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ed men of undoubted Christian worth, but of wisdom along with it, which throws a flood of light upon this question. No one will suspect them who went forth months ago on their pilgrimage of charity, and traversed the whole extent of Ireland-none will suspect them of hard-heartedness, or of callous indifference to the sufferings of their fellow-men; and yet let us hear their explanation of the fact, that of the forty thousand pounds which they had raised, augmented if we understand them aright, by twelve thousand more, the sum of twenty-four thousand pounds had been all that was expended-and this while hundreds were dying. "We cannot close this brief Report without expressing the satisfaction that we have in contemplating the proceedings of the Dublin Committee. We believe that if they had hastily distributed the money which had been committed to their charge, it would have been incalculably less useful. Some of those who have contributed money for a time have felt uneasy because their liberality has been husbanded, whilst hundreds of their fellow-creatures were dropping into the grave, but we believe that the larger the acquaintance they have with Ireland, her wants, and her national character, the more reason they will have to rejoice in the intervention of a committee, who, while they have known how to give, have known also how, by withholding for a time, to open the legitimate springs of assistance, which otherwise might have remained sealed, to the necessities of a famishing people." Had all the springs of assistance flowed as they ought, and if the opening of one had not had the effect, as if by some sort of moral machinery, of shutting another, the whole even of this stupendous calamity might have been fully overtaken.

The second reason, which we shall only state, without commenting on it, is the want of sufficient local agencies in Ireland -the effect of which is that though adequate funds were raised, they might prove unavailable for the adequate supply and distribution of food, and this over whole breadths of country where, each family living on their own half acre of potatoes, all marketing for victuals was in a great measure unknown. This alone accounts for a great number of the starvations. It is well brought out in an extract given below from a letter of the Rev. F. F. Trench of Clough-Jordan after a visit to the parish of Schull.*

The date of the letter is March 22, 1847. The following is but a small portion of it: Take for example the one parish of Schull, (and there are many like it.) Here there are scarcely any gentry, and none rich. What can one physician do amongst 18,000 people in such a state (and oats for his horse dear)? What can the ordinary number of local clergy do in such an extensive district? They cannot visit one-tenth part of the sick, even if they had horses, and oats to feed them, which some of them have not. Can Dr. Traill be expected to carry meal to the people in the mountains across the pummel of his saddle, as he has done? Can Mr. M'Cabe, the curate, be expected to push in the door and look for a vessel, and wash

We confess it to be in this last reason especially that we read the prognostication and the omen of future, and perhaps heavier disasters, than ever yet have fallen upon poor unhappy Ireland! It is easy for Parliament to ordain Relief Committees throughout all its localities; but do there exist everywhere materials for their formation, and still more for the vigorous and effectual working of them? Is not there room to apprehend a failure here; and that from this cause alone, unless we become callous-itself the most grievous moral calamity which can befall a nation-we might still continue between this and the coming harvest to be agonized as heretofore by these hideous starvations? It is true that no single Government is responsible for such a want of local agencies, proceeding as it does from a state of society which is the result of the misgovernment of many centuries! But has nothing been done even in our present session of Parliament to aggravate the evil? Whether have they taken the right method to invite or to repel the willing co-operation of the most important class, and the best able by their position and influence to lend the readiest and the greatest service in this trying emergency-the landed proprietors of Ireland? Was it the likeliest way for engaging them heart and hand in the work, thus to assimilate as has been done, the methods of temporary relief with the ordinary and permanent methods for the relief of the poor in all time comingand this contemporaneously with the passing of a measure by which to accelerate ten-fold the growth and increase of an all-absorbing pauperism? It is not only compelling them to vote away their own money, but to dispose of it so that it shall become the germ of a growing and gathering mischief-a deadly upas, which in a few years will be sure to spread its poison and shed its malignant influences over the whole land. But it is thus that England is ever for imposing on the dependent territories around her, her own wretched poor-law-as if this were the grand panacea for all our moral and social disorders, instead of being what it truly is, a distempering and disturbing influence wherewith to complicate and derange whatever it comes in contact with. It will indeed form a most instructive result, if in France without a

the vessel previous to putting a drink into it for the sick, who were unable to rise, as he has done? But let there be provided a sufficient staff of fit men to prescribe for the sick, and to place cooked food within the reach of the poor, and I feel confident that the supply of money that the public have proved themselves ready to give would pay for all, and so prevent absolute starvation, and restore health in many instances."

In a subsequent letter of Mr. Trench it appears that his appeal was quite effectual as far as the money was concerned; but the staff of fit men still remained a desideratum. Conceive some hundreds of such localities in Ireland; and we need not wonder if in a country so circumstanced, there should have occurred so many starvations.

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poor-law, and the disadvantage of higher prices than our own, she come forth of her famine unscathed and without a death-while the enormous destruction of two millions of human beings, now coolly reckoned on as the likelihood in Ireland, shall be held forth to a wondering world, as England's trophy to the wisdom and the efficacy of her boasted legislation.

But with all the blunders of England's legislation, the heart of England is in its right place-bent with full desirousness on Ireland's large and lasting good. We do hope that ere the close of the Parliamentary Session she will make a clear demonstration of her purposes, by the appointment of a Commission that shall at once represent the largeness of her wishes and the largeness of her means-a Commission that will not let down its labours, till it has left and established in both countries, an unfettered proprietary, a secure and lease-holding tenantry; and, best of all, a population in circumstances, should they have the will, to earn a stable sufficiency for themselves by their own prosperous and well-paid industry. In the prospect of blessings such as these, Ireland would forthwith address itself with alacrity and hope to its present duties; and vigorously work even the existing Relief machinery, with all its defects, rather than that the country should sink, and its people die as heretofore in thousands under the burden of their present distress. With the guidance and guardianship of the Holy Providence above, a harvest of good will ensue from this great temporary evil; and Ireland, let us trust and pray, will emerge from her sore trial, on a bright and peaceful career to future generations.

Such are a few of the general views, we fear somewhat confusedly put together, which have been suggested by these interesting volumes of Correspondence between the officials of Government on the subject of the Scottish and Irish famines. The several hundreds of passages to which we had affixed our notanda as the topics of remark and reflection, must all be laid aside for the present, though rich in materials ample enough for two other Articles on "the Highlands in detail," and "Ireland in detail." Whether these shall ever be forthcoming or not, the subjects certainly will suffer no decline in point of urgency and importance for many months or perhaps years; and on the vista of Irish questions there opens upon our view an argument of as much higher importance than any that we have now, touched upon, as the moral is higher than the economical or the physical,—what is best to be done for the education of a people, using this term in the most comprehensive sense of it, as education both for the present and the future world.

In our dislike to the work of condemnation, we have indicated

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rather than pronounced our views in regard to the parties on whom the responsibility lies for these starvations in Ireland. It clearly does not lie upon the Government-but partly on difficulties in the state of the country itself, and partly, we grieve to add, on delinquencies of mischievous and extensive operation, on the part both of proprietors and people. We will never give in to any wholesale calumny on either of these classes; but how can we otherwise account for so great a failure of byegone measures of relief, than by a flagrant misconduct somewhere, when we read the following sentences from a Report of the Relief Commissioners just come to hand :-"We feel that as long as the number of the destitute continue to increase as they have done, at the rate of about 20,000 persons per week, and as long as every person sent to the work must be employed, and, no matter how idle, cannot be dismissed, except on account of insubordination or outrage, the overseers, the greater number of whom have been necessarily taken from the surrounding country, are unable, perhaps sometimes unwilling, to enforce regularity or system in works executed by a mass of unskilful, and frequently weak and even dying creatures."

It further appears from Reports and other documents, that all the instructions "which have been from time to time issued, either to reduce the number of persons upon the works, or not to employ persons rated at £6 and upwards, and every other regulation of similar import, have been found utterly inefficacious to check the inordinate increase of persons upon the Relief Works, and that a large proportion of the Relief Committees have recommended for employment upon those works, in considerable numbers, persons having no claim whatever to relief, and have latterly abandoned all attempt to investigate the claims of the applicants."

Well then are the Lords of the Treasury warranted in their conclusion, "that all effectual control over the increase in the number of persons employed, and over the manner in which the work is executed by them, has, for the present, been lost."

In these circumstances, we would implore the landed proprietors of Ireland to bestir themselves; and see to it, that there shall be a righteous and well-principled administration of the new methods of relief. Without a patriotic co-operation on their part, and on the part of Ireland generally, all effectual good, whether in the shape of relief or amelioration, will be wholly impracticable.

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NOTICES OF RECENT PUBLICATIONS.

Memoir of the Rev. Henry Francis Cary, M.A., Translator of Dante. By his son the Rev. HENRY CARY, M.A., Worcester College, Oxford. In two volumes. London, 1847.

THE subject of this memoir, having graduated at Oxford, was presented to the vicarage of Abbots Bromley in Staffordshire in the year 1796. The first part of his translation of Dante was published in the year 1805-the fruit of the well-regulated labour of nearly the whole intervening period. Though it holds now so high a place in our literature, its first reception by the public was a cold and unflattering one. The sale scarcely extended beyond the circle of the author's personal friends. Nothing daunted, Mr. Cary prosecuted his task with unrelaxed diligence. On its completion in 1813, he offered the second part of his translation to the booksellers; but such had been the untoward fate of its predecessor, that none of them would incur the risk of its publication. At a time when he was ill able to do so, its author had to carry it through the press at his own cost. The second reception was as unpropitious as the first. The toil of nearly twenty years appeared to have been fruitlessly thrown away. To the pain of this disappointment that of severe family affliction was now added. Under this latter burden, which few men were ever less able to bear-mind and body both gave way. Relaxation from his ordinary employments, with change of scene and of society, became indispensable; and in the spring of 1818 he went to reside for a season in the retired village of Littlehampton, near Worthing. All hope as to his unfortunate volumes was now wellnigh gone-all thought about them swallowed up by the heavy calamity through which he had passed, and under which he still was suffering. He was engaged at this time in reading the classics with his son-the writer of the memoir now before us, who was then in his thirteenth year-and it was their custom, when the toils of their morning exercises were over, to walk out together on the sands, Henry carrying with him his copy of Homer, out of which he had to read aloud to his father as they walked. A stranger had frẹquently met and passed them on the sands while thus engaged. Mr. Cary, though personally unacquainted with him, recognised and pointed him out to his son as one of the greatest geniuses of the age. One day, however-instead of passing them as was his wont-the stranger placed himself directly in Mr. Cary's path, and accosting him when they met, said "Sir, yours is a face that I should know-I am Samuel Taylor Coleridge." It was the first step towards a friendship destined to bear very precious fruits-so far at least as one of the parties was concerned. Coleridge was not slow in discovering the extensive learning and fine critical powers of his new friend, and they did not sepa rate during the remainder of that day which had witnessed their first