not a crime, but a qualification, an indispensable qualification for official advancement it has been aptly subsidiary to the craft of the Melbourne ministry-the latter giving power and confidence to the enemies of British connection-the former discouraging and disabling its warmest and bestdeserving friends-and while thus enfeebling and dispiriting the constitutional party, it has not only not succeeded in converting their opponents to a better disposition, but, by giving them hope of success, it has stimulated them to the avowal of purposes and the adoption of means which, in former times, would have incurred the penalties of treason. Let it not be imagined from any thing we have said here, that we would desire the advancement of an unworthy partizan, because of his political principles or services— or that we condemn an experiment like that of Sir Robert Peel, to conciliate adversaries by wise discrimination in his use of patronage. We would simply have the best men placed in the posts where they could render best service and would require only that an honest government should not deny to the country the services of the wise and good, because their promotion would be unacceptable to the party who desire the dismemberment of the empire. To give repealers a veto in the appointment of those who are to be entrusted with the maintenance of British connection, is to become an instrument in the hands of the disloyal, and to betray the sovereign and the country. But the question perpetually recurs -What is to be done? Is the British government to conciliate the repealers? to put them down? or to yield to their demands? Would a surrender of the temporalties of the Irish church conciliate them? They say peremtorily-no. There are, certainly, members of the British House of Commons, very expert in speech, very daring in assertion, very ignorant of the subject, who say-yes; but they are even of an inferior class to those who, by similar audacity of promise and prediction, deceived and betrayed the country. We select an Irish and an English testimony to the spirit of determination with which repealers pursue their purpose, and the little likelihood there is that such bribes as conciliators can offer will turn them from their courses. One is from a speech of Mr. O'Connell; one from a Roman Catholic organ, "The Tablet." We copy both from the Statesman of July 7. Thus speaks Mr. O'Connell: "No defection can now injure the thumphant progress of the good cause, if we be true to ourselves. I have had the opportunity of consulting men the most respectable, the highest in respectability and station, who are supposed adverse to us. I won't mention names; but what did they advise? No compro. mise! You'll be offered (they said) the destruction of the church temporalities, or their appropriation to state purposes. Take all you get, but give up nothing. You have repeal well organised nowno need of a drag-no fear of being hurried down the hill of wild revolution. go on as you are doing, giving no offence to any one, injuring no one-the people conducting themselves better than the nobility at Almacks-giving the strongest proof of their subordination-of the highest order of civilization-that civilization which proceeds from religious principle and the purest morality.' Ay, the people of Ireland are showing to the nations of the earth a miracle of good conduct never yet equalled; that it never even entered into the heads of statesmen to conceive, till his knowledge of the virtues of his countrymen inspired the glorious idea. The demonstration in Dundalk was the last until I came to Dublin, and it would be only repeating what was said in every family in the city last night, to say one word of the majestic and awful spectacle of yesterday." Thus far the agitator. The organ of his party in England speaks thus: We of course agree with the Chronicle, that the Irish Church is a griev ance as real in its nature as it is enormous in magnitude;' and when the Chronicle asks, Why not come forward with a proposition to redress this grievance? we answer, because this redress, mighty as it would be in any other country than Ireland, is hardly worth naming in the present aspect of affairs. The abolition of the Irish Church, as a single measure, would not, we are firmly persuaded, buy off ten voices from repeal. And why not? First, because it comes rather too late; repeal seems now almost within the grasp, and contains within it this church question, and many more questions beside. In the second place, we say the condition of Ireland is such, that the church question is in itself a matter of truly secondary importance. In any other country it would be a question of immense value. But in Ireland it has hardly any value as a means; and as an end it is not to be named with one or two other questions. Miserable, indeed, must be the condition of a country which can afford two grievances greater and weightier than this monster church. That miserable country is Ireland. Two, at least-the landlord and tenant question, and the poor law— overtop even the gigantic stature of the monster church."-The Tablet. Who are to be believed--the unaccredited undertakers in parliament, or the recognised organs of the Roman Catholic and repeal parties? Can the British minister yield? If he do, he will yield up the honour and power of his country. Necessity, perhaps, may justify him. It would, so it was said in a recent debate, justify a breach of the articles of union; only let it be sufficiently manifest and constraining, and the union itself must yield. We warn England and the British legislature to beware in time that that necessity do not arrive. Let Mr. O'Connell be free to keep his agitation alive-an agitation which, in various forms of advantage, direct and indirect, may more than compensate his party for the trouble and cost at which it is maintained, and the day may come when the cry for deliverance from the burden of the legislative union may be more passionate and more general in Great Britain than now it is in Ireland. We speak advisedly. But is it possible to suppress the agitation by which Ireland is disordered, and the whole empire seriously alarmed? If it be not-bad as the alternative is-preparation should be inade to meet the horrors of repeal. We, for our parts, see no formidable difficulty in the way of suppressing the bad spirit, as well as putting an end to the threatening demonstrations now, but we fear much that forbearance and delay will increase the difficulty, and, if of much longer continuance, will nurture disaffection into such magnitude and strength that civil war may fail to effect what could have been accomplished by the timely intervention of a magistrate, and a division of police. We do not, however, think it enough to prevent the manifestation of a bad spirit,—until the spirit itself is converted, there is no security for the national welfare and repose. Can this bad spirit he appeased. can it be allayed? When British statesme. become wise enough to know what it is-the country may entertain a hope. So long as the nature of the evil remains a mystery, there is obviously little reason to expect that legislation can correct it. We repeat (and we have furnished many proofs in former numbers of our magazine, that we are correct in the assertion) that the spirit which torments Ireland is the offspring of Romanism and antiAnglican nationality. The people desire in repeal a resumption of lands, which whatever they were when forfeited, are now objects of desire. The Roman Catholic hierocracy and priesthood desire in repeal, empire-empire more undivided and absolute than they enjoy in Belgium. This is the real character of the repeal movement. It aims at ascendancy of the Romish religion and of priestly power-recovery of the whole territory of Ireland. Will We will not repeat again here what ought to be done to suppress or divert an agitation raised for such objects as these, but we confidently affirm that it will not be allayed by any concession which government has as yet been advised to grant. A powerful body, who are taught to regard concession as acknowledgment of their power, will not for inferior considerations be turned aside from the prosecution of an enterprise which they hope to have so richly rewarded as by the separation of Ireland from Great Britain. the government adopt a policy more effectual than that of concession? We know not, but we earnestly advise all who are interested in the stability of British connection to take care that the Protestant strength of Ireland be not overlooked or undervalued in a crisis which seems to direct all attention upon the more numerous hosts of repeal. The moral and physical strength of more than fifteen hundred thousand individuals ought to be carefully husbanded, and, when the character of the Protestant population is considered, can scarcely be too highly esteemed. FRAGMENT X.-A FRAGMENT OF FOREST LIFE. I AM half sorry already that I have told that little story of myself. Somehow the recollection is painful; and now I would rather hasten away from Brussels, and wander on to other scenes; and yet there are many things I fain would speak of, and some people too, worth a mention in passing. I should like to have taken you a moonlight walk through the "Grand Place," and, after tracing against the clear sky the delicate outline of the beautiful spire, whose gilded point seemed stretching away towards the bright star above it, to have shown you the interior of a Flemish club in the old "Salle de Loyauté." Primitive quaint fellows they are, these Flemings-consequential, sedate, self-satisfied, simple creatures-credulous to any extent of their own importance, but kindly withal; not hospitable themselves, but admirers of the virtue in others; easily pleased, when the amusement costs little; and, in a word, a people admirably adapted by nature to become a kind of territorial coinage, alternately paid over by one great state to another, as the balance of Europe inclines to this side or that; with industry enough always to be worth robbing, and with a territory perfectly suited to pitched battles; two admirable reasons exist for Belgium being a species of Hounslow Heath or Wormwood scrubs, as the nations of the Continent feel disposed for theft, or fighting. It was a cruel joke, however, to make them into a nation. One gets tired of laughing at them at last; and even Sancho's island of Barataria had become a nuisance, were it long lived. Well, I must hasten away now. I can't go back to "The France" yet awhile, so I'll even take to the road-but what road? That's the question. What a luxury it would be, to be sure to have some person of exquisite taste who could order dinner every day in the year-arranging the carte by a physiogmical study of your countenance and plan out your route by some innate sense of your desires. Arthur O'Leary has none such, however; his whole philosophy in life being to throw the reins on the hack Fortune's neck, and let the jade take her own way. Not that he has had any reason to regret his mode of travel. No; his nag has carried him pleasantly on through life-now cantering softly over the even turf, now picking her way more cautiously among bad ground and broken pebbles-and if here and there an occasional side leap or a start has put him out of saddle, it has scarcely put him out of temper; for one VOL. XXII.-No. 129. S great secret has he at least learned—and after all, it's one worth remembering: very few of the happiest events and pleasantest circumstances in our lives have not their origin in some incident, which, had we been able, we had prevented happening-and then, while taking your mare "chance" over a stiff country, be advised by me, give her plenty of head, sit close, and when you come to a rasper, let her take her own way over it. So convinced am I of the truth of this axiom, that I should not die easy if I had not told it; and now, if any thing should prevent these fragments being printed, I leave a clause in my will to provide for three O'Leary treatises, to establish this fact, being written, for which my executors are empowered to pay five pounds sterling for each. Why, were it not for this, I had been married say at the least some fourteen times in various quarters of the globe, and might have had a family of children, black and white, sufficient to make a set of chess men among them. There's no saying what might not have happened to me. It would seem like boasting if I said that the Emperor of Austria had some notions of getting rid of Metternich to give me the "Foreign Affairs;" and that I narrowly escaped once commanding the Russian fleet in the Baltic. But of these, at another time. I only wish to keep the principle at present in view-that Fortune will always do better for us than we could do for ourselves; but to this end there must be no tampering or meddling on our part. The goddess is not a West-end physician, who, provided you are ever prepared with your fee, blandly permits you all the little excesses you are bent on. No: she is of the Abernethy school, somewhat rough occasionally, but always honest-never suffering any interference from the patient, but exacting implicit faith and perfect obedience. As for me, I follow the regimen prescribed for me without a thought of opposition; and wherever I find myself in this world, be it China or the Caucasus, Ghuznee, Genoa, or Glasnevin, I feel for the time, that's my fitting place, and endeavour to make the best of it. The pedestrian alone of all travellers is thus taken by the hand by Fortune. Your extra-post, with a courier on the box, interferes sadly with the current of all those little incidents of the road which are ever happening to him who takes to the "by-ways" of the world. The odds are about one hundred to one against you, that when seated in your carriage, the postillion in his saddle, and the fat courier outside, the words "en route" being given, you arrive at your destination that evening without any accident or adventure whatever of more consequence than a lost shoe from the near leader, a snapped spring, or a heartburn from the glass of bad brandy you took at the third stage. A blue post, with white stripes on it, tells you that you are in Prussia; or a yellow and brown pole, that the Grand Duke of Nassau is giving you the hospitality of his territorysave which you have no other evidence of change. The village inn, and its little circle of celebrities, opens not to you those peeps at humble life so indicative of national character: you stop not at the way-side chapel in the sultry heat of noon to charm away your peaceful hour of reflection-now turning from the lovely madonna above the altar to the peasant girl who kneels in supplication beneath-now contrasting the stern features of some painted martyr with the wrinkled front and weather-beaten traits of some white-haired beggar-now musing over the quiet existence of the humble figure whose heavy sabots wake the echoes of the vaulted aisleor watching, perhaps, that venerable priest who glides about before the altar in his white robes, and disappears by some unseen door, seeming like a phantom of the place. The little relics of village devotion, so touching in their poverty, awake no thought within you of the pious souls in yonder hamlet. The old cure himself, as he jogs along on his ambling pony, suggests nothing save the figure of age and decrepitude. You have not seen the sparkling eyes and flushed cheeks of his humble flock who salute him as he passes, nor gazed upon that broad high forehead where benevolence and charity have fixed their dwelling. The foot-sore veteran or the young conscript have not been your fellow-travellers— mayhap you would despise them. Their joys and sorrows, their hopes, their fears, their wishes-all move in an humble sphere, and little suit the ears of those whose fortune is a higher one. Not that the staff and the knapsack are the passports to only such as these. My experience would tell very differently. With some of the most remarkable men I ever met my acquaintance grew on the roadsome of the very pleasantest moments of my life had their origin in the chances of the way-side-the little glimpses I have ever enjoyed of national character have been owing to these same accidents; and I have often hailed some casual interruption to my route, some passing obstacle to my journey, as the source of an adventure which might afford me the greatest pleasure. I date this feeling to a good number of years backand in great measure to an incident that occurred to me when first wandering in this country. It is scarcely a story, but as illustrating my position, I will tell it. Soon after the denouement of my Polish adventure-I scarcely like to be more particular in my designation of it-I received a small remittance from England, and started for Namur. My uncle Toby's recollections had been an inducement for the journey, had I not the more pleasant one in my wish to see the Meuse, of whose scenery I had already heard so much. The season was a delightful one-the beginning of autumn; and truly the country far surpassed all my anticipations. The road to Dinant led along by the river-the clear stream rippling at one side; at the other, the massive granite rocks, rising to several hundred feet, frowned above you; some gnarled oak or hardy ash clinging to the steep cliffs, and hanging their drooping leaves above your head; on the opposite bank, meadows of emerald green, intersected with ash rows and tall poplars, stretched away to the back ground of dense forest that bounded the view to the very horizon. Here and there a little farm-house framed in wood, and painted in many a gaudy colour, would peep from the little enclosure of vines and plumtrees; more rarely still, the pointed roof and turreted gable of a venerable chateau would rise above the trees. How often did I stop to gaze on these quaint old edifices, with their ballustrades and terraces-on which a solitary peacock walked proudly to and fro: the only sound that stirred, the hissing plash of the jet d'eau, whose sparkling drops came pattering on the broad water-lilies; and as I looked, I wondered within myself what kind of life they led who dwelt there. The windows were open to the ground, bouquets of rich flowers stood on the little tables. These were all signs of habitation, yet no one moved about-no stir nor bustle denoted that there were dwellers there. How different from the country life of our great houses in England, with trains of servants and equipages hurrying hither and thither. All the wealth and magnificence of the great capital transported to some far-off county-that ennui and fastidiousness, fatigue and lassitude, should lose none of their habitual aids. Well, for my part, the life among green trees and flowers, where the thrush sings, and the bee goes humming by, can scarcely be too homely for my taste: it is in the peaceful aspect of all Nature, the sense of calm that breathes |