his country, and would not have the despots of the continent, the false Prussian and the savage Russian, pointing as they do with devilish leer to Ireland, that foul blot in the midst of our glories; not only Englishmen, but every man who believes in the Gospel, and would have his neighbour used as himself, ought to thank him. What wants O'Connell? That Ireland should, in all respects, be placed on a footing with England. Can any thing be more reasonable? But, say you, "He wants repeal of the union." True; and if he and his countrymen think that it will heal the wounds of Ireland and I believe they sincerely do think so; if they think it will enable them to get rid of the curse of absenteeism, and enable the Irish farmer and cottar, not only to feed cattle and pigs, but to feed upon them, they have a great right to demand it. You and I think that Repeal would not do this; and, therefore, we oppose and prevent it. But we admit the evil, and would seek another remedy: —there is but one; and that is, to give to Ireland every thing which it needs besides! I repeat it; it is for the Irish to urge Repeal, and it is for us to render it unnecessary. If we would destroy the influence of O'Connell, O'Connell has long ago taught us the secret. Mr. Brotherton has assured me that, once sitting beside O'Connell in the House of Commons, he said to him, "If we were to grant to Ireland so and so, would you then give up agitation?" "My friend!" said O'Connell, smiling significantly, " agitation then would give up me I could not agitate!" That is the Agitator's own secret for putting him down. He has told us one secret; but he has discovered another, and in that lies all his present strength. It is the misfortune of Ireland that the fabric of its political and social system is built on a rotten foundation. Its government was seized by violence, and has been maintained by violence. Property, both that of the church and the people, was seized and put into hostile hands. Hence the root of bitterness which is continually producing the bitter fruits of hatred, jealousy, and faction. Property, if, from long use and sanction, it cannot now be made to change hands again, must, at least, be made, by the influence of wise laws, to yield to the population of the country something more than rags and potatoes,-it must yield employment, hope, and sufficiency. A difficult and nice matter!-but one which must be fairly and firmly met, or the sanctity of property itself will be destroyed by the hostility to its abuses. Guns and bayonets have hitherto silenced all murmurs; but these will answer no longer. They cannot cope with the great secret of O'Connell. Better days are come for the world; better knowledge has streamed out from between the leaves of Christ's Testament; better feelings animate man towards his brother man. The people of England, every day, see more clearly the scandal of the condition of the people of Ireland. We are a proud people, we English, and blush to be taunted with our cruelties to our poor relations. We are better than proud—we feel, and at length acknowledge, the sufferings and the patience of our fellow subjects of Ireland: and the sympathies of one great nation will demand justice and generosity toward another. Never again can a Strongbow, an Essex, a Strafford, or a Cromwell, sail to Ireland and silence all murmurs with the point of a pike, or the thunder of cannon. The barracks of Ireland are vast;how formidably do they crown many a hill! The armed police, those green dragon-flies that haunt every way-side, are numerous; but a new power is rising over their heads in every parish—it is the national school. Mr. O'Connell has discovered, and has taught it to the Irishman, that the most victorious power is a patient demand of his rights -and before that power arms are useless. O'Connell has commenced a new era in the history of the world. He has had the sagacity to take his stand on a great Christian principle; and neither man nor government can put down that power, unless he is prepared to put down Christianity too. He has proclaimed to his countrymen, that the moral influence of right, and its firm but peaceable assertion by an injured people, is omnipotent; that before it powder loses its explosive power; words are blunted, and bayonets refuse to advance. The piety of a nation has responded to the grand avowal in the acclamation of millions; and the fate of the great question is decided. At the judgment-seat of God and the whole world, a nation boasting of its Christianity must bow to the right. It is not my intention to pronounce an eulogium on Mr. O'Connell. No man is perfect; and it were easy to point out many serious errors in O'Connell's political progress: many things, especially violence of language, which might be amended in his mode of conducting this great question. It is a matter which merits his own most serious reflection; for with the wisdom of his procedure is bound up the question of his true success, and nothing less, than whether he shall eventually be hailed as the father and enfranchiser of his country, one of the Washingtons and Franklins of mankind. But spite of all his faults, it must be conceded to him, that he is the first national champion and reformer who has taken his stand on a full and sublime faith, in the invincible energy of moral power. And to this splendid appeal, how triumphant has been the answer from the heart of man! how magnificent has been his success! For the greater part of half a century since he assumed this course of policy, as a simple member of the Catholic Committe, or a leading one of the Catholic Association, he has gone on from strength to strength, and, like a giant oak, has struck his roots through the whole length and breadth of animated Ireland. He has done that which none of the great Irish patriots have done before. The Fitzgeralds, the Emmetts, the Wolfe Tones, the Plunketts, the Grattans, none, nor all of them, burning, as they did, for the renovation of their country, could avail to unite the hearts, and concentrate the energies, of the Irish people, in an evergrowing and invincible confederacy,-invincible because it was pacific. But from year to year the great Agitator has gone on, and the barriers of Catholic exclusion have fallen before him. He has opened parliament and office to his fellow believers, and has well won the proud title of "The Liberator." That point gained, he now advances as steadily, and with a progress as astounding, towards the great object of Repeal of the Union. They who affect to scoff at this agitation can know nothing of the vast and enthusiastic hold which it has taken of the hearts of the Irish, nor of the accuracy which marks the movements of the gigantic machinery of Repeal. Such a machinery, propelled by the hopes and the intense distress of seven millions of people, is irresistible. O'Connell at its head, has attracted the eyes and the wonder of all nations. There is scarcely a newspaper in any language or quarter of the world, which does not constantly record the proceedings of O'Connell and the Repeal Association. With a wisdom drawn from the divinest of all philosophy,does he guide, restrain, or stimulate the great moral mass of his nation; and the attempt to break the spell of this proceeding, and to excite his followers to outrage, by the English government, recoiled confoundingly on its own head. The spectacle of this great conflict between O'Connell and the English government, between Physical and Moral Force, arrested the profound attention of the whole civilized world, and the result was a lesson which will never again be forgotten. will not cut it, cannon cannot shatter it, fire will not burn it. It is a power that transcends governments, and governments must surrender before its unconquered majesty. "Perhaps," adds this noble woman, one of the finest specimens of female American mind, "you will say that O'Connell acts only from policy, as statesmen and generals have done before him. But does it mark no progress that a man who sways millions to his will, perceives that this is the best policy? Is there no encouragement in the fact, that the most exciteable and turbulent people believe the word he has spoken? Could the Irish have attained this wonderful self-command, if Father Mathew had not prepared them for the work? The law of Temperance has made a pathway in the desert for the law of love, and the forces of the Millennium are marching in, bearing on their banners-Friend, thy strength shall never equal my patience.' This is the grand position which O'Connell has assumed, and while he maintains it in the true spirit, not all the powers of earth can prevent his advance. He has put the British empire on its trial before heaven and all mankind, in the court of Christian truth; and the great champion of civilization and freedom, she who has broken the bonds of the slave, and given its death-blow to the slave-trade; she who succours distress in all quar Mrs. Child, noting this event in America, says-ters of the world; who sends out the missionary to "Let us turn again to proofs of the world's pro- its most distant people, and takes to her bosom the gress. Look at the glorious position of Ireland. persecuted of every nation, whether Pole, Greek, Where can you find moral grandeur to be com- German,-it is not for her to flinch and bow her pared to it in the history of nations? A people head in dishonour before such a tribunal. Repeal trampled on for generations, and therefore igno- or no Repeal,-the condition of Ireland has been rant and violent,—a people proverbially impulsive, forced by a stupendous agitation on the knowledge bold, and reckless, stand before the imposing array of the British people, and Ireland must be raised of British power, and say, as William Penn said, from her degradation, and her brave people be perwhen threatened with imprisonment in the Tower, mitted to eat the fruits of their own labours. The “Well, friend, thy strength shall never equal my question raised is not a question of party: it is one patience." Their oppressors, learned in the ope- of humanity and national honour; and it will be rations of brute force, arrest the Irish Liberator, the fault of its adjustment, if it be not for the good on the day of a great Repeal gathering, when the of all. The laissez faire system is at an end; the populace are met in masses, and under the influ- whispers of the prudent people who say, "We are ence of strong excitement. Having cannon and mending, only let us alone," are drowned in the troops in readiness, they seize O'Connell, nothing acclamations of millions who have discovered that doubting that a storm of stones and shillelahs will this system, which has lasted five hundred years, give them a specious pretext for placing Ireland and has left Ireland what it is, might last five under military control. But, lo! neither heads hundred years longer; and men now-a-days, very nor laws are broken! The British government naturally desire to reap the goods of this life, and stands check-mated by the simple principle of see them safe in the hands of their children; not peace. O'Connell has assured the Irish people merely probable some centuries hence. The Agitathat moral power is mightier than physical force; tion has taught them the greatest secret of sacred and they, with their strong hands and hearts burn-philosophy; and this in the hands of a nation will ing with a sense of accumulated wrongs, believe compel England to vindicate its high name, and the words he has so wisely uttered. Here is a knot retrieve the honour of its magnanimous character, for diplomatists, a puzzle for politicians! Swords in the common prosperity of the whole empire. CHILDREN. ""Twas pretty, though a plague."-All's Well that Ends Well. POOR HELENA'S account of her feelings, while | emotions with which parents not unfrequently engraving Bertram's lineaments on the tablet of contemplate their offspring, especially if they are her heart, will answer for the description of the numerous: and be it remarked, that the childish * Letters from New York, vol. ii. p. 104. character is only fully developed in large families. | and says nothing. In girl-children, the intellect If there are but a pair, and, still more, if there is only one, it is odds but the child has no childhood either it is too much neglected, or too much attended to. If the parents are busy, the pair, or the single one, is habitually placed in the corner, to keep out of mischief, or left to a nursery-maid, who has her caps to mind, and the young fellow she sets them at. The child soon feels that it is in the way; grows timid; its little affections and little faculties are kept unclosed by the chilly atmosphere of home. If made the pet and plaything of idle parents, the matter is even worse: it contracts prematurely the thoughts of old people. Neglected children have a partial childhood; but "the pet" is cheated out of that period of its existence. To see children as they ought to be, you must see them in numerous covies. The real child is only to be found in a house where you can't set down a foot heedlessly without trampling on one. There they are so much in the way, that people are not allowed to forget them; and they are so many, that none of them can be spoiled by petting. Besides, children make by far the best keepers and companions for each other. A baby in its bascinet, trying to rest on its feet, while propping its little hands on the rim, or reaching over to catch something, is enough to outwear the vigilance and patience of the most pattern nurse-maid; but set a little creature of two or three years old, the quiet and gentle one of the family, to watch the baby, and, proud of the commission, it never tires. The baby, too, is more amenable to its tiny coercion, when seeking to break bounds. Such a group is the only beautiful emblem of the power that love imparts to human weakness. When the blind is imagined directing the lame, while the lame carries the blind, the picture is painful and humiliating; but there is no such alloy in the picture of an elf, only half emerged from babyhood, keeping baby from hurting itself, while baby supplies the place of a plaything. Or perhaps it is a gallant unbreeched boy who takes upon him the guardianship of a sister some twelve moons his senior. How soon the "lord of the creation" shows himself in the male. There is a mischievous, laughing self-confidence in an urchin of two years, that girls never attain. If any other class of intelligent existence have it in their power to contemplate human beings, the most inexperienced among them must at once have a presentiment that in the baby-boy, they behold a creature whose will is to be law to himself and others. A nursery-maid, when children who are verging towards the transition epoch at which the child passes into the boy or girl prove unusually stubborn, sometimes threatens to leave them. Let the experiment be tried, and it is ten to one that the culprit, if a girl, looks on while the bonnet and shawl are being pinned, half-incredulous, half-anxious, that her younger sister is dissolved in tears, and that while baby keeps crowing utterly unconscious of what is passing, little master, with a pout on his lip and a frown on his brow, doggedly sets his back against the door to prevent egress, develops itself more rapidly than in boy-children; but the character is much earlier pronounced in the male. This may be the reason why we always find in the nursery pairings off, a brother and sister keeping themselves somewhat apart from the rest. Where there are two, one must go before: either the elder girl has not the talent of leading, or the younger feels instinctively that she has no authority over her by divine right. The boy takes the lead unconsciously, and yet, as in after life, the girl has perhaps more influence over him than he over her. It is a stirring little republic a nursery; feuds are incessantly recurring. The tears and passions of a nursery are like the rainy weather of England: it requires an effort of reflection to convince us the sunshine is more frequent than the squalls. It is difficult for one not attached to a child by custom, or the mysterious link of paternity, to estimate its character fairly. The more of energy, and of consequent promise for after life, a child has, the more apt it is to repel. Headlong and unreflecting, sufficing to itself, entirely possessed by the flush of young emotion, it needs when in health, no sympathy, and seeks for none. It cannot move without jostling an old maid or old bachelor in some sore point. Sorely does it try even paternal, and still more maternal forbearance. We must love children, as God loves us-not as we love our equals in age, quite as much from a refined selfishness, as any other cause; but simply because we love them. Affectionate creatures they are, and nestle themselves into your very heart when the mood is on them; but changeable as the elements, you must look for long intervals of forgetfulness. The intelligent unintermitting love borne by children to their parents, is the fruit of a much more mature age; the product of habit, and developed reason, emotion, and conscience. The best among us, looking back to his own childhood, grieves to think how coldly he repaid the affection lavished upon him by fond parents. If they survive, he " pays them well in after years,"-if gone, the debt of unrequited love is transferred as a legacy to his own children. To the reflecting mind, there is no claim so strong as that which a child has upon us, for unremitting devoted affectionate cherishing. It is there because we have been happy. That happiness we sought, careless, utterly thoughtless of it. Exclusively seeking our own gratification, we have forced it to encounter this rough world, and all its trials. The voiceless baby speaks to our conscience: you who have subjected my helplessness to all these wishes and wants, how deeply bound you are to provide! And this unconscious plea is urged with smiles so sweet, and glances so bright, as could well fascinate of themselves. Every day develops some new charm. The baby learns to smile recognition, and then to creep to its mother; an arch expression mingles with the smile of the child, and elevates it to the rank of intelligent beings; and as it nears the extreme verge of childhood, intervals of tempered seriousness descend upon its eyes and brow, foreshadowings of the deep and awful emotions of maturity. Drop by drop | water wears holes in the solid rock; day after day, with smile and arch look, and grave questioning, the child penetrates into the heart of hearts. If there be a love that is undying, it is that of the parent for the child. If there be love in which lurks no alloy of selfishness, it is that of the parent for the child. The love of man and woman is a beautiful and terrible emotion, strong beyond expression, triumphing over terror and death; and yet the best security for the permanence and happiness of wedded life, is to be found in that seemingly fragile chain which is knit by children's hands. No wonder that among rude nations, the name of mother has ever been so coveted. Man-with shame we confess it is more apt to be hurried away by the emotions of the moment than woman. It is not because he is less grateful for the love he has sought and won,-it is not because his conscience bears in less indelible traces, the duty he owes to her who has confided her whole happiness to him, that the married man is more apt to forfeit his faith than the married woman. It is simply because passion is more overmastering with him. Man is the wooer because he is the weaker to resist passion; man is, for the same reason, less able to struggle against transient ficklenesses. But when, by yielding, man has broken up the household tie, his consequential sufferings are the greater of the two. Be this as it may, man, without regarding him as less capable of deep and enduring love than woman, is more accessible to temptation, and more apt to break the tie. In the rude childhood of nations, while the will is untamed by any of civilized society's appliances, man is, of course, more apt to fall. The delicate tact of woman soon discovered the power a child has over a father's heart, and the additional hold which that power gives its mother upon him. And the fairest and most fascinating dame of our day may rest assured, that cherished though our young brides may be, the mothers of our children are regarded with a deeper, more enduring, and holier affection. The part that children play in the economy of families is an important one. But important functions often devolve upon creatures trivial in themselves. Not so in the case of children. The child is greater than the man. The man is him self, and that is often a shabby enough concern; but the child is a thing of hope and anticipation; we know not what it may become. The arch, laughing glance of these eyes, which flash upon us when the bushy, nut-brown hair is thrown back by a toss of the head,-what a lovely creature that may become, to make some honest man's heart ache! That boy, with flaxen hair slightly tinged with the golden, while his clear, resolute eye looks fearlessly at every thing it encounters, what may he not accomplish in after life! To us there is more of terror in the passions of children than of grown men. They are so disproportioned to their causes, that they rudely draw back the veil from our own hearts, reminding us "what shadows we are, and what shadows we pursue." Of all expressions of pain, we can least endure the wail of an infant. The poor imp cannot explain its little sufferings; and if it could, so little lies in our power to alleviate them. There is nothing for it but to have one's heart rent by its complainings, and pray in one's helplessness that its dark hour may pass away. The healthy child is pure and noble in its dispositions, wherever its lot may be cast. For a time it may be immersed in the sties of the lowest and most brutal debauchery, without being contaminated. It may even learn the language of vice,-and doubly shocking it is to hear the slang of depravity uttered by a child,--but the passions yet slumber which must be awakened before these words become to it more than mere empty sounds. Even less defiled than Una, in the bandit's den or the brothel, angels watch over and keep the child pure amid surrounding filth. And yet, even in the most carefully nurtured child of the most virtuous parents, bursts of ungovernable self-will betray the lurking elements of what may gather and grow to crime. The trail of the serpent is over the fairest buds of promise. This it is that causes many a heart-ache to the fond mother as she looks forward to her child's after-life. This glorious creature may be after all a cast-away, - wrecked by its own impulses! And terror but deepens the love the promise of its young beauty had inspired. Children are treasures so great as to be constantly a cause of fear to the possessor. There is nothing for it but to recommend them with "trembling hope" to the care of Him who said, "Suffer little children to come unto me." II. And whether 'twas the sunshine or the shade, At least, methinks, 'twas what our earth calls sleep; And seem'd to hear things strange to see or hear. III. Methought I saw, beneath the crust of earth, IV. Mournfully they stepp'd, Their solemn conclave. Fourfold was the array; "Of Britain and of Erin, oldest lords, We meet this time for action. Have we seen Of railroad labour? Men of peace are we; Is left, where we can 'scape the railroad whistle. Then arose, Toss angry torrents through their damm'd embankments. "A bog for me!" 66 A second shouted, twirling round his head, As 'twere a club, his long grass sceptre, till His brother princes shrank away. A bog For me and Jack o' lantern, after dusk ! 'Faith, and it's I that led a happy life, With ne'er a human worm to doubt my power. "Tis I that had a hundred towers and castles, Caves, rocks, and lairs, hill-sides innumerable. "Tis I that will not lose, without a blow, My kingdom!" (and he smote the air again;) "I'll fright each navigator as he steps Across my hallowed bounds; send elfin voices To howl round every hut;- perch goblin-shapes Astride on ditch and wall, and fill the night With uncouth shadows; I'll "And so you may; But what shall I, who have no bogs, no mountains, In Paisley mixture,) rose, and drawling said :- Hath doff'd his bravery,-reckon'd his gold,- - And, the next morning, 'twas but leaves and sand ! He had said, and all A something twitch'd my ear, and I awoke. - I had dosed o'er my scrip certificates. VI. And now, when the shares are going down, 'Tis Fairy-money and moonshine all!" J. T. |