lamented than mine, for the farmers have their land here for two or three shillings an acre."

Mr. H. still believes that the Catholics hate him, and never-as I have said-goes abroad to this day without pistols. His wife, who was the sister of a well-known London clergyman now deceased, lost the sight of both her eyes shortly after the execution of "Jack the Carder;" and the Catholic neighbours, of course, interpreted it as God's judgment upon her house for its sins.

I commend Counsellor D.'s specific against assassination to all Irish landlords, agents, or bailiffs, whose lives may be in danger. So long as Ribbonmen have an idea that the only remedy for agrarian wrongs is a blunderbuss with slugs, there will be murders; but if they get the idea into their heads that to shoot the landlord or agent, who may be the life of their leases, would be madness, there will be an instant breaking up of Ribbon lodges, and a new era of industrial prosperity and peace for Ireland. Will the landlords try this experiment? Its advantages are twofold. It will make the Irishman a better farmer, and it will increase the longevity of landowners and their agents.

There may be differences of opinion about the leasing system in Ireland, but there can be little doubt that, in the north at least, the lease is a great desideratum of the tenantry, and it would be the best protection of life against Ribbon bullets.

T. C.

A PORTRAIT-ROME.

BY THE LATE SIR THOMAS WYSE.

HE turn'd around

From that ungracious door: he turned quite round,
And smiled, and oped his swarth hand to the sun,
And all those jocund things, which laughed amidst,
The riotous trees, the giddy fount, and smoke,
Lazy with pleasure, all the stir, and gush
Of the heart's music babbling from yon gate,
And children in the midnight of their sports,
And old men listening on their wasted staffs,
And with them laughed he loudly, with a clear
And measured anger-for calamity

Will sometimes stir and ope a closing wound,
And then it breaks in laughter. There and then,
And thus he laughed, and for a space he took
Breath from his years and injuries. His teeth
Clattered, as if athirst for sudden thoughts
That would not speak, but noiseless in the heart
Stuck, and he shut and oped his broad harsh lips,
Opened and shut again-and shook his locks,
And closed his eyes in misery, and from hand
To hand pass'd quick his shrivelled hat. Away
Then went he in dead silence, and there were
Who smote him as he went! Who spares the JEW?

THE LAST SESSION.

THE commencement of the present and last session of the existing parliament we have, till now, suffered to pass unnoticed. It will be long remembered, if upon no other ground than the satisfactory position of the country up to the time of its meeting. Notwithstanding the depressed state of our cotton manufacture, and the injury to commerce in the war among the largest of our customers in the United States of America, the results of peace at home, wise commercial measures, and non-intervention in the affairs of other European nations, have told well. They have shown how much a rational policy regarding our own country is superior to that, which, abandoning the welfare of the people, commences scenes of extravagance and bloodshed, to uphold the fugacious pretences of foreign princes, or support alliances in which not the smallest advantage, and not always justice, has been to be charged upon our own side. Chivalry of old, when a couple of ignorant wooden-headed combatants, cased in iron, chose to knock heads together for amusement sake -fit subjects for a chapter in Burke's lamentations over fallen despotisms, when the arts of reading and writing were confined to a cunning priesthood-chivalry of old to deliver imprisoned damsels, fight windmills, or butcher men under pretence of upholding the doctrine that more especially anathematises murder and massacre-all that was suited to a barbarous era. The nobles of William the Norman were below the know

ledge their age had not brain to comprehend. We live in wiser days; we interpret our faith differently, and we believe from the Queen upon the throne, to her meanest subject, most of us are of a similar opinion as to the men of the old times, except it be the Lord Manners who evoked in rhyme the death of arts, learning, and commerce, if we could only get back our "old" nobility, a very few of whom who entered the lists in the head-knocking contests above alluded to could either write or read. Perhaps it was our hereditary pugnacity from such exemplars that so often embroiled us in war in past time for no better or more hopeful achievement than to show our want of the power of reasoning. But we are wandering from the subject.

So striking has been the success of the measures of the government in most branches of the public service, that its opponents have been unable, on the least important questions, to wage anything like a successful warfare against the ministry, with all the force they could muster. Thus whatever defects the cabinet may possess, it was clearly seen to have had the confidence of the country. The tenacious efforts of enemies to remove it were vain. If not as active in the House as that enemy might have been, still efforts in disparagement of the ministry have not been spared. The ill success thus encountered has been set down by party as a "generous" determination to refrain from mischief, with a hypocritical affectation of pity rather than have to meet certain defeat. Year after year we have seen the fallacy of those obsolete principles of rule which were so long, and are still, the staple of old Tory legislation. Never did Brothers the prophet display his imaginary foresight with more sanguine credulity, never was a spirit-rapper's divination doomed to a more remarkable

falsification. It did not change the face of affairs whether the arguments used were answered or not. Debility in ratiocination sometimes nurtured the hope of an adverse division to the ministry, if only by accident. No matter for the principle of the question, the right or wrong, if the desired result could be gained. Out of doors, on some representative' vacancy, a Tory now and then supplanted an opponent candidate. Pyrotechny was at once set at work in the way of rejoicing, and "Kentish fire" was squibbed off in triumph, but with no better result than the busy chambermaid met with upon an unusually high tide, when she stood on the beach and endeavoured to mop back the Atlantic.

But if this be the last sitting of the present House of Commons, while noticing its proceedings as it approaches its natural dissolution, we must not forget the chances and changes of a new election. We are not of those who dream of finding Roman patriotism in a mercantile nation, where money and its acquirement in any and all sorts of ways make the ruling passion. We must not forget that Roman patriotism is not to be expected in England. Our patriots must be wreathed with golden, not myrtle crowns-what is fame or glory to hard cash, or lofty feeling to 'Change-alley excitement? A nation flourishing upon commercial gains will never give self-interest the second place, while that passion is the moving principle of the majority. Such a nation will not overabound in those who can forget "themselves" for the public weal. We know how much temptation affects our best resolutions. Without any strain upon the imagination, we can anticipate the musters about to be made, and even now making in advance of the dissolution of the Commons, by those distinguished patriots the country attorneys. The seductive propositions, the direct promises, the wily temptations to the hesitating voter, the recommendation to be ready for the poll when the time comes, and the simplicity of the seduced in the matter of promise and reward under the indomitable pertinacity of the agent, one of the "Devil's Own," as Lord Erskine styled the members of his select profession, and so far all goes on aboveboard and well. But how much "pleasanter"-a favourite word, we believe, with the great Railway King some time ago in cases something similar-how much "pleasanter" for the agent, than soliciting, is it to be addressed by some "conscientious" elector, his right-hand palm uppermost, placed behind his back to be out of sight, and his fingers bent a little inwards, suiting the action with admirable significance to the words, "How much this time, Mr. Fluke ?"

But enough of this distasteful topic, the besetting sin, the corruption, we fear, inevitable in nations that rise to power through commerce, and make lucre the main object of their humanity in place of the public good. Let us for once imagine this interchange of selfish feeling, this corruption to be much lessened, and pass it by as being too likely an anticipation of customary events, only hoping that when the agents appeal and temptations are tendered, the voter will suffer the balance to incline to that side which has been most beneficial to the country. It is thus to be seen that we do not suppose selfish feeling to have disappeared because miracles have ceased. The advanced situation of the country, the increasing revenue, the wise preservation of a pacific state in the

empire, about which Lord Russell has been so bearded by the Opposition, and the general assent to our advanced social position, may plead for the preservation of electoral integrity, with some persons, when the present parliamentary body shall cease to exist, though such be not always the course of things. Faults must be discovered and denounced for party purposes, whether real or fictitious. "Here's for a hare or a fern-bush!" as the young sportsman said, when he must needs have a shot at something, he did not know what!

Some of the Opposition agree that one or two good things have been effected by the present government, but too crudely, compared to the way in which they would effect them! Thus it would be a benefit to the public were the Crown to place them in office, that they might put the top-stone to what they could not found; in other words, perfect a temple of political perfection in their own superior style upon the labour of others, just reversing the cry of the starling in the cage, "Let me in" standing for "Let me out," a cry long iterated by some in the country, not exactly conjurors, but reiterated too long to be regarded now at what Lord Brougham would call "the eleventh hour," though feeling the most Christian-like humility as to the credit of the work being given to others, if those hitherto excluded be allowed to use it for their own benefit.

The public business before the Houses of Parliament, after the usual preliminary proceedings, has not yet been very important.* Mr. Roebuck's speech, on the 27th February, in relation to Ireland, was a dose not at all palatable to the self-imagined superiority of the minor party which effects so much mischief against what is just and liberal, whether Catholic or Protestant, in that ever-feverish country, which seems determined never to be satisfied unless saved the extra trouble of acting and thinking. It is like an overgrown infant that expects to be supported on spoonmeat to the end, in place of feeding itself. However strong his terms, there was great truth in Mr. Roebuck's remarks, but we have recently touched upon the subject, and felt gratified that in a late numbert we had not in any point misstated or misrepresented things in that country. In fact, we found them corroborated by members of the House whose acquaintance with facts there is indisputable. Some charged the evil upon one thing, and some upon another, and the anomaly of a predominant Church with a minimum of members, dividing the whole religious resources of the country, was not passed over, as indeed it could not well be. Yet evil as it is, this in no way accounts for the existing position of the people. The same breadth of land must be cultivated in the one case as in the other. That the state of the country in regard to personal insecurity, where land is concerned, and the want of confidence, have kept, and will keep, strangers away, there can be no doubt, yet even Irish capitalists hang back, while able to make large purchases of land. Whatever is the cause, the evil is too apparent; and until religious peace and political union are uppermost in the country, if ever they will be, little good can be expected. The Irishman himself, even when he emigrates, often becomes a source of trouble to his vicinity, as he has again and again shown in the United

* When this was written.

April—VOL. CXXXIII. NO. DXXXII.

† January last.

2 K

States. It was upon the supposition, the other day, that the negroes, if freed, would confront them in the labour market, that the Irish in New York most cruelly ill-used the blacks there, and were only put down by military force. The same thing, we believe, happened in the Jerseys. No men work harder, in unwholesome places in the United States, only to squander their earnings in drink, not laying it by, and becoming, as the Scotch and English emigrants become, owners of land by degrees, from the log-hut and field to considerable estates. We have been told that before the civil war broke out in the States, the Irish would toil hard all the week in New York, and squander their wages in drink with negroes for companions, reckless of the future. Yet they rarely lost their affection for their friends in Europe, and the frugal among them, a minor part, had many in their numbers who remitted sums of money to their relatives at home to enable them to emigrate. In fact, the character of the labouring Irish is in all points as full of contradictions there, as it is at home, or in their dirty courts and riotous haunts in the British metropolis.

Lord Russell, it will be remembered, did not please the Opposition in his correspondence upon the Danish question-not an easy task, we take it. His lordship did not choose the "primrose path" to the grim graces of the Prussian court, though they say he deceived the Danes by holding out hopes never intended to be fulfilled. Perhaps his rhetoric had been formed too much on the model of that which includes a specific meaning, and he too honestly betrayed his own wishes. He had been accustomed to speak what he thought in good homely English, during his old intercourse with John Bull upon matters relating to Reform. The refinements of diplomacy are difficult to adopt with those who are accustomed to the use of the "negative sign," because it demands from honest men a new valuation of their native language. The vernacular is too plain and honest for the wiles of political intercourse. That which might honour the man might injure diplomatic craft. The untutored individual speaks what he thinks, and has no idea of the adoption of so precious a gift as language to circumvent-"language only given," as Talleyrand would have said, "especially to conceal thought." "How deeply it is to be regretted," say his lordship's political foes, "that he did not know better." How gladly-how disinterestedly-would our "accomplished" Malmesbury have afforded him some instructions! The use of a mallet and chisel may answer in shaping blocks, but to acquire the art of splitting hairs with dexterity is quite another matter., An experienced foreign minister must not suppose he is ever to be accommodated in his journeyings by bridges as wide as that of Westminster. On the contrary, he must reflect that his duties will oblige him, in mere bienséance, to cross by such delicate means of transportation as the Mahomedans tell us they use to reach their paradise-a bridge narrow as the edge of a razor, to be passed without toppling. There must be no hurry, no flutter, no sanguine generous emotion, but resolute repose over all. Words used in diplomatic intercourse, with the most dangerous design, must be spoken in the softest and most pleasing tone; and if written, it must be upon velvet, and presented wrapped in down, even if they bear the ne plus ultra of insult in summing up, or should outdo Mendez Pinto in defiance of truth. There is nothing more glorious in this