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English society, entitle them to the use of such costly attire.' Notwithstanding this, we are informed that there is no such thing as distress to be found in this brilliant and imprudent community. Formerly, according to Mr Forbes, when an officer of respectability, whether civil or military, died, a subscription was immediately set on foot for the widow and children, which was not only always liberal, but not unfrequently conferred on the parties a degree of permanent afiluence greater than the prospects from which death had excluded them. At present, the reviewer tells us, such subscriptions are not known-simply because they are not wanted. The funds for the retirement of officers, and the maintenance of widows and children, together with the almost universal custom of life-insurance, do everything that before was accomplished through the painful means of charity. A young civilian is said, in the matrimonial market, to be worth L.300 a-year, dead or alive, and a young military officer worth L.100 a-year. Yet private benevolence is still active, not in occasional, and perhaps ostentatious donations, but in the regular support of hospitals, infirmaries, and other institutions; while the extra funds of the Anglo-Indians are likewise freely bestowed in the patronage of the arts and sciences, unknown to their predecessors of even the last generation.

Indian or European traders - respectable personages enough in their way, and, peradventure, not much given to show; but the wife and the daughters must have their britska or barouche, though they do pinch a little at home to maintain it; and on the course at least, the wife of the uncovenanted subordinate may jostle the lady of the head of the office. When we consider how much is often sacrificed to support the dignity of the carriage and pair-how much substantial comfort is thrown aside to make room for this little bit of ostentation-that the equipage is with many the thing from which they derive much of their importance-we soon cease to wonder at the formidable array of assuming conveyances which throng the course every evening at sunset, and present a scene which, as one of daily recurrence, has not perhaps its parallel in the world.'

On the return from the drive, a late dinner winds up the day; at which the patriotic guests, with carpets beneath them, and curtains around them, determine to be European all over, and stew themselves in broad cloth! Formerly, white jackets were tolerated, and white trousers fashionable; but now, the greater the dinner or the ball, and the more stifling the crowd, the more indispensable is it for the English in India to dispense with everything adapted to the place and climate, and cover their persons with garments similar to those worn by the English at home.

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The mode of spending a day in India has been fre quently described, but, as regards the present time, Much of the improvement of manners and morals very erroneously. Formerly, the case was different. which has taken place within the last fifty years in The number of English was small, and the habits of India is owing, as has been said, to corresponding imsociety, therefore, uniform. Up to a certain date we provements at home, but something is also due to the are able to note, with tolerable accuracy, their mode of influence of the press. A growing indulgence in the passing the time; but they now form a large, variously-respectable literature of England is one of the most obviconstituted, and widely-dispersed community, and the ous engines of social advancement. We have more leisame social differences are observed among them as sure in Calcutta for reading,' says a recent Anglo-Indian we find at home. Early rising, however, is the general writer, than the majority of people in England who rule; many men being habitually on horseback before work for their daily bread. We are seldom called upon the sun is up. Breakfast is taken at all hours-from to consider the relative advantages of a new book and a sunrise till eleven; and it varies from a cup of tea and country ride. We are so little out of doors, that books a slice of dry toast, to a repast of rice, eggs, fish, cold constitute our principal source of recreation; and new meat, fruits, and preserves. From breakfast to five or books are as plentiful in Calcutta-I speak of course six o'clock, the men of business, civil or military, toil with regard to the demands of the community-as they in their sultry offices; while with others, and especially are in any town of England. Then there are our newsmany of the female part of the community, the day is papers. Why, no man could possibly read them attendivided by tiffin-the substantial Indian lunch. Before tively, without making a tolerable acquaintance with tiffin is the time for paying and receiving morning visits; the literature and science of the western world in all after that, a lady is her own mistress till her husband their rapidly-progressive stages.' But this is not the returns from business, and takes her out for a drive, or case in the capitals of the presidencies alone; for the accompanies her carriage on horseback; or, wearied, remotest station has its book-club, furnished either vexed, and dispirited with the cares of the world, sends from these cities, or from London direct; and there is her forth to eat the air' alone. As for the siesta hardly a regiment or detachment, either in cantonments between tiffin and the drive, that has gone a good deal or on the march, which is not provided with its library, out of fashion. Men of business can no longer afford and regularly supplied with newspapers and periodicals. the time; and it has been discovered that sleeping in Recently, indeed,' says the Calcutta Review, 'everythe daytime is merely an indolent habit, and not an thing has been in our favour; and not the least of the indispensable of the climate. many favourable circumstances which have tended toThe evening drive is the grand show of Calcutta. wards the advancement of European literature in India, Hyde Park in full season is nothing to it. No sooner resides in the cheapness and portability of many works does the setting sun tinge the western horizon, than all now issuing from the London press. Though we are the English residents in Calcutta throw open their doors now in the enjoyment of improved means of internal and windows, make a hasty toilet, and sally forth, in communication throughout the country, there are still carriage or on horseback, to enjoy the evening air. many parts of India in which no great facilities for the Before the sun has disappeared behind the western conveyance of heavy parcels exist; and such conveybank of the river, the strand is crowded with vehicles ance, even under most favourable circumstances, is of every description-a concourse as dense as that always attended with considerable expense. The treawhich may be seen on the Epsom Road during the race-suries of regimental book-clubs are seldom overflowing; week, with even more entanglements and embarrass- and there are not many private individuals who can set ments, for there is a stream setting both ways. One aside any very large sums for the purchase and the marvels who all these people are that own these hun-carriage of new books. India is therefore especially bedreds of carriages. The first impression made upon the holden to those enterprising publishers who have undermind of the stranger is, that there must be an enormous taken to reduce both the price and the bulk of the number of wealthy inhabitants in Calcutta. But the works they put in circulation.' equipage is, in reality, no sort of index to the worldly possessions of the owner. It may let you, perhaps, into the secret of a man's vanity, certainly not of his income. Some of the most pretending equipages on the course are sported by people belonging to the second class of society-uncovenanted government servants, petty East

All this is so far good, but as we presume that Britain retains India as much for the benefit of the native races as for that of the mercantile and military classes of England, we hope the Calcutta reviewer will soon be able to give us an account of what is doing to elevate and improve that enormous native population of India

by the establishment of schools and otherwise. Until this is done, and done thoroughly, we shall view Hindoostan only in the light of an encampment-a country kept and domineered over only for the sake of plunder, all pretensions to the contrary notwithstanding.

HOWITT'S HOMES AND HAUNTS OF THE

POETS.*

MR HOWITT, with good literary powers in himself, has that feeling for literature and literary men which seems necessary to one who would describe in a fitting manner the homes and haunts of the poets. He has accordingly produced out of this subject one of those works, lighter than history, graver than fiction, half-informing, half-emotional, which are now becoming the predominant books of the day. It is a beautifully-prepared book, with excellent wood-engravings, and some of those external elegancies which mark the Christmas publications. Like every other work of its author, it contains some free enunciations of opinion, which are apt to go gratingly over certain consciences; it is also not free from errors in small matters of fact; but, apart from these drawbacks - and what book can be wholly free from them?-we consider it as a most pleasant visitant, whether for the season, or for a permanency.'

little gentry in the place for information about Shelley: they knew nothing of any such person. At length, after much research, and the running to and fro of waiters from the inn, I was directed to an ancient surgeon who had attended almost everybody for the last half century. I found him an old man of nearly ninety, He recollected Shelley; had attended him, but knew little about him. He was a very unsocial man, he said; kept no company but Mr Peacock's, and that of his boat, and was never seen in the town but he had a book in his hand, and was reading as he went along. The old gentleman, however, kindly sent his servant to point out Shelley's house to me; and as I returned up the street, I saw him standing bareheaded on the pavement before his door, in active discourse with various Marlowean curiosity. On coming up, the old gentleneighbours. My inquiries had evidently aroused the man inquired eagerly if I wanted to learn more yet about Mr Shelley? I had learned little or nothing. I replied that I should be very happy. "Then," said he, "come in, sir, for I have sent for a gentleman who knows all about him." I entered, and found a tall, well-dressed man, with a very solemn aspect. "It is the squire of the place," said I to myself. With a very sat down opposite to each other. solemn bow he arose, and with very solemn bows we "I am happy to hear," I said, “that you knew Mr Shelley, and can give me some particulars regarding his residence here." "I can, sir," he replied with another solemn bow. I waited to hear news; but I waited in vain. That Mr Shelley had lived there, and that he had long left there, and that his house was down the street, and that he was a very extraordinary man, he knew, and I knew; but that Marlowe came out of the solemn brain of that large was all: not a word of his doings or his sayings at solemn man. But at length a degree of interest apGeo-peared to gather in his cheeks and brighten in his eyes. "Thank God!" I exclaimed inwardly; "the man is slow, but it is coming now." His mouth opened, and he said, "But pray, sir, what became of that Mr Shelley?"

There are about forty poets noticed, three-fourths of whom are men of the last or present age. The selection is not wholly with a regard to the distinction of individuals, but partly with reference to the accident of there being something interesting to say about their homes or haunts. There is also much biographical and critical matter, the former necessarily not new. graphical considerations have evidently been no obstruction to Mr Howitt. He has gone north to Deeside for the scenes of Byron's boyhood, and into the wilds of Ireland for the residences of Spencer and Goldsmith. On many occasions he seems to have travelled as a pedestrian with a knapsack, in quest of the places he required to visit. He mingled freely with the people on all occasions; drew from them their traditionary reminiscences, and listened to their remarks, of which he has made liberal use in his book. It occurs to uslargely experienced in the same kind of adventuresthat Mr Howitt was at times unreasonable in expecting information from a humble class of people, and expresses a needless impatience under the disappoint-ready for my departure, and was just in the act of ments he met with. The best intelligence about a person or an event is not always to be got exactly at the spot where the one lived or the other took place.

There is, nevertheless, some value in what Mr IПowitt sets down with regard to those living near the homes of the poets. The general result is, that the common people are either grossly ignorant of the names and characters of the bright spirits which lived amongst them, or else have regarded them with prejudice. We are told, for example, of Wordsworth, Coleridge, and one or two other young literary men living harmlessly in studious retirement at Allfoxden, and being so much persecuted by the gross suspicions of their neighbours, as to be at last obliged to leave the place. Mr Howitt went down to Marlowe, to inquire after the residence of Shelley in that town, and had considerable difficulty in learning anything about the object of his inquiries; in this case it was not the humbler class of people alone who showed ignorance. We give some of his adventures in his own words.

It was in vain that I inquired amongst the class of

* Two volumes, 8vo. Bentley, London. 1847.

"Good gracious!" I exclaimed. "What! did you miles from London-that sad story of his death, which never hear? Did it never reach Marlowe-but thirty created a sensation throughout the civilised world?" No; the thing had never penetrated into the Bocotian denseness of that place! I rose up, and now bowed solemnly too. "And pray what family might he leave?" asked the solemn personage, as I was hasting away. "You will learn that," I said, still going away, "in the Baronetage, if such a book ever reaches Marlowe." 'I hastened to the inn where my chaise was standing entering it, when I heard a sort of outcry, perceived a sort of bustle behind me, and turning my head, saw the tall and solemn man hasting with huge and anxious strides after me.

"You'll excuse me, sir; you'll excuse me, I think; but I could relate to you a fact, and I think I will venture to relate to you a fact, connected with the late Mr Shelley." "Do," said I. "I think I will," replied the tall stout man, heaving a deep sigh, and erecting himself to his full height, far above my head, and casting a most awful glance at the sky. “I think I will-I think I may venture." "It is certainly something very sad and agonising," I said to myself; "but I wish he would only bring it out." "Well, then," continued he, with another heave of his capacious chest, and another great glance at the distant horizon, "I certainly will mention it. all his bills to be paid most honourably, certainly most It was this. When Mr Shelley left Marlowe, he ordered honourably; and they were all paid-all-exceptmine! There, sir! it is out; excuse it-excuse it; but I am glad it is out."

"What!-a bill?" I exclaimed in profoundest astonishment. "A bill! Was that all?"

"All, sir-all! Everything of the sort: every shilling, I assure you, has been paid but my little account, and

it was my fault: I don't know how in the world I forgot to send it in."

"What!" said I; are you not the squire here? What are you?"

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Oh, Lord! no, sir! I am no squire here. I am a tradesman! I am-in the general way!"

"Drive on!" I said, springing into the carriage; "drive like the Dragon of Wantley out of this place Shelley is remembered in Marlowe because there was one bill left unpaid!"'

Perhaps there are reasons for this ignorance beyond what Mr Howitt thinks of. We shall say what occurs to us on the subject after quoting what will generally be felt as an interesting contrast-Mr Howitt's conversation with a poor elderly working-man, whom he fell in with on a Sunday forenoon, while walking from Ayr to the Burns scenery on Doonside. Our author having made an inquiry as to which of two ways led to Burns's monument, the face of his fellow-stroller kindled with an instant animation. "I am going part of the way, sir," he said, "and will be proud to show it you." I begged him not to put himself at all out of his way. "Oh," said he, "I am going to look at my potato plot, which lies out here." We fell into conversation about Burns: the way again showed a fresh branch-that was the way to his potato field; but the poor fellow gave a hesitating look; he could not find in his heart to give up talking about Burns, and begged that I would do him the honour to allow him to walk on with me. "But your potatoes, my friend?" "Oh, they'll tak no harm, sir: the weather's very growing weather. One feels a natural curiosity to see how they thrive, but that will do next Sunday, if you would allow me to go on with you?"

'I assured him that nothing would give me greater pleasure. I only feared that I might keep him out too long, for I must see all about Burns's birthplace, Kirk Alloway, the Brig of Doon, the monument, and everything of the kind. It was now about noon, and must be his dinner hour. He said "No; he never had dinner on a Sunday; for years he had accustomed himself to only two meals on that day, because he earned nothing on it, and had ten children! But he generally took a walk out into the country, and got a good mouthful of fresh air, and that did him a deal of good."

little ungrateful that he has never written to us since he went, three years ago. Yet I hear that he is alive and well in Jamaica. I cannot but think that rather ungrateful," he added; "but of a' Robin Burns's poems, there's none, to my thinking, that comes up to that one -Man was made to mourn.'"

'I could not help again glancing at the thin pale figure which went as softly at my side as if it were a ghost, and could not wonder that Burns was the idol of the poor throughout Scotland, and that the Sunday wanderer of his native place had clung so fondly to the southern visitor of the same sacred spot.

"Can you explain to me," I asked, "what it is that makes Burns such a favourite with you all in Scotland? Other poets you have, and great ones. Out of the same class, too, you had Hogg, but I do not perceive the same instant flash, as it were, of an electric feeling when any name is named but that of Burns."

"I can tell," said he, "why it is. It is because he had the heart of a man in him. He was all heart and all man; and there's nothing, at least in a poor man's experience, either bitter or sweet, which can happen to him, but a line of Burns springs into his mouth, and gives him courage and comfort if he needs it. It is like a second Bible."

'I was struck with the admirable criticism of the poor artisan. What acuteness of genius is like the acuteness of a sharp experience after all?'

With one remark on Mr Howitt's friend, that he was but a type of a whole genus of toiling, self-denying poor in our land-too often laughed at as over-cautious and frugal, when they are only just and independentwe pass on to say that one cause of the difference between Marlowe and Ayr may be in what Mr Howitt himself unconsciously suggests-that such writings as those of Shelley have not that adaptation to common feelings and common necessities and sorrows which belongs to those of Burns. Burns was, in fact, one of a thousand among the poets, in the fact of his having written for the people. It is not, therefore, wonderful to find the remainder of the thousand comparatively little known.

Mr Howitt has been at unusual pains with the localities of poor Goldsmith, notwithstanding that Mr Prior, his biographer, has gone over and described everything most carefully. The Auburn of the 'Deserted Village' is the hamlet of Lissoy, near Kilkenny West; yet not exactly so, for the poet, to give his poem greater currency, adopted many traits of the villages of England into his description of an Irish hamlet. The place really had been depopulated and rooted out, as happens with villages every day in Ireland; but the celebrity of the poem afterwards caused a Mr Hogan to re-erect it in part, including the public-house, which is

'I looked more closely at my new companion. He was apparently sixty, and looked like a man accustomed to dine on air. He was of a slight and grasshopper build; his face was thin and pale; his hair grizzled; yet there was an intelligence in his large gray eyes, but it was a sad intelligence-one which had long kept fellowship with patience and suffering. His gray coat, and hat well worn, and his clean but coarse shirt-collar turned down over a narrow band of a blue cotton neckerchief, with its long ends dangling over his waist-perhaps the most English article in the whole descripcoat, all denoted a poor, but a careful and superior man. I cannot tell what a feeling of sympathy came over me, how my heart warmed towards the poor fellow. We went on. Gay groups of people met us, and seemed to cast looks of wonder at the stranger and his poor associate; but I asked myself whether, if we could know, as God knows, the hearts and merits of every individual of those well-dressed and laughing walkers, we should find amongst them one so heroic as to renounce his Sunday dinner, as a perpetual practice, because he "earned nothing on that day, and had ten children." Was there a man or a woman amongst them who, if they knew this heroic man, as I now knew him, would not desire to give him, for that one day at least, a good dinner, and as much pleasure as they could?

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"My friend," said I, "I fear you have had more than your share of hardship in this life?"

"Nay," he replied, he could not say that. He had had to work hard, but what poor man had not? But he had had many comforts; and the greatest comfort in life had been, that all his children had taken good ways; "if I don't except," and the old man sighed, "one lad who has gone for a soldier; and I think it a

tion. Mr Hogan rebuilt the public-house, on the spot where tradition placed the old one, with the traditionary thorn in front. He gave it the sign of "The Jolly Pigeons;" he supplied it with new copies of "The Twelve Good Rules," and "The Royal Game of Goose;" he went even to the length of the ludicrous in his zeal for an accurate fac-simile of the genuine house--and

"Broken tea cups, wisely kept for show, Ranged o'er the chimney, glistened in a row." These, to perpetuate them, were fast imbedded in the mortar; but in vain. Relic-hunters knocked them out, fictitious as they were, and carried them off as genuine. The very sign did not escape this relic mania. It is no longer to be seen; nor, I suppose, were a new one to be set up, would it long remain. The new "Twelve Good Rules," and new "Royal Game of Goose," have gone the same way; and there is no question that a brave trade in such things might be carried on with what Goldsmith calls "the large family of fools," if a supply were kept here. The very thorn before the door has been cut down piecemeal, and carried off to all quarters of the world.' The house is wholly unlike the proto

'A poor woman named Catherine Geraghty was supposed to be

"Yon widowed, solitary thing, That feebly bends beside the plashy spring: She, wretched matron, pressed in age for bread, To strip the brook with mantling cresses spread." The brook and ditches near where her cabin stood still furnish cresses, and several of her descendants reside in the neighbourhood. The school-house is still pointed out; but it is unfortunate for its identity that no schoolhouse was built then, school being taught in the master's cottage. There is more evidence in nature of the poet's recalling the place of his boyhood as he wrote his poem. The waters and marshy lands, in more than one direction, gave him acquaintance with the singular bird which he has introduced with such effect, as an image of desolation

"Along thy glades, a solitary guest,

The hollow-sounding bittern guards its nest." Little charm as Lissoy has at the present moment, independent of association with Oliver Goldsmith, with him and genius it possesses one that grows upon you the more you trace the scenes made prominent in his poem, and we leave it with regret.'

type in the poem. The "Jolly Pigeons" is just a regular Irish alehouse, or rather whisky-shop. On going in, you look in vain for the picture Goldsmith has so beautifully drawn. The varnished clock clicking behind the door, the pictures placed for ornament and use, the twelve good rules, the royal game of goose, where are they? Not there, but in many an oldfashioned hamlet of England. The mud-floor, the dirty walls, the smell of whisky, these are what meet you. You look for the "parlour splendours," and on your left hand there is, for a wonder, a separate room; but it is, as usual, filled with the candles, the herrings, the bread of the Irish alehouse; and the whisky is doled out over the suspicious counter, instead of the nut-brown ale being brought in the generous foaming cup to the bright clean fireside by the neat and blooming maid.' After some remarks on the still continued practice of depopulation, Mr Howitt thus proceeds:―Under all these circumstances, Auburn or Lissoy, which you will, will always be visited with enthusiasm by the genuine lovers of purest poetry and of kindly humanity. The visitor will not find all there that he naturally looks for. He will not find the country very beautiful, or the mill, the brook, the alehouse, as rural and picturesque as he could wish; but he will find the very ground on which Oliver Goldsmith ran in the happy days of his boyhood, Amidst the sentiments scattered through this book the ruins of the house in which that model of a village are many in which we cannot sympathise. Some, howpreacher-simple, pious, and warm-hearted, justly, in- ever, are noble and beautiful-as, for example, the foldeed, dear to all the country-lived, the father of the lowing, which occurs after a quotation from Thomson's poet; the ruins of the house in which the poet himself Seasons:'-'It is the grand defect of our systems of spent a happy childhood, cherishing under such a parent education, for rich and for poor, but pre-eminently for one of the noblest spirits which ever glowed for truth the former, that it is not taught that no man can live and humanity-fearing no ridicule, contracting no innocently who lives only for his own enjoyment; that worldliness; never abating, spite of harsh experience to live merely to enjoy ourselves is the highest treason and repeated imposition, one throb of pity or of gene- against God and man; that God does not live merely rous sympathy for the wretched. . . . Every circum- for himself, his eternal existence is one constant work stance connected with the "Deserted Village" of such a of beneficence; and that it is the social duty of every man will always be deeply interesting to the visitor of rational being to live like God his Creator, for the good the spot, and we must, for that reason, notice one or two of others. Were this law of duty taught faithfully in facts of the kind before quitting Lissoy. Mr Best, an all our schools, with all its responsibilities, the penalties Irish clergyman, met by Mr Davies in his travels in the of its neglect, the ineffable delight of its due discharge, United States, said, "The name of the schoolmaster there would be no longer seen that moral monster, the was Paddy Burns. I remember him well. He was in- man or woman who lives alone for the mere purpose of deed a man severe to view. A woman called Walsey selfish enjoyment. That host of gay and idle creatures Cruse kept the alehouse. I have often been in the who pass through life only to glitter in the circles of house. The hawthorn bush was remarkably large, and fashion; to seek admiration for personal attractions and stood opposite the house. I was once riding with Brady, accomplishments-for dressing, playing, dancing, or titular bishop of Ardagh, when he observed to me-riding-whose life is but the life of a butterfly, when 'Ma foy, Best, this huge overgrown bush is mightily it should be the life of a man, would speedily disperse, in the way: I will order it to be cut down!' What, and be no more seen. That life would be shrunk from sir!' said I, 'cut down Goldsmith's hawthorn bush, that as a thing odious and criminal, because useless, when supplies so beautiful an image in the Deserted Village!' faculties, wealth, and fame are put into their hands, 'Ma foy!' exclaimed the bishop, is that the hawthorn and a world is laid before them in which men are to be bush? Then ever let it be sacred from the edge of the saved and exalted; misery, crime, shame, despair, and axe, and evil to him that would cut from it a branch!"" death prevented; and all the hopes and capacities for In other places the schoolmaster is called, not Paddy good in the human soul are to be made easy to the Burns, but Thomas Byrne, evidently the same person. multitude. To live for these objects is to be a hero or He had been educated for school teaching, but had gone a heroine, and any man or woman may be that; to live into the army, and serving in Spain during the reign through this world of opportunities given but once, and of Queen Anne, became quartermaster of the regiment. to neglect them, is the most fearful fate that can befall On the return of peace he took up his original calling. a creature of eternal responsibilities.' He is represented to be well qualified to teach; little more than writing, reading, and arithmetic were wanted, but he could translate extemporaneously Virgil's Eclogues into Irish verse in considerable elegance. But his grand accomplishment was the narration of his adventures, which was commonly exercised in the alehouse; at the same time that, when not in a particular humour for teaching, he would edify his boys in the school with one of his stories. Amongst his most eager listeners was Oliver, who was so much excited by what he heard, that his friends used to ascribe his own love of rambling to this cause. The schoolmaster was, in fact, the very man to raise the imagination in the young poet. He was eccentric in his habits, of a romantic turn, wrote poetry, was well-versed in the fairy superstitions of the country, and, what is not less common in Ireland, believed implicitly in their truth.

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Mr Howitt indulges in some fierce outbursts against critics--he had better let these gentlemen alone. After all, a critic is but a literary man in a certain position, or undertaking a certain duty. The general inducements for his doing this duty conscientiously, and to the best of his judgment and power, are as great as these are in any other department of literature. If he fails in many instances, do not men fail in other tasks as well? Our author is often misled, too, by what appear to us as singular prejudices. For example, he rails at universal England for not endowing the descendants of Shakspeare's sister! Alas! how many duties more pressing and practical has England failed in! How vain, then, the denunciations on such a subject!

In the article on Wordsworth, Mr Howitt gives a view of that gentleman's poetry, which will startle many of his young worshippers. 'It is,' says our

author, simply a poetic Quakerism. He [the quaker] believes that if he "centres down," as he calls it, into his own mind, and puts to rest all his natural faculties and thoughts, he will receive the impulses and intimations of the Divine Spirit. He is not to seek, to strive, to inquire, but to be passive and receive. This is precisely the great doctrine of Wordsworth as it regards poetry. He believes the Divine Spirit which fills the universe to have so moulded all the forms of visible

nature, as to make them to us perpetual monitors and instructors.' Thus in the poem, The Tables Turned,' this doctrine is announced. The poet calls his friend from his books, as full of toil and trouble, adding

"And hark! how blithe the throstle sings!
He, too, is no mean preacher:

Come forth into the light of things,
Let nature be your teacher.

She has a world of ready wealth
Our minds and hearts to bless
Spontaneous wisdom breathed by health,
Truth breathed by cheerfulness.

One impulse from a vernal wood
May teach you more of man,
Of moral evil and of good,
Than all the sages can.

Sweet is the lore which nature brings;
Our meddling intellect

Misshapes the beauteous forms of things:
We murder to dissect.

Enough of science and of art;
Close up their barren leaves;
Come forth, and bring with you a heart
That watches and receives."

Wordsworth tells us that to this practice of quitting men, books, and theories, and seeking communion with nature, he owes

"A gift

Of aspect most sublime: that blessed mood
In which the burden of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world

Is lightened: that serene and blessed mood,
In which the affections gently lead us on,
Until the breath of this corporeal frame,
And even the motion of our human blood,
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul.
While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things."

This is perfect Quakerism; the grand demand of which is, that you shall put down "this meddling intelleet, which misshapes the beauteous forms of things;" shall lay at rest the actions and motions of your own minds, and subdue the impatience of the body, till, as Wordsworth has most clearly stated it

"The breath of this corporeal frame, And even the motion of our human blood, Almost suspended, we are laid asleep In body, and become a living soul."" There is much more to this purpose-the passage is altogether a remarkable one. The poet and the Friends agree,' we are told, 'that there is a power seated in the human soul superior to the understanding, superior to the reasoning faculty, the sure test of truth, to which every man may confidently appeal in all cases, for it is the voice of God himself. With the poet and the Friends the result of this divine philosophy is the same-the most perfect patience, the most holy confidence in the ever-present Divinity; connected with no forms, no creeds, no particular conditions of men; not confined by, not approachable only in temples and churches, but free as his own winds, boundless as his

own seas, universal as his own sunshine over all his varied lands and people; whispering peace in the lonely forest, courage on the seas, adoration on the mountaintops, hope under the burning tropics and the blistering lash of the savage white man, joy in the dungeon, and glory on the deathbed.'

If truth is to be learnt in this way, what is the use

of the inductive philosophy? We suspect, however, that the truth of feeling, not the truth of fact, is meant by the votaries of this system, or at least that beyond that point it is but a dream.

WAITING FOR A COMMISSION.
BY AN IRISHMAN.

IDLENESS, they say, is the parent of all evil. If the proverb be a true one-and few, I think, will be disposed to doubt it-there is then a sufficient reason why this green isle of ours should be one of the most vicious countries in the world; for certainly in no other under the sun are so many genuine idlers to be found, young men especially. Living on their 'expectancies,' they go on from day to day-from boyhood to youth, and from youth to manhood-existing, nobody knows how, and looking forward to, nobody can tell what. In other lands, parents educate and bring up their children with some definite pursuit in view. Here, it is different. Fathers and mothers trust to chance, as though it were the surest possible source of provision for their fami lies. One man depends upon his own interest, another upon that of his wife. One has a twenty-first cousin deputy something or other in a government office. A second is connected by marriage with a lord (people in Ireland think a lord can do anything and everything). A third was a schoolfellow of the lord chancellor, or a college companion of the attorney-general. A fourth served in the militia. A fifth gave the casting vote at a contested election: and the great-grandfather of a sixth did something wonderful a hundred years ago.

Thus each and all have, or imagine they have, a certainty of one at least of their offspring being provided for; and thus they bring them up in idleness, having given them an education, to get on hereafter as they best may-upon their 'expectations.' The consequence is, that idlers are to be found wherever you go. There is no circle without them-no family, from the peasant's to the peer's, but can reckon one or more of them amongst its members or connexions.

These idlers are of various grades, according to their different degrees of respectability, or perhaps I should rather say according to the rank of life in which each is born and moves. Some look forward to one thing,

some to another. There is no situation in the empire, from the treasury to a tide-waitership, but has at least a hundred pair of expectant eyes watching eagerly for a vacancy. The grand object, however, is a commission in the army-that is the great end and object of an Irishman's ambition. It is really astonishing how numerous are these would-be heroes; and I verily believe that if but one-half the youth of Ireland who are at this moment wasting their time and talents in the unprofitable pursuit of waiting for commissions,' were at created, of officers alone, sufficient to carry conquest once to obtain the thing they seek, an army would be throughout the world. I know not whether it be owing to the martial spirit of her sons, or the degree of admiration bestowed upon red-coats by her daughters, but it is an undeniable fact, that the thing I speak of is a perfect passion in Ireland, and that, let the cause be what it may, at least a moiety of our 'respectable' young men set the first wishes of their hearts upon entering the army.

You go to a dinner-party or a ball, and meet a goodlooking, well-dressed, gentlemanly fellow, who knows everybody, and is up to everything in the ring. From the turf to the drawing-room, from the kennel to the library, his conversation ranges. With the details and materiel

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