant reputation upon the chief battle-fields of Europe. Neither have they the literature of Russia, so artless in its popular poetry, so original in the compositions of Pushkin and Gogol. But little do they care what exists in other countries. They have the happiness to believe all other nations very inferior to them, and all the imagination that the perpetual use of figures has left them is agreeably employed in raising the airy edifice of their glory. Their least success is an event which must occupy the thoughts of the whole world. A battle in which they have taken a banner And slain thirty men is a second Marengo. The name of their General Scott is to be transmitted to posterity with the same lustre as that of Alexander or Cæsar; and not a soldier who served in the war against Mexico but is a Napoleon on a small scale. When they talk of their country and of its progress, the ordinary vocabulary is too weak for their enthusiasm. They are fain to seek extraordinary epithets, words which the learned Johnson never admitted into his dictionary. They remind me of the Italian cicerone who exclaimed, when showing a picture of Albano to a traveller, '_Ah, Signor! questo è un maestro, e un grande pittore, e un pittorissimo!_'

I accordingly heard, from one end to the other, the story of the battle of Plattsburg, after which my officious American, satisfied probably with my attention, made me a bow--a rare circumstance! I even believe--a still rarer event--that he made a motion as if to raise his hand to his hat. Then, having no other Homeric epic to narrate, he took himself off, and left me opposite to the shores of the Champlain, at liberty to indulge in meditation."

Thus left to his reflections, M. Marmier grows pathetic--as is not unfrequently the case with him--and feels his heart oppressed with an unspeakable sadness, and gives us a French prose version of some German verses by Tieck, which he might just as well have omitted, as also some gossip about the moon and other analogous matters, which merely serves to swell his book, and will inevitably be passed unread by every sane reader. However, we must take the gentleman as we find him, and sift, as well as we can, the wheat from the chaff, when the latter occasionally predominates. Presently he relapses from the pathetic into the sarcastic, on occasion of a visit to the Legislative Assembly of the United States, which reminded him a good deal of that of France. There were certain points of difference, however. "The American deputies, he says, chewed tobacco very agreeably, and spat with remarkable dexterity to a distance of fifteen paces,"--through a keyhole at that distance, we have heard it asserted, but do not guarantee the fact. Even Mr Taylor but imperfectly conceals his disgust at the "antique vases, vulgarly called spittoons," placed beside the desk of each member of Congress. From the senate-house to the President's levee is but a step. It is taken by M. Marmier under the guidance and protection of a lady, to do honour to whose introduction he put on, he tells us, his whitest cravat and his blackest coat. But soon he perceived that this garb of ceremony formed a striking contrast with the motley costumes that thronged the White House at Washington. Frocks of every colour were there, and vests of every cut, but of coats very few.

"There was no servant at the door or in the antechamber. We walked at once into the saloon, where the President was on his legs, fulfilling the arduous duty imposed upon him, without respect for his age and for the dignity of his military services, by the arrogant republic. My amiable conductress advanced towards him. He held out his hand and said, 'How do you do?' She named me, he turned towards me, holding out his hand, and saying 'How do you do?' A crowd of visitors came up; he shook hands with them all, repeating 'How do you do?' These amiable salutations bidding fair to be indefinitely prolonged, my charming introductress thought I had enough of it, and took me up to the President's daughter, who welcomed me with the never-failing 'How do you do?' After which we went to walk about another saloon with a crowd of individuals who were parading it in pairs in silent procession; women, such as exist nowhere but in Henri Monnier's comedies, and men to whom you would fear to grant admittance into your anteroom. For opening his marble palace once a-week to this plebeian crowd, for courteously saluting all these ladies who keep stalls, for shaking hands with some hundreds of unclean citizens, the republic gives its President only one hundred and twenty-five thousand francs a year. It is poor pay!"

The pittance certainly appears paltry, contrasted with the more ample allowance of a French president; but the two cases will hardly admit of a comparison, nor does M. Marmier draw one. There is evidently very little of the republican in his composition; we should rather take him for one of the class which M. Louis Blanc's followers designate, in picturesque abbreviation, as _aristos_; and indeed he makes no secret of his aversion to what he terms _demagoguery_--a word which is probably not to be found either in Boyer or Walker, but which some of our ballad-writing friends may possibly think no bad rhyme to roguery.

Soon after his visit to the President, we find our errant Frenchman steaming down the Ohio and Mississippi to New Orleans. At Cincinnati, when about to embark on a steamer pompously advertised as "The splendid and fast-running John Hancock," he is somewhat startled by a conversation between two Americans, from which he gathers that the said "Hancock" is a worthless boat, whose boilers have been condemned by the inspector, and which the insurance companies refuse to take, but out of whose rotten hull and rickety engines the considerate proprietors propose to squeeze a little more passage-money at risk of the passengers' lives. So M. Marmier takes his place by the "Western World," also announced as "splendid and fast-running," but which, he flatters himself, is more sea, or at least river worthy, and devotes a few pages to the perils of the West, the recklessness of steamboat captains in America, and the unpaternal nature of a Government which imposes no check on the employment of damaged steamers. Explosions, conflagrations, inundations, snags, sawyers, and races--he makes out a terrible list of dangers, and estimates at thirty or forty per annum the number of steamers lost in the Western waters.

"The average existence of a boat is here about four years. In four years it must have brought in its cost, with interest. If it lasts longer, it is by unhoped-for good luck. But the American does not trouble his head about difficulties or perils. He _must_ travel, and he travels at all risks. You have doubtless read the account of that terrible explosion of the "Louisiana," which, about a month ago, discharged the fragments of her boilers and some hundreds of corpses upon the quay of New Orleans. Next day, not a steamer had a passenger the less. _Go ahead_ is the American motto. Is there a new territory to explore at three hundred leagues distance, a sale of goods to be effected north or south--_go ahead!_ The weather may be bad, the roads covered with snow, the journey long and difficult, no matter--_go ahead_. The steamer by which they are to go is of bad repute, is ill organised and worse commanded; there is danger of its sinking at the very first casualty; never mind--_go ahead_. Fatigue and danger are nothing--movement before everything. I ought to admire such intrepidity; but, with my old-fashioned European notions, I regret to think that the seductions of fortune can inspire as great courage as the chivalrous sentiments of glory, religion, and love."

M. Marmier is manifestly of too romantic a turn to travel in the States with gratification to himself, or to write about them in a manner likely to satisfy their inhabitants. He humbly confesses his deficiencies, and implores indulgence. A poor tourist, he says, incapable of correctly adding up a column of figures, and ignorant of the very first principles of mechanical science, he prefers the fresh morning breeze to the roar of a locomotive, and would never dream of putting a railway in competition with a hawthorn-hedged footpath. And although, before starting on his Transatlantic expedition, he assiduously studied the works on America of Michel Chevalier, De Tocqueville, and Miss Martineau, even _they_ had not sufficiently guarded him against disappointments. At the bottom of his heart there still lingered fanciful dreams of vast forests, Indian traditions, and deep silent savannahs. He had dreamed of New York as "rising like an enchanted isle between the waves of ocean and the azure current of the Hudson, in the poetical prestige of a world decked in all the charms of youth." We feel that our imperfect translation but feebly renders the elevation of M. Marmier's style and sentiments; but it may suffice to give the reader an idea of that gentleman's bitter disappointment on finding the city of his dreams a vast focus of speculation, cupidity, and roguery; where "the stranger is every moment exposed to find himself gently duped or audaciously robbed;" where the proportion of knaves and adventurers to the mass of the population exceeds that in any other city of the world; and where the religion, even of the most honest, is the blind and unbounded worship of the Golden Calf. The most ungallant of Frenchmen, he spares not even the ladies, but imagines that the gay swarm which daily flutters in Broadway, between the hours of twelve and two, laden to excess with silks and velvets, shawls and laces, collars and jewellery, do not repair thither solely for their amusement, nor yet for the more important business of shopping; but that they are intended as sauntering advertisements of the wealth of their houses, "and to announce, perhaps, by an increased display of plumes and diamonds, each new victory achieved in the campaigns of speculation." In America, according to M. Marmier, and particularly in New York, everything is reducible into dollars and cents, and is duly reduced accordingly.

"To understand the ardour with which they toil in this reproduction, (of dollars,) we must bear in mind that, in their virtuous democracy, there is no other real sign of distinction, neither birth nor titles of nobility, nor artistic and literary talent. Here everything must be reckoned by figures, or weighed in the goldsmith's balance. A captain of a vessel has distinguished himself by a voyage of discovery, and you take pleasure in quoting the interesting places he has seen, and the observations he has made. You are interrupted by an inquiry of how much he was paid. A painter has been successful at the Exhibition, and has received the most encouraging eulogiums, accompanied with a gold medal. They overlook the eulogiums, but desire to know the weight of the medal. Tell an American that Murray gave Lord Byron sixteen hundred guineas for a canto of _Childe Harold_, he opens his eyes, and exclaims, with poetic enthusiasm, that he should like to have written _Childe Harold_. But if you add, that Béranger lives in a cottage at Passy, and that his whole fortune consists of a slender annuity, he ridicules Béranger's glory, and reckons he would have done better to take to trade. With such ideas, you will understand that here literature takes no very high flight. Cooper, Washington Irving, and the learned historian Prescott, have certainly acquired much more fame in Europe than in the United States. For there the merit of their works is alone thought of; but here it is gravely remarked that, with all their writings, they have not made their fortunes.

Nevertheless, standing in a New York library, and reckoning up the immense number of newspapers published in America, one might suppose that a more literary country did not exist on the globe's surface. But those publishers do but reprint, in a compact form, and at the lowest possible price, the _feuilletons_ of France, and the elegant octavos of England. Alexander Dumas gives employment to more printing-presses, papermakers, and stitchers here than in France. As to the two thousand four hundred newspapers of which the United States boast, as of a sign of the diffusion of enlightenment, it is impossible, until one has held them in one's hand, and read them with one's own eyes, to form an idea of such a mass of personal diatribes, coarse chronicles, puerile anecdotes--of such a confused medley of political and commercial notices, mingled with shopkeepers' puffs in prose and verse, and smothered in an ocean of advertisements. Nothing that you see in France can give you an idea of these advertisements. They are a daily inventory of all imaginable merchandise, heaped up, _pêle-mêle_, as in an immense arena--a register of all the inventions possible, and of every conceivable trade.... With the exception of the New Orleans _Bee_, and of the _Courier of the United States_, (both published in the French language,) I do not know an American paper--not even the best of all, that of a distinguished poet, Mr Bryant--which can be compared, for the order of its contents, and its general getting-up, to the most unpretending of our provincial newspapers. As every considerable city publishes at least a dozen papers, and every little town two or three, the consequence is, that none attain sufficient circulation to afford fair remuneration to a body of able writers. Some are sustained by the funds of partymen, whose organs they are; and the majority exist only by the proceeds of their advertisements."

Arrived at New Orleans, M. Marmier makes his moan over the fair and broad territories once possessed by France in the Western Hemisphere, and predicts the loss of nearly all that she still retains in those latitudes, the Islands of Guadaloupe and Martinique, as a natural consequence of that decree of the Provisional Government which liberated, at one blow, the whole of the blacks, thereby ruining the white proprietors. The slaves had cost three or four thousand francs a-piece; four hundred francs was the indemnity granted to their owners. The negroes, thus suddenly emancipated, at once took to idleness, and would work only when they pleased, and as they pleased, and on their own terms. The sugar-fields were deserted, and the Creoles, abandoning their plantations, worthless for want of hands to cultivate them, were emigrating in numbers to the United States. M. Marmier met a great many of these unfortunate men, ruined and exiled by the mad precipitation of one of the most worthless and despicable Governments that ever swayed, even for a brief space, the destinies of a great country and its colonies.

"Some day," he says, "the negroes will no longer be satisfied to receive wages. With the ideas of equality preached to them by their apostles, they will grow indignant at their condition of hired labourers. They will desire to possess lands. The sooner to have them, they will seize them by force. All the emigrants from Guadaloupe and Martinique with whom I conversed respecting the present condition of the two islands, foresaw a bloody and terrible catastrophe. Failing energetic repression, those islands, like that of St Domingo, will be lost to us. But we shall have the satisfaction, perhaps, of witnessing the foundation of a new kingdom of blacks, and of manufacturing at Paris the crown and sceptre of another Faustin I."

Such gloomy accounts of their condition and prospects were not calculated to encourage M. Marmier in any design he may have entertained of a visit to the French West-Indian colonies. He preferred Cuba--previously, however, abiding some days in New Orleans, where, as in Canada, he fondly traced the lingering habits and traditions of his native land. The gay, urbane, and sociable Creoles contrasted most favourably with the dry, taciturn, tobacco-chewing men of business of the Northern States. M. Marmier was no less surprised than pleased at the striking difference, having expected to find the people of New Orleans already "vitrified by the American furnace."

"For of all the things," he says, "which astonish the stranger in the United States, the most astonishing, perhaps, is the power of absorption of the American character. Suppose a skilful chemist throwing five or six different ingredients into his crucible, mingling and crushing them with a view to the extraction of one homogeneous essence, and you have the image of the moral and intellectual chemistry which continually acts upon this country. What we call the American people is but an agglomeration of emigrants from various regions and races. The first came from England; others have come from Germany, Ireland, France, the mountains of Switzerland, the shores of the Baltic--in short, from all the countries of Europe. At first this agglomeration was effected slowly, by small detachments. Now it annually consists of whole armies of artisans and tillers of the soil, and of thousands upon thousands of families. All these foreigners naturally take with them to the United States their particular predilections, their national habits, doubtless also their prejudices. At first the character of the American displeases them, and they are disagreeably surprised by his habits. They resolve to keep aloof from him, to live apart with their own countrymen, to preserve, upon that distant continent, the manners of their native land, and in their mother tongue they energetically protest that they never will become Americans. Vain is the project! useless the protestation! The American atmosphere envelopes them, and by its constant action weakens their recollections, dissolves their prejudices, decomposes their primitive elements. Little by little, by insensible modifications, they change their views and mode of living, adopt the usages and language of the Americans, and end by being absorbed in the American nation, as are the streamlets from the valleys in the great rivers that bear them onward to the ocean. How many are the honest Germans, who, after cursing the rudeness of American manners, and bitterly regretting their good kindly Germany, have come at last to stick their hat, Yankee fashion, on the back of their head, to stiffen themselves, like the Yankee, in a coat buttoned up to the chin, to disdain all the rules of European courtesy, and to use no other language but the consecrated dialect of business."

Fearing a like transformation in the French population of New Orleans, M. Marmier, delighted to find himself mistaken, thanks Heaven for his escape from the frigid zone of Yankee-land, and for once more finding himself, for the first time since he left Canada, amongst people with hearts as well as heads, whose commercial pursuits do not preclude social enjoyments and friendly attentions to a stranger. He notes a vast difference between the aspect of New Orleans and that of the other cities of the Union. In the Louisianian capital there is more of holidaymaking, and less of unremitting money-seeking; there are to be found gay dinners, agreeable pastimes, music in the streets and coffee-houses, manners more courtly and dress more elegant, an opera and a vaudeville. This, at least, is the case in the French portion of the city; and the inhabitants of the American quarter have benefited, our traveller assures us, by the contact and intercourse of their lively and amiable neighbours. Even in New Orleans, however, he finds things to blame, or at least to deplore. The principal of these is the fatal practice of duelling, which has brought desolation into so many Creole families. _A. N., victime de l'honneur à 24 ans_, is the brief but significant inscription upon a plain tombstone, before which he pauses during his ramble amidst the flower garlands and green shrubberies of the carefully kept cemetery. Duels in Louisiana are much less frequent since the passing of a law which deprives the duellist of his civil rights for a space of five years, and which closes to him the profession of the bar, and the avenues to certain public employments. No law, however, can tame the fierce passions of the men of the Southern States, or prevent those extempore duels, fought out on the instant of quarrel, with revolver and Arkansas toothpick--a Gargantuan toothpick, M. Marmier shudderingly explains, having a two-edged blade, a foot long and two or three inches wide.

Before quitting the Union, whose inhabitants and institutions have certainly met with little favour at his hands, M. Marmier apologises for any undue severity into which he may possibly have been betrayed.

"If," he says, "in my remarks on the social relations of the Americans, I have been unjust towards them, I sincerely ask their pardon. In towns and cities one feels a desire to meet benevolent glances and friendly words from our fellow-men; and this, with some rare exceptions, which I gladly treasure up, is what I sought in vain in the great cities of the United States. Whether my search was unskilful, I know not; or whether, like an impatient miner, I too hastily abandoned a bed of rocks which concealed a precious vein. It is possible I may have done so. The one thing certain is, that in Canada and at New Orleans the sympathetic vein was revealed to me at once, and I had but to extend my hands to be met on all sides with a friendly grasp."

Finally, M. Marmier, who, whatever his faults of style or occasional flimsiness of substance, must be admitted to form his own opinions and to speak them out frankly and boldly, whether right or wrong--prophesies the rupture of the Union as a consequence of the slavery question.

"When the two halves of this immense country shall have taken a greater development, when each of them shall have grown strong enough to need no longer the other's support, the consciousness of its power will give keenness to its susceptibilities, and it will repel with anger what it now with difficulty tolerates. A fortuitous circumstance will cause a long-repressed animosity to burst forth; and slavery is, perhaps, the straw that shall break the steel bar of the United States."

With which ominous valediction M. Marmier closes his first volume, and embarks on board the "Ohio," the leviathan of American steamboats, constructed for the express purpose of conveying Californian gold-seekers to Chagres, and boasting, according to advertisement, engines each of a thousand horse power, and cabins for five hundred and fifty passengers--figures which the incredulous Marmier, long since initiated in the mysteries of Yankee puffery, inclines to think exaggerated. The vessel, however, is undeniably both fine and fast, and on the fourth morning after her departure from New Orleans, (four-and-twenty hours having been lost getting over the bar,) she flashes past the walls of the castle of the Moro. A narrow passage between rocks, fortresses right and left, frowning batteries of cannon--the entrance to the port of Havana is a menacing introduction to the delightful panorama that presents itself within. A vast semi-circular basin, which no tempest ever ruffles, envelops the city with its azure waters. So gay and bright is the aspect of the city itself, that the enthusiastic Marmier is at the gangway in an instant; his carpet-bag in one hand, his pilgrim's staff in the other, shouting for a boat to convey him ashore. He forgets that he is no longer in the States, where passports are unknown and all may come and go unquestioned. Cuba is the paradise of police and custom-house officers, the purgatory of tourists. Before embarking at a foreign port, your passport must receive the visa of the Spanish consul. Two dollars for that. On arriving at Cuba, the authorities take your passport and give in exchange a document of their own fabrication. Eight dollars for that. Still you are not allowed to land till an inhabitant of the island has guaranteed your respectability. It is a puzzle how to obtain this guarantee whilst you are forcibly detained on ship-board. The difficulty is removed by the appearance alongside of a number of obliging individuals, offering to certify your morality and orthodoxy; in return for which service you cannot do less than offer them a four-dollar bit. So that on summing up, and including boat-hire and porterage, it costs the humblest traveller something like twenty dollars to cross the quay of the Havana and reach his hotel.

But it is worth while to pay a good price for leave to land upon the enchanting shores of the Queen of the Antilles, to roam in forests of orange trees, to repose beneath the broad shade of the banana, and to enjoy, in their delightful quintas, the hospitality of the kindly Havanese. Besides, as M. Marmier exclaims, what are a hundred francs in a country whose soil produces golden harvests! _There_ are none of your coarse copper coins, or dirty Yankee bank-notes. A silver _medio_ (about threepence) is the smallest current coin, dollars are spent like francs in France, and a Cuban thinks no more of a portly golden ounce than a Paris dandy of a light napoleon. In that beauteous and luxurious isle, now almost the last colony remaining to the Sovereign of "Spain and the Indies," whilst the rich have abundant facilities for squandering their wealth, the man of humble fortune is at no loss for enjoyments. The bright sky, the glorious scenery, the gorgeous flowers, the cooling fruits of the tropics, are as free to him as to the _millionnaire_. And both alike are subject to the perils and annoyances of those sultry regions, where venomous plants and reptiles, offensive vermin, and the relentless _vomito_, the terrible Yellow Jack, are more than equivalent, as evils, to the grey skies and chilling blasts, snow-drifts and long winters of Northern Europe. It was in the month of January that M. Marmier reached the Havana, and by aid of open doors and windows, of curtains, mosquito nets, and a bed composed of two sheets and a sackcloth stretched on a frame, the heat was rendered very endurable. He scarcely dared imagine what it might be in the dog-days, when the demon of fever stalks abroad, invisible but fatal. In some years, however, the _vomito_, even at the most unhealthy season, commits few ravages, its virulence seems impaired, and the rejoicing Cubans almost imagine it is dying out upon their shores. The delightful dream of security is soon dispelled. Suddenly the grim phantom reappears, more deadly than ever, smiting alike the stranger and the native, the rough European mariner, and the graceful daughter of the tropics.

"Last year, in the month of August, the ships in harbour resembled those which are deserted by their sailors in the port of San Francisco. But it was not to hurry to the dazzling _placer_ that sailors and officers abandoned the national flag. It was to seek in the hospital a remedy for their tortures, to be buried in a foreign graveyard, far away from their pleasant Scheldt and beautiful Gironde."

As if the isle itself did not harbour enough disease, the winds of heaven and the ocean tides wafted it thither from other climes, from the fever-ridden shores of Tampico and Vera Cruz.

"One day the watcher on the Moro saw an English brig pass at the foot of the ramparts, steered by a woman, whom a pale skeleton-like man strove to assist in her task. Captain Jackson, who commanded this brig, had left Tampico with his wife, two young children, and seven sailors. A few days after they sailed, the seven sailors sickened of the fever and died, one after the other; the captain and his children, attacked by the same malady, lay in bed, unable to move. The woman, with a superhuman courage, inspired by her trust in God, threw the corpses into the sea, furled a part of the sails, took charge of the wheel, nursed her husband and children, and, thanks to a favourable wind which seconded her resolution, directed the ship towards the island of Cuba, until such time as her husband, rising from his sick bed, was able to give her some assistance. And thus she came into port, after forty days' navigation, timid and modest, casting down her eyes when lauded for her heroic energy, and seemingly unconscious of having achieved that from which the imagination of the most resolute man might well recoil with terror."

All who have read _Tom Cringle's Log_, will call to mind its glorious descriptions of Cuban scenery, its graphic and thrilling sketches of tropical sports and perils. We think all the better of Mr Taylor, that he has attentively studied Captain Cringle's admirable work, and refers to it with the respect due from a tyro to a master of the art. At St Jago de Cuba he became acquainted with the original of Don Ricardo Campana, the Spanish Scotchman who accompanied Cringle and Captain Transom on their memorable expedition into the interior of the island. Who has forgotten that exquisite chapter of the Log, "The Pirate's Leman"? Mr Richard Maxwell Bell, the gentleman whose name Cringle has humorously translated, is not a Scotchman, (as he is stated to be in the Log,) but is every bit as hospitable, sensible, and kind-hearted as he is there represented. By his good offices, Mr Taylor obtained a companion in the person of a young Spanish officer, proceeding up the country to join his regiment, for the journey to Gibara, a small town on the north shore of the island, five and forty leagues from St Jago. In the district of Holguin, whose capital is Gibara, the promised gold vein was said to exist, and that was Mr Taylor's destination.

"After seven days' delay, I received intimation that my fellow-traveller, Don Carlos Saldivar, was now ready, and awaited my joining forces with him at eleven that night, so as to get a long cool march by moonlight. About half-an-hour after the appointed time, we filed off down the street, the cavalcade consisting of about twenty-four horses, the head of one being tied to the tail of the other; and Don Carlos and myself brought up the rear. I have met with very few, even old residents, who have ever crossed the island by the road we took. It leads all the way over highlands, rocky passes, and through mountainous streams, except where it crosses some immense savannas; whereas the main road is mostly all the way on the banks of the Cauto, the principal river of Cuba. But the main road, though short and level, is dreadfully muddy and clayey in rainy weather, and for that reason our arrieros chose the other. After passing a small _ingenio_ or sugar-mill, worked by oxen, which Don Carlos pointed out on the side of the road, we entered a perfect forest of orange trees, whose ripe and tempting fruit hung in profusion from every tree, and lay also on the ground by cart-loads. I let the party get ahead some distance, and then, quietly dismounting, eagerly clutched the finest and ripest I could see. My mind misgave me a little on applying the test of smell, although that was very refreshing; but my worst fears came out on removing the peel, when I found my orange was both bitter and sour, being of the kind called in England "Seville," indigenous to and abundant in all the forests of Cuba, as well as the lime. I rode up to my friends, feeling considerably "sold," and now began to be aware that good fruit, although abundant enough in Cuba, is not to be had on every tree. We had accommodation, none of the best, the four nights we passed on the road. One of them saw us in a small _rancho_, the dwelling of a solitary negro, who, it seemed, was a tailor, and where the only place I could find for passing the night was on a _barbacoa_, or platform of small round sticks; and of all the beds I ever tried to sleep on, this was the most hopeless! I suffered much on this journey for want of a hammock, and seriously counsel all who may have to make a journey, long or short, in Cuba, to travel always with one. But how different the mode of travelling in Cuba, where Coolies are not to be had for a song, as they are here where I am writing, (Ceylon.) A Ceylon planter or merchant cannot move through the jungle or take any trip at all, without the attendance of six or eight of these poor creatures, toiling under a weight of baggage, bedding, &c. A Spaniard will travel seven or eight hundred miles, suppose from the Havana, to Holguin, on one and the same horse, and carry all he requires with him. Folded partly over the cantle of his saddle, and hanging on each side, the two capacious pockets of his _seron_ hold his coffee-pot, bread, and provisions on one side, and several changes of garments on the other. In front are strapped his cloak and holsters; behind, his hammock; and his trusty _machete_ hangs by his side. He is a perfectly independent man--a man after Sir Charles Napier's own heart; can carry two or three days' provisions in his _seron_, and cares not a fig where night overtakes him. To be sure there are, fortunately, no venomous reptiles or wild beasts in Cuba. Here, in Ceylon, perhaps it would not do to try on that 'dodge' too far. You might find a cobra de capello alongside of you in your hammock, or be unceremoniously ejected therefrom by an inquisitive elephant, a playful cheetah or an affectionate bear."

The above extracts, culled from half-a-dozen pages of Mr Taylor, give a fair idea of the texture of the earlier portion of his book, which, it will be seen, is slight but agreeable. He is not strictly correct in stating Cuba to be exempt from the plague of venomous reptiles. The island certainly produces nothing to compare to the _cobra_, but it has varieties of the serpent tribe that would be found anything but pleasant bedfellows--to say nothing of most formidable scorpions, and of gigantic spiders whose sting brings on fever. In his later chapters, Mr Taylor grapples with graver subjects--gives us a few statistics, describes the culture and preparation of sugar, and argues the question of slavery, for the gradual extinction of which he propounds a project. Although he passed upwards of three years in Cuba, the greater portion of the time was spent in the plantations; and he saw nothing of the great towns, except St Jago, where he slept through an earthquake, in the next room to a man with the yellow fever, and where he was duly impressed with the merits of Madame Sauce's boardinghouse and Bordeaux wine. For sketches of Cuba's capital, the gay coquettish city of the Havana, we must revert to M. Marmier, whom we find, with his national versatility, driving in _volantes_, (the light cabriolets which are almost the only equipages used in Cuba,) quoting Horace, Byron, and Lamartine, lauding Havanese courtesy, glancing at Hegel's philosophy, criticising Spanish colonial government, telling anecdotes of General Tacon, (the stern but efficient governor to whom Cuba is indebted for many reforms,) admiring the Creole beauties in the theatre, and cooling his heated interior in the vast coffee-houses, where the delicious fruits of the island--the orange, the pine, the guava, and many others for which English names are wanting--are transformed into preserves, ices, and frozen drinks. At one of these coffee-houses, an ingenious French _glacier_ had so multiplied his refreshing inventions, that he had exhausted his Spanish vocabulary, and was driven to politics and the Anglo-Saxon. "Waiter!" cried a thirsty customer, within hearing of M. Marmier, "bring me a President Taylor!" "A President Jackson for me!" exclaimed another voice. M. Marmier, with praiseworthy curiosity, tried both Taylor and Jackson. The ingenious confectioner, he declares, had had due regard to the characters of the two venerable Presidents, when he gave their names to his cunningly compounded liquors: Taylor was a sweetish and cooling draught, Jackson an energetic punch. At the theatre, where an Italian company performed _Lucia_ in most creditable style, M. Marmier was struck with the elegance of the house and the aristocratic appearance of the audience. The pit was full of men in white waistcoats and trousers; the three ranges of boxes, instead of wainscoting at the back, and a heavy wooden balustrade halfway up the front, had Venetian blinds in the one place, admitting air and light, and in the other a light trelliswork, which afforded a full view of the fair inmates from their luxuriant hair down to their fairy feet.

"Above the boxes is the place allotted to the negroes, who seem stationed there that their thickset figures and black faces may serve as a foil to the white doves in the boxes. Ladies' fashions have here no resemblance to those of Paris. Velvet is not to be thought of; even satin is too heavy and inflexible for those delicate forms, and Cinderella's slipper would be too heavy a load for those bird-like feet. A flower in the hair, a flood of gauze and lace on the body, a silk ribbon, with an imperceptible sole, for a shoe, and another ribbon of the same colour round the instep,--this is all that these lilies of the tropics can support. One might take them for those Northern elves, who formerly, in the forest glades, wove themselves garments out of moonbeams."

Lavish and luxurious in dress, the Havanese lady does not long retain the fresh and delicate tissues that drape her slender person, but transfers them, often scarcely worn, to her black waiting-maids, who turn out upon the Sunday, like so many African princesses, in all the glory of satin shoes, lace mantilla, and muslin robes. At the Havana, as at New Orleans, and even to a still greater extent, the lot of the domestic slaves might be envied, as far as material comforts go, by most of the lower classes of free Europeans. They form part of the family in which they are brought up, enjoy great kindness and indulgence, and frequently grow rich by hoarding the presents they receive.

"Many economical negroes," says M. Marmier, "especially those of the tribe of Caravalis, amass in service a sum which they well know how to employ. The law of Cuba obliges the proprietor to liberate his slave when he repays the sum he cost, either at once or by instalments. There is a lottery at the Havana, similar to those of Germany, which has already contributed to the enfranchisement of many negroes. There are tickets at twenty francs and at five francs, and prizes of forty thousand, eighty thousand, and a hundred and fifty thousand francs. Once there was a prize of five hundred thousand francs, which was won by a negro, unluckily for him; for when he saw the mass of gold spread upon the table, the excitement killed him. Once free, the negro opens a workshop or warehouse, and buys other slaves. Unhappy those who call him master. They are worse treated by the man of their own colour than by the most merciless of the whites."

However fortunate the lot of the domestic slaves in Cuba, neither of the books before us gives a very pleasing picture of the life of those on the plantations. Of course much depends on the character of their owner, and whether he resides on his estate or leaves it entirely to an overseer. Mr Taylor, who saw much more of plantation life than M. Marmier, and indeed may be considered excellent authority on that subject, gives quite a pastoral sketch of negro life on one particular estate, partly owned and wholly managed by a kind-hearted friend of his, from whom the slaves had no undue severity to fear; but he significantly hints that cases of this sort are the exception rather than the rule, and, indeed, in more than one place, his italics and suppressions give us gloomy glimpses of the condition of the blacks in Cuba. M. Marmier describes the corporal chastisements inflicted as frequent and cruel, and occasionally leading to suicide and flight. But neither the virgin forests of Cuba, extensive and intricate though they be, nor the lofty and rarely-ascended mountains, secure the fugitive slave from pursuit and capture. As soon as he is missed, the terrible bloodhound is on his trail. Whilst residing on the sugar estate of Santa L., Mr Taylor, sitting one evening in the verandah, happened to fix his eyes on a distant clump of palms, which he had often before admired. Suddenly the tallest of them disappeared.

"Struck by such a strange circumstance, I called to the overseer, who was quietly walking his horse up the avenue, and told him. Quick as lightning, without giving an answer, he struck his spurs into his horse's flank, and quicker than I can write, he was on the spot. A noble palm of eighty feet lay prostrate, cut through with an axe, and already minus its glory, (its crown,) cut off for the cabbage. In vain, however, did he look for the culprit, and shout. But in less than two minutes, behold him back! 'White or black, I have him now!' shouted he, as he and the dog scampered off again. One sniff at the tree was enough for the bloodhound, and in five minutes more the negro, for it was one belonging to the estate, was in custody--uninjured by the dog, for his master was close on his track. He was punished, but, I believe, not very severely."

Madame de Merlin, from whose graceful pages we have already quoted, speaks at some length of these celebrated slave-hunting dogs, whose strength and sagacity are as remarkable as their intense instinctive aversion to runaway negroes. These seldom dare resist them, but when they do, the contest is never long nor the victory doubtful. The dog seizes the man by the ear and pulls him to the ground; having thus daunted him, he suffers him to rise, and takes him home without further injury.

"Yesterday," says Madame de Merlin, "three malefactors who had devastated the environs of Marianao, at a short distance from the Havana, and who had escaped from the pursuit of justice, were brought in by two dogs. On arriving near the town, one of the dogs, his jaws all bloody, his eyes glittering, remained on guard over the prisoners; whilst his comrade, running to the entrance of the town, howled, shook people by their clothes, and indicated, by the most ingenious signs, the spot where the captives were waiting. At last he made himself understood, and guided the police to the place where the other dog, stanch to his post, was guarding the malefactors, who lay half-dead upon the grass. One of the unfortunate wretches had a broken jaw, and all three had been grievously wounded in the conflict."

The greater part of the labour on the sugar-plantations is necessarily of the very severest description, and the hardship is trebled by the burning heat of the climate; the negroes are punished by the whip, twenty-five lashes being the number permitted by law, and which Mr Taylor believes to be seldom exceeded, although there is no security against it not being so, since he admits that the owner or manager, offending in this particular, can evade the fine by a bribe to the Government official. If a slave, weary of stripes and toll, takes to the woods, the bloodhounds are on his track; and if he escapes for a while the keen scent and unwearying pursuit of these sagacious and formidable brutes, it is only at the cost of a life of constant terror and privation amidst the jungles of _canas bravas_[7], or in the depths of gloomy caverns, strewed with the bones of the aborigines of the island. There exist, however, according to Mr Taylor, colonies of fugitive negroes, dwelling in comparative security on mountain summits of difficult approach.

[7] A species of gigantic reed or cane, which attains an elevation of fifty feet, in clumps of two or three hundred stems.

"At the very eastern end of Cuba, within the triangle between the cities of St Jago and Baracoa and Point Mäysi, is a wild and rugged tract of country, and in the centre of all, an immense mountain, called the Sierra del Cristal, which I have often seen from the sea. Hither no adventurous topographer has yet directed his steps; but, were the proper admeasurements made, I am almost certain the Cristal would be found the highest eminence in Cuba. On this mountain range, every one unites in declaring that the runaway negroes have established a large settlement."

Such collections of wild Indians or negroes are called Palenques, and the men composing it are known as Apalencados. When more than seven are congregated, it is a Palenque. The pursuit and suppression of these is under the superintendence of an official, appointed for the purpose, and of a tribunal called a consulate.

"If the expedition be considered one of extreme danger, special rates of reward are offered. In that case, _extirpation_ is probably determined on; but such cases have rarely happened.... The great Palenque of the Cristal remains as much a mystery as ever; and some even doubt if the Spanish Government does not leave it purposely as a kind of safety valve for the discontented, for no expedition of importance enough to reduce it has ever been undertaken, although small parties are annually formed in Baracoa, who hover about it and capture a great many negroes. Common report says that the settlement is high up on an elevated plateau, only approachable by one pass, which is fortified by overhanging rocks, kept ready to hurl on the invaders, and strictly guarded by wary sentinels; and, that on this plateau, whose inhabitants are said to amount to many hundreds, grain, tobacco, &c. are grown sufficient for their wants. It is further hinted that some whites have more dealings with the Apalencados than they would wish generally known, and supply them with clothes and necessaries unattainable in the Palenque."

Spaniards are generally admitted to be much kinder slave-masters than most Americans. Were we to give implicit credence to the Countess Merlin, which her enthusiasm for her own countrymen and womanly partisanship prevent our doing, we must believe Havana the very paradise of slaves. "The humanity of the generality of the laws and regulations of the Spaniards in the particular of slavery," says Mr Taylor, "contrast favourably with that of _some_ of the States of the American Union." M. Marmier considers the houses of the Havanese to be "the El Dorado of slaves, the plantations their purgatory." But all three authorities agree in preferring the condition of the slaves to that of the _emancipados_--slaves captured by our cruisers and liberated in the Havana, or confiscated by the Cuban authorities in some rare moment of zeal and good faith. These are hired out to taskmasters with a view of their being taught some trade, which they very seldom manage to learn; and, meanwhile, they drag on in bondage from year to year, often worse treated than slaves, because, as Mr Taylor says, the _emancipado_ belongs to nobody, whilst the slave has an owner who is interested, to a certain extent, in not destroying his _animal_. It is the free black, in short, in these cases, who gets least victuals, hardest work, and most whip. Mr Taylor is rather good upon this head, and quotes with considerable effect the report of the Sugar and Coffee Planting Committee, printed by order of the House of Commons, and of which he received a copy in Ceylon, just as he was writing his book. The document, he says, singularly confirmed the impressions he had received five to eight years previously, during his residence in Cuba, as to the shameful manner in which the treaties respecting slavery are evaded in that colony. It shows how the _emancipados_ are virtually sold (hired out for terms of years) in an underhand manner, for the profit of the Spanish Government and officials; how his Excellency the captain-general supplied the Gas Company, of which the chaste and tender-hearted Christina is the chief shareholder, with dark-complexioned lamp-lighters at five gold ounces a-head; how Mrs O'Donnell, (now Countess of Lucena) lady of the captain-general of that name, procured herself a snug little income by the labour of four hundred _emancipados_, transferred to the paternal care of the Marquis de las Delicias, chief judge, of the mixed court(!) _and one of the greatest slave-holders in Cuba_--all these statements being given upon the undeniable authority of a letter from the British consul-general Crawford, read by the chairman of the Committee above referred to. And there would be no difficulty in producing equally reliable authority for a host of similar iniquities, incredible to persons unacquainted with the atrocious immorality of Spanish colonial administration, with the insatiable greed of certain high personages in Spain, and with the immense fortunes amassed by Cuban captains-general. "It is said," says Consul-general Crawford, as quoted by Mr Taylor, "that upwards of five thousand of those unfortunate wretches (the _emancipados_) have been resold at rates of from five to nine ounces, by which upwards of six hundred thousand dollars have been made in the government-house, one-sixth of which was divided amongst the underlings, from the colonial secretary downwards." "I heard the other day," says Mr Taylor, "of a grand new _ingenio_ having been set up by Queen Christina, with every latest improvement; behold the secret!" He makes bold to believe that not a few of the five thousand "unfortunate wretches," spoken of by Mr Crawford, might be found doing duty in the queen-mother's plantation and sugar-mill. A very probable hypothesis. There can be no doubt, however, that the means by which the estate is worked, and the gas-lamps lighted, would bear investigation quite as well as the mode of acquisition of the funds invested in them by the enormously wealthy widow of the Well-beloved Ferdinand.

Those recent visitors to Cuba who have written of what they there saw, have in few instances done more than glance at the subject. They have either treated it superficially, like M. Marmier, who, in his love of locomotion and eagerness to get afloat again, dismisses the Pearl of the Antilles in three or four hasty chapters; or, like Mr Taylor, their opportunities of investigation have been limited to a small portion of the island. Mr Madden's little volume is of a special and statistical class; and, as far as it goes, we think well of it, notwithstanding the attack made upon it by Mr Taylor, who is shocked at the faulty spelling of Spanish words and names, and who laughs at Mr Madden for deprecating the annexation of Cuba to the States, which he (Mr Taylor) inclines to advocate. Madame de Merlin's work is much more copious and comprehensive than any of the three above named; but if her sketches of Havanese society and manners are pleasing and characteristic, her descriptions of scenery vivid, and her retrospective historical chapters careful and scholarly, on the other hand she is frequently biassed, when touching on matters of greater practical importance, by the joint prejudices of a Frenchwoman and of a Spanish Creole; whilst her sex necessarily precluded her from acquaintance with various phases of Spanish colonial life, and from exploring those wilder districts, an account of which is essential to the completeness of a work on Cuba professing thoroughly to describe the island and its motley population. For such a work there is abundant room; and of such a one, in this century of intelligent and enterprising travellers, we confidently hope before long to welcome the appearance.

ONWARD TENDENCIES.

TO AUGUSTUS REGINALD DUNSHUNNER, ESQ. OF ST MIRRENS.

MY DEAR DUNSHUNNER,--Is it too great a liberty to inquire into the nature of your present avocations, or to ask if you are occupied with any magnificent scheme to take the public mind by storm? You have of late maintained so mysterious and obstinate a silence, that your friends are becoming anxious regarding you. Like Achilles, son of Peleus, you seem to be sulking in your tent, whilst all the rest of the Greeks are abroad in the clear sunlight, making head against the Trojan army, and skirmishing in the front of their ships. We miss you, and the public miss you. Your red right arm was wont to be seen far in front of the battle fray, and, at the moment when the political strife is hottest, we cannot afford to lose the countenance of our bravest champion. I hope there is no Briseïs in the case? If so, tell us which of the Free-Traders has wronged you, and the damsel shall be immediately restored, with a corresponding recompense of plunder.

The fact is, Dunshunner, that we are in a devil of a scrape. Matters have not turned out exactly as we anticipated; and, although we are endeavouring to maintain the attitude of perfect confidence, I need not disguise from you my conviction that Free Trade has proved an utter failure. Of course you will keep this to yourself. We cannot venture to let it be publicly known that we have lost faith in our own nostrums; and we are doing all we can, by means of mitigating the tenor of the trade circulars, to keep the great body of the manufacturers, who of late have shown certain symptoms of revolt, at least neutral and reasonably quiet. Our friend Skinflint of the _Importationist_ is fighting a most praiseworthy battle, and every one must admire the pluck which he has exhibited under extraordinarily difficult circumstances. He has had not only to defend the general policy of Free Trade, but to maintain that his own predictions have been fulfilled to the very letter--a task which most men would have considered rather arduous, seeing that figures are entirely against him, and that all the facts which have occurred are directly in the teeth of his prophecies. But Skinflint is an invaluable fellow to lead a forlorn-hope. He can prove to you that an unfulfilled prophecy is quite as good as one which has been accomplished, and he is truly superb upon the subject of the natural limits of capital. Political economy, as you know, has long been my favourite study; but I fairly confess to you that, with all my reading and acquired knowledge, I cannot cope with Skinflint. He has gone so deep into the science--he has dived so profoundly not only through the water but the mud, that to follow him is absolutely impossible; and--to pursue the metaphor--you can only ascertain the whereabouts of this unrivalled professor of the art of sinking, by the dirt which ascends to the surface, and the rising of the fetid bubbles. At present he has as much work on his hands as might stagger the stoutest Stagyrite. The farmers, the millers, the sugar-refiners, the shipowners--yea, the very delegates of the working-men--all are at him! You may conceive what a breadth of buckler and how many folds of brass are necessary to shelter him against such a multitude of weapons; yet still Skinflint combats on. I wonder if he is descended from the Berserkars, who, in consequence of abstaining from ablutions, succeeded at length in rendering their hides invulnerable?

The farmers--poor devils!--are entirely up the spout. I will admit that I am sorry for that; but my sorrow arises from no maudlin compassion for their misfortunes. You are aware that I never had any sympathy with things bucolic. I always considered the towns as the proper habitations for mankind, and have maintained the opinion that the sooner we could get rid of the country the better. What man of common sense cares one farthing for cows, or buttercups, or sheep? Are we in the nineteenth century to pin our faith to the Georgics, or to babble in senile imbecility about green fields? What care I about purling brooks? They may be useful for a dye-work, or as the means of motive power, but otherwise they are entirely superfluous; and we may thank those idiots, the poets--who, by the way, are perfectly useless, for not one of them pays Income Tax--for having created a false impression about them. I cordially agreed with Cobden, that the sooner we could lay Manchester side by side with the valley of the Mississippi, the better; and, had it not been for the obtuseness of those pig-headed scoundrels, the Yankees, who, forsooth, have got a crotchet in their heads about maintaining their own miserable industry, the job would have been done long ago. Had Jonathan acted by us fairly, as he was in honour bound to do--had he demolished his mills, blown out his furnaces, shut up his mines, and passed an Act of Congress to inflict the penalty of death upon any presumptuous loafer who should attempt to manufacture a single article in the United States, my life upon it that at the present moment we should have been driving a roaring trade! But the infatuated blockhead wont have our goods, and is actually heightening his tariffs to restrict their admission still further! The German ninny-hammers and pragmatical Spaniards are doing the same thing; and, in consequence, our whole anticipations have been violently frustrated. Perhaps you see now why I am sorry for the farmers. My regret is, that their power of purchase has decreased--that they can't buy from us as formerly--and that, in short, the home market is going to the mischief. Personally, I am connected with an exporting house; and yet I must acknowledge candidly that business is anything but brisk. We have overdone the thing in trying to get up an enormous increase of exportations; and the consequence is, that we have caused a glut in many of the foreign markets. It is not impossible that, before a healthy demand is restored, new competitors may step in, and our grand staple of calico, upon which the prosperity of Britain entirely depends, go down to a further discount. These are gloomy anticipations, but I cannot quite banish them from my mind. I look forward with considerable apprehension to the time when we shall fairly have eaten up the farmers. Of course, when that arrives, we must look out for another class to devour; and, according to my view, the Fundholder is the next in order. He will make a hideous row when he finds himself marked out for general mastication, but no doubt we shall, somehow or other, contrive to stifle his cries. His fate is perfectly natural. In all cases of shipwreck, when the supplies of provisions are exhausted, the fattest individual of the crew is selected for the sustenance of the rest. It would be absurd to pitch upon a lean victim; for the amount of suffering is the same in either case, and the economical principle is to secure the largest amount of supply. Of course he must be dealt with gently. We have the high authority of Seneca for supposing that gradual phlebotomy is an easy manner of death; and we shall not put an end to him in a hurry. He is unquestionably a full-blooded animal; and, when tapped, will yield as readily as a barrel of October.

All this, however, is mere anticipation; and doubtless you have already in your own mind maturely considered our prospects. What presses upon us most immediately, is the chance of a speedy dissolution of Parliament, and a new general election. I strongly suspect that the Whigs cannot hope to remain in office long. With all my regard for that party, I must admit that they are a shocking bad set, in so far as business is concerned, and their exclusiveness is really quite insufferable. Had they reconstructed the Cabinet upon a liberal footing, by taking in half-a-dozen of us original Free-Traders, there might have been no occasion for any dissolution until the expiry of the seven years. Our demands were not extravagant. Cobden would have done the business of the War-Office in a highly creditable manner. Bright would have been too happy to go out as Governor-General of India, and look after the growth of cotton. Joseph Hume is at least as fitted for the situation of Chancellor of the Exchequer as Sir Charles Wood; or if Joseph is rather too ancient, why not our undaunted M'Gregor? He is the only man alive who can improvise a budget at a quarter of an hour's notice. I myself should have been happy to have served in a subordinate capacity. Williams, Walmsley, or Kershaw, would gladly have relieved Earl Grey from the trouble of looking after the colonies; and I really think that, with such an infusion of new talent, the Government might have gone on swimmingly. Of course, we should have put an end at once to that ridiculous Protestant howl about Papal aggression, which is directly opposed to the spirit of Free Trade, and to the liberal tendencies of the age. Black cattle are admitted duty free; and I can see no reason why a cardinal should be considered contraband, merely on account of a slight peculiarity in the colour of his legs. Let him call himself anything he pleases--what need we care? Protestantism, my dear Dunshunner, is about the only obstacle in the way of our becoming perfect cosmopolitans. Why should we, of all people on the earth, affect eccentric distinctions? Luther was a sad fool. If he had played his cards properly, he might have been a bishop or a cardinal, or anything else he chose, and we should have been spared the trouble of this hubbub about a matter which seems to me of no earthly consequence. But our friend Lord John is, as you know, as obstinate as a whole drove of pigs, and will always take his own way. And a very nice mess of it he has made this time, to be sure!

However, the Whigs did not choose to come to us, though they were glad enough to make overtures to Graham and Gladstone, and the rest of that lot, who, after all, would have nothing to say to them. In consequence, they now feel themselves more ricketty than ever. The Protectionists are making powerful head, and gaining strength daily; and I cannot look forward to a new general election without feelings of great anxiety. I quite concur in the sentiments expressed by that patriotic creature, Colonel Peyronnet Thompson, that he would as lieve see London occupied by a foreign army, as the Protectionist party in power. I do believe that, in such an event, the cause of Free Trade would be desperate. You see we have no party whatever in the country to fall back upon for support. The artisans are declaring against us; the small traders have been unmercifully rooked; the shopkeepers are making no profits; and, as to Ireland, it is more than beginning to wince under the operation of a system which has destroyed its only product. We have tried to keep the Irish in good humour for a year or so by hinting at an immediate influx of English capital. That idea was mine. It was not by any means a bad dodge while it lasted, and our friends of the press took care to do it full justice. But, after all, it was merely a dodge. As for English capital going to Ireland, where no possible expenditure could insure a penny of rent, the thing is as preposterous as the notion of applying guano, for agricultural purposes, to the island of Ichaboe! Notwithstanding, we have done some good. We have ruined the proprietors, and starved a reasonable portion of the peasantry; and I am glad to see that the same operation is going on in the Hebrides. Labour in the towns will, no doubt, be considerably cheapened in consequence. But we cannot calculate with certainty on the support of Irish members after a new election. They won't work together as formerly. We miss our perished Daniel, who, with all his faults, was a capital ally, if you gave him a sufficient equivalent.

It is no use disguising the truth; the Protectionists are like enough to beat us. There is a vigour and a perseverance about that party which I am quite at a loss to understand. Two or three years ago, when they first began to look really formidable, we took the utmost pains to write them down; and, if good sheer abuse and hard hitting could have accomplished that object, we ought to have succeeded. We worked the old joke about a Protectionist being a spectacle as rare as a mummy in a glass-case, until it was perfectly threadbare. We sneered at and scouted their statistics. We questioned their sanity, and talked with mysterious compassion about Bedlam. We assured them, that to restore protection to native industry was as hopeless as an attempt to re-establish the Heptarchy. We used and abused, in every way, that fine metaphor touching "the winds of heaven and the waves of ocean;" and we pressed poets into our service to celebrate the cheap loaf in dithyrambics. We reviled Disraeli, misrepresented Newdegate, lampooned George Frederick Young, and insinuated that Lord Stanley was a traitor. Finally, we became affectionate, and warned the besotted Protectionists of the danger which was hanging, in a heavy cloud, over their devoted heads. We did everything which ingenuity could suggest to prevent the mummy from being resuscitated; but Cheops has come again to life with a vengeance, and has given us a shrewd blow on the skull as he started full armed from his sarcophagus. We must now deal with him as a reality, not as a shadow; and, for my own part, I cannot aver that I am inordinately eager for the encounter.

Still, something must be done; and our first duty, according to my notion, is to look out for new candidates. To the disgrace of human nature be it spoken, some of our most esteemed veterans have little prospect of being again returned by their present constituencies. There will be changes, and changes too of a most extraordinary kind; and that circumstance renders it the more necessary for us to prevent, at all hazards, a dissolution. You may now, my dear Dunshunner, fathom the real object of this letter. We want you to come into Parliament, on the independent, Ministerial, or any other interest you please, provided that, when returned, you give us the benefit of your vote, and the aid of your powerful eloquence upon any occasion when the cause of Free Trade may be in jeopardy. I know what your own private leanings are, but these are not times to be scrupulous. The League expects every man to go the entire hog. If you want a subscription, or--what would suit us better--the promise of a place, say so at once, and you shall have either. But, if you follow my advice, you will content yourself with a positive promise. We are strong enough to wring anything from the Whigs in case of emergency; and as in all human probability, judging from the past, no single week can pass over without the shadow of a crisis, we shall be able to make terms for you, better and earlier than you might suppose. Some few pickings there are still left, which are well worth a gentleman's acceptance; and it will be your own fault if, after having taken your seat, you do not make your parliamentary position advantageous in more ways than one.

I suppose there is no chance of an immediate vacancy in the Dreepdaily Burghs? Well, then, you must even make up your mind to come south and attack a Saxon garrison. I have one or two places in my eye, either of which you will be sure to carry in a canter, provided some fiery fanatical fellow does not start up to oppose you. They are cotton boroughs under the complete control of the millocracy; and I think you are certain to step in, provided matters are properly managed, at the expense of a small judicious outlay. And here, I know, you will begin to object--You cannot afford the expense, &c. My dear friend, you _must_ afford it, if you wish to cut any figure in life, or to make yourself accounted worthy of purchase. No parsimony is so ill-judged as that which boggles at the outlay of an election. No matter how many firkins of beer may be consumed in the course of the canvass--how many hundred dozen _goes_ of brandy-and-water may lubricate the throats of the thirsty potwallopers and freemen who espouse your cause, and bear your colours--the true principle is to consider these charges as a debt which a grateful Ministry must refund on the first convenient opportunity, with such rate of interest as you are fairly entitled to expect, taking into account the risk which you have run, and the labour which you have performed on their behalf. Altogether independently of this, a seat in Parliament is well worth the expense. It gives you a position in society which is otherwise difficult to attain; and any man who can talk as you do, glibly and off-hand, is certain, before a session is over, to push himself forward into notoriety.

I'll tell you why we want you, and I shall do so with the most perfect frankness and unreserve. Our best men are used up. In the opinion of the Secret Committee, of whose views I am the humble expositor, Cobden is no longer worth his weight in oakum for any practical purpose whatever. We committed a monstrous mistake in subscribing that unlucky fund. We ought to have remembered the story of the soldier who carried with desperate gallantry a redoubt the morning after he had been rooked of his last penny at cribbage, but who invariably declined to volunteer for any subsequent enterprise, in consequence of the injudicious douceur awarded him by the commanding officer. Just so has it been with Cobden. The testimonial turned his head. You remember the awful exhibition he made of himself, when, in attempting to lecture the farmers on the best method of cultivating land, he assumed the character of a country gentleman; and the undying ridicule which was excited by the immediate publication of a lithographed plan of his estate, which, in a good year, might pasture a couple of cows, and afford precarious subsistence besides to a brood of goslings? Then came his Peace platform tomfoolery, just at the very time when war was becoming universal on the Continent, and revolutions were springing like mines under the feet of every government. Then, again, instead of cajoling the bucolics, he chose openly to defy and insult them at Leeds; and the result has been that, from that hour, every man connected in the most remote degree with the landed interest has drawn off from our body. In the House of Commons he can hardly command an audience. The Liberal whippers-in say that a speech of his is equivalent to a dozen votes added to the Opposition minority, and they never see him crossing the threshold without quaking with terror lest he should take it into his head to commence a harangue. Bright's eloquence is usually smothered by cries of "Oh, oh," and derisive cheering. He is a sturdy chap in his way, but woefully injudicious; and he has been so exceedingly rude to Lord John Russell, that the Whigs will have nothing to say to him. Old Joe is rapidly becoming imbecile. He can no longer fumble with figures as he used to do; and his perception, in most cases, is not sufficiently clear to enable him to state the "tottle of the whole" with accuracy. I love and revere the veteran, but I am afraid his best days are gone by. Milner Gibson won't do; and of course we have too much respect for our cause to allow M'Gregor to come down to Westminster without his muzzle. We require, of all things, a new hand with gentlemanly manners, an easy address, some flow of language, and a slight dash of humour--one who will not weary the House with interminable statistics, or get into a passion because he is contradicted, or fasten upon his opponent with the brute ferocity of a bull-dog. We want some fellow not fully committed to Free Trade, who can keep, as it were, on our flanks, and amuse the enemy at times by suggesting articles of condition. He must have no one-sided predilections, no abstract preference for the Cottonocracy over the other interests of Britain. He must appear to be animated by a fine, generous, patriotic spirit--ever ready to listen to distress, and always eager to condole with it. Fine words, you are aware, butter no parsnips, but they are fine words notwithstanding. This is the part which we wish you to undertake, if you consent to come among us. The fact is, that we must do something of the kind if we wish to escape annihilation. I am afraid we have derived no benefit from sneering at the farmers. The proposals which were made in the public prints for their wholesale emigration have excited general disgust, and men are beginning to ask each other what crime the agriculturists have committed, to justify the infliction of such penalties? The question, of course, is a foolish one. Every sound economist knows that the farmers are mere creatures of circumstance, and that their interests cannot be allowed for one moment to stand in the way of the approaching supremacy of Manchester. But, unfortunately, all men are not political economists, and we must, for some time at least, humour their fancies. I should be the last man in the world to admit that any feelings of compassion should have weight in the settlement of a great national question; and you, who know me well, will do me the credit to believe that I could see every farm-house in England made desolate, and the inmates transported to the antipodes, without the weakness of shedding a tear. We cannot, however, expect so much Spartan stoicism from the masses. They are still by far too much under the influence of the clergy; and it will be some time before we can eradicate from their minds the lingering fibres of superstition. I agree in the main with the sentiments expressed the other night by that trump, Joseph Sandars of Yarmouth, that all we have or ought to regard, is the interest of the manufacturers. Did you observe what he said? Excuse me if I quote the passage. "Look at the fearful consequences which would result to the commercial classes of the country, if their powers of competition with foreign nations were weakened or crippled. If that large portion of the community did not spin and weave for the four quarters of the globe, the subsistence and happiness of millions of our population would be destroyed. That competition went on day by day, and year by year, increasing in force and intelligence, and formed the great social question of our times. If adequate provision were not made for that class of the population, there must be danger." Sandars was undeniably right; but what demon could have possessed Sandars to make him say so in as many words? It amounts to a pure and unqualified admission of the real truth, that Free Trade was intended to operate, and must operate, solely for the benefit of the exporting houses, to the ruin of all other interests in the country; but was it in any way necessary to tell the country that? These are the sort of speeches which are playing the mischief with us. How can we attempt to bamboozle the shopkeepers who are losing custom, and the artisans who have little or nothing to do, and the small tradesmen who are verging towards the Gazette, if members of our own party will have the consummate imprudence to tell them that they are merely parts of a general holocaust--infinitesimal faggots of a grand pile of British industry which is to be fired, in order that the aged phoenix of cotton-spinning may be regenerated, and soar, triumphant and alone, from the heart of the smouldering ashes? Our game is to keep all these things in the background. Three years ago, at one of our private Manchester conferences, I indicated the course which we should pursue. My advice was--on no account to break with the farmers. I represented that, when agricultural distress arrived, as it must do immediately, our first business was to attribute that entirely to exceptional causes--such as a good harvest, which we could have little difficulty in doing, considering the deficiency of agricultural statistics. That, I said, would gain us a year. Next, we could fall back upon the subject of rent, and sow dissension in the bucolic ranks, by alleging that the whole loss might be met by a remission on the part of the landlords, and that they were in fact the only parties interested. I explained that this line of policy, if properly and dextrously pursued, could not fail to add enormously to our strength, since, by radicalising the farmers, we must separate them entirely from the landlords, and make them ready tools for our grand final move--which, I need not say, is the repudiation of the National Debt. My advice was not only applauded, but adopted. We surmounted the difficulties of the first year pretty well; and, but for the folly of some of our own men, we should by this time have had the farmers clamouring on our side. Cobden, however, reviled them in all the terms which his choice and polished imagination could suggest; others told them to go to Australia or to the devil, whichever the might think best; and now Sandars deliberately comes forward, and lets the cat out of the bag! I ask you, Dunshunner, if it is not enough to make any man of parts and intellect as rabid as a March hare, when he sees his finest and best-adjusted schemes utterly ruined by such deplorable bungling? Our only chance is to gain time. Give me another year, or eighteen months more, at the utmost, of the present Parliament, and, I trust, the death-warrant of the Fundholder will be sealed. If we can extend the suffrage in the mean time, so much the better. We have managed to get up a tolerable hatred of taxation. The anti-excise party is very powerful, and, by giving them a lift, we might knock off several more millions from the revenue. Cardwell, and some of that soft-headed set, who call themselves Peelites, wish to take the duties off tea, and they ought by all means to be encouraged. Tobacco follows next, of course; and as smoking and snuffing are now almost universal, the repeal of the duties on these articles would be immensely popular. Malt goes, and so does sugar,--and then, my dear friend, where's your revenue, and where the means of paying the interest of the national debt? Don't you see what a beautiful field is open to us, if we can only keep our own men from making premature disclosures, and pander properly to the public appetite for getting rid of taxation? By itself, direct taxation cannot stand six months. That fact in natural history has been ascertained by so many experiments, and consequent revolutions, from the days of Wat Tyler downwards, that I need not fatigue you by recapitulating them. The reimposition of the Income Tax for three years is an immense point in our favour. I never felt so nervous in my life as during the Ministerial crisis, when it appeared possible that Stanley might come in. I knew that, if he succeeded in forming a Government, the Income Tax was doomed, and then, of course, we must have had a revision of the tariff; and probably he would have proposed to levy such duties upon imports as might put the British artisan, labourer, and grower, on a fair level to compete with the foreigner, at least in respect of taxation. Had he succeeded, our game was up. But, most fortunately, we have escaped that danger. I shall ever regard the glass house in Hyde Park with feelings of peculiar gratitude; for I am convinced that, but for that sublime erection, we should have lost the services of Sir Charles Wood, and, with him, lost all chance of carrying into execution those schemes which we consider most important for the entire ascendency of Manchester. Fortunately, Wood is spared to us. He is an excellent confiding creature--as innocent as a lamb who is tempted into the precincts of the slaughter-house by the proffer of a bunch of clover; and if we can manage to keep him in office a little longer, why, between ourselves, I think, Dunshunner, we may look upon the matter as achieved.

Did you ever read old Cobbett's political writings? It is rather funny to refer to these just now. We are precisely in the state which he vaticinated some thirty years ago, when viewing prospectively the effects of Peel's Currency Act of 1819: and I confess that I have lately conceived a wonderful respect for the prescience and sagacity of that queer ill-regulated genius. I call him ill-regulated, because I believe that, were he alive, we should have found him our bitterest opponent in any scheme which involved, as ours does, the expatriation of the British yeomanry. The old fool had a heart--that is, the amount of cellular or medullary tissue, which anatomically answers to that portion of the human frame, was acted upon by natural impulses, which it is the duty of the scientific Free-Trader to control. We of Manchester flatter ourselves that we are above any such deplorable weakness. But, setting his heart entirely aside, Cobbett had a head, and it is perhaps as well for us that that head is mouldering in the grave. He would have broached the grand question too early, and thereby given our booty time to escape; whereas, now, we have the fundholders gone to sleep, like pheasants on a tree at sunset. If no untoward barking--no alarum on the part of our own lurchers unsettles them--they are safe enough. Granting that they are startled for an instant, a very little delay will suffice to put each bird's neck beneath its wing; and then--hey, my fellow countrymen, for the brimstone-match, and the sack to receive the fallen! Let them kick and spur as they like afterwards--it is a mere question of the expenditure of feathers.

Of course you are quite aware of the present state of the colonies. Some of the more enthusiastic of our men were anxious to get rid of them at once, which they thought might be done by a simultaneous withdrawal of the troops. I have seen this plan recommended more than once in respectable quarters, and the arguments in its favour are not without plausibility; still, I think it better that we should abstain from active measures, and allow the colonies to drop off, like blighted fruit, as they must naturally do, without any violent effort on our part. Under the operation of Free Trade, colonies can be of no earthly use to us. We do nothing for them, and they do nothing for us; therefore, the sooner we cut the cable, and let them go, the better. The Whigs are doing all they can to precipitate the crisis with Canada. The removal of the seat of Government to Quebec will give such an impetus to the Annexation party, that the Canadas must go over to the United States, notwithstanding all the scruples which may be preferred by those fools who talk of loyalty as if it were something hereditary, or, indeed, as if loyalty were otherwise than an absolute sham. We know better. Crowns are usually estimated according to the value of the jewels which they contain; and, if certain jewels are detached from their setting, and transferred, it is not difficult to ascertain the value of the remanent bullion circlet. You take me? This involves a point which we don't wish to broach at present, though we have long had it in view. Do you take any interest in the affairs of France? That, now, is a country worth living in! None of your aristocrats there! Why, if England were France, you or I, Dunshunner, might be riding in the royal carriages, with half a squadron of the Guards before and behind us, receiving that homage which is the due of genius, political wisdom, and recondite science, instead of tramping, as we do, on foot, at the perpetual risk of catarrhs. I cannot sufficiently admire the coolness of our little friend Louis Blanc, who, as he was stepping into one of old Louis Philippe's vehicles, specially devoted by the Provisional Government to the service of the Lilliputian patriot, thus addressed, with a graceful wave of his hand, a group of envying _ouvriers_:--"My friends! one of these days we shall _all_ of us ride in our carriages!" There is a sublimity about this which utterly distances our feebler flights of imagination. We have never been able hitherto to hold out higher expectations to the people than what are inferred by pictures of gigantic pots of beer and dropsical loaves; and we have tried these baits so often that they have now lost something of their freshness, and much of their original significance. We really must have some new device for our banners. I wish you would turn your mind to this, and let me have your opinion what kind of property would be most acceptable to the million.

What do you think of the Girondists? That is the new name we have got for Graham and his party, and it seems to me a very happy one. Hitherto they have played remarkably well into our hands, but they are clearly not to be trusted. As Watt remarks, in his treatise on the steam-engine, there are wheels within wheels; and those gentlemen have been so extremely gyratory in their motions, that it is impossible with the least certainty to predicate the direction of their course. One thing, however, seems to me perfectly clear--they never can join the Protectionists. Two years ago I should have hesitated to say this authoritatively, but they have thrown away so many excellent chances of reconciliation, and invariably manifested such rancour and bitterness towards their former allies, that I do not see how they can possibly return. There is no hatred equal in intensity to that of a deserter. Awake or asleep, he has ever before him the awful apparition of the provost-marshal; his back tingles with the imaginary lash of the cat-of-nine-tails; and, if you watch him in his slumbers, you will hear him moaning something about a file of musketry and a coffin. It is something to be certain of this. You see that the party of the Gironde is very small, and never can act effectively of itself. It is simply useful as a make-weight, and as such we consider it. Now, a glance at the late division-lists will show you that these men, whatever else they may do, are resolutely determined never to go into the same lobby with the Protectionists. They have no abstract affection for the Whigs--which is not wonderful, considering the tenacity and strength of the family alliance; and though they may occasionally seem to help them, they would be sorry to lose any chance of giving them a sly dig with the stiletto. We are by far their most natural allies--indeed, if they had any sense, they would throw themselves into our arms at once. But, unfortunately for them, they are tainted with the aristocratic leaven. They affect to look down upon us, pure democrats, as though they were something infinitely superior, and they will not fraternise with that cordiality which we are surely entitled to expect. You may rely upon it, this will not be forgotten at the proper time. Nothing is, to my mind, so purely offensive as the demeanour of an aristocratic Liberal. His look, his language, and the very tone of his voice, tells you that he considers his support of your principles as an act of magnificent condescension; and that, if you entertained a proper feeling of gratitude, you ought to go down upon your knees and thank him. Now, considering that one-half of the Peelites are little better than pragmatical coxcombs, and the other half, with a few exceptions, venerable serving-men of the Taper and Tadpole school, you may easily conceive that these airs give us infinite disgust, and that we are keeping an accurate account with a view to a future settlement.

And now, Dunshunner, I must conclude. I have thought it best to state to you my views without any reservation, because it is always bad policy to enlist a recruit without making him distinctly aware of the nature of the service which he is expected to perform. Our Committee never forms its conclusions, or takes its measures hastily. We have been long preparing for the great work of national regeneration; and although we may have been, and certainly are, disappointed with the results which in some cases have followed our exertions, we are not less firmly convinced that our cause must progress, and be triumphant. If we can only prevent a legislative return to indirect taxation--if we can maintain for a little longer the struggle of unprotected British industry against foreign competition, we cannot choose but win. The struggle with the earth-born Antæus has been a very severe one. A poet, now, would tell you that the old mythical story of the Greeks had an occult meaning--that Antæus, the son of Terra and Neptune, was a typification of Agriculture and Navigation, which the manufacturing Hercules is attempting to destroy, and that, every time the giant is overthrown, he derives new strength from his contact with his venerable mother. So be it. Hercules, you know, strangled him at last by lifting him up into the air; and there is no reason why we should not repeat the same operation. On second thoughts, you had better not make use of this illustration, happy as it may appear. On consulting Lemprière, I observe that Hercules was finally consumed in consequence of putting on one of his own shirts, and that circumstance might be awkwardly interpreted by some ungenerous enemy.

The sooner you can make up your mind the better. Let me hear from you without delay; and if your answer, as I anticipate, should be affirmative, we shall bring you into the House in time to take part in the debate on the confiscation of the revenues of the Church.

Believe me alway yours, ROBERT M'CORKINDALE. MANCHESTER, 15_th April_ 1851.

THE PAPAL AGGRESSION BILL.

We do not underrate the difficulty in legislating upon the Papal Aggression; but the acknowledgement of a difficulty is a confession of a danger. Legislation, therefore, is often the more necessary as it becomes less apparent what direction it should take; for every obstacle has its accompanying mischief. Nevertheless, the greater peril lies in suffering an evil to grow. The nature of the evil, and the principles from which all its action proceeds, must be examined, and thoroughly sifted. It is not the present magnitude which is so much to be considered, as its innate growth--its power of reproducing itself, even when apparently cut down to the ground. There are poisonous plants of such an obstinate root, that they will spread both on the surface and below it: and such is the Papacy. It is hard to overcome. Its one steady purpose is domination. It must either be a tyranny or a conspiracy. It is a religion without a religious obligation, for it professes to be the maker of the world's religion, and demands obedience to an individual will--the will of one man whom a superstition sets up--a will that is guided by no fixed rules; that, however varying and contradictory, claims infallibility. The inheritance it would assume is Satan's promise, "the kingdoms of the earth and the glory of them." If the Papacy cannot take full possession, it is only because it is hindered, not by its own will, but by external resistance. It never has relaxed its demand of universal obedience, and, whenever and wherever it has had power, has enforced it. It would have an absolute jurisdiction over all the affairs of Christendom, as above all kings and princes, to judge them and depose them at pleasure. More than this: from being God's Vicar, the Bishop of Rome would be above his Master, and abrogate Divine laws and precepts; exercising absolute authority over the Scriptures, even to annul them, and to set up his own decrees as more divine; taking to himself the resemblance of him of whom it was said that he "should sit in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God." Yet with all his presumptuous titles, remembering that it is written that he that would be greatest among the disciples should be servant to the rest, he is also "_servus servorum_," that he may himself fill every office, and enlarge the view of his dignity, from the depth of that affected humility--measuring up to the highest from the lowest, himself usurping every space.

From the moment the Bishop of Rome usurped this sovereignty, then commenced the necessity of maintaining it, _per fas et nefas_. To abrogate one iota of his power was to abrogate the whole. He took upon himself and his successors a contention that can never cease, but with a universal submission. The whole history of the Papacy, from the day of its assumption, proves this. It does not come within the scope of our object to enter into the details of that history. They are well known: the remembrance of many and sore atrocities has been too deeply engraven on the minds of the people of England to be easily obliterated. When they hear of the Papal Aggression, they ask, When was the Papacy not an aggression? Neither are we very desirous to treat minutely of the Romish corruptions and apostacies, excepting where they evolve principles that will not amalgamate with any civil polity, or the laws and governments of nations. It is possible there may be religions that, being tolerated, would in practice not only destroy every other, but the very name of liberty. Even Thuggism professes to be a religion, and secret murder its duty. Would it be religious liberty to tolerate the Suttees and Juggernauts of India? We do not mean to make offensive comparisons: we only put the case strongly, to show how obvious it is that toleration must have its limits; if not, toleration may become a domination, and the thing be lost in the name. There must be in every state some agreement between religion and its social laws. The Mahometan may have his mosque in a Christian country, but could he be allowed to set at defiance the decency of Christian morals, on the plea of his religious liberty? We have "Latter-day Saints," believers in Joe Smith, and interfere not with them. We trust that they do not infringe the laws, nor break their civil obligations, or at least we do not know that they do so. We know nothing of mischief in their history, have no record of former doings, that should lead us to dread their principles. But to return to the Papacy: it stands apart from every religion, in its abhorrence, intolerance, and persecution of all that is not of itself. It will never cease to strive openly if it can, if not secretly, to subvert every other--to set up its own absolute authority. Persecution is its law, its creed, its necessity. Where it is quiet, it is undermining; where it is visibly active, it sows dissensions and rebellions, because they promote its own supremacy; where it has the smallest chance of success, it moves onwards. Besides, it has organisations wondrously adapted to its work. There is not only a large submission to the Pope throughout territories and kingdoms that are not his, but there is that especial order of obedience, the Jesuits, who bind themselves to have no will but that of their "Holy Father;" whose first religion it is to do his will, whatever it be--to have no conscience, with regard to what is good and evil, but the Pope's dictation;--a working army they may be called, that, though they seem dispersed and banished, are emissaries everywhere, and rise up in multitudes where it was thought there were none. They are allowed to assume whatever dress they please; for their better disguise, any occupation: they are in the highest and the lowest conditions, and have been known to appear as zealous members in conventicles.

Having constantly in view the firm establishment of its own power, as a foreign sovereignty the Papacy has communication, league, and intrigue with all the principal courts in Europe. It is therefore mostly dangerous to Protestant countries, as it naturally leagues with their enemies; and it is doubly dangerous in those countries where it has any large number professing themselves its subjects, organised by its authority, looking to Rome in preference to their legitimate governors. We need but instance Ireland, where that authority has borne its fruits in rebellions, and the sad, the continued degradation of the people. Are we at war with other nations?--the Pope's aid may be solicited by them to create distractions in Ireland. _There_ is a sore that is never allowed to heal: it has paralysed and still paralyses the power of this great country. Hence it has been the arena of political warfare. For party purposes, the Church of Ireland has been discouraged, the Romish priesthood coquetted with, ten bishoprics of our Church annihilated to please them, and that fatal error Catholic Emancipation perpetrated. And here we are compelled to add, that one of the professed principles of Romanism has been made patent--that faith is not to be kept with heretics; for how ill the oath of doing nothing to the disparagement of the Church of England was kept by Roman Catholic members is too well known.

It may not be amiss here to make one remark. We remember the warnings given when the Emancipation was carried; we now see how just--how prophetic they were. But the remark we were about to make is this:--How little trust is to be placed in any prospective promises that Ministers at any time may make! They too often speak as if they had a prescriptive right to a perpetuity of office. We remember the Duke said, that, should the country be disappointed in their hopes of the peace, amity, and good faith of the Roman Catholics, he would be the first to come forward to annul the grant. He has been called upon to fulfil his promise. His reply is, that he is not in office.

It is admitted by the best advocates for leaving this aggression to itself, that the Roman Catholic religion is dangerous; that, if it could recover its political ascendency, another Marian persecution would follow. It is said that, although it never renounces anything to which it had once committed itself, that times and circumstances are changed; that the coercion which made it more dangerous has been relinquished by Governments. Emancipation, if it has not changed its character, has rendered it innocuous. And it is asked, What has occurred since emancipation? The question may well create surprise. What has occurred! Has Ireland acquired the promised peace, the absence of rebellions, the discontinuance of denunciations from altars, and murders, which a shamefully palliating press almost excuse by naming "_agrarian_?"

True, indeed, is it that the Papacy renounces nothing of all it ever claimed, however it has renounced its creeds. This obstinacy delayed Roman Catholic Emancipation twenty-five years, because the suggestion of allowing the Crown a veto in the nomination of bishops was treated with scorn. Every Popish priest, says Blackstone, renounces his allegiance to his lawful sovereign upon taking orders. That he may more substantially, more effectually do so, the attempt is made to substitute their canon law for the law of the land. And here we see one great object of the aggression. The so-called Cardinal Wiseman alleged that the object of the Pope's brief was to introduce the "real and complete code of the Church; that, for this purpose, the Roman Catholics must have a hierarchy; that the canon law was inapplicable under vicars-apostolic; that, besides, there were many points that required to be synodically adjusted; and that, without a metropolitan and suffragans, a provincial synod was out of the question." What are these points to be so adjusted--requiring this extraordinary organisation, but that this kingdom, in the fustian simile of the Cardinal, is to be restored as a planet to roll round the centre, the Pope? But this centre is no fixed sun, disseminating its certain and seasonable heat. The comparison will not hold with Popery, that is only the _semper eadem_ in one course--that of perpetual aggression; of one only law--domination. Are its creeds one and the same consistent unerring faith from the beginning? Creeds have been thrown off that implied a submission, or even subscription, to the creeds of the ancient church, that were built upon the authority of the Scriptures and the Apostles. All things of doctrine and authority must have their real origin in, and arise _primo motu_ from, the Papacy. St Peter himself, from whom the succession is claimed, is discarded; the inspired dictum of a present Pontiff is all-sufficient. There is a law now for all this, unknown to the Apostles, not sanctioned in the Gospels; they call it the law of "development." It is not a new doctrine this, but is now prominently brought forward, sanctioned, established. St Peter orders, "If any man speak, let him speak as the _oracles of God_;" that is, as the Holy Scriptures speak. They say, Let no man speak but the Pope; he is the only oracle of God. The Scriptures give the rule of faith. They say--No, the Scriptures are insufficient; the true faith is locked in the Pope's breast, and he delivers it out when and in such portions as he pleases. He is neither bound by antiquity nor Scriptures. Development is in him. It is true, many eminent divines of the Romish Church--as, for instance, Bossuet--have strenuously opposed this doctrine of development. But there is another progress besides Popery. Inquiry has its developments: the old foundations of Papacy have been shaken; antiquity and apostolic faith, it has been proved, it has departed from. It must, therefore, change its foundation. There was no resource but to this law of development. The Scriptures have failed the Papal doctrines. They have been hidden--they have been mistranslated--translation set aside for new translation, each more false--and Pope after Pope have declared their predecessors, and those who received these Bibles, heretics; till, it being impossible to remove the Scriptures altogether, a new doctrine is invented, that at least shall supersede them--and that doctrine is now in the greatest favour. It is the grateful and acceptable offering to the Court of Rome by the neophyte author of the _Essay on Development_--the convert Mr Newman. It is for this he has been graciously received at Rome, and welcomed on his way by the Archbishop of Paris, and flatteringly received by the Nuncio of the Apostolic See; lauded by the most eminent bishop of the French Church and the journals of France, and honoured by lectures on his essay by the Roman Catholic Bishop of Edinburgh. It may be worth while to look a little into this law of development, as declared in this essay of Mr Newman, and put forth as the doctrine to be received by the faithful of the Papal Church. It has been well sifted, perhaps by none more ably than by Dr Wordsworth, Canon of Westminster. And how, with such a comment, will it be received by the old members of the Roman Catholic Church!

"Mr Newman's conversion to Romanism," says Dr Wordsworth, "was accompanied, as I have said, by the publication of his _Essay on Development_, which is intended to declare the grounds of his change. But it so happens that, in this volume, he has inflicted a severe wound on the Papacy. Its very name is ominous against it. What is Development? The explication and evolution of something that was wrapped up in embryo. St Paul gives us a very pertinent illustration of this process with respect to doctrine. He speaks of a Mystery. What is a Mystery? A thing concealed, _undeveloped_. He speaks of a Mystery of _Iniquity_--or rather, of lawlessness ([Greek:anomia]) He says that this mystery is already at work, like leaven, secretly fermenting the mass in which it is; and he adds, that in time it will be developed.

"Let us apply this to the fundamental doctrine of Romanism, viz., the Pope's supremacy. 'On this doctrine,' says Cardinal Bellarmine, 'the whole cause of Christianity' (he means Romish Christianity) 'depends.' Let us now turn to the essayist. He allows (indeed, with his well-stored mind he could not do otherwise) that, in the first ages of the Church, this doctrine existed only in a seminal form; that is, it was a _mystery_. 'First the power of the Bishop awoke, then the power of the Pope,' (p. 165.) 'Apostles are harbingers of Popes,' (p. 124.) Again, (p. 319,) 'Christianity developed in the form first of a Catholic, then of a Papal Church.' So that, in fact, the primitive ages of the Church--the purest, the apostolic times--did not hold _that_ doctrine on which the 'cause of _your_ Christianity depends.' (Dr Wordsworth is writing to M. Condon, author of _Mouvement Réligieux en Angleterre_.) And thus you are brought into the company of those _heretics_ of whom Tertullian writes, 'that they were wont to say that the Apostles were not acquainted with all Christian doctrine, or that they did not declare it fully to the world; not perceiving that, by these assertions, they exposed Christ himself to obloquy, for having chosen men who were either ill-informed, or else not honest.' Let me remind you also, my dear sir, of the words of a greater than Tertullian. Our blessed Lord himself says to his Apostles, '_All_ things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you;' and that the 'Holy Spirit should _teach them all_ things, and guide them into all truth, and bring all things to their remembrance, whatever he had said unto them.' And he orders them to proclaim to the world what they had heard from him: 'What I tell you in darkness, that speak ye in light; and what ye hear in the ear, that preach ye upon the house-tops.' 'Teach all nations _all things_ whatsoever I have commanded you.' And accordingly, St John witnesses, that Christ's true disciples 'have an unction from the Holy One, and know _all things_;' and St Paul, as a faithful steward of his Lord's house, the church, declares that 'he has kept _nothing_ back from his hearers;' that he 'uses great plainness of speech;' and 'not being rude in knowledge, has been thoroughly made manifest to them in all things;' and has 'not shunned to declare unto them _all the counsel of God_;' and he plainly intimates that he should not have been 'pure from their blood,'--that is, he would have been guilty of destroying their souls, if he had done so. And he warns all men against building 'hay and stubble on the only foundation which is laid;' and says that, 'though an angel from heaven preached unto them anything _beside_ what he had preached unto them, and they had received from him, let him be accursed.'"

According to the theory of development, if a doctrine be said to be evolved from Scripture, it is not from the plain, but the mystic sense, from "the spiritual or second sense." Thus, any doctrine may be drawn from Scripture--and there is to be but one interpreter--the "one living infallible judge." Let us see a specimen of this honest interpreter. Pope Innocent III. (who dethroned our King John) thus explains the text of Genesis i. 14,--"God made two great lights." "These words" (says that Pope) "signify that God made two dignities, the Pontifical and the Royal; but the dignity which rules the day--that is, the spiritual power--is the greater light; and that which rules the night, or the temporal, is the lesser. So that it may be understood that there is as much difference between Popes and Kings as between the sun and the moon." Pope Boniface VIII. thus applies to himself the tenth verse of the first chapter of the Prophet Jeremiah--"See I have this day set thee over the nations, and over the kingdoms, to root out, to pull down, and to destroy." "Here," says the Pope, "the Almighty is speaking of the power of the Church, to create and to judge the temporal power; and, if the temporal power swerves from its duty, it shall be condemned by the spiritual; and since Peter said to Christ, 'Ecce duo gladii,' ('Lord, behold here are _two_ swords,') therefore the Pope has _both_ the temporal and spiritual swords at his command; and since also Moses writes--'In _principio_ Deus creavit coelum et terram,' and not _in principiis_, therefore there is only one princedom, and that is the Papacy." Be it remembered the Papacy has never receded from any claim of power.

If such be the interpretations from Scripture, the Fathers and Councils of the ancient Church are handled according to pleasure. Whatever they say in opposition to the Papacy is of no authority; and the power of "correcting them" is assumed. Directions are given for the "Index Expurgatorius," that passages shall be expunged; nay, the Fathers of the Church, it is said, should be grateful for the correction--for the Fathers of the Church are the children of the Pope, and when "the Pope revises the lucubrations of his children, and corrects them when it is necessary, he discharges an office gratifying to the writers, and useful to posterity, and, in good truth, he then performs a work of mercy to his sons." Neither Scripture nor ancient Church must stand in the way of the Pope's will. In them the mystery was in a "seminal state" undeveloped. There is, according to this theory of development, but one real authentic inspiration, and that in the breast of the present Pope. Nay, it is asserted, that though the Pope for the time being should decree that which his successor contradicts and interdicts, the falsehood was true at the time, and for the time, as is the new developed truth. Thus--dreadful blasphemy!--God may be false; but man, one man, must be infallible. To support this infallibility the development theory is necessary. Now, it is this theory reduced to practice which at once makes the Papacy dangerous and hard to deal with. We have no security as to what it shall decree--as to what it shall establish as Christian doctrine, built upon no really Christian foundation. It is possible it may retain the name, and forsake Christianity altogether. We can be sure but of one thing, that it will never cease to proclaim, and to endeavour to enforce, its own supremacy. It has two capacities, mutually involved, each brought into play as occasion serves; and each serving, subtending to the other. It is both political and spiritual. But times and circumstances, we are told, are changed. True, but is the Popedom changed? It only wants the power. Pius V., who pretended to depose our Queen Elizabeth, and ordered her subjects to rise in rebellion against her, is now _worshipped as a saint_. Gregory VII., who deposed the Emperor Henry IV., has still his festival-day; and these words are in the second Lesson (not taken from Scripture)--"He" (St Gregory) "stood like a fearless wrestler against the impious attempts of Henry the Emperor, and deprived him of the communion of the faithful and of his crown, and released all his subjects from their allegiance to him." Roman Catholic sovereigns have prohibited the printing this second lesson; but is it withdrawn? "As far as the Roman Pontiffs are concerned, it is read in every Church at this day." But, more than this; though formerly suppressed by the Parliament of France, 1729, it has found its way into the Paris and Lyons edition of the Roman Breviary of the year 1842. The Church of Rome, by eulogising these acts in her Liturgy, "shows her desire that they may be repeated."

But let us look to that which comes still nearer to us. The Church of Rome requires the oath of Pius IV., as declared in the Canon Law, to be taken by _all_ her ecclesiastics. In the "Roman Pontifical," printed at Rome _by authority_, in the year 1818, the oath is thus given as required from the bishops:--"To be faithful and obedient to his Lord the Pope, and his successors; to assist them in maintaining the _Roman Papacy and the royalties of St Peter against all men_; to preserve, defend, augment, and promote its rights, honours, and privileges; to _persecute and impugn, with all his might, heretics and schismatics, and rebels against his said Lord_; to come when summoned to a Roman council; to visit the threshold of the Apostles (the city of Rome) once in every three years, to render an account to his Lord the Pope of all the state of his diocese, and to receive his Apostolic mandates with humility; and if he is unable, through any lawful impediment, to attend in person, to provide a sufficient deputy in his stead." Let us ask who are "rebels against his said Lord." Is it without design that the Papacy, which weighs nicely the force of words, in the recent brief speaks, not of the British Empire, but the "Kingdom of England?" Is no recognition intended of his claim to the disposal of the Kingdom of England, once surrendered to him? Does he not look upon all the Queen's subjects in England as rebels to him, "their Lord?" Can, we ask, a bishop taking this oath, and obeying its imperial mandates, and going to the "Roman Council," be said to owe any allegiance to his own lawful sovereign in England? Put the case, that it shall appear advisable to the "Roman Council" at which such bishop shall be summoned--either at the instigation of some foreign power, or with a view to promote the Pope's interests--that the Queen of England's council shall be thwarted, and that a rebellious spirit shall be encouraged and fostered in Ireland: to which sovereign shall the said bishop pay obedience? Will it not be that one whose "mandates" he has sworn to "receive with humility?" Is there any one at all acquainted with our politics of the last half-century who will doubt that mandates injurious to the interests of England have been received, and have been obeyed? Need we refer to the Irish Rebellion of 1795? We shall there find an account of one Dr Hussey, an Irish priest, who had been bred at Seville, and was recommended by Burke to superintend the recently erected College of Maynooth, how he frequented the camp at Schaunstown, and tampered with the soldiers. We need not refer to the notorious fact of priests in active rebellion. "Bartholomew massacres" are thought old wives' tales, and impossible in modern times. Impossible!--is human nature so changed, and in so few years? Many of us remember the first French Revolution, to say nothing of very recent most cruel revolutions. By the Report of the Secret Committee of the House of Lords in 1797, it appears that it was decided by the conspirators that all persons who, from their principles or situation, may be deemed inimicable to the conspiracy, should be massacred; and the first proscribed list was calculated by one of their leaders at 30,000 persons. We would not dwell upon these atrocities; but we entreat those who speak so confidently of altered "times and circumstances" to consider for a moment what times they have lived in, and are living in. It is true we in England have been mercifully spared; but while even we were boasting of peace, cruel revolutions were commencing throughout Europe, brutal assassinations performed, for a fanaticism which belongs to human nature, and may readily be called into action either by religion or politics. Nay, we say more, that, according to the "development" theory, we know not how much of religion political fanaticism may take up, nor how much of revolutionary politics religion may assume. The Roman Pontiff has had to fly for his life. Their boasted threshold of St Peter has been deluged with blood. We do not mean here to charge our Roman Catholic fellow-subjects with any of these diabolical intentions--far from it; but we must say that we do not see, in countries where their teaching has prevailed, any remarkable abhorrence of them. And we gather from the tenor of history that such atrocities grow out of events--and events of great importance grow out of creeds--and a struggle for religious supremacy (and the Papacy must ever strive to that end) always tends to persecution; and what shall we say, when persecution is a duty of obedience, and the consciences of the many are merged in the infallibility of a Pope? The history of the Popes shows a frightful list of these claimants of infallibility.

Few who speak or who write on this Papal Aggression approach the principle of toleration with any doubt; but surely toleration has its limits. "Civil and religious liberty:" under that banner we may have strange armies--destroyers.

Religious development is going on beyond the Popedom. The assumption of a kind of religion, or more properly a cant of religion, is the homage vice pays to virtue. The subverters of all social order are propagandists of a new religion. What are St Simonites? Even Red Republicans associate themselves to a kind of creed; and perhaps many take up one, purposely that they may demand a civil and religious liberty. We do not subscribe to the doctrine that "full and complete liberty" is to be given to every society that proclaims itself of a civil polity, or of a religious agreement. The principles of creeds should be ascertained, before full scope be given to them--and the principles of civil communities, before a state is justified in arming them with power. There are societies that can, and societies that cannot, live together peaceably, with equal power. There is a strong conviction in the public mind, (and certainly justified,) that if Popery can once reach an equality in visible power with the Church of England, or even with Protestant Dissenters, a system of persecution would commence.

The present aggression is of a two-fold character. It is against the Church, which it ignores; and the sovereignty of England, which it both insults and defies. It sets up bishop against bishop--altar against altar. It takes up a position of authority, and impudently declares that it neither can nor will recede one step. Hear the "Bishop of Birmingham" so styled, Dr Ullathorne. He thus writes to Lord John Russell:--"There is one point for your Lordship to consider--the hierarchy is established; therefore it cannot be abolished. How will you deal with the fact? Is it to force a large body of her Majesty's subjects to put the principle of the Divine law in opposition to such an enactment?" Here is obstinate defiance; but there is more. He proclaims that the Pope's brief is a "_Divine law_." Is not this the Pope's supremacy over the supremacy of England's sovereign? And if England's sovereignty maintains its own, what kind of warfare are we to have from Rome? Of course, the first step will be an Irish rebellion, or the attempt to raise one. Then is our Queen to be excommunicated--the old game played--the interdict, the absolving from allegiance, and the curse? Is the Pope, the foolish man, who has been driven from his Popedom, and just kept in it again by French bayonets, in his disappointment to enact the spite of a witch turned out of doors, and look back and spit, and take a revengeful pleasure in seeing the Canidian venom take effect? And of a truth it may be said Lord John Russell, Earl Grey, and some others of the Government, grow somewhat pallid from the poison; it has at any rate reached them. Lord John Russell thought it absurd to deny titles, which he now brings in a bill to interdict; Earl Grey would have the Roman Catholic Bishops sit in the House of Peers--and has given strange encouragement to them in the Colonies. Their titles have been smuggled into a Charitable Bequest Bill. It is a hard thing for a Minister to eat his own words, tainted too by the Pope's venom. But, besides this, there appears to have been a connivance with this aggression, or an unpardonable ignorance, on the part of the Ministry. Whence is the suddenly conceived indignation that breaks forth in the Durham Letter? The event had actually taken place long before. Dr Wiseman was gazetted, as Archbishop of Westminster, at Rome on the 22d January 1848; in the _Gazette_ he is called, "His Eminence the most Reverend Monsignore the Vicar-Apostolic, Archbishop of Westminster." What was Lord John Russell doing then? Was he practising "mummeries" that, in his after mind, bore similitude to those of Rome? He had not then been exorcised by Dr Cumming! He has now, however, been tutored to make mighty preparations, to doings of large professions for little ends. If he has not done worse, he has made a burlesque for the page of history, and the age of his Administration ridiculous to posterity.

Dr Wiseman, it has been shown, was gazetted in Rome, January 1848. If the Government knew that fact, did they know, do they know, the exact position in which that ecclesiastic is? Mr Newdegate, in the House of Commons, very clearly shows this position, that "Cardinal Wiseman is a legate of the Pope--a legate _à latere_, armed with still wider powers than Dr Cullen, and who, as he (Mr Newdegate) believed, merely delayed interfering with our social, civil, and temporal affairs, until that House should have separated for the recess." He showed them "that, from the earliest periods of our history, it had been contrary to the constitution and common law of the country that a legate of the Pope, and especially a cardinal, should come into this country without the leave of the sovereign, and without an oath taken that he would attempt nothing against the realm and liberties of the people."--"He found that there was a meeting of the clergy of the Established Church, a few days ago, at Zion College, at which Dr M'Caul, quoting from a recognised authority of the Catholic Church, stated that the order of Cardinals was literally a part of the Papacy and constitution--the privy council, which was the body corporate of the Pope; and then gave an account of how the office and power of the cardinal was wielded throughout. From that account it appeared that the office of cardinal, when the Pope assumed the temporal attributes of the Emperor, was converted into that of privy councillor; and that the cardinals ought not to be absent from the Papal court, except by reason of being sent out as legates. Cardinal Wiseman, then, could only be there as legate. Van Espin, whose works were recognised at Maynooth, also said, that whatever might be the case with other legates, cardinal legates were called legates _à latere_, because they were taken from the side of the Pope. He believed that Cardinal Wiseman had been asked whether he had taken the oath of privy councillor, and that his answer was that he had not. But he had taken the oath of archbishop in full, and that would be an excuse for not taking the oath of privy councillor; but he (Mr Newdegate) could find no possible authority for the omission. However, the oath of the archbishop was strictly the oath of privy councillor, binding the party to discharge temporal functions; and with this remarkable addition, that for the recovery of such rights and property as had been alienated from the Romish Church he would do his utmost. He wanted to show that Cardinal Wiseman, by his own act as cardinal priest, adverted to that very function, of labouring to the utmost for the recovery of the goods of the Church. It was a very long time since there had been a cardinal legate in England; and for this good reason, that it was contrary to the ancient statute law of this realm that these temporal officers of a foreign potentate should reside among us. Even Cardinal Beaufort, the brother of Henry VI., had found it necessary to have a special statute enacted in his favour, before he could reside in England as cardinal legate. Cardinal Wolsey was appointed legate at the express instance of Henry VIII.; and Cardinal Pole, after he had been compelled to leave England because he resisted Henry VIII.'s proceedings with the temporalities of the Church, was appointed legate in England, not upon the motion of the Pope, but at the desire of Queen Mary. In the time of Elizabeth, the cardinal whom the reigning Pope had sent to England as nuncio, received in the Netherlands, whence he had sent to request permission to enter England, a prohibition from entering the realm, on the distinct ground that the ancient statutes of the realm declared that no legate from the Papal Court might reside in England. Happy would it have been for this country, (emphatically adds Mr Newdegate,) had the advisers of the present Queen emulated the firmness of those of Queen Elizabeth."

How much better would it have been to put in force an existing and old law, which can only be said to be obsolete because the offence against which it provided was obsolete, than to nullify it by a new and uncertain one, satisfying no one, and such as no one believes will, and perhaps the framer does not intend should, be obeyed. Sir Edward Sugden is of that opinion, and can there be a better legal authority? The people of this country have more confidence in old than new laws: they were made with more precision; and it was not then the practice to smuggle into them expressions for ulterior though hidden use. It is the boast of modern legislation, that a coach may be driven through our acts of Parliament. Queen Elizabeth, who would not suffer the legate to touch our shores, right royally said, "I will not have my sheep marked with the brand of a foreign shepherd." Modern liberality would be content to see Queen Victoria the Pope's sheriff. Is it to be borne, that a cardinal legate, whom existing laws exclude, should be allowed to organise a conspiracy of priests, all, not only virtually, but in word and deed, abnegating allegiance to their lawful sovereign? It is their business, it is in their bond, to persecute the majority of their countrymen as heretics, and to effect in the British dominions as much evil as shall so weaken their country as to make her unable to resist the foreign usurpation of their Pope, or even those of our enemies with whom he may be in league. It is surprising that Mr Gladstone should palliate the doings of the Synod of Thurles, and seem to justify them on the right of civil agitation allowed to other leagues. But surely the difference is great. Political agitators, bad as they often are, do not bring the authoritative dictum of a religious synod. The Synod of Thurles denounces with an authority more potent than the law of the land; they appeal not to reason, to policy, but to obedience. The law is given out by the legate, and enforced by the Synod. They know the danger of mooting questions between landlord and tenant; and it is the very danger which tempts them to it. It is in fact a threat, and the first move of its action. It is almost a declaration to this effect:--The Pope, and we in his name, have right to the land, to dispose of it as we please; and if you in the slightest degree resist or interfere with us, we will stir up those who shall take it from you. They know the threat extends to the life as well as property. All means with them are lawful for the one end. Do we, in all these fruits of the aggression, and of the Ministerial favour which created it, see the promised gratitude of the Roman Catholics? Every obstacle to the free exercise of their religion had been removed; and we were to have peace, but have it not, because, from the vantage-ground of their emancipation, a dominant supremacy was to be superadded. The hierarchy is not for the use of the Queen's Roman Catholic subjects, but for the Pope and his priesthood's power. Even the time it has been allowed to be here, while there was a law that might instantly have been put in force, is a submission to it. It is tampering with illegality and with insult; neither the one nor the other should be suffered to remain a day. The dignity of England is deteriorated by delay. And what has this delay--this sufferance of the evil done, but added to its growth? It is worse than ridiculous, it is mischievous to be furious against an enemy, as our Prime Minister was in his Durham Manifesto, and not to crush his power. All the fury and fierceness is made to appear cruelty for the time and weakness after; and thus the enemy gets more than he had before. The difficulties attending the dealing with this aggression now cannot be denied. They have been greatly enlarged by the mode of proceeding adopted. Parliament, or the executive, might have instantly demanded reparation for the insult, and the law have been as immediately enforced.

The difficulties now must not be denied; and they increase day by day, and will be sure to increase with _new_ legislation. Suppose we have in the British dominions a Roman Catholic population of seven or eight millions. It is too vast a number to ignore, even though the "Protestant brotherhood" out of the Church should desire so to do. If we were a strong Government we might, and ought to do this--to enact that every Romish priest, having sworn obedience to a foreign potentate, has so far renounced his allegiance to his lawful sovereign, and therefore should be subject to a registration, and, with some limitation, be considered an alien.

We might abrogate "Catholic Emancipation," seeing that it was a compact broken by one of the contracting parties. But although we believe all this would be just and fair, and safe, and that one day or other--after, perhaps, frightful rebellions--it will be done, it is nearly certain we cannot do it now. The whole system of government is on another principle--it is called a "Liberal" one. It is that of reconciling to you those of whose dispositions you cannot be certain, if they will be reconciled; and you renounce the government of fear, of which you may be certain, and for which you need but consult your own breast. There is no general liberty where even comparatively a few evil-doers have no fear. The Government has put itself in the position in which it can scarcely do anything that is not mischievous; for if effectual suppression is out of the question, there is only left a something to do which will satisfy none, and will irritate beyond measure the Roman Catholics in Ireland. We can only look to a future day for the registration of the priesthood, and allowing them defined rights, and the imposing restrictions, by which they shall no longer denounce from altars and preach rebellion.

There are other evils, likewise, attending this hierarchy introduction, which require immediate remedy--the evil of their convents and nunneries. These are the real instruments of the Papal tyranny. How are they increasing! In 1847 there were in this country thirty-four convents--in 1848, thirty-eight; and in 1851, fifty-three.

The country is demanding, and well it might, a legal inspection of these houses. It cannot be borne that young inexperienced women of the most tender age, with the common feelings of nature undeveloped, ignorant alike of themselves and the world, should be entrapped, imprisoned in these so-called religious houses, perhaps for life, and their properties seized for the benefit of these religious establishments. Who knows anything of the inmates? If they are miserable, they are shut out from the notice of the world, which is ignorant of their lives and of their deaths--how they live or how they die--in regrets, in a repentance they believe sinful--broken-hearted. The recent disclosures, coming as they do unexpectedly, not as things got up, appear providential, offering, as they do a most wholesome check, as well as creating abhorrence, disgust, and, an active enmity to the whole system. These disclosures have not been without their effect on those who have seemed inclined to look upon the Romish Church not unfavourably.

In the case of Miss Talbot, is there one person concerned in that affair that does not appear implicated in a plot--from the bigotry of Lord and Lady Shrewsbury, to the perpetrations of the so-called Bishop of Clifton? Dr Hendren, unfit as he is to be the bishop of any church, is also a weak and vulgar-minded man--and from his weakness we learn something worth remembering. He avows that the Romish Church wants money; and his own letters show what methods, or rather what arts, are to be used to obtain it. That case is too well known to need farther comment now. We wish we could think Miss Talbot still protected. This is but one case out of many. The case of the two young women of the Black Rock convent tells the same story. They were, it was given in evidence, as much compelled to sign away their property as if a pistol had been held to their heads.

Money must be obtained for the Romish Church, and the end justifies the means. No sum is too small, and no large sum large enough. In the case of Carré, the poor man did not even receive that for which he had paid. The deed signed, he was suffered to die without the last offices. What does Mr Newdegate say of his own neighbourhood, in his place in the House?

"In his own neighbourhood there were convents, too many. From one of them, some years ago, a nun escaped. Unfortunately she was taken back. What did they know farther of that woman? Nothing: except that within a week afterwards fifteen hundredweight of iron stanchions were put up to barricade the windows, and convert the place into a perfect prison. Women entered there--they died. There was no account of their illness or their death. No coroner's inquest was held. They were utterly shut out from light and life, and, he would add, from the protection of the law."

We venture to extract a case from a Hereford paper, because the writer received the narration, as will be seen, from the best testimony:--

"We know a case where a young lady of wealth became an inmate of one of these 'Religious Houses.' It was here in England. She had not been so long, ere she began to write home for money for purposes of charity. Her requests were complied with at first, not unwillingly; subsequently, as the requests became more frequent, and in larger sums, with reluctance. At length the amount became so considerable, that her friends became uneasy, and felt it right that her guardian and trustee should have an interview with her, and remonstrate on the extent to which she was impoverishing herself. He did so, and discovered that not one shilling of the money had reached her. The applications were all forgeries. Apparently they were in her hand-writing; she knew nothing whatever of them! This, of course, led to a searching inquiry, which every endeavour was made to baffle; but the trustee was resolute. It turned out that one of the sisters in the nunnery was an adept at imitating handwriting, as was another in worming out of all new-comers the amount and particulars of their property. Between them--it is not difficult to understand how--the pillage was effected. What became of the money so obtained we know not. But the worst remains to be told. In order to save the character(!) of the superior, and of the establishment, the poor girl was prevailed upon--how and by whom may be imagined--to _adopt_ the whole. There was, of course, an end of the investigation, and of the affair. The young lady became a nun herself, and is so, we believe, at this moment. Her guardian and trustee is a merchant of eminence in the city of London. We have given the facts as narrated by himself."

This case is so like others, that it may be said, without much reserve, _Ex uno disce omnes_. "Faith is not to be kept with heretics." Even saints of the Romish Church have declared that a lie may be, and ought to be, told for the good of the Church. Such maxim may be found in the works of the canonised Ligouri. We give Cardinal Wiseman credit for a high moral character, and learn that he is much esteemed; but we cannot acquit him of a _suppressio veri_, in a statement made recently by him, that the children of the person who had bequeathed (to him, we believe) a considerable sum for purposes of the advancement of the Romish religion, were _in possession of the property_. Now it was not even quite true, for they were only in possession of a _life-interest_ in the property. Suppose the property to be £3000 per annum, what is _the property_ of a life-interest, and what of the reversion? Whoever was in possession of the value of the reversion, was in possession of the larger amount. The children, therefore, were not in possession of the property. It is absolutely necessary that Mortmain should be applied to bequests of this nature. The item of purgatory in the Roman Catholic creed is too potent upon the fears of the dying, when weakness of body and of mind aids those fears, in providing, by bequests, a release from purgatorial pains. But there are legacies, gifts, or confiscations of another kind that must be looked to. The property of all who enter monasteries or convents for life should pass, excepting an annual portion, to the immediate relatives; in case of none, to the Crown. This would be a merciful provision, for it would be the surest protection, perhaps the only one. It is the temptation to possess their property which makes nuns. We are here supposing monasteries and nunneries still allowed to exist, and vows to be taken. But we confess we have another view. There are "illegal" oaths, and laws provided to take severe cognisance of them. It may be doubtful if there is not a treason against oneself, that ought to be illegal, as there is against a sovereign or a government. To take the vow of celibacy, of perpetual virginity, is a treason against nature, and against the first law of our Creator. It is a suicidal vow, and should be considered a crime; and we believe it would be sound legislation, though suiting not some notions of religious liberty, to put a stop at once to these vows in England. At all events, it is not according to civil liberty that either parents or guardians, or parties themselves, should be allowed permanently to bind their conscience down, and to inflict or to submit to a perpetual imprisonment, from which there is no possible subsequent escape.

It should be no matter of surprise if Christians, whatever be their denomination, unite in endeavouring to resist this growth of a power sworn to put down, to persecute to the utmost, as heretics and rebels, all who submit not in obedience to the Pope. "Cunningly devised" indeed must be that system which has, most unfortunately, shown itself to be a potent charm, working in the minds of too many of the clergy of the Church of England. We cannot imagine by what arguments they have been persuaded, either by themselves or others. It would seem to be impossible that they could bring themselves to forsake _their_ first, and _the_ first, Christianity, as restored at the Reformation, for the adoption of impostures so transparent, were it not that it often happens that the mind, bewildered in the fever of controversial curiosity, and wearied by the multiplicity and oscillation of its own thoughts, yields itself up, in despair of finding a solution of its own, to the name of an authority which promises rest from restless thought, and permanent quiet of conscience.

And yet we know not whether this aggression, even in the mischief it has done, may not in the end prove our strength. Under Providence, we may find in it a provocation to watch and guard more jealously the foundations of our Christian faith. It has led, and will further lead, to a full exposure of the Romish errors. They cannot escape the scrutiny of an inquiring world; and thus, even at the moment of its insolence and boasted triumph, the Popish religion may receive in this country a blow which may damage it in every part of Europe, and possibly precipitate it to its downfall. But it must no longer have a Government encouragement; that which has been given to it has, though not so intended, sufficed to evidence its character. It can never be trusted. If there had never been heresies, the pure faith might have been less a living principle. They have practically led to putting into effect and practice the divine command to "search the Scriptures." It is the will of Providence to bring good out of evil. Denial of false doctrines has been the illustration of the true. Received as Popery is now in this country, with, to the Papists, an unexpected hatred, with an undying suspicion, and manifested as it has been in some of its most offensive doings, it will indeed be our fault if it receive not more than discouragement--a combativeness which shall shake it to its foundation. Even now a wondrous change is taking place in all Roman Catholic countries. The Infallible is derided, some fall into the Protestant ranks, and, as a natural consequence of a long maintenance of superstitious errors, multitudes sink into utter infidelity. But in the British dominions a happier change is being effected. What are the few converts to Rome, of bewildered and dreaming ecclesiastics, to the large, the wholesale abandonment in Ireland of the Romish doctrines? The Pope and his cardinals cannot there any longer keep the Scriptures from the people, and they are sensible of the bondage in which they have been held. Perhaps this is one cause of the insolent endeavour to establish their hierarchy. The priesthood and the Roman Catholic press, with a double object--the keeping up their religion and rebellion--yet uniting in one purpose, see that any movement is more safe to them than peace, which is weakening their hold, and confirming the strength and power over the people's minds of the religion of the Reformation.

Under these circumstances, in that country particularly, it is most unadvisable to allow any new position to the Papal power. Let it have no quasi-State authority, which our Government of late years has laboured to give it. Allow fully religious liberty, but mark distinctly where religious liberty terminates, and falls into a civil incompatibility. Allow not an inch of ground to the anomalous mixture, a divided allegiance. Exact strictly that allegiance, whole and undivided, without which civil liberty is endangered. If there be any doctrine in a religion subversive of that, those who hold it ought to be content with the liberty of holding it, but they must be content also with restrictions which civil liberty demands. Popery can only gain strength two ways--by positive persecution, and by indifference as to its movements. By the latter it is gaining strength at this day in France. The Church has been shaken off by the State; the mass of religionists, therefore, are become thoroughly ultra-montane, and acknowledge no authority but that of Rome. Persecution, we trust, will never be the law of England, until, if this shall ever be, Romanism prevails; and, to prevent so dire a calamity, restriction should be our law.

We have not, as some do, spoken exultingly of our "Protestantism" through any doubt of the thing; for as in opposition to Rome we are thoroughly Protestant, we protest most solemnly against all its unscriptural tenets--against its worse than tenets, its insidious doings, and its innate incurable tyranny; but we confess we are shy of the unnecessary use of a term which gives, and has ever given, them a handle of advantage. It allows them to ask, "Where was your religion before Luther?" as if we should admit that Christianity began with Protestantism, and not with the Scriptures themselves, and the appointment of our only one infallible Head. Nay, we might fairly retort upon them, that if they will take the word, which we object not to in itself, in this sense, we have the best right to throw it back upon themselves; for theirs is the law of development--a law of perpetual change, a law of continual protest against themselves, against their doctrines of yesterday--protest against the doctrines of the Apostles, protest against the Universal Church's teaching before Popery was, protest against its own Popery at different times--it is a protest against what it establishes to-day as that which may be legitimately uprooted to-morrow. And this is what the "Unchanging" is doing by his infallibility. "The faith delivered to the saints" is not with the Papacy one faith; there is but one faith, the dictum of the one present Infallible--the Pope of Rome. By this they protest against their own best men, and most learned theologians, who have strenuously contended against this their law of development. What pen could put down a historical catalogue of all the "Roman variations," which yet they are pleased to call "one truth?"

The _Index Expurgatorius_ is a curious document: it shows how the Infallible deals with authorities; what variations he makes--what subtractions and what additions. That made known by Zetsner, 1599, contains some curious specimens. The Roman Church did not _publish_ this, but sent it to the prelates, to be by them distributed to a few fit--"_quos idoneos judicabunt_"--bibliopoles. Thus the Pope will alter these words of St Augustine: "Faith only justifies," "Works cannot save us," "Marriage is allowed to all," "Peter erred in unclean meats," "St John cautions us against the invocation of saints." The holy Bishop (says the Church of Rome) must be corrected in all these places. St Chrysostom teaches that "Christ forbids heretics to be put to death;" that "to adore martyrs is antichristian;" that "the reading of Scripture is needful to all;" that "there is no merit but from Christ;" that it is "a proud thing to detract from or add to Scripture;" that "bishops and priests are subject to the higher powers;" that the "prophets had wives." The venerable patriarch must be freed from all these heretical notions. Epiphanius affirms that "no creature is to be worshipped;" this is an error, and must be expunged. St Jerome asserts that "all bishops are equal;" he must be here amended. Such, and others of subtraction and addition, are the directions _secretly_ and authoritatively given by the Roman Church to the venders and publishers of books. Nor let any be deluded by the idea that there is no _Index Expurgatorius_ now. These are doings, not of a time, but of a continuation, as an inherent necessity of the Roman Church; which must, to keep its position, thus treat authority, whether of the Primitive Church, or of the Scriptures themselves. The above passages are taken by Dr Wordsworth from the _Index Expurgatorius_.

But this ever-variable Infallibility, which discovered purgatory at the time of the discovery of America, as if practically, by cruel inflictions, to show what its torments might be; this boasted one, yet ever-varying Infallibility, has, under Pope Pio Nino, now at length developed a new doctrine--not new, indeed, in invention, for it was mooted at the Council of Trent, and set aside as uncertain by that "certain" council, but new as an established authoritative dogma--the "immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary." It is no longer true, in the Roman Catholic belief, that there was but "one sinless." There is now a new exception; it is now no longer a truth that, Christ excepted, "the Scripture hath concluded _all_ under sin." The Virgin Mary was, as the infallible present Pope decrees, born without sin; she was miraculously, immaculately conceived; and hence, what follows? Awful to contemplate is this most recently received dogma. She has an altar to her by the side of that to God the Father. The Roman Catholic Church is no longer Trinitarian--it is Quaternian; it sets up a Quaternity for that glorious Trinity, "three persons and one God." And where is all this development to end? Doubtless, it is in the wisdom above man's, that, like the serpent that was devoured by his own brood, it should be ultimately destroyed by its own inventions; for it makes "the Scripture of none effect" by its traditions and developments.

But to return to the present aspect of things, and the position of the Papal aggression. It will not do to leave the Roman Catholics the power of holding synods, and thereby doing such work as the legate, a member of the Pope's Council, shall dictate; and, at the same time, to fetter the Church of England, which has her legitimate Parliaments only as a mockery--to ordain that all religious bodies shall be free, and the Church of England not free. It is well known that there is a disposition, not confined to a few, to Germanise her Liturgy according to the rationalistic principle; and that advantage is taken of this aggression to promote that end. The movement for this object is on foot: without doubt, it is joined by many who do not see these ulterior views, and believe they can put down thereby practices which seem to lean to Rome, and there stop. They will have no such power. The majority in this movement are desirous of destroying all creeds--in fact, of repudiating the Church. It is well known that there is something very like a conspiracy to bring about this change in Established religion (originating in Germany) in every country. It is about five years ago since a great metropolitan municipal body addressed a memorial to the Sovereign of Prussia upon his throne, embodying principles which still, under the name of Christianity, are subversive of all Christian doctrines. They are, in fact, principles which make every man his own God. His own mind is Christianity--and is infallible. The divine authority of Scripture is ignored. They speak of the "Spirit of Christ," but only as a principle within their own minds; and that principle as the "Church." They, too, adopt the development theory--

"She finds in her foundation and in her history the clue that conducts her through the labyrinth of human error, and the _rule of the development of her doctrine_. Christianity renews itself in the human heart, and follows the development of the human mind, and invests itself with new forms of thought and language, and adopts new systems of church-organisation, to which it gives expression and life. The _Scriptures_ and the creeds are the witnesses of _ancient_ Christendom. Being, however, the _works_ of _men_, they express the faith of _men_; and their form bears the impress of the time in which they were made. It is not in _them_ that absolute truth resides, but it is in the _spirit_ of truth, holiness, and love, which animates mankind. He who revealed Himself to the world by the authors of the Scriptures, is _in us_, and _by us_. He interprets the same Scriptures, and judges of their truth."

Thus, according to this really atheistical disgusting verbiage, Christianity is a myth, "within us" and "by us." And we ask if Protestantism--the Protestantism of the Reformation, or the Protestantism after the Reformation, as it now exists in the Church of England or Scotland, or in sects of any Christian denomination--would not shrink with horror from a proposal to substitute this blasphemous farrago for the creeds, liturgies, and services in established use?

We have ventured upon this, it may be thought, delicate ground, because we think it intimately connected with this Papal aggression, and with modes of dealing with it. The Rationalistic aggression would be the most intolerant. It has a mortal hatred to creeds. It is of the Philosophy which, in the French Revolution, massacred priests and demolished churches. It claims its own infallibility, and would make it subservient to a tyranny. It would be as dominant as the Papacy, and denounce its heretics. If there be any that have a confidence in present times and present _liberality_, and believe that none of these things can come to pass in our country, we would only refer them to a few lines in the page of our recent history, wherein may be read that a furious mob centred itself from all parts in one of the most important cities of the kingdom, attempted to burn down the cathedral, did burn and tear and trample on the Bible, and burnt to the ground the bishop's palace, and eagerly sought the bishop's life.

"The _holiness_," and even the "_love_," "within us," that is not of the Christianity of the Scriptures, is an absolute deceit and falsehood; and will ever be, in operation, the most selfish cruelty.

It is an audacious impiety in man to claim infallibility: "_humanum est errare_." Rationalism and Popery are above humanity. What Cicero said of the smile, when augur meets augur, it may be thought may take place when the Pope meets his confessor. For the Infallible confesses--what?

There is but one infallible, the one Head of the Church which He made. He has given an infallible guide--the Holy Scriptures--all-sufficient, and which require no "development" to interpret them.

Upwards of five centuries ago, the great poet of Italy spared not the expression of his indignation against Popes, monkeries, and their mercenary distribution of "blessings," "pardons," and "indulgences," that fatten, as he terms them, the "swine of St Anthony." He refers all true doctrine to the directions given by the only Infallible, and as taught by the primitive Church.

"Non disse Christo al suo primo convento Andate, e predicate al mondo ciance. Ma diede lor verace fondamento."

"Christ said not to his first conventicle Go forth, and preach impostures to the world, But gave them sure foundation."

And, a few lines after, he speaks contemptuously of the mummery, and promises, pardons, and buffooneries of the Popish preachers of those days; and adds that, if the gaping populace could but see "the dark bird that nestles in the hood," they would "scarce wait to hear the blessing said."

THE BOOK OF THE FARM.[8]

[8] _The Book of the Farm._ By HENRY STEPHENS, F.R.S.E. Second Edition. 2 vols. 8vo. Blackwood and Sons, Edinburgh and London: 1851.

There are some things of which a traitorous Parliament cannot deprive the agriculturist. His is the only industrial occupation that can be said to possess a literature of its own--a literature at once ancient, varied, extensive, and curious. In the Augustan era, the Romans could number upwards of fifty Greek authors who had contributed to illustrate the practice and science of agriculture; and we know, with much greater precision, how important a niche agriculture occupies in the existing library of ancient Rome. The curious and quaint lore of Cato the elder--the three works of Varro, the ripest scholar of his age, and evidently the very model of an accomplished Roman gentleman--the minute details of Columella--and the various but somewhat apocryphal information scattered throughout the writings of Pliny, with many lesser luminaries who have written _de re Rusticâ_, abundantly indicate the importance which the Romans, in the most brilliant era of their history, attached to the study and practice of agriculture. But in a literary aspect the poems of Virgil better demonstrate, than the professional writers just named, how deeply the love of agriculture was cherished by the finest intellects of classic antiquity. In the most original productions of his immortal muse, Virgil has embellished with the charms of divine poesy the arts of rural economy, and the habits of rural life. What other _toil_ of weary mortals has genius enshrined in imperishable verse? Nay, what other industrial calling could wake the inspirations of genius? "The textile fabrics," as they are somewhat pedantically called, are now in the zenith of their popularity; but is Jute poetical, or is Calico propitious to the Muses? The Budge Doctors of the economic school will smile at the question. Although not embraced in their philosophy, it may nevertheless be an important feature in the occupation of a people that it furnishes meet themes to the poet's fancy, and is in harmony with the purer sympathies of the human soul. In such an avocation it may be inferred that there can be nothing innately vulgar or mean, nothing ancillary to low vice and coarse immorality. The ancient Romans seem to have thought that agriculture was the only profession in which a gentleman could engage without suffering degradation. The sentiment is still prevalent; and the professor of the _Literæ Humaniores_ may yet betake himself to his Sabine farm without sullying the honour of the ancient dynasty of letters. One Roman writer speaks of husbandry as an art noble enough to occupy the attention of kings; and to this day we seem ready to acquiesce in the opinion. The Prince Consort fitly employs a leisure hour in observing the processes of agriculture carried on at the home-farm of Windsor; but the national taste would probably not allow it to be a regal employment to watch the spinning of cotton or the printing of calico. The Roman authors duly appreciated the moral influences which the employment of husbandry exerted on the mind. _Omnium rerum, ex quibus aliquid acquiritur, nihil est Agriculturâ melius, nihil uberius, nihil dulcius, nihil homine libero dignius._ And Ceres, according to the poet, _prima dedit leges_. This was indeed the doctrine of the more ancient Greek writers; and the object of the Eleusinian mysteries seems mainly to have been intended to represent the importance of agriculture as the handmaid of civilisation. The mind insensibly catches a hue and complexion from the natural objects with which it is conversant, and the beautiful in nature may be friendly to the beautiful in morals.

.... "The soul At length discloses every tuneful spring, To that harmonious movement from without Responsive."

The peaceful employments of the husbandman, and his daily converse with nature in her gentler as well as more solemn moods, can scarcely fail to be favourable to devotional feeling, and to the milder and more amiable virtues. Although this must be a matter of infinitely small moment to those in whose estimation the _summum bonum_ of human life consists "in buying in the cheapest market and selling in the dearest," yet a wise statesman might not be uninfluenced by such a consideration in cherishing a branch of national industry--of vital moment, no doubt, in its economic results, but so peculiarly propitious to the growth of the peaceful and patriotic virtues, to the rearing of a virtuous peasantry, and of brave and loyal yeomen, who in every peril have proved the thews and sinews of the commonwealth. Although the statesmen of the Augustan age correctly appreciated the importance of agriculture as the surest basis of national prosperity, yet the neglect of husbandry, and the consequent dependence of the people for their daily food on imported grain, which occurred at an after period, largely contributed to the decay of the Roman empire. The history of ancient Attica reads us a similar lesson. The Athenian farmers, anticipating the recommendation of Sir James Graham, devoted their attention more to pasturage than agriculture. The necessary result was an immense importation of corn to provide for the subsistence of a population unusually numerous and dense. Demosthenes tells us that the quantity of corn annually imported from the Crimea alone amounted to 400,000 _medimni_--a _medimnus_ containing about four of our bushels; and the peril of such stipendiary reliance for the staple article of the people's food on the caprice of neighbouring, or, it may be, hostile states, was bitterly experienced by the Athenians, and precipitated the crisis in which Grecian freedom and Grecian glory sank overwhelmed never to revive. But history has been written in vain for our modern statesmen, who are infinitely too wise to be instructed by the monitory lessons in the art of government which may be derived from the decline and fall of Greek and Roman greatness.

Without stopping to trace the history of British Agriculture, we venture to offer an opinion which we believe will be acquiesced in by those most familiar with the subject--that, while modern times have contributed not a little to our knowledge of the principles and theory of agriculture, they have done infinitely more to advance the improvement of the practice of agriculture.[9] We say so, without at all intending to disparage the discoveries of Chemistry and Vegetable Physiology. From these sources we expect much more important services, in advancing the art of husbandry, than certainly they have ever yet rendered.

[9] Those acquainted with the writings of Tull, Arthur Young, Marshall, and Elkington, must know that, although not exempt from errors, they evolved the leading principles of a right agriculture. Indeed, we would seem almost to be recovering only the lost principles and practices of the Roman farmers of old. They seem to have known the mode of manuring ground by penning sheep upon it--nay, what will astonish Mr Mechi, they practised the plan of feeding them in warm and sheltered places with sloping and carefully prepared floors, upon barley and leguminous seeds, hay, bran, and salt. They knew the advantage of a complete pulverisation of the soil, and the necessity of deep ploughing. Their drainage was deep, and if Palladius does not mislead us, they seem in certain cases to have employed earthenware or tile-drains. But to those who wish to know more of Roman husbandry, and who may not have leisure or opportunity to consult the originals, we have great pleasure in recommending Professor Ramsay's (of Glasgow) paper entitled "Agricultura," in the last edition of _Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities_,--an admirable specimen of condensed erudition.

We do not believe that there ever was a time in the history of this country, when so deep an excitement existed in the public mind regarding the present position and future prospects of our domestic agriculture. As the sun never attracts so much attention as during an eclipse, so it would seem to fare with British agriculture in the disastrous plight into which legislation has plunged her. Our litterateurs have all taken to "piping on the oaten reed," and to paying their _devoirs_ at the shrine of Ceres--in whose temple, however, they are manifestly neophytes, and as yet but playing the part of postulants. We hope, indeed, that we may remark without offence, that sometimes they place strange fire on the altar of the goddess, and that they do not always exhibit satisfactory proofs of being very intelligent or well-informed worshippers. When Goldsmith meditated an exploratory journey into the interior of Asia--with the view of discovering useful inventions in the arts, and of adding them to our stores of European knowledge--Dr Johnson, assured of his unfitness for the task, grotesquely supposed that "he would bring home a grinding-barrow, which you see in every street in London, and think that he had furnished a wonderful improvement." One cannot help fancying that some of our most brilliant contemners of the importance of British husbandry, were they to make a tour of discovery into rural parts--would run some chance of picking up a three-pronged fork, and of reporting it as the veritable trident of the god Neptunus. Journalists, subject to commercial impulses and influences, are for the most part town-bred, and unacquainted with the habits of rural life, and with the theory and business of farming. Husbandry is too large a subject to be learned from the windows of an excursion train, or by the casual consultation of an agricultural cyclopædia. Unprepared by previous observation and study, it should not surprise us, when summoned to discourse Georgical lore to their readers, that our journalists should find it necessary to confine themselves to vague generalities, or political speculations on an agricultural question. We beg, however, respectfully to suggest that the writing of "Pastorals" has always been thought a somewhat difficult branch of the literary art. It is now abundantly proved that the agitation flowing from agricultural distress cannot be sopited by burning eloquence, or brilliant sneers, or sharp antitheses, or bold paradoxes; and the time would seem to have arrived when it becomes those whose duty it is to instruct others, and to consult for the good of the State, to inform themselves accurately on a branch of national industry so engrossing public attention, and to weigh maturely and impartially the infinitely momentous and vastly complicated interests involved in the prosperity or decline of British husbandry.

The position, on the other hand, of those actually engaged in the business of agriculture, is far too critical to permit them indolently to lie on their oars. Within the last twenty years, immense advances have been made to improve our knowledge of the theory and practice of husbandry in all its branches; and if the owners and occupants of land are ignorant of these,--if they are ill-informed in their own business--if lack of knowledge compels them to sit silent when the spruce merchant glibly taunts them for their ignorance of the lights shed on their profession by the torch of modern science--if they are unable to defend themselves, and to vindicate the important interests which they represent--let the existing race of proprietors and farmers know assuredly that, if they are to fall degraded from their present position, they will, in the case supposed, fall the unpitied victims of commercial rapacity and a vicious legislation. Whatever may be the ultimate phase in which agriculture shall emerge from the cloud now resting on it, it is evident that those whose interests, capital, and prospects are dependant on the produce of the soil, were never urged by so pressing considerations to acquaint themselves fully and accurately with the science and practice of their profession.

There never was a juncture, we venture to assert, in the history of British husbandry, that so loudly demanded the publication of a work on agriculture at once copious and minute in its scientific details--fully up to the mark of modern improvement--incorporating everything old and new likely to throw light upon the subject--and detailing faithfully the latest experiments and discoveries of chemical, physiological, and mechanical science; and we can honestly congratulate the British agriculturist, that, in the new edition of Mr Stephens' _Book of the Farm_, he truly possesses such a work.

We have, in our day, been not a little tormented with second editions. We have sometimes harboured the ugly suspicion that, in the matter of new editions, publishers and authors were in league to cheat the honest public; and, under the influence of this uncomfortable feeling, we have once and again vowed never to buy the first edition of any book whatsoever. On cool consideration, we feel constrained, however, to confess that the author of this work must have endangered, if not forfeited, the high position which he holds as an agricultural writer, had he not strenuously set himself to emend, and enlarge, and in great portions to re-write his book, when a new edition of it was demanded. It is not only that, on a subject so large, completeness in a first effort might have been naturally expected to baffle any knowledge, however comprehensive, and any industry, however indefatigable; but the brief period that has elapsed since the publication of the first edition has been so fertile in agricultural progress, and so rich in scientific inquiry and experiment, that not to have noted these, and embodied their results in this new edition, must have damaged not only the work, but the author, as implying an ignorance of, or a contempt for, the advancing tide of improvement. The present is undoubtedly a very superior work to the first edition; and it seems to us now to contain a complete institute of agriculture. We venture deliberately to affirm, that in no country or language was so perfect a work on agriculture ever given to the world before; and that no work on this subject, whether foreign or domestic, can for a moment come in competition with _The Book of the Farm_. Perhaps the most remarkable feature in the work is the immense mass of varied information which it contains. _The Book of the Farm_ is indeed a many-chambered storehouse of agricultural lore--a vast repertory of information on the subjects of which it treats. To prove the erudition of the work to those that may be yet unacquainted with it, it may suffice to state, that there are above fourteen hundred references to authors, ancient and modern, continental and domestic, who have written on the subject of agriculture, and on the allied branches of art and science. The references in the work are equivalent indeed to a _Bibliotheca Agricolaris_; and, by directing him to the authorities and sources of knowledge, will enable the educated agriculturist to prosecute his inquiries on any peculiar branch of his business in which he may desire more minute information than even the text embraces. _The Book of the Farm_ is, in fact, another "Stephens' Thesaurus;" and the author must evidently be one of those robust geniuses, who can grapple with whole libraries, and reduce them to their service. Let it be understood, too, that the author's powers of assimilation are as excellent as his literary appetite; that the information is not heaped together in rude disorder, but is interwoven naturally with the texture of the narrative--every fact falling fitly and easily into the appropriate place, where it may best illustrate the precise point discussed. In nothing more than in this does the learned author show his complete mastery of the subject. We fancy that the tenant-farmer, in perusing this work, must often feel how much its author has dignified his art, by showing him how many sciences contribute to its advancement, and how many authors of great learning and talent have devoted their labours to advance the progress, and to vindicate the rights, of husbandry.

But all this learning may not be allied with practice; and the author of _The Book of the Farm_ may, peradventure, be only a book-farmer--a species of impostor that has done a world of mischief in his day and generation. Quite the reverse. The author is enthusiastically practical, and his work is intensely practical. He seems, indeed, to look somewhat askance at any alleged improvement that is not likely to be profitable and beneficial; and we can fancy that he would abate the pretensions of an empiric boastful of some grand discovery, by asking, with an awful mildness, _Cui bono?_ We can assure the agriculturist that, in Mr Stephens, he will find an instructor thoroughly and eminently practical. He is perfectly familiar with the processes of husbandry. He writes not merely as an eyewitness; for it would appear from his book that there is scarcely any one of the manual operations of farming which he had not learned, and, by continued practice, acquired expertness in performing. We believe that there is no author, living or dead, who has written any similar work on agriculture, of whom the same thing can be said. It is an unspeakable satisfaction and comfort to the practical farmer to walk in company with such a guide. We remember very well the impression made on our mind by the first perusal of _The Book of the Farm_. We at once learned that the author, from actual practice, knew perfectly the employments of the ploughman, the agricultural labourer, the cattle-man, groom, and shepherd. With the most minute and insignificant, as well as the most important operations of husbandry, he seems equally familiar. We soon discovered that his knowledge of the history, habits, diseases, and general management of stock, was as perfect as if he had studied nothing else. He writes as minutely about cattle as if he had spent half a lifetime in the cattle-court; and urges that their "comfort" should be attended to as earnestly as if he were consulting for his wife and family. When he discourses on the fleecy people, you conclude that he must be a mountaineer, and that he has tended his flocks amid the valleys of Clova, or on the slopes of the Cheviot. This idea, however, was speedily dispelled by finding our author quite precise on the piggery; in fact, a most learned and enthusiastic _Porculator_. We were delighted to find that he did justice to the porcine race, for long the best abused of all our quadrupedal domestics. He writes with a genial enthusiasm on pigs that would have delighted the gentle spirit of Charles Lamb, (see his dissertation on "Roast Pig,") and have won the regard of Southey, (see his poem, "The Pig,") and astonished the ignorance of Sydney Smith, (see his late work "On Morals,") and have caused a gracious smile to mantle o'er the benevolent countenance of the excellent Mr Huxtable. Pigs and poultry, in life and death, are natural allies; and it did not surprise us to find Mr Stephens intimately acquainted with the merits of the winged denizens of the homestead, and that brave chanticleer and his feathery harem were not dismissed without an accurate disquisition. By this time, however, we believed that the practical knowledge of the author was exhausted. But it was not so. He showed himself forthwith in new characters altogether, and proved himself to be a dexterous hedger, (no offence is meant,) no mean proficient in the veterinary art, and quite able to lend a helping hand to the blundering smith, carpenter, or mason; while, to complete the range of his attainments, Mr Stephens seems quite at home amid the perilous retorts and subtle agencies of chemical science.

The extraordinary extent and accuracy of our author's practical knowledge, is in some measure explained in the preface which accompanies the new edition. After a liberal education, he seems to have carefully trained himself for the business of farming by studying it in Berwickshire, "labouring with his own hands," as he tells us, at every species of farm work. He thereafter travelled through most of the countries of Europe, and thus obtained insight into the methods of Continental agriculture. Thus prepared, Mr Stephens commenced a practical farmer; and on a farm of three hundred acres, in Forfarshire, he executed a series of most successful improvements, some of them quite new, at the time--not only in the culture of the soil, but in the management of stock. Everything was done not only under his own personal inspection, but he scrupled not to put his own hand to the work; his object being, as he records, "that his mind and hands might be familiarised with every variety of labour appertaining to rural affairs." Since he relinquished farming, Mr Stephens has been an ardent student of his favourite science. If at any agricultural show a fine animal was to be seen, or if in any country or district or farm an improved mode of culture was alleged to exist, our author seems to have resorted thither to test its merits by accurate and patient observation. His position as editor of the _Journal of Agriculture_ necessarily makes him familiar with the literature of agriculture, and with every new light which Continental and British discovery has shed upon the theory and practice of agricultural industry. To these opportunities of knowledge he conjoins an unbounded enthusiasm and an unconquerable industry. Never before in one person, probably, had there met such a combination of qualifications fitting him to compose a standard work on agriculture. And thus equipped and furnished, never, we believe, did any author devote his energies with more untiring and conscientious fidelity to the performance of his self-imposed task. No inquiry seems too minute or insignificant--none too gigantic or laborious, if it will add to the store of instruction which he desires to communicate. He gathers information from all authors, famous or obscure, and levies assistance from all sciences, that he may satisfy his reader, and present his work perfect and complete! And now we beg to congratulate the author on the completion of his great work, for a _magnum opus_ it emphatically is; and to acknowledge, with gratitude, the infinite obligations under which he has laid the agricultural world.

The primary intention of the author seems to have been to compose a work that might prove a manual of instruction to young men who were studying agriculture, and preparing themselves for the practical business of farming. But, in reality, the work has outgrown the original idea; and it forms now a complete code of instruction not only to the learner, but to the experienced farmer, to the landowner, and, in fact, to every one whose interests are dependant on agriculture, or whose duties lie in any one of the multifarious departments of rural affairs. The plan of the work is perfectly original, (although old Palladius may have given the hint,) and seems to us peculiarly felicitous. Mr Stephens divides the year into the four agricultural seasons--not absolutely coincident with the chronological division, but sufficiently distinctive--each having its respective class of operations to perform. The work might, in this aspect, be described as the Farmer's Book of the Seasons, with the employments peculiar to each copiously described. There are undoubtedly cycles, recurring periods, if not of repose, at least of change, in the farmer's employment; and, by keeping in view these landmarks of nature, the author enables his reader to comprehend, step by step, the progressive advancement that takes place in the business of husbandry. We know no other work that affects even to do this, or from which it would be possible for the student to acquire an intelligible conception of the actual system of husbandry, in the natural and consecutive order in which her processes take place. It seems strange that, in preceding works, a similar plan had not been adopted. In learning a profession men begin at the beginning, and proceed gradually onwards through the curriculum of study and of practice. How should it have been thought that it could be otherwise in agriculture? Agricultural dictionaries and cyclopædias cannot possibly expound a system of husbandry; and it would defy any sagacity to frame one out of them. Their articles may individually be worthy of occasional consultation by the initiated; but they present to the student a bewildering and motley jumble of instruction, "beer" being found, perhaps, next neighbour to "beet," and "bones" in juxtaposition with "botany." Their prelections, written in different styles, and by authors differing oftentimes in opinion, resemble a multitude of loose, independent, and particoloured threads. In the _Book of the Farm_ we find all rightly arranged, and woven by one artist into a web of continuous and consentaneous narrative. The concluding part of the work is entitled "Realisation," in which the author places his pupil on a farm of his own, pointing out the principles that should guide him in his choice of a farm, and teaching him how he should reduce his knowledge into practice. This is not the least valuable part of the work, and in the strongest manner indicates the superior value that the author attaches to skill, energy, and success in the actual practice of husbandry, in comparison with any knowledge of the "Book theoric," or any passion for experimental freaks. Having fairly embarked his agricultural alumnus in the business of life, Mr Stephens, as if loath to leave him, still accompanies him with invaluable directions, and continues to counsel him in kindliest strain regarding the duties which he owes his servants, his neighbours, his landlord, and himself. Upon the whole, there is something approaching to epic excellence and dramatic unity in the conception and execution of the work; and when the author, in his final paragraph, bids us adieu, and expresses a hope that his labours may prove profitable and instructive to his brethren, it is impossible not to feel that the curtain has fallen upon a complete performance.

Until we received the concluding part of _The Book of the Farm_, which only reached us lately, we were considerably nervous on one point--quite vital, in our estimation, as to the merits of the book. The older we grow, we attach the more value to an accurately arranged index. We hesitate buying any book of importance unfurnished with such an accompaniment; and if it is a book deserving to be re-read, and to which frequent reference must be made, as is the case with the work under review, we put it without compunction into the _index expurgatorius_ of our library-catalogue, and would without pity place the author in the pillory. What a time-table is to a railway, or a guide-book to a traveller in a strange land, such is an index to an extensive work; and if our readers consider that _The Book of the Farm_ contains 1456 pages of clear but close print, in double columns, and embraces the whole range of subjects connected with the conduct of rural life, they will see the imperious necessity of a carefully compiled index for such a work. From the beginning we saw that the book was well planned and paragraphed, (the paragraphs now numbering 6459;) but no excellence of arrangement could compensate for the want of an index. We are therefore happy to add that the value and utility of the work are consummated by the index appended. It is accurately digested and arranged, rendering reference easy and expeditious, and giving the reader a complete control over the voluminous contents. We have found it a prompt and sure guide to any particular point in the varied realms which the author surveys. We have narrowly tested its virtues; and having found it to fail but in one solitary case, and that only partially, we feel bound to approve of the judgment and labour bestowed upon this part of the work. We dwell upon this feature of it not only as momentous in itself, but because the possession of such an index gives _The Book of the Farm_ all the advantages of an agricultural dictionary, while it has merits of its own to which such a work can never lay claim.

In describing the general character of the work, it would be grievous injustice to omit mention of the admirable manner in which it is illustrated. It is enriched with 14 engravings on steel, and 589 on wood, of the most exquisite quality. The portraits of the animals are not from fancy, but are faithful likenesses from life; and we know nothing more excellent or characteristic--not even Professor Low's elaborate and coloured plates of the domesticated animals. In one department the author has, with admirable success, called in the engraver's aid. We refer to the insects infesting that portion of vegetable and animal life in which the farmer is peculiarly interested. This is a province of agricultural instruction which, if not hitherto neglected, has certainly not been treated by any preceding author in a useful and intelligible, manner. Mr Stephens describes the insect-invaders of the farm with a precision that will satisfy scientific readers; but Mr Stephens does not demand, as seems to have been unreasonably done by his predecessors, that farmers shall be familiar with the tremendous terminology of entomological science. He places the little pests before us in vivid pictures true to the life, and evidently from it; so that, without determining the import of such startling vocables as "apterous," "coleopterous," and "orthopterous," the husbandman is at once able to detect the winged and creeping foes, so weak in single combat, but so devastating in legionary myriads--that ruin his crops and injure the health of his cattle, tormenting their patience, and by no means improving the sweetness of his own temper. The black woodcuts, too, depicturing the principal operations on the farm, are inimitably graphic. But when it is mentioned that the artists are Landseer, R. E. Branston, Gourlay Steell, and George H. Slight, the reader will understand that the choicest embellishments which the fine arts could render have been devoted to the illustration of _The Book of the Farm_. It was well thus to charm the young farmer, and to teach him through the medium of his eyes, by presenting him with portraits of the finest animals, and models of the best implements, and pictures delineating the employments in which he and his staff of servants must engage. We shall be bold to assert that no work on agriculture exists equal to this for the profusion, originality, and excellence of its illustrations.

It would be utterly vain to attempt, by quotation, to give our readers any idea of the extent and variety of the contents of this work; but we may say that we would feel infinitely surprised if an inquirer into any subject touching the culture and drainage of the soil,--or relating to the management of stock,--or into any of the collateral arts and sciences, so far as they are connected with agriculture,--or into any duty or employment in which the owner or occupant of the soil may be called upon to engage,--or into any difficulty likely to overtake him in the discharge of that duty, and out of which a more perfect knowledge and skill may extricate him,--shall _not_ find in _The Book of the Farm_ the information of which he is in quest. In the parts of the work that are strictly theoretical, we conceive that much originality will be found in the author's exposition of the rationale of the feeding of animals, of the germination of seeds, and of the action of special manures. He states the result of every modern experiment worth noting. The present edition contains, in fact, a digest of every experiment, down to the present date, that has been tried in the cultivation of crops, and in the management and feeding of stock--not omitting Mr Huxtable's method of feeding sheep--and of every new light and discovery worthy of preservation made by agricultural chemists. We admire the excellent sense and discretion with which the author addresses the practical farmer regarding the reception which he ought to give to the discoveries of modern science. These are not to be instantly and obstinately rejected, because they may be not only true, but ultimately of great practical value; they are not to be fanatically entertained and temerariously adopted, for, if not scientifically untrue, they may be utterly abortive in application, and may conduct only to bitter disappointment, and, in the case of the tenant-farmer, to an unwarrantable waste both of time and money. Nothing, in point of fact, has more injured chemical science in its relations to agriculture, than the exaggerated expectations and promises that have been held out regarding its discoveries. While, in the chemist's room, the result of an experiment may be demonstrable, it should never be forgotten that, in the laboratory of nature, the elements and agents are not under our perfect control, and that the rise or fall of a few degrees in the thermometer may utterly nullify the most perfect manipulation of the most expert experimenter. Climatic, atmospheric, and physiological peculiarities effect strange differences on the constitution and habits of plants and animals; and although scientific research may sometimes be able to detect the causes, it may be utterly unable to assist us in removing them. The supralapsarian employment of our great progenitor was horticultural rather than agricultural; but while the art of husbandry dates from the sad exile from Eden, it seems to be forgotten that chemistry is scarcely half a century old, and that it is but as yesterday that she volunteered her services to agriculture. Nothing is easier than to sneer at the inveterate prejudices that cloud the agricultural mind, and that impede all agricultural progress; but it may be well to remember that chemistry itself was at a comparatively late period associated with alchemy--that its aims were empirical, the chief of them being the discovery of the philosopher's stone, and the transmutation of the baser ores into fine gold. It seems the special province and duty of landowners, who have the leisure and the means, to make experiments; but British farmers, previous to their adoption, are entitled to satisfy themselves that the discoveries of science are readily available by them, and are likely to be profitable. The most enthusiastic chemist will scarcely deny that the discovery of a very condensed animal manure in the islands of the Pacific has contributed more to the prosperity of agriculture than any modern discovery in his favourite science. We write this in the profoundest conviction of the importance of chemistry and the cognate sciences, and of the impetus they will yet give to agricultural progress; but as it is the present fashion to contemn the torpid and immovable understandings of British farmers, it may be well to remind our philosophers that they have been very long of thinking how their philosophy could advance the culture of the soil, or increase the supply of human food--a vulgar consideration, but not to be despised by philosophic sages, who must live like meaner mortals--and that, as yet, they have rather evolved principles, than shown Mr Hodge how he can profitably apply them. Of late, too, a most ridiculous rout has been made about liquid manures; and our urinary land-doctors would persuade us that they could liquify the whole face of the earth into a garden. To such hydropathic empirics we cry, pish! The value of liquid manures is undeniable, as seen in the watered meadows adjoining our cities; and on dairy farms the quantity may be such, that the application of it may not only be expedient, but profitable. When farmers generally, however, are abused for their ignorant neglect and waste of liquid manure, it is necessary to inquire into the justice of the charge. In the first place, it is certain that the litter in the cattle-court, if the court is rightly constructed and situated, will easily absorb all the liquid flowing from the animals in it and in the byres. Suppose the urine were collected as it passed from the animals, and were prevented from permeating and saturating the manure in the court, then, nearly _pro tanto_, the value of the manure would be deteriorated. This seems undeniable. The leakage from cattle-courts, when properly situated, arises exclusively from rain-water; and the overflow is caused by the want of rones to the buildings, and the waste of this diluted liquor arises from the want of tanks to contain it, so that both the leakage and the waste are the fault of the landlord rather than of the tenant. But what are the potent virtues of this liquor which escapes from the homesteads of our farmers, and the neglect of which has brought on them such a deluge of obloquy, and by the right use of which their plundered exchequer is forthwith to be replenished? M. Sprengel tells us that "it contains two per cent of manuring matter!" From the trouble, expense, and occasional delicacy required in administering it to the crops, we are quite satisfied that Sprengel is right in stating that any surplusage of liquid manure about a farm, from whatever cause it may arise, can be "most profitably employed in the preparation of compost." We are fortified in this view by the opinion of that skilful and judicious farmer, Mr Finnie of Swanston, as lately stated by him at a meeting of the Agricultural Society of Scotland. The fact is, that this cry about the untold value of liquid-manure proceeds from the city. The inhabitants of our large towns have for many a day been living immersed in a stercoraceous atmosphere, and have been inspiring the fetid fumes exhaled from their horrid sewers. Awakening to the discovery, they have been seized with a sanatory mania; and on the instant, with upturned nostril, they have proceeded to rate the rural population for not relieving them of their cesspools, and for not admiring with sufficient ardour the virtues of these turbid and odoriferous streams that meander amid their dwellings. The Free-trade philosopher, himself pretty much in the puddle, joins in the cry, and condemns scornfully the farmer's neglect of the fertilising properties of sewage water. If these gentlemen were civil, and did not deserve to be soused in one of their own fragrant ditches, it might be replied, that the moment they transport their liquid treasures to the country, the tenant-farmers, after having ascertained their value, will cheerfully pay the worth of them, per ton, in sterling money. It is quite true, no doubt, as Mr Stephens contends, that "it is wrong to permit anything to go to waste, and especially so valuable a material on a farm as manure;" but when practical farmers are denounced by ignorant parties, who have shown that they care not a jot for the agricultural prosperity of the country, but who may hope, by railing at those they so lately robbed, to divert attention from their own political misdemeanours, it seems but right that we should ascertain the value of the article neglected, and the origin of its waste, if waste there be, and perhaps even inquire into the motives of the new patrons of British husbandry who have floated themselves into public notice on the black sea of sewage water. At the same time, he would certainly be an unreasonable man who would try to prevent the Free-trade water-doctors of the soil from sweetening the atmosphere in which they live, and from cleansing themselves from all impurities.

When we remember the excitement and distress under which the agricultural community are now suffering, we fear that at this moment they may scarcely be in a humour to accept graciously our recommendation of _The Book of the Farm_. In the fever of critical emergencies, men have not patience to study their profession, and scarcely taste to read anything that does not bear on the one engrossing theme. Mr Stephens, no doubt, ignores the Corn Laws and Protection in his work--(we are under no such a vow)--but it should be remembered that there never was a time when it was more necessary for the cultivators of the soil to acquaint themselves with all the improvements and appliances of modern husbandry; and although good farming, nay, the very best, under present prices and rents must be unprofitable, that yet it may tend to the mitigation of present suffering, and to the postponement of coming disaster. But is there any occupant, or owner of land, with the smallest glimmer of sense, who really thinks--whatever he may affect--that the present condition of the British agriculturist can continue, and that his downward progress to destruction is not to be arrested? We do not believe it. It is because we anticipate that, ere long, justice will be done the tenant-farmers of the nation, and that they will be in a position soon to start upon a new career of agricultural improvement, that we earnestly urge upon their attentive study the stores of knowledge and instruction communicated in the pages of Mr Stephens' work.

Supposing the iniquitous competition and taxation to which the agricultural interests of the country are subjected were to remain permanent, we do not believe that any knowledge, or skill, or enterprise, can make the business of farming _generally_ profitable. We think, however, that on casting the horoscope of British husbandry, many writers have predicted a speedier ruin to the tenant-farmer than the nature of his employments should lead us to expect. Everything connected with the processes of husbandry is slow and operose. There is only one harvest in the year, and there can only be one annual profit or loss upon the capital invested. A farmer cannot be ruined in a season. He may have a little spare capital; and, at all events, he has capital invested in stock, and by trenching upon the one or the other, he can for a while meet his losses. Agricultural capital has, however, been already so much impaired, that if, in present circumstances, a bad crop at home were to concur with a good one in the corn-growing countries of the Continent, the coincidence, we believe, would plunge immense numbers of farmers into bankruptcy. If any easy and apathetic landlord doubts this, let him ask the country bankers. It may be difficult to predict the ultimate issue of an unbending adherence to the present system. After a period of hopeless struggle, the capital of the present race of farmers will disappear, and, degraded and ruined, they must go. Who will succeed them? Most probably a race of servile cultivators, like the helots of ancient Sparta, or the ryots and serfs of modern Europe, who, content to subsist upon the meanest fare, shall deliver over to the lord of the soil the produce of the farm. We have heard that some patriotic lairds and discerning factors, taking time by the forelock, are looking out for such clodpoles--for the race is not extinct--to occupy their vacant farms, wisely concluding that men without capital, skill, or education, will live upon black bread, and surrender to them the whole proceeds of the soil. A curious comment this upon the high-farming theory, and a plan of operations highly creditable to the agricultural sagacity and patriotic benevolence of its discoverers! Or it may be that Sir James Graham's "pasturage" may be the _dernier resort_ of a ruined agriculture, in which case we may have, as in the Australian continent, men living somewhat like gentlemen, and occupying extensive tracts of country with their flocks and shepherds. Such a result could, of course, only take place by approaches slow, insidious, and imperceptible. If it were possible, _which it is not_, that such a social revolution should be _allowed_ to take place, it is plain that it must be spread over a large period of time. We think error has been propagated by anticipations of immediate disaster. It is conceivable that events may occur that will postpone the triumph of truth, and that may enable the Free-trade press a little longer to mystify their readers. A temporary rise in the price of grain would have this effect. Such a brief respite might lull even the fears of the sufferer, although, while the organic disease remains uncured, it is certain to destroy him. The inconsiderate, and those whose interest is to delude or to be deluded, think the question settled by individual farms letting higher than before, and point triumphantly to "grass parks" maintaining their value, or rising in rent. They are ignorant that, as far as farmers are concerned, they must, in many localities, take grass, whatever it may cost them, unless they are to alter and subvert their whole system of farm management, which would involve a loss more fatal than that which, with open eyes and under dire necessity, they are content to endure. There is some fragment of truth, too, in one part of Sir James Graham's speech on Mr Disraeli's motion--in several respects the most audacious oration ever spoken in the House of Commons. "Shopkeepers retiring from business," said the member for Ripon, "small merchants in country towns--(ironical cheers and laughter)--I repeat it, small traders of little capital in country towns, are now waiting the moment to make investment in farms."--(_Times_, 10th Feb.) Isolated cases of this kind may be occurring, as they always have done, and, generally speaking, after a brief career, the _emeritus_ shopkeeper retires, impoverished and disappointed. The merchant, deluded with some poetical fancy about the charms of a country life, takes a farm, but, like Dr Johnson's tallow-chandler, who retired to the country, but could not keep from town on "melting days," his heart is not in his work, and he gets disgusted with the details of agriculture, and the affairs of his farm speedily fall into confusion. Is Sir James Graham serious in thinking that the prosperity of our domestic agriculture is to be recovered or maintained by "retired shopkeepers,"--that is, by men unbred to the business, strangers to its duties, and, of necessity, utterly destitute of any practical knowledge of agriculture? Mr Stephens anxiously prescribes a course of careful study and practice to his agricultural pupil; but Sir James Graham can, with his wand, metamorphose retired shopkeepers into _extempore_ farmers. What elevated notions the Knight of Netherby must entertain of the qualifications of an English farmer, and of the importance of the agricultural art--an art that it had been hitherto supposed required great experience, and a knowledge of the elements of all sciences, to study and conduct it to perfection! But if retired shopkeepers are the men for the present emergency, has Sir James Graham an army of them sufficiently numerous to occupy the abandoned territory? For before Sir James Graham's remedy--if its application is to be coextensive with the malady--can come into operation, he presupposes the extermination of the present race of farmers. Let the tenant-farmers of the nation ponder his words. "Small traders of little capital in country towns are waiting the moment to make investment in farms." Waiting what moment? Why, the moment, gentlemen, when you are ruined, and are to be driven, with your wives and families, from your homes. Any sentiment more bitterly unfeeling, or more mockingly cruel, was never vented within the walls of Parliament; and, to our taste, it was made more loathsome by the oily compliments to English farmers with which it was garnished. The ex-Minister, however, is evidently deceiving himself, and he will find that retired shopkeepers are not such simpletons as he fancies. The "small traders in country towns," that _very section_ of the mercantile community who are _notoriously_ suffering _most_ from the inroads of Free Trade, are to invest their remaining capital in farming, _that particular business_ which has received the _deepest_ wound from Free Trade! And this is the sheet-anchor of Sir James Graham's hope; and this is a sample of Free-trade wisdom from the lips of its greatest champion! No doubt there may be small traders with little capital in the commercial world who are fools; but we begin to believe that there may be great _traders_, with little principle, in the political world, who, wily though they be, may reveal the cloven-foot, and defeat their aspirations after place and power. Let us be thankful, whatever befalls us, the English O'Connell with his threat of rebellion cannot harm us, and the fate of the Grahamite faction is sealed! The retired shopkeepers, instead of adopting the disinterested advice, will more probably purchase snug villas; thus indulging their passion for the pleasures of a country life more innocently than by waiting for the ruin of the farmers; and thus we believe, too, that their "little capital" will be as safe as under the self-suggested guardianship of Sir James Graham.

Sir James Graham has no doubt of the present prosperity of agriculture, because his rents are paid. (See _Times_, 14th Feb.) This is enough for him, and the rest is all "but leather and prunella"--the mere constitutional croaking of the agricultural body. We should have liked better to have heard the views of Sir James Graham's tenantry on this department of the subject than his own. With the value of agricultural produce reduced thirty-five per cent, is the reward of his tenants' industry undiminished, and their capital unimpaired? What a draft upon the agricultural ignorance of the present House of Commons, and what a contempt for the understanding of his auditors, did this bold man evince by hazarding such an assertion! Any inquiry into the sources whence his rents were paid was not thought necessary by Sir James; and we believe that there are many more amiable men than the Laird of Netherby who are solacing themselves with the same view. Their rents are paid--their grass is letting--they are content--they eschew inquiry. The struggling farmer is pinching himself and his family, and is dipping his hand into the hard-earned savings of former years, in order that he may meet the factor. But examination would be unpleasant--dangerous; and any expression of sympathy even with the sufferer, would imply a distrust of the blessings following in the wake of the Free-trade policy. It might almost seem that many of our landed proprietors were set at present upon acting the part of the silly bird of the desert, which hid its head in the sand that it might not see the destruction that was coming. The Newark election, in which the nominee of the landlords was unceremoniously set aside by the farmers, and a man of their own choice selected, might have taught the owners of the soil that condign punishment may eventually await wilful ignorance or criminal neglect of the present duties of their station, and indifference to the condition of those whose prosperity is indissolubly associated with their own. If degradation from that position of influence and power which they have hitherto so justly and naturally possessed be thought no evil, we confess, that we would wish to see that great interest--whose importance to the welfare of the State we have ever vindicated to the best of our power--selecting a more graceful and magnanimous mode of self-destruction. The retention of an undiminished rent-roll Sir James Graham has set his heart upon, as is unblushingly implied in the speech already quoted--but this will not be allowed him; and if there be any meaning or sincerity in his own creed, he dares not ask it. The Free-trade press unanimously assert--and unanswerably upon their principles, and Sir James Graham's own--that the only and the necessary termination of agricultural distress must conduct to a reduction of rent; and the Free-trade press is stronger than Sir James Graham.

The _Times_ contends (or rather did contend, for here a delicate attention to the use of the tenses should be observed) so earnestly for the reduction of rent as the only possible solution of the difficulty, that one must conclude that the journalist believes what he writes. We have not sworn at the altar to fight the battles of the landowners--but if it were possible so to arrange it, we have yet to learn upon what principle they are to be singled out as the sole subjects for plunder. But, as the Free-trade press have resolved upon the reduction of rent as the right settlement of the question, it may be well for a moment to consider what this position amounts to. It is usual to make a threefold division of the whole annual proceeds from a farm. One-third goes to the landlord in name of rent; one-third meets the expenditure connected with the farm; and the remaining third goes to the tenant, as the interest of his invested and floating capital, and as the reward of his industry. We believe this premise cannot be challenged as unfair. But it is universally admitted now, that the annual value of the whole agricultural produce of the farm is reduced immensely by the compulsion of an Act of Parliament. For the present, let us say that the reduction amounts to 30 per cent. Then, by what would seem an equitable distribution of this loss over the three parties, the rent of the landlord, the wages of the agricultural labourer and the other industrial classes dependent on agriculture, and the profits of the farmer, should each be 30 per cent less--that is, each of the three parties should have 30 per cent less to pay the taxes with, and to spend upon the home trade of the nation. This would seem the natural issue of the diminished agricultural revenue, and, when things find their level, to this pass they will infallibly arrive. But no: the Free-trade press have determined that the agricultural labourer shall not suffer, and that the profit and comfort of the tenant-farmer shall not be impaired. It is solely and exclusively a question of rent, say they. Well, be it so. Then, in that case, the rent must be reduced, not 30, but 90 per cent; for upon this condition alone can the agricultural labourer and the tenant-farmer be left uninjured. We defy Sir James Graham, or any Free-trade philosopher, to escape from this conclusion. The existing case may be illustrated in another way. Land at 40s. per acre should produce three rents, while inferior land, at 20s. per acre, as every competent judge will allow, should produce four rents. A farm of 200 acres, at 40s., gives a rent of L.400, and should produce a gross revenue of L.1200. Take wheat now as the test. The farm was rented, and the capital invested, when that grain averaged 56s. per quarter. But wheat has fallen one-third in price, and the L.1200 is reduced to L.800--that is, the rent has disappeared. On the poorer farm of the same extent, at 20s. per acre, with four rents to be raised, it will be found, upon the same data, not only that the rent has vanished, but L.67 in addition. The force of this demonstration can only be evaded by denying the premises upon which it is based; but, indeed, so impregnable is our case, that we might consent to any modification of the premises that the most besotted admirer of Free-trade results could dare to ask, without imperilling materially the strength of our position. And yet Free-trade proprietors are talking gravely of a revaluation of their acres, and of a readjustment of their rent, and of a relinquishment of some 10 or 15 per cent of their rentals, as the grand and all-sufficient remedy for all the sufferings under which the agricultural interest is now struggling, although even to this point of economic magnanimity Sir James Graham has not reached. The ex-minister must have been filled with amazement when he heard the Queen lamenting, not only that the occupants, but that the "owners of the soil" were suffering. His own experience refuted the rash assertion; and, had it been otherwise, we may conjecture that the orator would have spoken a different speech. Personal and pecuniary loss has been known to sharpen the wits and to clear the reasoning faculty in a remarkable manner. On the other hand, the Free-trade press philanthropically insist that the agricultural labourers not only are not suffering, but that they _shall not_ suffer. It is necessary for the latter class to uphold this dogma; for if they admitted that the wages of the labourer must diminish, sooner or later, in proportion to the value of their work--that is, in proportion to the value of the produce, they are instrumental in raising--then instantly the popular delusion which they have so assiduously cherished would be exploded, and their fame as the friends of the poor would be dissipated. We are ready to admit that only in certain localities has the evil reached the agricultural labourer; and where it has not, of course the tenant-farmer is suffering not only his own share of the infliction, but that which should properly fall upon his dependants. It has been erroneously supposed by many that the agricultural suffering would quickly extend itself to the industrious poor: we never saw any good reason for supposing so. The farmer cannot, like the spinner of flax or cotton, stop his mills, and pause in his work, and dismiss his servants, or put them on short time; he must proceed, at whatever risk, and hire his labourers at what they can be got for. The fact that the agricultural labourers are not universally in distress is undoubtedly blinding many honest men to the real position of the country, while it is enabling Parliamentary orators, and Whig _snipper-snappers_ from the hustings, to point to the present comfort of this class as a proof of the success of the Free-trade policy. But can these gentlemen be honest? Upon what principle of political economy or common sense can the farm-labourer continue to receive the same wages as formerly, when the value of the produce of his labour is reduced one-third? It is certainly a grievous trial of the patience to listen to Sir J. Graham lending his talents to the support of a delusion so very cruel, and so very palpable.

But a truce to this strain. A very pleasant book has most innocently led us into very unpleasant themes. Believing that the reign of delusion is drawing to a close, and that a spirit of juster legislation will soon prevail in the councils of the nation, and that the time draws nigh when the occupants and owners of the soil may prosecute their affairs with better hopes than they at present have, of enjoying a fair reward for their toil and enterprise, we again earnestly commend to their attentive perusal _The Book of the Farm_. To the landed proprietors it ought to be invaluable, if they wish to be qualified to discharge those duties which Providence has laid on them, and which they owe to their tenantry, to the agricultural poor, and to the nation. While the rights of every petty interest are pled in Parliament by parties who prove their intimate acquaintance with the disadvantages--fictitious or real--under which it labours, the ignorance prevailing, in the present House of Commons, on the subject of agriculture, and on its various bearings in reference to national prosperity, is so flagrant as to have excited universal remark. A large body, however, of that august assembly are country gentlemen, and the charge might imply a reflection on their education and attainments. But it would be base ingratitude to forget that patriotic band of country gentlemen in Parliament, as well as out of it, who, in the face of discouragements more disheartening than a great party were ever subjected to before, have fought the battle of just legislation so gallantly, patiently, and prudently--who have identified themselves with the suffering tenantry--and are now contending, with brighter hopes and revived energies, for a fair protection to native and colonial industry, as the only mode in which the labouring poor of the land can _permanently_ enjoy the just reward of their industry, as that system of policy by which alone the taxes can be paid, the national honour kept untarnished, and the constitution and the monarchy saved from dilapidation. There are many others for whose return to their right mind we have waited patiently. We believe that in their case an ignorance of agricultural affairs may be the source of their present apathy. To all gentlemen, however, living in the country, although they may have no stake in its soil, we recommend Mr Stephens' work, as containing most agreeable reading. We do not say that, from such, a continuous perusal is required. They may intercalate an agricultural season from _The Book of the Farm_, now with the corresponding season from the "Bard of the Seasons," and now with an eclogue from Virgil. The pleasures of a country life will thus be infinitely multiplied; for, startling although the paradox may be, there are multitudes resident in rural parts who look ignorantly on rural sights, and have no knowledge of rural employments, and no sympathy with rural habits, and who know not in reality _how to live in the country_. Mr Stephens' work--or a better, if it can be got--ought, of course, to be in the hands of every factor and land-steward, otherwise they must be unfit for their business; and it ought to have a place in every parish library, that it may be accessible in the winter nights to the agricultural labourers. It is particularly, however, the tenant-farmer's manual, if he is to keep pace with the progress of his art. He may think it costly, but not with reason, if he considers that it comprises an agricultural library in itself. The thrifty and buxom housewives of our homesteads, too, will find admirable instruction in _The Book of the Farm_ regarding the important branches of duty that fall to their charge. Mr Stephens is copious regarding everything touching the management of the dairy. Indeed, our author seems somewhat _recherché_ on the matter of dairy produce. We acquiesce in his approval of the deliciousness of new-made, unwashed butter, churned from sweet cream--a luxury which our southern friends never tasted. "Such butter," says Mr Stephens, "on cool new-baked oatcake, overlaid with flower virgin honey, accompanied with a cup of hot strong coffee, mollified with crystallised sugar, and cream such as the butter is made from, is a breakfast worth partaking of, but seldom to be obtained." Most excellent sir! on such terms we shall breakfast with you on the morning of Saturday se'nnight, provided you add to your matutinal _cuisine_ a veritable "Finnan" and a mutton ham of the true flavour, (if possible, let it be from one of the Keillor four-year-old Southdowns;) for we have long conscientiously entertained the opinion of a late ingenious professor of Church History in our metropolitan university, "that Edinburgh eggs are not to ride the water upon!"

AN EVENING WALK.

BY THOMAS AIRD.

The Patriarch mild, who mused at evening-tide, Saw blessings come: they who with ordered feet Go forth, like him, their blessings too shall meet,-- Beauty, and Grace, and Peace, harmonious side by side;

Whether the down purpled with thyme they tread, Woodland, or marge of brook, or pathway sweet By the grave rustling of the heavy wheat, Singing to thankful souls the song of coming bread.

The restless white-throat warbles through the copse; High sits the thrush and pipes the tree upon; Cloud-flushed the west, a sunny shower comes on; Up goes the twinkling lark through the clear slanting drops.

In straight stiff lines sweet Nature will not run: The lark comes down--mute now, wings closed, no check, Sheer down he drops; but back he curves his neck; Look, too, he curves his fall just ere his nest be won.

Here stands The Suffering Elm: in days of yore Three martyrs hung upon its bending bough; Its sympathetic side, from then till now Weeping itself away, drops from that issuing sore.

Dryads, and Hamadryads; bloody groans, Bubbling for vent, when twigs are torn away In haunted groves; incessant, night and day, Gnarled in the knotted oak, the pent-up spirit's moans;

And yonder trembling aspen, never still, Since of its wood the rueful Cross was made;-- All these, incarnated by Fancy's aid, Are but extended Man, in life, and heart, and will.

Your eye still shifting to the setting sun, The diamond drops upon the glistening thorns Are topazes and emeralds by turns; Twinkling they shake, and aye they tremble into one.

Clouds press the sinking orb: he strikes a mist Of showery purple on the forest tops, The western meadows, and the skirting slopes; Down comes the stream a lapse of living amethyst.

Beauty for man, O glory! yet how vain, Were there no higher love to correspond, Lifting us up, our little time beyond, Up from the dust of death, up to God's face again.

The Word apart: Nature ne'er made, in whim, An organ but for use: our longing hope Of life immortal, like our hand, has scope To grasp the things which are: that life is thus no dream.

We tread on legends all this storied land: Here flows a ferry through the mountains black With pinewood galleries far withdrawing back; Man's heart is also here, and dwarfs those summits grand:

The virgin martyrs, half the ferry o'er, By ruthless men were plunged into the tide, Singing their holy psalm; away it died, Bubbling in death. The moon a blood-red sorrow wore.

And aye, they tell, when, wan and all forlorn, Sickening she looks upon our world of wrong, And would be gone for ever, far along The mournful ferry dim that dying psalm is borne.

Yon peasant swarth, his day of labour done, Pipes at his cottage door; his wife sits by, Dancing their baby to the minstrelsy: To temperate gladness they their sacred right have won.

Rest after toil, sweet healing after pain; Repent, and so be loved, O stubborn-viced-- The Tishbite girt severe runs before Christ: Such is the double law complete to mortal men.

Yon lordly pine bends his complying head To eve's soft breath, and the stupendous cloud Shifts silently: Man's world is fitliest bowed By power when gently used: Force not, love thou instead.

One cool green gleam on yonder woodland high, And day retires; grey twilight folds with dew The hooded flowers; in gulfs of darkening blue The starry worlds come out to Contemplation's eye.

Home now to sleep. No part in all man's frame But has its double uses, firm to keep, Help this, round that, and beautify: of sleep, Complex of sweet designs, how finely 'tis the same.

Touched with the solemn harmonies of night, Down do we lie our spirits to repair, And, fresh ourselves, make morning fresh and fair; Sleep too our Father gave to soften death's affright:

In sleep we lapse and lose ourselves away, And thus each night our death do we rehearse. O, at the last may we the oblivion pierce Of death, as aye of sleep, and rise unto the day.

MODERN STATE TRIALS.[10]