ration of, and veneration for, ancient and magnificent proofs of skill and opulence. The monastics built as well as wrote for posterity. The never-dying nature of their institutions set aside in all their undertakings every calculation as to time and age. Whether they built or planted, they set the generous example of providing for the pleasure, the honour, the wealth, and greatness of generations upon generations yet unborn. They executed everything in the very best manner; their gardens, fishponds, farms, were as near perfection as they could make them; in the whole of their economy they set an example tending to make the country beautiful, to make it an object of pride with the people, and to make the nation truly and permanently great.

Go into any county and survey, even at this day, the ruins of its, perhaps, twenty abbeys and priories, and then ask yourself, 'What have we in exchange for these?' Go to the site of some once opulent convent. Look at the cloister, now become in the hands of some rack-renter the receptacle for dung, fodder, and fagot-wood. See the hall, where for ages the widow, the orphan, the aged, and the stranger found a table ready spread. See a bit of its walls now helping to make a cattle-shed, the rest having been hauled away to build a workhouse. Recognise on the side of a barn, a part of the once magnificent chapel; and, if chained to the spot by your melancholy musings, you be admonished of the approach of night by the voice of the screech-owl issuing from those arches which once at the same hour resounded with the vespers of the monk, and which have for seven hundred years been assailed by storms and tempests in vain; if thus admonished of the necessity of seeking food, shelter, and a bed, lift up your eyes and look at the whitewashed and dry-rotten shed on the hill, called the Gentleman's House,' and apprised of the 'board

wages' and 'spring guns,' which are the signs of his hospitality, turn your head, jog away from the scene of former comfort and grandeur; and with old-English welcoming in your mind, reach the nearest inn, and there, in a room, halfwarm and half-lighted, with a reception precisely proportioned to the presumed length of your purse, sit down and listen to an account of the hypocritical pretences, the base motives, the tyrannical and bloody means, under which, from which, and by which, the ruin you have been witnessing was effected, and the hospitality you have lost was for ever banished from the land.-History of the Protestant Refor

mation.

8. The State of Ireland.

WHY should Ireland be in a state of semi-barbarism? Why should it be in a state to render necessary such laws as we have seen above described, and such treatment as we have, alas! all heard of? 'Traitors!' Yes, poor Ireland has had traitors indeed; but these traitors are men who have calumniated her for the purpose of serving their own interested and base purposes; these are the true Irish Traitors.

Ireland took the lead of England in civilization; she has a better climate and a more fertile soil; she has harbours, rivers, all the natural advantages that England possesses, and in a greater proportion. Her people are naturally robust, brave, generous, and full of genius and spirit. I observed before how conspicuously this was proved by their success and influence in the American States. There, where all nations meet, without any preference; where they all enter the lists of talents, industry, and enterprise; there, where all have a clear stage and no favour,' the Irish have obtained a decided predominance, notwithstanding the wretched plight

in which they generally make their entry, notwithstanding the far greater part of them are, at first, bondmen and bondwomen, and thus have to work for years to pay off the debt which the misery of Ireland had imposed upon them. We see grants made annually out of the public money to make roads and bridges and canals in the Highlands of Scotland, for the avowed purpose of creating, in that most sterile of all countries, labour in order to prevent the people from emigrating. And, while we are doing this, we see, in every two or three years, as many people emigrate from Ireland as the whole population of the Highlands amounts to! Is this a mark of wisdom? Was there ever any thing so directly in the teeth of reason as this?

Why not do something to keep the Irish at home? It is certain that people will not voluntarily quit their native soil if they be happy, or only tolerably comfortable there. This is certain, and we, though very unwisely in my opinion, are taxing one part of the kingdom to make work for people in another part (the Highlands) in order to make the people comfortable. But, while this is done, shall we do nothing for the people of Ireland, who do not want our money; who want no work made for them; but, who have a climate and a soil ready to produce more than they can need?

Am I asked what can be done for them, and whether I believe, that granting the claims of the Catholics would do every thing? I answer, that this particular measure would not, in my opinion, do much; but, it would do something. It is one of the things that should be done, and, as it would not cost one single penny beyond the amount of the paper and print of the Act of Parliament, there can be no ground for delaying, other than those grounds which have been so often stated, and so often proved to be futile.

But, though this measure would be something; though it

would please a great number of persons, and give rise to hope in a greater number, it must be followed by other measures, having a tendency to better the lot of the common people; and, though to effect this must be a work of time, let it be recollected, that content would commence with the commencement of a better state of things. The patient dates his pleasure from the day when he feels that his cure has begun; and, perhaps, the day of his perfect re-establishment does not yield him pleasure so great.

If a people fall into a state like that in which the people of Ireland are, we are not bound to assign the cause. We have a right to assume, that the fault is in the manner of governing the country. Who that has read the observations of intelligent travellers, who that has travelled himself, has not ascribed the misery of a people, where he has found them miserable, to the government and not to the people themselves? Who that has looked over the stock of a farm and seen a parcel of poor, wretched-looking animals, ever thought of ascribing the condition of the stock to any one but the farmer? I do not compare men to beasts; but the cases are exactly similar. And, do not governments themselves recognise this principle in taking credit to themselves for the prosperity of the people, which they never fail to do when they can? Indeed, it is to the laws of a state, as well as to the rules in a family, that we are to look for the cause of prosperity or of misery.

Therefore, without entering into any detail, we may ask why the people of Ireland are in their present state; why they require a regular army to keep down the French factions; why they fill every hole and corner in every ship that goes to America; why they go to cultivate the lands and to add to population, the talents and the power of other countries? We have a right to ask of our rulers, why these

things are, and to call upon them to put an end to their existence.

I have always thought, that the measure of Catholic emancipation, as it is called, should be followed by others of far more extensive effect.-Political Register, 1811.

9. The British Soldier.

To the army, to every soldier in it, I have a bond of attachment quite independent of any political reasonings or considerations. I have been a soldier myself, and for no small number of years, at that time of life when the feelings are most ardent and when the strongest attachments are formed. Once a soldier always a soldier,' is a maxim, the truth of which I need not insist on to any one who has ever served in the army for any length of time, and especially if the service he has seen has embraced those scenes and occasions where every man, first or last, from one cause or another, owes the preservation of his all, health and life not excepted, to the kindness, the generosity, the fellow feeling, of his comrades. A community of monks hate one another, because they are compelled to live together, and do not stand in need of each other's voluntary assistance in the procuring of the things necessary to health and life. It is precisely the contrary with soldiers. And, a soldier has not only a regard of all the men of his own corps, but, in a degree a little fainter, for all the soldiers in the army. Nay, the soldiers of two hostile armies have a feeling of friendship for each other; and, this feeling and the acts arising from it, have, when occasion has offered, always been found to exist in proportion to the bravery with which they have fought against each other.

Of this military feeling I do not believe that any man ever