SANTA LUCIA AND THE CAPUCIN CONVENT, &c.

Some Franciscans told us that Saint Lucia was stabbed close to a granite column, in a subterranean chapel in their church, in the fourth century, and under Nero!—so ignorant are these men even about what it concerns them to know. They show a silver image, which a dozen men can, they assure us, scarcely lift. The body of the saint is not, however, here, but at Venice. "No; we have but one rib and a thumb," said the padre! "but we have two very handsome dresses which she wore—one red, the other blue." Cast-off clothes, then, will do for relics! In returning to the church, they tell us of a blind old general who came hither on purpose to obtain the intercession of: Santa Lucia, (who had her own eyes put out,) to remove this calamity; with success of course, for they never record failures in church clinique. "Do you believe the cure?" we ventured to ask. "Why not? il miracolo e autenticato." "No!" said his companion, "autorizzato! The distinction is, that the church authorizes the declaration of some lies as miraculous, but declines to make herself responsible for the reality of others!" Round the Capucian church certain stanzas are written, under what are called the fourteen stazioni or stations of the cross, (places where our Saviour is supposed to have halted, or fainted under his load, on his way to Calvary.) Stanzas we were at first profane enough to attribute to Metastasio, but afterwards found that it was only the metastasis of his metre adapted to the use of the church. They are much better than most of our sacred poetry, as it is strangely miscalled, which is frequently neither poetry nor common sense:—

"Il sol si oscura, E in fin la terra Il sen disserra Per grand dolor; Morto e il Signore! O Peccatore, Se tu non piangi, Sei senza cuor!

"Deh, madre mia, Con quant' afflitto, Piangendo, al Petto, Stringi Gesu! Io, l'ho fer ito, Ma son pentito— Non piu peccati, Non piu, non piu!

"Dal tuo sepolcro, Non vo partire, Senza morire, Ma qui staro; Finche 'l dolore M'uccida il core, L'alma piangendo Qui spirero!" &c. &c.

The Capucins live on a hill in the only good air in the vicinity of Syracuse; in their precincts we found ourselves fairly attacked on Luther's quarrel, and expected to take up cudgels ecclesiastic on that worn-out controversy—one of our Capucins vaunting himself ready and able to bleed for the truth. Liberal ideas are not common in the cloister. "You aver," said he, "that Roman Catholics may be in a way of salvation; we by no means return the compliment—but as both Lutherans and Calvinists agree in believing thus charitably of us, and not of one another, it seems a pretty strong argument in our favour." With such high subjects did our apparently very much in earnest friends entertain us, in a garden planted amidst those quarried prisons of the captive Athenians. A man attempted to-day to put off some bad coins upon us, which we recollected to have had offered to us by another hand—still we only hinted that they were forgeries, and declined purchasing. While this was in progress, another person came up properly introduced, with an enlarged spleen, which was certainly authentic. We tell him that such indurations of viscera require a very long time indeed for removal: and that malaria is their origin This convent possesses one of those revolting vaults, which dry up and preserve the corpse in the form of mummy; a huge trap-door flapped its wooden wings, and gave us admission into a large subterranean apartment, wherein we presently stood in the midst of defunct brethren arranged along the walls, as if they stood in chapel at their devotions! On the floor thirty or forty light boxes looked like orange chests, with custom-house hieroglyphics on their lids; but they were marked with proper and even high-sounding names, and were in fact the coffins of barons, counts, and prelates, transported here to have the benefit of the air, and there accordingly they lay unburied, to profit by the antiseptic qualities of the soil. We looked at a baron or two, and saw something like a huge caterpillar beginning to change into a chrysalis; a grub mummy dressed out in old Catanian silk, and so enveloped in cobwebs, that you could with difficulty make out the central nucleus of shrivelled humanity. "Questo," said our cowled conductor, "e il Barone Avellina, morto di cholera, anno aetatis fifty-six; he loved our order! here is another equally good-looking personage," said he, exposing a corrugated face and dark hair, frightfully at variance with a blue silk handkerchief, and all the funeral gear of twenty years ago. This was another victim to that awful visitation; his feet and hands were covered with faded herbs, rosemary, and lavender; first placed in the coffin at the time of his decease, and renewed every year by friends, when the cobwebs of the year preceding are brushed away. One elder, the pride of the collection, had lain in his court-suit for nearly a hundred years, the aforesaid aromatics having kept off the moths all this time. The room felt dry, and, except for the company, what one calls comfortable. Knee-buckles and shoe-buckles, and steel-hilted swords, do not rust here, and white cravats and embroidered waistcoats might almost return to the world! The Capucins themselves are disposed in niches, and each has a text from Scripture over his cowl. "Do you prepare these mummies?" we enquire "Nienti preparati, signor! We only lay them to dry in yonder room over a sink, and when they have lain four months, we take them out and complete the process in another room, where the sun comes; after which we dress them and place them here." These Capucins, they tell us, are the strictest of all sects of Franciscans. From the sights of the mummy chamber, we see at least that they are not idle, and must always have a job on hand. Females, if not Catholic, are here admitted to see the grounds, and they offer wine and bread for our refreshment, which we, thinking of their wallets, decline on the plea of anorexia. Near the Capucins is the Church of San Giovanni, a singularly wild spot, in the midst of bad air, and within reach of the Ear of Dionysius. We descend with a fellow filthier than the filthiest Capucin, calling himself a hermit, to guide us in the vast catacombs over which the hermitage stands. It was a trial to follow him—the rank woollen dress, uncleansed till it falls to pieces, diffuses an odour which, in such confined passages, is particularly unpleasant. Cleanliness, says an English proverb, is next to godliness; but, in cowled society, it assuredly forms no part of it. Catacombs, in general, are called interesting—we never saw one in which we did not pay heavy penalty for gratifying curiosity. Those of Syracuse are vast indeed; spacious arcaded streets intersect each other in all directions, and your walk throughout lies between lengthening files of niches, cut into the walls for coffins, tier above tier, like berths in a steamboat, conducting here and there into a circular apartment, with a cupola and a central aperture, looking out upon the wild moor above.

SHARKS, FIREFLIES, &c.

We form to-day the acquaintance of an intelligent medical practitioner and collector in natural history, from whom we learn that there are eight different species of dog-fish (Squalus) along the Syracusan coast. This animal, to the popular fame of whose injurious exploits we had hitherto yielded unabated confidence, appears fully to justify his West Indian character. An "ancient mariner" told us, that full forty miles from Syracuse, a shark, which had been following him for a long time, thrust his head suddenly out of the water, and made a snap at him; and if the boat had not been a thunny boat, high in the sides, there is no saying how much of him might have been extant! A pair of trousers drying in the sun over the side of the boat should have small attraction for a shark, but he took them on speculation. At one of the principal thunny fisheries near Catania, the fishermen have fixed upon poles, like English kites on a barn-door, pour encourager les autres, two immense sharks' heads as trophies—the jaws at full gape, exhibiting four sets of teeth as sharp as harrows, and as white and polished as ivory. They always wish to decline any dealings with this formidable foe, though his flesh is in repute in the market, and he weighs from two thousand five hundred to four thousand pounds. But Syracuse has no reason to complain of scarcity, or to eat shark's flesh from necessity; most of the Scomber family,—the alatorya, the palamida, and a fine gray-coloured fellow which the fishermen call serra, frequent her coast; then there is the Cefalo—the ancient mugilis, our gray mullet—and the sea-pike, Lucedimare, whose teeth and size might well constitute him lieutenant to the dog-fish,—all these came to table during our stay; but we did not meet with one very superior fish known to the ancients as the Lupus, (labrax of the Greeks,) which abounds when in season, and is known in every comfortable menage along the Sicilian coast; his Linnaean name is sparus. On the shore are to be picked up occasionally two small kinds of shells peculiar to Sicily, of which our intelligent acquaintance is so obliging as to give us specimens. We never saw or heard of a firefly in Sicily. Professor Costa of Naples, though he doubted the fact of there being none, had never seen any in his frequent entomological trips to that island. This beautiful insect, so common about Florence and Rome, and in central Italy, is extremely rare about Naples; nor does this seem to be from their disliking the sea, for we never saw so many as at Pesaro, on the Adriatic;—no insect, then, is more volage, or uncertain as to place, than the firefly. The only poisonous reptile of Sicily is the viper, of which there seem to be several varieties. A beautiful blue thrush (Turdus cyaneus), a great talker, much prized, and high-priced too, when he has been taught to speak, is found in the rocky clefts about Syracuse. The heat and brilliancy of the sunshine render it extremely difficult, we are told, to preserve collections in natural history. All the water drunk here is rain water. The butter, fruit, and vegetables of Syracuse are, in the month of May at least, bad, very bad; but its Muscat wine, its Hybla honey, and its fish, are all of superior quality.

The honey of that hill needs not our praise,

——"quae nectareis vocat ad certamen Hymetton, Audax Hybla, favis."

For ourselves, after tasting the confection of the Attic as well as of the Sicilian bee, we know not which is the greater artist, or which operates on the finer material; but the best honey in Europe, in our opinion, comes from the apiaries of Narbonne.

A CONSULTATION.

We had given advice, and were preparing to go, when another candidate comes forward, and, with suitable gesticulation, so placed his hands that we could not help saying, "Liver, eh?" "Eccelenza, si!" "Dopo una febbre?" "Illustrissimo, si!"—Folk now beginning to wink approvingly at our sagacity, we were looking exceeding grave, when a pair of Sicilian eyes set in a female head put us quite out by evidently taking us for a conjurer, and so setting at once our ethics, our pathology, and our Italian dictionary at fault. Still the surgeon congratulates the room on the "lumi" brought to it by the strange doctor, approves of the prescription, and corroborates our opinion that the "Signore Don Jacomo" Somebody was the incontestable possessor of a "flogose chronica del fegato!" We now said we must go; and two children ran for our hat, the man with the liver kisses our hand, others seize our coat-skirts, and the guide, Jack Robertson, carries the mace and leads the way, and puts himself at the head of the procession homewards; and glad were we to escape the embarrassment of curtsies and courtesies, to which we are unused, and far too extravagant ones to admit of reply. Come! the best of fees is a poor man's gratitude; but from poor or rich, at home or abroad, it is seldom that medical men walk off so magnificently.

EXCURSION TO EPIPOLAE.

The country about Syracuse is neither grand nor beautiful; but the ground is classic ground, and Sicily has not been brought within the reach of an intercourse which, while it polishes and confers substantial benefits, removes the sacred rust of antiquity. The Hybla hills, as hills, are not equal to the Surrey hills as one sees then from one's window at Kensington; but Hybla is Hybla, and here we eat the honey and sip the wine of the soil. Yonder plain before our breakfast-table is plain enough, and promises little; but that small insignificant stream is the Anapus, those columns belonged to a temple of Jupiter, that white tower, five miles off, marks Epipolae, the snow-capped Etna is the background of the picture, and the bay at our feet once bore that Athenian navy which left the Piraeus to make as great a mistake as we did in our American war. We rowed across that bay to the mouth of the Anapus, and penetrated up the stream to the paper manufactory, from real papyrus, on its banks. The vestiges of a temple of Diana, converted into a monastery, and the nearly perfect remains of that amphitheatre which Cicero pronounced the largest in the world, are not to be seen in every morning's walk! Of Archimedes, without being able to fix his proper tomb among so many, the name here is enough. One ought to be able to conjure with it; the genius that concentrated the sun of Syracuse on the hostile anchorage, was of no common measure. We spent our day on a visit of the deepest interest, up at Epipolae (i.e., the position on or over the city, as Thucydides expresses it,) the acropolis, in fact, of Syracuse, and at about the same distance from the town itself as Athens is from Piraeus. In order to do this commodiously, we allowed ourselves to be suspended between two mules in a very narrow watchman's box, lettiga, (the ancient lectiga, you will say—no: here there is nothing for it but an erect spine.) The see-saw motion is unpleasant as well as unusual; the mules, though docile, have not the savoir faire of a couple of Dublin or Edinburgh chairmen. You must sit quite in the middle, or run the perpetual chance of capsizing. A little alarming, also, is it to look out on the stone-strewn furrow, over which the mules carry you safely enough; and when you have become reconciled to the oscillation, and have learned to trim the boat in which you have embarked, it is long before your ear becomes accustomed to the stunning sound of a hundred little bells fastened to the mules' heads. "Do take them off," said we, after half an hour's impatience; "do, pray, remove these infernal bells!" "And does the signor imagine that any mule would go without falling asleep, or lying down, were it not for the bells?" We arrived safe and stunned, in about an hour and a half, at the foot of a tower of no Roman or Sicilian growth, but a bastard construction upon the ancient foundations of Epipolae. We saw, however, some fine remains of a wall, which might have been called Cyclopian, but that the blocks which composed it were of one size. Our guide, a mason, and, of course, an amateur of walls, insists upon our calling this a capo d'opera, as, no doubt, it is. On the spot itself there is nothing antique to see; but the drive or ride is one of the most remarkable in all the world! It takes you over from four to five miles of a rocky table-land, by a very gradual ascent, abounding with indelible traces of human frequentation, else long forgotten. The deep channelling of those wheels is still extant that had transported million tons of stone out of those interminable lines of quarries, to raise buildings of such grandeur as to give occasion to Cicero to say, that he had "seen nothing so imposing as the ancient port and walls of Syracuse!" The scene is altogether wild and peculiar; you pass for miles amidst excavated rock, and on the flagstones of ancient pavement, between the commissures of which wild-flowers, principally of the thistle kind, spring up into vigorous life, and look as if they grew out of the very stone itself. The small conduit-pipe of an underground aqueduct still serves to carry from the same sources the same water; but the people who used it are gone. In the wildest parts of the way, the large flat stones, that formed a continuous road, serve for barn-floors—or rather threshing-floors that require no barns—on which long-horned cattle tread out, without any chance of bad weather to injure, the golden grain of the Sicilian harvest. Here lives the blue-breasted hermit bird in unmolested solitude; and, careless of solitude, the Passer solitarius utters her small twitter in the hollows—a few goats browse amongst the scanty thistles, and one or two dogs protect them. Snakes, hatched in vast number under the warm stones, show you their progress, by the motion they impart to the thin light grass; and an endless variety of new lizards present themselves in a soil not untenanted, though barren. From a plain, justly called Bel Veduta, we see Catania and Lentini, (Leontium,) famous once for its coinage, infamous now for its malaria. A little bay bears the great name of Thapsus; and, opposite, a small mass of nearly undistinguishable houses, the ambitious distinction of Port Augusta.

We have seen our sights, and are returned, and waiting to go on shore. Our paddle-wheels are once more at rest in the harbour of Messina! They have let down the windows of the long room on deck, in which we had taken shelter from the vermin below, and wake we must, though it is not five o'clock. The sun breaks cover to-day, magnificently, behind Messina; but the Health-office having no inducement to open its eyes prematurely, will not, for some time, send its delegates on board, to announce our liberty to land. We have nothing for it but to look over the boat, or study haggard faces reflected in the unflattering mirror of a beautiful sea. The hauling about of things on deck is always pleasant, as a signal of voyage over! The sun still shines full upon the long row of houses on the quay—fishing boats are entering with abundance of fresh fish for our dinner, and shoals of silvery sardines, untaken, are leaping out of the water near our prow, to escape from a large body of mackerel which is pursuing them. The authorities are coming! We don't want any cards to hotels, but cram a dozen into our pockets, and ask if there are any more here? We are sorry to take a new guide. Jack Robertson has spoiled us for some time. When he pocketed our supplementary piece, as we were coming off, he told us, "haud sine lacrymis," it should buy a linen shirt for his youngest child. "I good Christian, sir, I no tell you lie, sir! I love my children, upon my word! When they go to bed, my wife not able to attend them, sir! They cry, father. I say, yes! Bread, says little Bill—I get up; give him some bread. Mary say, water, and I get up for water six times every night!—no story, sir!" "How many hours do you work?" "When sun get up, sir, till it be mid-day; I go see childer till three, den work hard at BUILD WALL till sun go down; den I go home. I wish I could speak English better; but you understand me, sir." We rowed off with many vivas, and this poor mason's "hopes" that we "might find all square at home." At home! Oh, that we had a home!!—an unassuming wife—placens et tacens uxor; an unpretending house, with a comfortable guest-chamber; and no noiseless nursery, unfendered and uncared for! But the bells of Messina, all let loose together, interrupt our pleasing reverie, and our friends, who have been hovering round us in a boat, are now permitted to approach, and to land with us at our hotel. 'Tis our last day!—in the evening, we go to hear Sicilian vespers for the last time; and the next day we are off for Naples!

ADDIO! SICILIA!

On deck!—off!—Stromboli is already veiling himself in the rapidly encroaching shades of darkness, and it is time to say good-night to this fair night, and to go to our cabin. Beautiful Sicily! may this not be our final leave-taking! We found no poetry below, and in a short time are driven back from the cabin by its complicated nuisances, to moonlight contemplation, and catching cold. An hour elapses—a town not to be forgotten by the Neapolitans is just ahead. The moon shines brightly on its high-perched castle, and we have scarce stopped the paddles, when our deck is invaded by a new freightage of passengers, already far too many. Twenty boats full of noise and animation, with all the exaggeration that attends both in these latitudes; every pair of oars fighting for a fare, and knocking one another over board in contention for passenger or parcel destined to land at Pizzo. They ship about with the wildness and alacrity of South-Sea islanders; some are all but naked, and every quarrel is conducted in such a Calabrian brogue, that the very men of Messina profess not to understand them, and to treat them as savages rather than as countrymen. The small fort in front was disgraced by the nocturnal trial and prompt execution of the unfortunate Murat. It is long ago; but of these noisy disputants for the things to be landed, some probably had been eyewitnesses of the last bloody act of a blood-stained throne. A poor sick horse, confined in his narrow crib on deck, blinks at the moonlight, and can neither sleep nor eat his corn; he drops his lower lip, and presents an appearance of more physical suffering than we should have thought could have been recognized in face of quadruped; but pain traces stronger lines, and understands the anatomy of expression better than pleasure. We wished to land for half an hour, but this being impossible, addio Pizzo! Our vessel is quickly off, and our Cyclopean stokers are already mopping off their black sweat in the dreadful glare of the engine-room. Some cages, full of canaries and parrots, just become our fellow-passengers, are all in a fluster at the screaming and bustle to which they are unused, and a large cargo of turkeys, with fettered legs, and fowls that can only flap their wings, do so in despair at the treatment threatened them by the dogs on deck—second and third class passengers are fighting for prerogatives in misery, amidst the clatter of unclean plates, and the remains of the supper of the fore-cabin. The space for walking, is encumbered with coils of cordage, and the empty water-barrels are all taken possession of for seats. Bad tobacco, even among the elite, and garlic every where, drive us to the fore-deck, or to the neutral ground between it and ours. A passage, which promised fair when we started, begins, now that we are half over, to look suspicious; and a preliminary lurch or two, as the breeze freshens, converts many from an opinion they had begun to promulgate, that the steamer on the Mediterranean afforded, on the whole, the most eligible mode of traversing space. We looked at each other piteously enough, on seeing that we were fast going to face a magnificent specimen of a wave, of which our piston was determined to try the valour, and if possible abate the confidence. When Greek meets Greek, said we, as we dashed through it, and gave a warning to old Neptune to take care of his interests below! Other huge parcels of water hit us obliquely, or come down upon us with a swoop like a falchion; steam hisses, and chimney gets red-hot; but though the vessel yields not, there be those on board who do: an Anglo-Sicilian pleasure party is quenched in twenty blanched faces at once; conversation is over, women retire, and the deck is deserted. Against such ups and downs as these, the very philosophy of the Stoics were powerless!—even thou, O moon! seemest a little disconcerted, and hast withdrawn thy pale face from thy whilom plate-glass, the Mediterranean, so often, for weeks together, like the inland lake of the north,

"Thy mirror! to inform Thee, if the dark and arrowy storm The forest boughs that brake, Require thy slender silvery hand, to still Thy ruffled wreath of lily and jonquil!"

Pindemonte.

Whew!—wind gets up, and takes part with wave, and all against us—never mind!—

"Hurrah! for the marvels of steam, As thus through the waters we roam; For pistons that smite, oh! for funnels that gleam, And to carry us safe through the foam."

Whew, whew!—but greater divinities than Neptune are abroad to-night!—What! expect our black chimney to show the white feather! Pooh! pooh! old Eunosigaeus, what are thy white horses to the invisible hoofs of two hundred and forty coal-black steeds stamping in the hold? We had, however, a sharp seven-hours' tussle for it; at the end of which, the buffeted Mongibello came bounding into the harbour, and swirled round in the face of Vesuvius, who was smoking his cigar as quietly as ever!

We have tried several Mediterranean steamers, and our report of all is much the same—bad is the best! A sea passage any where, to be comfortable, depends solely on the smoothness of the water; if this be rough, what care you for mahogany, rosewood, and plate-glass? Whether the cabin where you are to be sick, and to hear others groan, has its Scotts, its Byrons, and its Moores, under a convex mirror; its rows of curtained births, and horse-hair sofas, and its long line of polished, well articulated tables? Whether the smell of empyreumatised grease be wafted to the nostrils by a Maudsley or a Bell? Whether the captain have his ears bored, or be an Englishman? Your brass nails and varnished buffets are very well in dock, when the vessel has stank off her last voyage, and lies clean washed, like that other syren of the opposite coast, who coaxed Ulysses and his men, some years ago—not, indeed, to come on board, but the contrary. But when her deck is all soot and nastiness, when she has quartered her vermin on her passengers, and goes gurgling along, as if she had an Empyema under her pleura costalis; when she pitches into the waves, as if to punish them, and tramples on their crests, as if to crush them under her keel, why all the brass you want is "AES TRIPLEX;" and there is no varnish in the world that will enable you to put a good face on it. A few heaves more, such as those of our present imagining, and brandy and water, bottled porter, and bottled philosophy, are uncorked in vain!

As to particular steamers, the Castor since he lost his twin-brother, who was run down off Capo D'Anzo (he forgot, we suppose, to invoke Fortune "gratum quae regit Antium"), has become quite negligent of toilette, and incredulous about the powers of soap and sand. The bugs in only one of her beds would defy Bonnycastle! Fast enough, however, goes the Castor! Orestes, pursued by the furies, never rushed more impetuously on than does this child of Leda, with all his vermin in the locker. Of Virgil in the water, we have no experience, but they say his prosody is perfect, and his quantity (of accommodation) blameless. The Dante under paddles is unknown to us; but the poem which his customers read oftenest on board is doubtless the Purgatory. The captain of the Palermo, an obliging man, with ear-rings, and speaking Siculo-English, does his job in nineteen hours; and giving you one execrable meal, gives you more than enough. This vessel (blessed privilege!) carries some of the Teffin family (Mr Teffin, our readers know, was bug-destroyer to the king), and is said to have no bugs. As to the two floating volcanoes, Vesuvius and Mongibello, we had heard much against the Neapolitan crater (cabin they call it), and, after due preparation, we precipitated ourselves into the latter, which placards her two hundred and fifty horse-power. The engineer, however, if you acquire his confidence, reduces the team considerably, taking off at least one-fifth. Horse-power is, after all, we fear, an appeal to the imagination! How do you measure horse-power? and what horses? Calabrian nags? Arab stallions? Dutch mares? or English drays? or perhaps you mean sea-horses? That every vessel has a great rocking-horse power we know by sad experience, and are come to read one hundred and fifty, two hundred, &c., with great tranquillity, being convinced that when the translation from horse-power into paddle-power is effected, you obtain no corresponding result.



AESTHETICS OF DRESS.

MILITARY COSTUME.

Military dress is almost as difficult and dangerous a thing to deal with as ladies' attire; as various in its hues and forms, as fanciful in its conceits, as changeable in its fashions, and as touchy in the temper of its wearers. To pull a guardsman by his coat-tail would be as unpardonable an offence as to tread on a lady's skirt; and to offer an opinion upon a lancer's cap might be considered as impertinent as to criticise a lady's bonnet. Having, however, been bold enough to commit offences of the latter description, we will now venture to brave the wrath of the whole of Her Majesty's forces, horse, foot, and artillery, while we read those gallant gentlemen a lecture on their costume; and we will even add into the bargain that other most honourable and equally useful branch of the public force "the mariners of England;"—as for "the force," the police, truly we eschew them and their deeds. They are a perverse, stiff-necked race, who wear two abominations, round hats and short coats, and they have a villanous propensity of following you home from your club of an evening, and inveigling you every now and then to Bow Street, thrusting a broken knocker or two into your pocket as you go along, and then pestering your bewildered memory with all sorts of nocturnal misdemeanors; truly they are a race of noxious vermin; pretty well, perhaps, for the protection of the swinish multitude; but for us gentlemen, why, they "come betwixt the wind and our nobility," and their remembrance stinks in our nostrils! One thing only we know in their favour,—they dress all in one colour; their blueness alone makes them sufferable in this nineteenth century of ours, and whenever they depart from this great principle of aesthetic unity, we will bring in a bill for their suppression.

Now, if there be any thing more self-evident than the ante-Noachian problem that "two and two make four," it is this axiom, the verity of which was demonstrated long before Achilles behaved in so ungentlemanlike a manner to Hector, when he took him that dirty drive round Troy, viz., that utility for purposes of service is the very essence and spirit of military costume. The finest dressed army in the world had better be in plain clothes, if the excellence of their clothing depends only upon its ornament; while, on the contrary, the plainest and most rudely equipped corps will come out of campaign with excellent military effect and appearance, provided only that their clothing has been suited to their service. "My dear fellow," said an old moustache to us one day on the Place du Carrousel, "give me 20,000 men who have served in nothing but blouses and blue caps, and I'll make you ten times as fine a line as all that mob of national guards there in their new uniforms." And he was right; in military matters it is the man that produces the real effect, as to appearance, upon the long run; and the practised eye of the old campaigner would prefer a Waterloo man in a smock-frock to any flunkey you could pick out, even though he were dressed up as fine as Lady L——'s favourite chasseur. We assert, then, that a scrupulous attention to the nature of the service should form the basis and the starting point of all discussions as to military costume; but we will not go so far as to say that ornament is inadmissible or unnecessary for military men. On the contrary, we know that the adornment of the person has been attended to by the bravest men in all ages and in all armies; and we know further, that it does produce a powerful effect on the morale of a corps. We intend to advocate the use of frequent but consistent ornament for our soldiers, but we do not wish to turn then into mere paraders. Use first and before every thing, in this case at least—ornament next and entirely subsidiary to it; keep to this rule, and you shall see an army turned out into the field better than most that pass muster now-a-days.

It is of no use going into that diffuse subject—that vexatissima quaestio—of how far the military dress of ancient days accorded with the wants and uses of the service; the reader may go and look into that dusty little volume of Vegetius de Re Militari, if he is fond of dabbling in military antiquities; or he may consult our learned old friend, Captain Grose of facetious memory; or still better, let him be off to Goderich Court, and ask the porter to admit him to a sight of the finest collection of armour in the world. We are not going to dive into these matters; we will rather say roundly, that ever since armour came to be disused, we think military men have gone clean daft in equipping themselves. Only look at the uniforms of the campaigns of the Grand Monarque or William of Orange; see what inconvenient coats those glorious fellows that won Blenheim and Ramilies wore; recollect the absurd turn-out of Charles XII., and even of Frederick the Great. Convenience and comfort seem to have been totally out of the question in those days—not that they made the men worse soldiers—they all fought admirably—but we question whether their fatigues would not have been less, and their health sounder, had they been clad and equipped in a sensible manner. Oh, the powder, and the pigtails, and the broad cuffs, and the Ramilies cock, and the sword tucked through the coat-tail! Glories of glorious times, ye are gone for ever! But so, too, are the tactics of your wearers; all is changed; another Caesar has swept you all off the field; and even the famous uniforms of the French empire, so brilliant,—but at times so absurd,—even they have been altered. They have had their day, and most of them are fit now only for fancy-balls and old-clothes' shops. Nothing is so short-lived as a good uniform; it varies with the taste of a commander-in-chief, or a commander-in-chief's toady; or the fancy of some royal favourite. It's like the wind in the Mediterranean; you never know what is coming upon you till you are in the midst of it; and so it is with your uniform. Get a new one, and the probability is that you will not show it on parade half-a-dozen times before a new regulation is out, and then more work for the tailors. Be it so, then; military costume, like all other kinds, is doomed to change; let us aim only at keeping its vagaries within something like the limits of common sense.

The infantry of our own army—the successors of those noble fellows that walked across Spain—have no better covering for their backs than the scanty and useless coatee; in this they parade, and in this they are supposed to fight. Behind, two little timid-looking skirts descend any thing but gracefully; they are too small to have any grace in them; and a pair of sham cotton epaulettes, or large unmeaning wings, are supposed, by a pleasing fiction of the military tailors, to adorn their shoulders. Now, this garment, we contend, is neither ornamental nor graceful: were it cut down into the common jacket, it would be better; were the excrescences at the shoulders removed, it would be more seemly; it has no warmth in it, and offers little or no protection against the rain. No soldier, who has been reduced to his coatee in a campaign, but must have sighed after his original smock-frock, or any other outer covering that had at least some pretensions to being useful. Since, however, the idea of defending the body of the foot-soldier by steel or leather is given up, the two things requisite in a serviceable coat are warmth and convenience. No coatee nor jacket can be warm enough for the British service, exposed as the men are to all varieties of climate; and infinitely more to cold and wet than to sunshine. In India, and in some of the colonies, a lighter kind of clothing may be indeed necessary; but for the common use of the army, a coat is wanted that shall be a protection against wet and cold, and yet not inconvenient to the wearer—making him comfortable, in fact, while it allows him free use of all his limbs and muscles. For the heavy infantry, therefore, we would propose such a coat as we have before recommended for all civilians; nothing more nor less than a frock-coat, coming down half way along the thighs, and close buttoned above to the chin. Every body knows that this is the most comfortable thing he can put on for all kinds of wear; and the evolutions of a good infantry soldier can be perfectly well gone through by whoever wears it. The shoulders, if they require external ornament, should have something that is really useful at the same time; not merely tinsel or cotton lace; and, therefore, it should be the adaptation of a thick woollen pad, ornamented with metal or coloured lace, calculated to take off the pressure of the musket and of the knapsack-straps from the bones of the neck and arm. Whoever has carried a musket twelve or fourteen hours continuously, and has had his pack on at the same time, well knows how comfortable and how really useful such an addition to his dress would have been. The coat should be furnished with two small pockets in front, just to hold a knife, some money, and things of that kind; and they should be close to the circle of pressure at the waist.

The appearance of a close-buttoned coat of this kind, not caricatured about the shoulders, is manly and dignified; it proclaims its usefulness at the first glance; and, whatever be its colour, will form a handsome uniform. The cross-belts should be done away with—being at once ugly, expensive, and inconvenient—a plain broad strap, white or black, as you please, should gird the waist up well; and the cartouche-box, which could be made to slide upon it, might be worn, while out of battle, behind; but, in actual engagement, in front. The bayonet (which might advantageously be lengthened, and made to approximate rather more to the nature of a sword, or a long knife, than it does now) should always have its sheath fixed to the belt, at the left side.

The soldier would in this way have his habiliments warmer, his equipments tighter and more simple, and his appearance in line or on guard, highly improved. Only think of how you would dress yourself if you were going out deer-stalking, and you will come to something of this kind—barring the pockets of your shooting-coat, which are certainly inadmissible, from motives of military neatness and discipline; and barring, too, the buttoning up to the chin, which, on the mountain's side, you had perhaps rather dispense with; but which the soldier must adhere to, if he would keep up the essential degree of stiffness and smartness of dress. Coats of this kind, and equipments of this nature, are worn by the Prussian and French infantry—two good authorities in military matters; they have been tried on our police force; something of the sort has been used for clothing the pensioners; and we venture to predict, that, in a few years, a dress upon these principles will become universal in the British service.

Should a man have a cloak or a great-coat?—It should be a compound of both—a small cloak with sleeves; and it might be worn either rolled up, as at present, on the top of the kit; or else, as some of the French troops wear it—both conveniently and gracefully—made up into a long thin roll, going over the left shoulder, and with the ends strapped together upon the right hip. The Scotch regiments would wear their plaids most effectively in this fashion; and it is a good guise to adopt, whether you are on the rough lands of Spain, or in the thick woods of America. A warm coat and a blanket are two of the soldier's dearest friends in winter and have kept many a man out of hospital.

The light-infantry man—and there ought to be more distinction made in the uniforms than there is—might wear a long jacket, descending below the hips, instead of a frock-coat: his cloak, too, should be lighter: and, in fact, his whole equipments constructed for quick and active service. So should be the rifleman's clothing and arms; everything should be designed to serve the one end had in view—the real use and intent of that particular arm, whatever it might be; and, if so, then let the officers of the rifles leave off their long trailing sabres—fitter for a light dragoon than for one who is supposed to be hopping about, like a Will o' the Wisp, in swampy brakes; or creeping, like a serpent, through rushes and long grass. Their present swords are good for nothing but to trip them up in their movements, or to give them the pleasure of holding the sheath in one hand, and the blade in the other.

For the leg-clothing of our men, give us the trouser, and let us keep to it; we do not indeed seem likely to change it; yet, who can tell? Just as the civilian seems to have decided upon this happy invention, as the most useful and comfortable thing he ever donned, so will all military men agree in its praises. It is not so good for parade purposes, as the light pantaloon and gaiter, in as much as it conceals defects of limbs; but, on the long run, it is far to be preferred; it lasts better, keeps cleaner, and does more comfortable service to its wearer, than any thing else. One point not sufficiently attended to by our military authorities, and yet which affects the health of the men, is, that their trousers, whether in parade or for service, whether for winter or for summer use, should be made of such a woollen fabric as will allow of frequent washing. It is impossible for the cleanliness of the soldier to be sufficiently kept up without this; and the material now used for plaids of various kinds, or the common blanketing for sailors' clothes, might be easily modified, so as to be suitable for this purpose. Linen trousers are indispensable for foreign service of some kinds; but for summer clothing at home, a light white blanketing, which has the curious faults of being cool in warm weather, and warm in cold, is the proper substitute; our men often get sudden chills in summer evenings, which send then to the fever ward, and the cause is mainly attributable to undue exposure in insufficient clothing. To complete the lower portions of the soldier's dress, let him wear either the shoe and gaiter, or the low boot; either is good, there is hardly a choice—comfort preponderates in favour of the gaiters—ornament in that of the boot.

And now for the head-gear of the British Achilles: a touching and a troublesome subject, which has bothered all heads, from those of the humble wearer up to the field-marshal, who is content under the shadow—not of his laurels—but his plumes—to design any kind of uncomfortable and ugly thing that strikes his imagination, and to clap it on the cranium of steady veteran and raw recruit. Truly we have been most unfortunate, aesthetically speaking, in our military caps; and, to go no further back than Peninsular recollections,—from the conico-cylindrical cap of Vimiera to the funny little thing with a flap up in front of Vittoria and Waterloo, down through the inverted cone-shaped shako of recent days—until we have come to the very bathos of all chapellerie that now disgraces the heads of too many among our infantry regiments—all has been bad. Never, since the day when men first armed their heads for the fight, has there been seen such a paltry, ugly, useless, bastard kind of a thing as the last cap turned out for the British army. With its poke before and behind, its conical top and low elevation, it is a degraded cross between a Germano-Tyrolese cap and a policeman's hat—a bad mixture of both. May it be sent back to Germany, where the idea came from, and may it be stuffed into a barrel of sour-crout, not to come out till it is thoroughly rotted.

There is only this choice for the useful and graceful covering of the foot-soldier's head; either the small slouched hat of the old Spanish infantry—a hat very liable to be turned into something slovenly and dirty—or the foraging cap of our undress—a covering most comfortable, but not quite strong enough for campaigning use, as well as for parade; or the helmet of antique form, shaped, that is to say, in some conformity with the make of the head, and more or less ornamented with crest and plume. We incline on the whole to the latter, and for two reasons: it is not so liable to get altered in shape by service as the others; it will wear well for a longer time; it is more useful in melees and against cavalry; and it is the most becoming of any. In Prussia it has lately been adopted with great success; and the appearance of the infantry there is now warlike and graceful in the highest degree. The helmet need not be made of metal; boiled leather is the proper material—ventilation and lightness can be easily provided for in it, and any degree of ornament may be superadded—crest or feathers, each is becoming.

For Eastern service something lighter than this is of course necessary—a cap or a broad hat might easily be adopted there; and for American service another description of covering is also most essential to the health and comfort of the soldier. We mean the close-fitting and well-formed fur cap, which can protect the head, neck, and cheeks of the wearer from the extraordinary rigour of a Canadian winter. The cap worn by our guards when last on service in these regions, was at once comfortable, useful, and handsome.

For the cavalry, where ornament seems to be required much more than amongst the infantry—for they fancy themselves, if indeed they are not, the top sawyers in all matters of service—the head-dress must be not only useful, but can hardly be made too ornamental, within the limits of good taste. And here allow us to say that the infantry shako and the great grenadier's cap are perfectly absurd and misplaced; the one will never give a man any chance against a sabre-cut, and the other is fit only to tumble off within the first two minutes of a charge. In heavy cavalry nothing but the helmet, richly plumed and crested, should be allowed; constructed either of leather or metal, yellow brass or silvery steel, and adorned sometimes with skins, sometimes with graven plates. The handsomest helmet worn by any regiment in Europe, is that of the old gardes du corps of Charles X., the same as that now worn by the gardes municipaux a cheval in Paris; a metal helm with leopard-skin visir; a lofty crest, with a horse-tail streaming down the back, and a high red and white feather rising from the left side. Beauty of natural form, the sharp contrast of flowing lines between the feather and the tailed crest, and the general brilliancy of colour, render this by far the most effective head-dress for cavalry which we have ever seen. Our helmets in England, for the dragoon guards, are too heavy, too theatrical; there is no life and spirit in them.

In light cavalry of all kinds, except lancers, the fur cap, lately re-introduced into the British army, is the most useful and most suitable covering; it is at once comfortable and becoming; its form is warlike and harmonious; its colour rich; and it admits of as much or as little ornament as you please to put upon it. Without a feather it is good, with one it is better; guard-bands add to its appearance without troubling the wearer; and it has the merit of lasting to look well longer than any other kind of cap whatever. In the lancers they should always preserve that national cap which tells us of the origin of this arm, and which is an ingenious and elegant adaptation of the strength of the helmet to the lightness of the shako; it is beautiful and graceful as the lance itself; we have nothing to say of it but what is in its favour.

Heavy cavalry, in our opinion, ought to wear the cuirass; this is the only relic of ancient defence which we are advocates for keeping up, and we do so upon the score of utility. It is rather heavy for the men, but only so because they are not accustomed to wear it in a judicious manner; it is of real service to the arm in question, and is the greatest ornament that a soldier can put on. It is true that our heavy cavalry did all their gallant deeds without it, and may do so over again; still it can do no harm, and may be of much use to a brigade of decidedly heavy cavalry; the helmet and the cuirass should always go together, neither without the other, as we see it often now, forming an absurd anomaly. The coat of the cavalry should be long, like the frock-coat for the heavy regiments; short, like the lengthened jacket of the light infantry, for the corresponding branch of the mounted soldiers; and the lancers should all wear the Andalusian or Hungarian jacket. While these may be ornamented with all the fancies of lace, embroidery, and buttons, the dress of the cuirassiers should be severely plain and simple. Epaulettes here, if worn, should be mere enrichments of the top of the sleeve; no weight has to be carried on the horseman's shoulder, and therefore our metal plates now stuck upon them are useless. The belt of the cartouche-box, if needed, can be confined on the shoulder by other means; and this, as well as the waist-belt for the sabre, should be broad and serviceable, fit for the roughest use.

To complete the clothing of our brave cavaliers, we would urge that wherever the helmet and cuirass are used, there the long boot should be adopted, were it only for harmony of purpose, to say nothing of means of defence. They need not be stiff, unwieldy, and so-called sword-proof boots, like those of the Life-guards, but equally high and much more flexible; they would cost a good deal of money at the first mounting of a regiment, but they would last for a long time by merely renewing their feet, and they would be both serviceable and comfortable to the men. Let all other regiments adhere as at present to their trousers—they can hardly do better; though, if any smart hussar corps wanted to show off their well-turned limbs to the ladies on a review day, they might sport tight pantaloons and Hessian boots as of old, pace nostra.

One important subject, as connected with military dress, is that of national distinctions of costume; for whatever tends to remind men of their common country, whatever tends to mark them out as a band of brothers in arms, coming from the same homes, and bound to stand by each other in their noble calling—this is worthy of the attention of the skilful leader. In our own country, we have admirable opportunities of turning the strong love of local distinction and ancient glory to good account; for while we consider the brilliant scarlet of our uniforms to be distinctive of English arms, we have the glorious old plaids of Scotland, any one of which is enough to stir up the heart of the hardiest mountaineer, when he meets his brethren in the field. We are of opinion, then, that as a point of military discipline, as well as of aesthetical correctness, all English regiments—properly so called—should adhere to their red uniforms, varied with subsidiary ornaments, or other distinctions, to mark separate regiments and corps. Those from Scotland should all wear the plaids, so as to let them predominate in their habiliments—of course, we would send those stupid plumed caps to the right-about, and adopt the Scotch bonnet; but the plaid of each clan should find its place in the British army; and those noble distinctions of old feudal manners should never be done away with. The Irish regiments ought also to have their distinguishing colours; and as green seems to be the poetical tint of the Emerald Isle, there is no sound objection to the adoption of that hue for the base of the Irish uniform. Irish soldiers will fight like devils in any uniform, or in no uniform at all, as has been seen on many a gory field; but if the use of green can awaken one thought of national glory—one kindly recollection of "dear Erin" in their hearts—then let the gallant spirits from the western isle lead their headlong charges in the tint that haunts their imagination. Do we want them to have some red about their coats?—they are always willing to dye them with their best blood. And even the Taffies—the quiet, sedate Taffies—for "she is good soldier, Got tam, when her blood is up"—why should not they have some national uniform, to remind them of the blue tints of their native mountains and deep vales? Children of the mist and the wild heath, the natural rock, and the lonely lake—the glare of our Saxon red is too brilliant for them; let them wrap their sinewy limbs and fiery hearts in pale blue, and grey, and white—and so let them enter the bloody lists, where they will hold their ground by the side of the three other nations, and bear away their share of military glory.

A few words on the navy, and we have done—and only a few words; for we have nothing to say, but to give unqualified praise. In the habiliments of our jolly tras—God bless 'em!—utility is every thing, ornament nothing. They are clad just as they should be; and yet, on gala days, they know how to make themselves as coquettish as any girl on Portsmouth Downs. There is no greater dandy in the world, in his peculiar way, than your regular man-of-war's man. The short jacket, and the loose trousers, and the neat pumps, and the trim little hat, and the checked shirt, and the black riband round his neck—he is quite irresistible among the fairer portion of the creation. Or in a stormy night, with his pilot coat on, at the lonely helm, and his northwester pulled close over his ears, and his steady, unflinching eye, and his warm, lion-like heart within—the true sailor is one of the noblest specimens of man. He that is fierce as a bull, and yet tender-hearted like a young child—the greatest blasphemer on earth, and yet the most religious, or even the most superstitious, of men—he is not to be tied down by the rules of aesthetics, like a land-crab. His home is on the sea, as somebody has said or sung; he has nobody there to see him but himself, (if we may be excused the bull.) What does he care for dress? Only look at him standing by his gun, when broadside after broadside is pouring into the timbers of some sanguinary Yankee or blustering Frenchman. What is his uniform then? Let them declare who have seen that most awful of human sights, a great battle at sea; but let them not whisper it in ears feminine or polite.

To the officers, we will only add a word—let them eschew all hats and short coats, and keep to their caps and frocks. This is their proper dress. Let them keep themselves warm, comfortable, and ever ready for service. Never let them face their coats with red again. The old blue and white against all the world, say we! And let the soldiers take a leaf out of the sailors' books, and remember that utility, though accompanied by plainness, is far more consonant to the laws of aesthetics than unmeaning ornament or erroneous form.



GOETHE TO HIS ROMAN LOVE.

ATTEMPTED IN THE ORIGINAL METRE.

Lass dich, Geliebte, nicht reu'n dass du mich so schnell dich ergeben! Glaub'es, ich denke nicht frech, denke nicht niedrig von dir. Vielfach wirkten die Pfeile des Amor; einige ritzen, Und vom schleichenden Gift kranket auf Jahre des Herz, Aber machtig befiedert, mit frisch geschliffener Scharfe, Dringen die andern ins Mark, zunden behende das Blut. In der Heroischen Zeit, da Gotten und Gottinnen liebten, Folgte Begierde dem Blick, folgte Genuss der Begier. Glau'bst du er habe sich lange die Gottiun der Liebe besonnen, Als in Idaeischen Hain einst ihr Anchises befiel? Hatte Luna gesaeumt den schonen Schlaefer zu kuessen,— O, so hatt' ihm geschwind, neidend, Aurora geweckt! Hero erblickte Leander am lauten Fest, und behende Stuerzte der Liebende sich heiss in die nachtliche Fluth. Rhea Sylvia wandelt, die fuerstliche Jungfrau, der Tiber Wasser zu schopfen, hinab—und sie ergreifet der Gott. So erzengte die Sohne sich Mars! Die zwillinge tranket Eine Wolfin, und Rom nennt sich die Fuerstin der Welt.

Rue it not, dear, that so swiftly thy tenderness yielded thee to me— Dream not again that I think lightly or lowly of thee. Divers the arrows of Love: from some that but graze on the surface, Softly the poison is shed, slowly to sicken the heart; Others, triumphantly feather'd, and pointed with exquisite mischief, Rush to the mark, and the glow quivers at once in the blood. In the heroical time when to Love the Deities yielded, Follow'd desire on a glance, follow'd enjoyment desire. Deem'st thou the parley was long when Anchises had pleased Aphrodite, Catching her eye as she roved deep in the woodlands of Ide? Or that if Luna had paused about wooing her beautiful Sleeper, Jealous Aurora's approach would not have startled the boy? Hero had glanced on Leander but once at the Festival—instant Plunges the passionate youth into the night-mantled wave. Rhea in maidenly glee caroll'd down with her urn to the Tiber— But in a moment she sank mute on the breast of the God: Hence the illustrious Twins that were nursed in the den of the She-wolf; Worthy of Mars were the boys:—Rome was the Queen of the World.

P.M.

EPIGRAMS.

ANACREON'S GRAVE.

Wo die Rose hier blueht, wo Reben um Lorbeer sich schlingen Wo das Turtelchen lockt, wo sich das Grillchen ergezt, Welch ein grab est hier, das alle Goetter mit Leben Schoen bepflanzt und geziert? Es ist Anacreons Ruh. Fruehling, Sommer und Herbst genoss der glueckliche Dichter, Vor dem Winter hat ihn endlich der huegel geschuetzt.

Here where the Rose is in bloom, the Vine and the Laurel entwining— Here where the Turtle invites—here where the Grasshopper springs, Whose is this grave in the midst, which the Gods with life and with beauty Thus have circled and decked?—This is Anacreon's Tomb. Spring, and Summer, and Autumn, the joyous spirit had tasted, And from the Winter he hides under this hillock of green.

THE WARNING.

Wecke den Amor nicht auf! Noch schaeft der liebliche Knabe Geh! vollbring dein Geshaeft, wie es der Tag dir gebeut! So der Zeit bedienet sich klug die sorgliche Mutter, Wenn ihr Knaebchen entschlaeft, denn es erwacht nur zu bald.

Waken not Love from his sleep! The boy lies buried in slumber; Go, and, while leisure is left, finish the task of to-day; Even as a diligent mother, who, seizing the hour as it passes, Works while her child is asleep—knowing he'll waken too soon.

THE SWISS ALP.

War doch gestern dein haupt noch so braun wie die Locke der Lieben, Deren holdes Gebild still aus der Ferne mir winkt; Silbergrau bezeichzet dir fruh der Schnee nun die Gipfel, Der sich im sturmender nacht, dir um den Scheitel ergoss. Jugend, ach, ist dem Alter so nah, durch's Leben verbunden Wie ein beweglicher Traum Gestern und Heute verband.

Yesterday's eve were thy peaks still dark as the locks of my loved one, When from a distance she looks fair and serene upon me; But, with a mantle of snow, at morn those summits were silver'd, Which the chill fingers of night sudden had spread on thy brow. Ah! how swiftly in life may youth and old age be united— Even as the flight of a dream yesterday link'd with to-day.

NORTH AND SOUTH.

Glanzen sah ich das Meer, und blinken die liebliche Welle Frisch mit gunstigem Wind zogen die Segel dahin. Keine sehnsucht fuehlte mein Herz; es wendete rueckwaerts Nach dem Schnee des Gebirgs, bald sich der schmachtende Blick. Suedwaerts liegen der Schaetze wie viel! Doch einer im Norden Zieht, ein grosser Magnet, unwiderstehlich zurueck.

Glitter'd the ocean around, in light the billows were breaking, Freshly, with favouring winds, glided our sails o'er the sea. Yet for the land of beauty I felt no longing; in sadness Backward my glances still turn'd towards the region of snow. Southward how many a treasure invites! but one, like the Magnet, Stronger than all, to the North draws me resistlessly back.



CHRISTMAS CAROL, 1845.

TUNE.—"Packington's Pound."

I.

"The intrigues of this month shall we e'er comprehend? Will the Dons, when the Parliament meets, give a clue? Will one Tory among them speak out like a friend, On the WHY and BECAUSE of this famous to-do? Is it really the case That the Whigs are in place, Because Peel, when his colleagues assembled, appall'd them By a cool proposition, To toss to perdition, Both the faith and the force that in office install'd them."

II.

Thus groan'd out a grumbler, all sulky and sour, But for Christopher's temper such trash was too much; And it soon made the malecontent quiver and cower, When he saw preparations for handling the Crutch. "Lay your croaking aside," The old gentleman cried, "Or I'll make you eat up each ungenerous word: Not our deadliest foe, Such injustice should know, And far less shall a friend be convicted unheard.

III.

"Come read here their Mottoes extracted from Burke For the Commoners,—here for the Peerage from Lodge; Say, can these be consistent with pitiful work, On a par with some Whiggish O'Connellite dodge? Though at present a cloud May the mystery shroud, Till secrecy's seal from their lips be removed; When the truth shall appear, It will all become clear, And the words here inscribed shall again be approved.

IV.

"Ne'er believe that Peel's noble INDUSTRIA Plann'd Aught design'd of its honours his fame to despoil, Aught but JUSTICE to INDUSTRY, JUSTICE to Land, To the loom and the ploughshare, the sea and the soil. His hand will still hold Straight, steady, and bold, The scales where our wealth and our welfare are weigh'd: Still though tempests may blow, And cross currents may flow, He will steer our good ship till at anchor she's laid."

V.

"But surely that terrible leader of Walter's Was not utterly void of foundation in fact. Was the Cabinet really not full of defaulters, And resolved for a time on that ruinous act?" "Cease, blockhead, to babble Your ganderlike gable: Could Repeal e'er be REASON CONTENTS ME with Graham, Could the NE NIMIUM Of good Gordon succumb, Or the Stanley's SANS CHANGER be changed into shame?

VI.

"With AVITO HONORE would Wortley turn tail, To his PRAESTO ET PERSTO is Binning untrue? Could the SPERNO TIMERE of Somerset quail, Or a Ripon with treachery blot FOY EST TOUT? Could the princely Buccleuch Stoop the star-spangled blue Of his Bellenden banner when Leaguers came on? Proved the Lion a jest On great Wellington's crest? Did his VIRTUS exude at the shriek of Lord John?

VII.

"Arthur falter'd?—I'll swallow such inpudent flams When the ears of the sow yield us purses of silk; When there's no Devil's Dust in the Cotton Lord's shams, And the truck-master's pail holds unmystified milk. Not a Tory, I swear, Will be forced to declare In the face of the Nation's assembled Senatus. That from duty he shrunk, Or once felt in a funck About Cobden, and Bright, and some rotten potatoes!

VIII.

"We shall see them again, even now or erelong, Upon Wisdom and Equity taking their stand, Calm, able, and upright, harmonious, and strong, In peace and prosperity ruling the land. Firm, faithful, and free? What they say they will do— No Right unprotected, no Wrong unredress'd; While writers of Letters And all their abettors Stand in swaggering impotence caught and confess'd."



THE CRISIS.

The announcement that the Peel Ministry had resigned was received by us, as we believe it was by the nation at large, with feelings of sincere and solemn regret. We do not know that any Cabinet has existed within our memory whose retirement was wished for by so few, and deprecated by so many among all classes of men. We have doubted the policy of some of its measures, and more than doubted the propriety of others. But we have never ceased to respect the energy, the ability, and the honesty of the great men composing it; and have always felt that in those points on which we could not agree with them, they were entitled to a generous forbearance, due to their responsible and arduous position, as the ministers who have most strenuously and most successfully endeavoured to solve the problem, how the government is to be carried on under the Reform Bill. The disappointment of some expectations among a powerful and prominent part of their supporters had diminished the enthusiasm, and divided the feelings, of the party who mainly contributed to bring them into power. But, on the other hand, it should not be forgotten, that they equally disappointed the adverse expectations, and ultimately gained the confidence of a large, and not unimportant, portion of the country, who for years had been taught to believe, that the accession of Conservatives to power would commence a new era of warfare, oppression, profusion, and corruption. Let us look fairly at some of the practical and palpable facts of the case—at some of the most conspicuous features of public affairs, during their administration. AGRICULTURE has flourished, and agricultural improvement has advanced in an unprecedented degree. COMMERCE has plumed her wings anew, and added other regions to her domain. PUBLIC CREDIT has been supported and advanced, and the revenue raised from an alarming and increasing depression. PEACE has been universally maintained abroad, and agitation rendered powerless and contemptible at home. The POOR have been contented and employed, and not a murmur has been heard against the authority of the Crown, or the principles of the Constitution. These unmistakable results have been felt by all men, and all have confessed, in their hearts, that however they may have been offended with minor blemishes—whether by the short-coming, or by the excess of ministerial liberality,—the great purposes of government have been achieved by the ministry now dissolved, and they will frankly acknowledge with ourselves, that we shall not soon look upon its like again.

We know nothing of the causes that have led to this memorable and momentous event, except that apparently differences of opinion prevailed among the members of the Ministry in reference to the corn-laws. We shall not believe, until we hear it from their own lips, that any portion of the Cabinet have advocated any scheme fraught with danger and injustice to the best interests of the country: nor shall we indulge in any conjecture as to the real nature of the policy that may have been under discussion, where conjecture must be so vague, and where it must so soon give place to authentic information. We shall merely say, that any measure calculated to place agriculture and industry generally, in a disadvantageous and defenceless position, must have met with our unfactious, but firm, opposition. If ever the day should come, when protection, by common consent, were to be withdrawn, truth compels us to declare, that there is no one by whose hand we should desire to see that painful and dangerous operation performed so much as Sir Robert Peel;—not because we should be insensible to all the awkward and painful embarrassments of such a change of course; but simply, because we are bound to say, that there is no other man of whose knowledge, skill, and sagacity we have the same opinion. By none we think could the fall be so much broken, or the transition made so smooth, or so little injurious. Certain it is, that a measure of total and immediate abolition from the Whigs, incompetent and incapable as they have been proved, would be a calamity of which the magnitude can scarcely be estimated by the most gloomy imagination. We are far, however, from contemplating the necessity or possibility of such a policy from any Ministry whatever.

We take our stand upon the principle of protection to national agriculture and industry, in the existing and peculiar circumstances of the country. We do not love restrictions for their own sake, or desire any protection by which nothing is to be protected. But we think that protection is demanded by the exigencies of the whole community, and to that extent and on that ground we advocate its preservation for the general good. We shall not enquire at present how far the amount or the form of that protection may be modified. That may no doubt be a varying question, of which the discussion is to be controlled only by the grave consideration that its too frequent agitation is a great evil, as inevitably unsettling important rights and arrangements. But if it be thought that the rapid progress of events in this railway age admits or requires a relaxation or re-construction of existing restrictions, we are prepared candidly to consider any specific plan that may be tabled, and to weigh deliberately the amount and kind of protection that may now be necessary to preserve our status quo, having regard to the facilities of transit, the discoveries of science, the progress of improvement, the increase of population, the abundance of money, and any other elements which may be alleged as to a certain extent emerging since the last adjustment of the scale, and having special regard also to any alteration in the distribution of taxation which may accompany the proposal for such change. We do not see our way to such a change. We do not recognise its necessity; but we think it unbecoming the position occupied by those who concur in our principles to offer a blind or bigoted resistance to any discussion of a practical matter, which must always depend greatly on surrounding circumstances and complex calculations. Far less shall we here enquire whether the time is soon or is ever to arrive when all protection is to cease. In politics, as in other things, the absolute words of "always" or "never" are rarely to be spoken. It is sufficient for us to say, that the period when such a revolution ought to take place has not as yet been presented to our minds as an object of present and practical contemplation.

Let us unite, then, in support of these national principles with a calm, candid, and temperate firmness, demanding a just and fair protection, so far and so long as it is needed to keep our soil in cultivation, and to foster those improvements, which cannot be carried on without the prospect of a due return, and by means of which alone, if ever, the necessity of protection may be superseded, or its amount diminished. Let us oppose any rash or undue alteration, from whatever quarter it may come; but, above all, let us resist to the uttermost the attempts of selfish Leaguers and the more reckless portion of the Whigs, whose interested or unprincipled policy would overlook all those large and deep-seated considerations, which in every view require so much management, and such nice computation, before any thing can be done in so momentous a matter as the providing permanently for a nation's food, and the development of a nation's resources with a due regard to those various interests which seem often to be conflicting, but which, in a just point of perspective, are ultimately identical.

Our pain in contemplating the loss of one ministry, is not alleviated by our anticipation of the ministry that is expected to succeed. The rash and presumptuous man who has been called to take office, does not possess, and his character, so far as hitherto known, is not calculated to command, the confidence of the British nation. We could not look back upon the crude projects and unscrupulous practices by which the last Whig ministry disgraced their office and endangered their country, without a feeling of the deepest alarm—if we believed it possible that a repetition of them would now be tolerated. What is to be the character and course of our new rulers? Independently of the corn-laws, what is to be their policy as to Ireland, as to foreign affairs, as to domestic finance? Is the Popish Church to be endowed in the sister kingdom? or is the Protestant Establishment to be overthrown? Is repeal to be openly patronized, or only covertly connived at? Is Lord Palmerston to be let loose on our relations with other powers, and to embroil us, before six months are over, in a quarrel with France and a war with America? Is our revenue to be supported to the level of our expenditure, or is a growing deficiency to be permitted to accumulate, till our credit is crippled, and our character branded with almost Pensylvanian notoriety? Is the country prepared for such enormities as these, or for the risk of their being attempted? We hope not: we think not. We feel assured that the very contemplation of their possibility, would make the nation rise in a mass, and eject the imbecile impostors who have already been so patiently tried, and so miserably found wanting.

Then, as to the corn-laws, is the new minister to adhere to his last manifesto, or has he used it merely as a lever for opposition purposes, to be laid aside, like some implement of housebreaking, when an entry into the premises has been effected? That attempt will scarcely be tolerated by his own supporters. Then how is he to carry his measure? With the present House of Commons, he cannot hope to do so, nor can he entertain that anticipation from any dissolution, except one carried on under such circumstances of unprincipled agitation, as would convulse the country, and prove fatal to commercial credit and prosperity.

But suppose he had the power, how would he use it? Would his measure be such as would immediately throw any considerable portion of land out of cultivation? That seems to be the hinging point of this corn-law question; and it is one on which the "total and immediate" men are more evasive, in public discussion, than on any other, though privately such of them as understand the subject, are fully aware of its bearings. If the proposed scheme would not attain or involve the result of throwing inferior soils out of culture, what good would it do to the League and their friends? For, strange to say, when the matter is probed to the bottom, the battle for which the League are truly fighting is directed to the great national end of laying waste inferior land. It is only by lowering rents and prices that they expect benefit, yet it is as clear as day that rents are dependent on the comparative value of the highest and lowest grades of the land in tillage; and if prices fall, those lands that barely pay at the present rates must cease to be cultivated. Read any of the more open and outspoken repealers. Take up the little tales of Miss Martineau, one of the most able and honest of her sect, and see how completely the object is to get rid of the expense attending the cultivation of inferior land. If that object is not attained by total and immediate repeal the whole discussion is a delusion. But if Lord John's proposed measures will throw lands out of cultivation, to a large extent, what provision is to be made to avert the inevitable evils that must ensue? How is the surplus population to be supported that will thus be thrown loose on the market of labour? How are the burdens to be provided for that the land thus disabled has hitherto borne? Are the imposts on agriculture to increase while its returns are to diminish? or is the old Whig expedient to be resorted to, of raising that very tax which they have resisted and denounced? Are all customs-duties to be abolished, and is the deficiency to be supplied by having the property-tax aggravated to whatever multiple the account may require? What safeguards or palliatives are to be devised to prevent the PANIC likely to ensue from so vast and so sudden a revolution; in which, under the instant diminution of rents and precariousness of prices, every mortgagee will be driven in desperation to recur upon his debtor, and every landlord upon his tenant; while the whole landed interest, high and low, though chiefly, no doubt, the middle and smaller proprietors and tenants, will be compelled to curtail their expenses to the lowest sum, and those who have already but a narrow margin of surplus, be reduced to beggary and ruin.

But would this confusion and distress affect the landed interest alone? No; the same alarm which involved that interest in ruin, would soon extend to manufactures, by striking at their foundation, CREDIT. Already, from a singular and unhappy combination of causes, a period of restricted circulation and of high interest for money, has begun to follow on one of unlimited accommodation: distrust seems ready to take the place of confidence: gigantic schemes in progress are paralysed or threatened with abandonment: the country appears to be trembling on the brink of one of those commercial crises which from time to time, and unavoidably, arise out of the spirit of speculation. Let but this additional element of confusion—the distress of the agricultural classes, and all that depend upon them—be thrown into the already wavering scale, and who can pretend to estimate the amount of ruin which a week may produce? The paradise of free-trade in corn may indeed be obtained, but it will be reached through the purgatory of a general bankruptcy.

But is free-trade to be confined to corn? Are the agriculturists alone to be deprived of protection, the manufacturing interests retaining the advantage of those protecting duties which exclude the competition of foreign markets? That is plainly impracticable. The silk, the wool, the iron, the manufactures of the Continent—the "main articles of food and clothing," according to Lord John Russell's letter—are also to be admitted into our markets at rates with which native industry cannot contend. Is this likely to raise wages, or to keep them as they are? Will it better the condition of the working classes? Or is the condition even of the higher classes in the mercantile circles to be made more comfortable by that immediate increase of the income-tax, which must be imposed, to balance the loss of revenue arising from the deficiency of our customs, if national faith is to be preserved, or the government of the country conducted. In every view of the case, and to every interest in the state, we believe that absolute free-trade, such as appears to be contemplated by the late leader of the Whigs, would be fraught with ruin. The letting loose of such a storm upon the State, with the hand of Lord John Russell to hold the helm, is a contingency from which we believe the very boldest will draw back.

But we feel no apprehension of such a result. There is now no democracy to be fooled into a new excitement in favour of a Whig ministry, or to be cheated by a cry of cheap bread, counteracted as it must be by the contemplation of lower wages, and an increased competition in the labour-market. The middle classes, again, and all who have any thing to lose, are too wise to hazard the prosperity of the last four years, by supporting the men to whose ejection from office that prosperity is attributable.

We should, at the same time, act with a want of candour and frankness towards our agricultural friends, if we did not direct their attention to another aspect of the case. If it be true, contrary to our own hopes and convictions, that repeal is inevitable, every thing depends on the TIME and MANNER of effecting it. There is a inestimable value attending every year of continued protection that can yet be gained. Even a comparatively short period might be of infinite importance in completing those great improvements now in progress, which will raise the available fertility of so large a portion of our soil, but which must instantly stop, if protection be suddenly withdrawn. It is not in our power to see far into futurity, but every delay is precious, as enabling us better to meet the demands of public necessity, and to stand a competition with foreign soils, if that competition must ultimately be entered upon without legislative aid. How infinite, too, the difference of any change produced WITH A PANIC, and WITHOUT ONE! There may be various arrangements, moreover, which, if boldly and equitably made, might possibly go to place our protection on a footing nearly as firm, and not so likely to be assailed. On all this, however, we suspend our judgment for the present, remarking merely that we are not prepared to quit our present amount and plan of protection without DEMONSTRATION that we cannot fairly or prudently retain it.

In the meantime let us hope and struggle for the best, for the maintenance either of the present law, or of a scale substantially equivalent. If that fails us, let us aim at the next best arrangement; and by a firm and temperate course, we need not at least despair of averting that overwhelming confusion and wide destruction of property that would inevitably follow from the nostrums of desperate and designing men, devised and conducted with an equal absence of wisdom and of honesty.

A single word of earnest admonition in conclusion. The next few months or weeks must decide one important practical question, which we think has been unfolding itself silently before the minds of considerate men for the last few years, and which, whether they will or no, men of all opinions must weigh well, with the deliberation due to their own safety and self-interest, and with that freedom from personal pique or party spirit which the emergency demands. We are far from pinning our faith to individual characters, or thinking that the welfare of the state can be wrapped up in the fortunes or progress of a single mind. But still the question will recur, whether, in the existing state of the country, and when all circumstances are balanced together, Sir Robert Peel is not the statesman of the day, as being at once the most Conservative and the most Liberal minister whom the opposite and conflicting forces in operation in this great country are likely to suffer or submit to. He may not be so tenacious of certain points as some would wish, or so lavish of concession as may be wished by others. But we speak of him on the one hand as witnesses to the fact, that his past measures, though calculated to excite apprehension, have been found, by experience, to carry with them no detriment to agriculture, or to any other great interest in the country; and, on the other hand, in the confident anticipation that nothing has recently occurred in his proposed course, that will not, in due time, be fully and satisfactorily explained. With these views of Sir Robert Peel's conduct, we cannot avoid asking, whether when we take him all in all, and appeal to the standard of practical good sense and prudence which wisdom will alone employ in such a momentous discussion, there is any other man now in the field, or likely to appear, to whom all parties can look so confidently, as an equitable and safe arbitrator of our national differences? If there is such a man, let him be pointed out. Sure we are that it is not Lord John Russell.

We had written thus far, in the belief that the Whigs, though after some coy, reluctant, amorous delay, would succeed in forming a sort of government—a task which we were sure Lord John Russell would attempt. That result seems now more than doubtful, and we close this article in the anticipation that a Conservative cabinet may possibly be again in power, before these pages meet the eyes of our readers. We rejoice at the prospect, and the country will rejoice. Good measures from good men is the best consummation of political well-doing, as it is certain that dangerous measures from dangerous and desperate men, is the most fearful political evil. In any view our friends have a plain course. It is, to adhere to their principles with a firm, yet prudent, determination of purpose—to hope and believe the best of their leaders and party—and to await patiently, and receive candidly, the elucidation of those things that have hitherto been a mystery; and, as to which, as it was impossible to make any explanations, so it was unjust to pronounce a decision. We earnestly pray that, whether in power or in opposition, the meeting of Parliament will see among our great Conservative statesmen, and their followers throughout the country, including the new adherents whom the rashness and recklessness of our opponents have necessarily gained for us, that solid union of opinion and vigorous co-operation of action, on safe and sound principles of legislation, which can alone terminate the CRISIS and avert its recurrence.

THE END