vinculo matrimonii. I am sure we have lived a cat and dog life of it. Let us have no silly saving of one crown and two legislatures; that would be preserving all the mischiefs without any of the goods, if there are any, of the union. I am deliberately of opinion, that England, in all its institutions, has received injury from its union with Ireland. My only difficulty is as to the Protestants, to whom we owe protection. But I cannot forget that the Protestants themselves have greatly aided in accelerating the present horrible state of things, by using that as a remedy and a reward which should have been to them an opportunity.* * "Whatever may be thought of the settlement that followed the battle of the Boyne and the extinction of the war in Ireland, yet when this had been made and submitted to, it would have been the far wiser policy, I doubt not, to have provided for the safety of the constitution by improving the quality of the elective franchise, leaving the eligibility open, or like the former, limited only by considerations of property. Still, however, the scheme of exclusion and disqualification had If the Protestant Church in Ireland is removed, of course the Romish Church must be its plausible side. The ink was scarcely dry on the parchment-rolls and proscription-lists of the Popish parliament. The crimes of the man were generalized into attributes of his faith; and the Irish catholics collectively were held accomplices in the perfidy and baseness of the king. Alas! his immediate adherents had afforded too great colour to the charge. The Irish massacre was in the mouth of every Protestant, not as an event to be remembered, but as a thing of recent expectation, fear still blending with the sense of deliverance. At no time, therefore, could the disqualifying system have been enforced with so little reclamation of the conquered party, or with so little outrage on the general feeling of the country. There was no time, when it was so capable of being indirectly useful as a sedative in order to the application of the remedies directly indicated, or as a counter-power reducing to inactivity whatever disturbing forces might have interfered with their operation. And had this use been made of these exclusive laws, and had they been enforced as the precursors and negative conditions,-but, above all, as bonâ fide accompaniments, of a process of emancipation, properly and worthily so named, the code would at this day have been remembered in Ireland only as when, recalling a dangerous fever of our boyhood, we think of the nauseous drugs and drenchinghorn, and congratulate ourselves that our doctors now established in its place. There can be no resisting it in common reason. How miserably imbecile and objectless has the English government of Ireland been for forty years past! Oh! for a great man but one really great man, who could feel the weight and the power of a principle, and unflinchingly put it into act! But truly - there is no vision in the land, and the people accordingly perisheth. See how triumphant in debate and in action O'Connell is! Why? Because he asserts a broad principle, and acts up to it, rests all his body on it, and has faith in it. Our ministers true Whigs in that, -have faith in nothing but expedients de die in diem. Indeed, what principles of government can they have, who in the space of a month recanted a life of political opinions, a-days know how to manage these things less coarsely. But this angry code was neglected as an opportunity, and mistaken for a substitute: et hinc illæ lacrymæ !" - Church and State, p. 195. and now dare to threaten this and that innovation at the huzza of a mob, or in pique at a parliamentary defeat? I sometimes think it just possible that the Dissenters may once more be animated by a wiser and nobler spirit, and see their dearest interest in the church of England as the bulwark and glory of Protestantism, as they did at the Revolution. But I doubt their being able to resist the low factious malignity to the church, which has characterized them as a body for so many years. FAUST. February 16. 1833. - MICHAEL SCOTT, GOETHE, SCHILLER, AND WORDSWORTH. BEFORE I had ever seen any part of Goethe's Faust*, though, of course, when I was fami * "The poem was first published in 1790, and forms the commencement of the seventh volume of Goethe's liar enough with Marlowe's, I conceived and drew up the plan of a work, a drama, which Schriften, Wien und Leipzig, bey J. Stahel and G.J. Goschen, 1790. This edition is now before me. The poem is entitled, Faust, ein Fragment (not Doktor Faust, ein Trauerspiel, as Döring says), and contains no prologue or dedication of any sort. It commences with the scene in Faust's study, antè, p. 17., and is continued, as now, down to the passage ending, antè, p. 26. line 5. In the original, the line "Und froh ist, wenn er Regenwürmer findet" ends the scene. The next scene is one between Faust and Mephistopheles, and begins thus: "Und was der ganzen Menschheit zugetheilt ist,” i.e. with the passage (antè, p. 70.) beginning, " I will enjoy, in my own heart's core, all that is parcelled out among mankind," &c. All that intervenes, in later editions, is wanting. It is thenceforth continued, as now, to the end of the cathedral scene (antè, p. 170.), except that the whole scene, in which Valentine is killed, is wanting. Thus Margaret's prayer to the Virgin and the cathedral scene come together, and form the conclusion of the work. According to Döring's Verzeichniss, there was no new edition of Faust until 1807. According to Dr. Sieglitz, the first part of Faust first appeared, in its present shape, in the collected edition of Goethe's works, which was published în 1808."- Hayward's Translation of Faust, second edition, note, p. 215. |