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..Of the wrongs and sufferings of the Irish people, (which is altogether a different question,) of the condition to which their landlords, their middlemen and their priests have reduced them, and the state of barbarism in which the British Government, by the grossest neglect of its paramount duty, has suffered them to remain, I have at all times felt, and spoken, as a man who abhors oppression, and earnestly wishes for every possible improvement in the spiritual and temporal condition of his fellow-creatures.

Having thus given the most direct contradiction to Mr. Shannon's assertions, I leave him to reconcile his conduct on this occasion with the principles by which our intercourse in society is usually supposed to be regulated, and his insinuations with the charity which as a minister of the Gospel he ought better to have understood and to have practised.

KESWICK, 9th March, 1829.

DIRECTIONS FOR PLACING THE PLATES.

VOL. I.

Portrait of Sir Thomas More.

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to face page 41

Druidical Stones near Keswick
Derwentwater, Bassenthwaite-water, and Skiddaw, from Walla Crag

122

Derwentwater from Strandshagg

238

ON THE

PROGRESS AND PROSPECTS

OF

SOCIETY.

COLLOQUY I.

THE INTRODUCTION.

Posso aver certezza, e non paura,
Che raccontando quel che m' è accaduto,
Il ver dirò, nè mi sarà creduto.

Orlando Innamorato, c. 5. st. 53.

Ir was during that melancholy November, when the death of the Princess Charlotte had dif fused throughout Great Britain a more general sorrow than had ever before been known in these kingdoms; I was sitting alone, at evening, in my library, and my thoughts had wandered, from the book before me, to the circumstances which made this national calamity be felt almost like a private affliction. While I was thus musing, the post-woman arrived. My letters

VOL. I.

B

told me there was nothing exaggerated in the public accounts of the impression which this sudden loss had produced: that wherever you went, you found the women of the family weeping, and that men could scarcely speak of the event without tears that in all the better parts of the metropolis, there was a sort of palsied feeling which seemed to affect the whole current of active life; and that for several days there prevailed in the streets a stillness like that of the Sabbath, but without its repose. opened the newspaper; it was still bordered with broad mourning lines, and was filled with details concerning the deceased Princess. Her coffin and the ceremonies at her funeral were described as minutely as the order of her nuptials and her bridal dress had been, in the same. journal, scarce eighteen months before. Man,' says Sir Thomas Brown, is a noble animal,

'

I

splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave; solemnizing nativities and deaths with equal lustre, nor omitting ceremonies of bravery in 'the infamy of his nature.' These things led me in spirit to the vault, and I thought of the memorable dead among whom her mortal remains were now deposited. Possessed with such imaginations, I leaned back upon the sofa and closed my eyes.

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