priation to the case of fantastic buildings. | religious. It will, therefore, be a sort of Any building is called "a folly," which resurrection for both the palace and the mimics purposes incapable of being realiz- poet, if I cite his description of this gored, and makes a promise to the eye which it cannot keep to the experience. The most impressive illustration of this idea, which modern times have seen, was, undoubtedly, the ice palace of the Empress Elizabeth-t

"That most magnificent and mighty freak,"

which, about eighty years ago, was called up from the depths of winter by

"The imperial mistress of the fur-clad Russ."

Winter and the Czarina were, in this architecture, fellow-laborers. She, by her servants, furnished the blocks of ice, hewed them, laid them: winter furnished the cement, by freezing them together. The palace has long melted back into water; and the poet who described it best, viz. Cowper, is not much read in this age, except by the

"A folly." We English limit the application of the term to buildings: but the idea might as fitly be illustrated in other objects. For instance, the famous galley presented to one of the Ptolemies, which offered the luxurious accommodations of capital cities, but required a little army of four thousand men to row it, whilst its draft of water was too great to allow of its often approaching the shore; this was "a folly "' in our English sense. So again was the Macedonian phalanx the Roman legion could form upon any ground: it was a true working tool. But the phalanx was too fine and showy for use. It required for its manoeuvring a sort of opera stage, or a select bowling-green, such as few fields of battle offered.

:

geous folly. It is a passage in which Cowper assumes so much of a Miltonic tone,, that, of the two, it is better to have read his lasting description, than to have seen, with bodily eyes, the fleeting reality. The poet is apostrophizing the Empress Eliza

Another moon new-risen:

Nor wanted aught within
That royal residence might well befit
For grandeur or for use. Long wavy wreaths
Of flowers, that fear'd no enemy but warmth,
Blush'd on the panels. Mirror needed none,
Where all was vitreous: but in order due
Convivial table and commodious seat
(What seem'd at least commodious seat) were
there ;

Sofa, and couch, and high-built throne august.
The same lubricity was found in all,
And all was moist to the warm touch; a scene
Of evanescent glory, once a stream,
And soon to slide into a stream again.

The poet concludes by viewing the

t I had written "the Empress Catherine:" but, whole as an unintentional stroke of satire on second thought, it occurred to me that the

"mighty freak was, in fact, due to the Empress by the Czarina,

Elizabeth. There is, however, a freak connected with ice, not quite so "mighty," but quite as au

cold.

-On her own estate,

tocratic, and even more feminine i. its caprice, on human grandeur, and the courts of kings. which belongs exclusively to the Empress Cathe-was transient in its nature, as in show rine. A lady had engaged the affections of some 'Twas durable; as worthless, as it seem'd young nobleman, who was regarded favorably by Treacherous and false,-it smiled, and it was Intrinsically precious: to the foot the imperial eye. No pretext offered itself for interdicting the marriage; but, by way of freezing it a little in the outset, the Czarina coupled with her permission this condition-that the wedding night should be passed by the young couple on a matress of her gift. The matress turned out to be a block of ice, elegantly cut by the court upholsterer, into the likeness of a well-stuffed Parisian matress. One pities the poor bride, whilst it is difficult to avoid laughing in the midst of one's sympathy. But it is to be hoped that no ukase was issued against spreading seven Turkey carpets by way of under blankets, over this amiable nuptial present. Amongst others who have noticed the story, is Captain Colville Frankland, of the navy.

Looking at this imperial plaything of ice in the month of March, and recollecting that in May all the crystal arcades would be weeping away into vernal brooks, one would have been disposed to mourn a beauty so frail, and to marvel at a frailty so elaborate. Yet still there was some proportion observed; the saloons were limited in number, though not limited in splendor. It was a petit Trianon. But what if, like Versailles, this glittering bauble, to which

all the science of Europe could not have Keats had the honor to speak the language secured a passport into June, had contained of Chaucer, Shakspere, Bacon, Milton, six thousand separate rooms? A "folly" Newton. The more awful was the obligaon so gigantic a scale would have moved tion of his allegiance. And yet upon this every man to indignation. For all that mother tongue, upon this English language, could be had, the beauty to the eye, and has Keats trampled as with the hoofs of a the gratification to the fancy, in seeing wa- buffalo. With its syntax, with its prosody, ter tortured into every form of solidity, re- with its idiom, he has played such fantastic sulted from two or three suites of rooms, tricks as could enter only into the heart of as fully as from a thousand. a barbarian, and for which only the anarchy of Chaos could furnish a forgiving audience. Verily it required the Hyperion to weigh against the deep treason of these unparalleled offences.

Now, such a folly, as would have been the Czarina's, if executed upon the scale of Versailles, or of the new palace at St. Petersburg, was the Endymion: a gigantic edifice (for its tortuous enigmas of thought multiplied every line of the four thousand into fifty) reared upon a basis slighter and less apprehensible than moonshine. As reasonably and as hopefully in regard to hu- STATE OF POLITICAL PARTIES IN SPAIN.

man sympathies, might a man undertake an epic poem upon the loves of two butter

From the Foreign Quarterly Review.

Queen Isabella II.'s Speech to the Cortes of 1846.

that sort, and there are sundry gentlemen beyond the Atlantic, encouraged by the high state of morals in Pennsylvania and other repudiating states, who re-echo the sentiments of the perfectionists on this side of the water.

flies. The modes of existence in the two parties to the love-fable of Endymion, their relations to each other and to us, their THERE is, we believe, a sect in this prospects finally, and the obstacles to the country which still puts faith in human instant realization of these prospects, all perfectibility, and teaches that we have all these things are more vague and incompre-of us long been on the high road to angelic hensible than the reveries of an oyster. completeness. It is just within the limits Still the unhappy subject, and its unhappy of possibility that it may be right; Goodexpansion, must be laid to the account of win, if we remember well, had a notion of childish years and childish inexperience. But there is another fault in Keats, of the first magnitude, which youth does not palliate, which youth even aggravates. This lies in the most shocking abuse of his mother-tongue. If there is one thing in this world that, next after the flag of his country and its spotless honor, should be holy in the eyes of a young poet,-it is the language of his country. He should spend the third part of his life in studying this language, and cultivating its total resources. He should be willing to pluck out his right eye, or to circumnavigate the globe, if by such a sacrifice, if by such an exertion he could attain to greater purity, precision, compass, or idiomatic energy of diction. This, if he were even a Kalmuck Tartar, who by the way has the good feeling and patriotism to pride himself upon his beastly language. But Keats was an Englishman;

*

If diligently sought for, more than one philosopher of this school might, no doubt, be found also in Spain, where things have been wearing so promising an aspect for the last century or so. the theory of perfectibility is, that it is founded on experience.

The rare merit of

tional poem, [doubtless equally hideous,] they hold to be the immediate gifts of inspiration: and for this I honor them, as each generation learns both from the lips of their mothers. This great poem, by the way, measures (if I remember) seventeen English miles in length; but the most learned man amongst them, in fact a monster of erudition, What he could repeat by heart was little more never read farther than the eighth mile-stone.

than a mile and a half; and, indeed, that was * Bergmann, the German traveller, in his ac- found too much for the choleric part of his audicount of his long rambles and residence amongst ence. Even the Kalmuck face, which to us foolthe Kalmucks, makes us acquainted with the de-ish Europeans looks so unnecessarily flat and ogrelirious vanity which possesses these demi-savages. like, these honest Tartars have ascertained to be Their notion is, that excellence of every kind, the pure classical model of human beauty,perfection in the least things as in the greatest, is which, in fact, it is, upon the principle of those briefly expressed by calling it Kalmuckish. Accord-people who hold that the chief use of a face is— ingly, their hideous language, and their vast na- to frighten one's enemy. VOL. III.-No. II. 50

All history shows that men were exceed-sible mistake to suppose that man is as yet ingly demoniacal at their first starting on this an unhatched perfectibility, and that he globe, and that they have gone on improv- will by and by break his shell, put forth a ing their tempers and their practices from powerful pair of wings, and soar away afthat day to this, so that at present there is ter some transcendental fashion into what scarcely an ounce of the old man left in Mr. Shelley calls the intense inane.' At them. There are no tyrants or cannibals all events the upholders of this notion act in the world now. None who persecutes as to excite in us but little hopes; they for conscience' sake, no thirst for conquest, philosophize as the witch repeats her no appetite for war or bloodshed. We all prayers-backwards, and imagine that the of us sit down under our vines and under best means of fitting us for mounting upour fig-trees, and there is no such thing as wards is to strip our nature of every thing faction or an union work house in the land. ethereal and spiritual. Gentlemen with white waistcoats legislate Our own opinion is that modern society for us, gentlemen in hair-cloth shirts preach does not intend to climb much higher. It to us at the universities, and take charge seems to be rapidly becoming practical, to of our ethical habits, and determine the re- be surrounding itself with conveniences, in lations in which we are henceforward to one word, to be making itself comfortable, stand to the Bishop of Rome. Clearly we -a temper of mind highly adverse to amhave very few steps to take to reach that bitious speculation. Nations which look supercelestial state towards which the ad- up the plane of possibility, which contemvocates of perfectibility assure us we are plate a high and distant level, and are rehastening; a state in which there will be solved to reach it, gird up their loins and no circulating libraries, in which gentlemen prepare for a struggle. They think little will buy books for themselves and read of ordinary enjoyments, present or prothem; the millennium of printers and pa- spective. Their delight is in intellectual per-makers, the holiday of soldiers, the long vacation of lawyers.

Meanwhile, there is a slight jarring of the system in Spain, where General Narvaez, the Pythagoras of the Peninsula, has for some time been endeavoring to inculcate into the press the necessity of preserving a five years' silence. He considers free discussion a very pernicious thing, and objects to juries, because they are apt to take views of political errors and delinquencies somewhat different from those of the government. There was a time when similar fancies possessed gentlemen in office here, in our own island, though they had exceedingly few converts among the people. There is therefore progress, it may be said, or in other words, a tendency towards perfection.

and moral activity, in building up systems of philosophy or government, in subduing the actual by the speculative, in mounting over the steps of their own theories to the loftiest regions of thought. But throughout Christendom humanity is evidently in the attitude of Lot's wife. It regrets the circle of traditions, emotions, creeds, and philosophies out of which it has blundered, and longs passionately to re-enter it. We live in an age of re-actions. But as time never retraces its steps, so neither can mankind. In endeavoring to reproduce what formerly existed, they are impelled by irresistible principles into something new, inferior, or superior to what has been, but not at any rate the same.

With respect to Spain, the great point of interest is to ascertain, if possible, whether We fancy the human race very much re- its progress towards constitutional freedom sembles a traveller, who progressing perpet- is to be pacific or bloody, or, in other ually has some timesto traverse long level words, whether moral objects are to be efplains, steppes or downs, and sometimes to fected by moral and intellectual means, or climb steep acclivities, or to ascend the by exhibitions of physical force, and a perpinnacles of mountains; but sometimes petual cycle of revolutions. Some appear also, when he has got up as high as he can to think, that because the action of society go or as there is a rock or a glacier to has there for many years past been greatly stand upon, it becomes his duty, painful or disturbed, we are to look for a constant repleasant as the case may be, to descend, to currence of the same phenomena. It may plunge into sombre valleys or toil drearily be however that it has now passed through along over morasses and swamps. Civili- the period of turbulence and anarchy, and zation, at its best, cannot make a silk purse entered upon that of repose. Many feaout of a sow's ear. It is the greatest postures in the aspect of the country would

appear favorable to this conclusion. The deposit their estates, and even their repumasses seem weary of violence, of pronun-tations, at the foot of the throne, and, with ciamentos, of bootless insurrections, of a sort of practical idolatry, to worship the street fights and fierce personal struggles in prince. All Spanish history may be recoffee-houses. They have made the discov-garded as a realization of this feeling. ery that little is to be gained by such The proudest nation of Europe was of nodoings. No thanks to Narvaez, or Senor thing so proud as of its complete subjection Pidal, or Senor Mon, or the Bank of to the throne, which by degrees underminSan Fernando. The tranquillity of the ed its energy, corrupted its morals, extinpresent period is the offspring of events, as guished all love of industry, and gave uniwas the confusion of that which preceded versal currency to a barbarous taste for disit. General Espartero and his colleagues were the martyrs of circumstances. They aimed at bestowing institutions on Spain, but failed; because the passions of the people kindled by civil war could not be suddenly allayed or reduced to order.

play and gross physical excitement. When the state had, through these means, been reduced to the lowest pitch of weakness and degradation, a reaction took place, monarchy became the object of general aversion, and the secret of national prosperity was sought for in the opposite extreme of that which had once been regarded as the supreme good.

Should matters in the Peninsula take a fortunate turn, infinitely more credit will be given to the Narvaez administration than it has any claim to. Since its acces- Hence the rise of the republican party, sion to power, which took place under very which supposed that society could be turnpeculiar circumstances, no formidable at- ed inside out, like a coat, and that names tempt has been made to renew the state of were a sort of talisman, which could effect anarchy, not so much owing to the unspar-miracles by mystical processes, unknown ing policy of the government, which how-to political science. The leaders of this ever has evinced its determination to pur-party in Spain, as every where else, were chase quiet at any sacrifice, as owing to a generally honest and able men, who, deepnew turn taken by the public mind. The ly versed in theory, sometimes disdained fierier and more destructive passions had to study the occasions and modes of its burnt themselves out, and whoever had re-application. They refused to believe that mained in power, or succeeded to it, the ef- political constititutions are slower of fect had been nearly the same. After the growth than the oak, that they are but the exhaustion of the public and private re- complete expression of the national characsources of the country, the necessity of re- ter, that they are planted in a country with newing them was universally felt, so that the first germ of its population, and that the minds of all classes were turned towards though they may at different times assume commerce and industry. They perceived different phases, they are essentially among that while they were knocking each other any given people, one and the same, till the in the head, the rest of Christendom was utter extinction of nationality. enriching itself, submitting new lands to the plough, calling forth fresh harvests, building new factories, constructing new ships, founding new colonies or establishing new institutions calculated to promote public prosperity. The knowledge of these facts slowly surmounted the Pyrenees, or stole in with the contraband cotton goods over the sea-board of Andalusia. Among other revolutions there was then effected a revolution of opinion, which, at the outset, enabled the moderados to triumph over their rivals, but in the end will prove fatal to their power.

Still, whatever degree of freedom Spain may hereafter enjoy, she will be indebted for it to the republican party, who, though they aimed at too much, actually created something. They infused into the public mind the belief that the Spanish monarchy, like an old house, required to be pulled down and built up again; and if they had been chosen to superintend the operation, and could have freely acted according to their own plan, would have taken care it should have had more than one chimney.

But the elements of political change are seldom homogeneous in any country. If Up to this moment the Spaniards have there was in one quarter a powerful tenentertained but crude notions of civil gov-dency towards democracy, in another there ernment. When they had an absolute was a counteracting impulse, and the result king, they thought it their duty to practise was a compromise, a recognition of the the most complete abnegation of self, to popular principle, a limitation of the royal

prerogative, in one word, a sort of constitution, which, however imperfect, was rather in advance of the age.

It is now a matter of the utmost difficulty to discover the condition of the public mind in Spain. We cannot trust safely to the interpretation which may appear to be given by events. These are rather the result of material forces, more or less nicely balanced, than of that curious and delicate mechanism of thought which the leading statesmen and politicians of the country have been endeavoring to introduce, and on which we bestow the name of public opinion. Neither, unfortunately, can we trust to those who have travelled there and undertaken to report on the existing state of things, their wishes being much too obviously the parents of their theories. Few minds are sufficiently capacious to take in all the multiplied relations of a great people. Still fewer are capable of basing a sort of divination on their experience, and foretelling what is to be from what is. We approach the subject with diffidence. Our own leanings and partialities are all on the side of freedom, and therefore, when we desire to satisfy ourselves respecting the future destiny of any people, our hopes are apt to preponderate over our fears. It must not, however, be dissembled that there exist in the case of Spain many causes of apprehension, and that the most patient, laborious, and conscientious inquiry may possibly lead to a too favorable conclusion, when the tendencies of the mind are such as we confess ours to be.

well as to the great body of the clergy. The partisans of the movement in Spain would appear to be situated nearly as the commonwealth's men were in England, during the contest for liberty under Charles I. Possessing superior knowledge, superior principles, and superior personal character, they are yet inferior in the essential requisite of numbers, and are disliked by the many, because the cure of the state is not to be effected without occasioniong considerable pain and discomfort. They took the lead for a time, because, as a party, they displayed more intelligence and greater energy than their opponents, but were overthrown because, by undertaking church reform, they enlisted against them the prejudices of the majority, and even appeared to be inimical to religion itself. It is not at all improbable, moreover, that being accidentally placed in opposition to the Church, they may in some instances have misunderstood the necessities of their position, and have really become irreligious from imagining that it was requisite for the antagonists of the clergy to be so. At any rate we discover in this antagonism the weak point of the Progresistas, who have now discovered their error, and, yielding to their natural impulses as Spaniards, have reconciled themselves to the Church, and are seeking to work in conjunction with it.

Nor is there any reason to doubt the sincerity of their reconciliation. From the very nature of things, the advocates of political progress are impassioned and imIn the process of regenerating a people, aginative, prone to subtle theorizing, adthere is a work for all classes of statesmen, dicted to speculation, and more inclined to and all kinds of administrations. Without, seek their happiness in the worship of abtherefore, believing in the doctrine of polit-stractions, in gratifying the sense of duty in ical necessity, or imagining that certain the lofty domains of ideal truth, than in the men are born to effect certain purposes bleak and chilly mazes of skepticism. To and no others, we may affirm, upon the all such men religion is a necessity and an whole, that as Espartero was well fitted to enjoyment, not, however, the religion of manage the public affairs of Spain, during shows and ceremonies, not a literal faith in a certain critical period, so Narvaez is arbitrary creeds, but that high, poetical, aptly qualified to remain in the ascendant spiritual belief, which burns like a pure during another phasis of public opinion, in flame upon the loftiest summits of the inits nature, perhaps, transitory. The Pro- tellectual world, and lights up the intergresista party, though essentially popular space between earth and heaven. No men in its principles, had highly unpopular have so much need of religion as the votawork to perform; for while a great major-ries of popular institutions. All the force ity of the Spanish people were vehement of worldly principles is with their enemies. Papists, swayed by all the prejudices of Power has an affinity with power. Church Romanism, and habitually directed by their establishments may support despotism, clergy, it was found necessary for the pro- but religion never does or can.. It is the motion of national prosperity, to take mea- last resource of the oppressed, the comfort sures highly unpalatable to the pope, as of the afflicted and persecuted. It takes