this, also, would be accounted a question of life or death, or was it only after the defeat in committee that the minister informed his friends of his determination to resign in case they persisted in their opposition to his wishes? Observe, that we do not commend Sir Robert Peel for having made this question-at either_stage of its progressa vital one. It was not of importance enough so to be treated. Indeed, when the minister and his friends met, as we believe that they did, a day or two before going into committee, the question between them might have been decided by the toss of a penny, if they could find no more rational means of determining it. What did it signify whether the duty should be fixed at thirty shillings or at thirty-four? Only think of the prime minister of a great nation, who has undertaken, as he declares, to preserve the monarchy and the Church, staking his tenure of office on the flexibility of the House of Commons in reference to a point so minute as this. However, out of evil often comes good. Both the minister and the party must have learned their lesson now; and both must be insane if they fail to gather from it moderation, as well as wisdom, in regard to their future proceedings.

We have said elsewhere that the whole civilised world is in a state of transition, and that in this country, not less than elsewhere, men must make up their minds to witness events the possible occurrence of which would have been scouted as an idle dream by our forefathers. It is our firm persuasion, however, that unless there be sad mismanagement among those to whom the conduct of these changes is intrusted, they will all, when effected, tend to the promotion of the public good, and the perpetuity, as far as the term can be applied to human affairs, of the great institutions of the country. We fancy, too, that in the recent decision of the House of Lords, not to permit the suppression of the see of Bangor, symptoms of one of the most important of these changes are visible. There is no objection offered to the erecting of a new see at Manchester. On the contrary, all who spoke in favour of the retention of the Welsh see spoke

approvingly of the latter arrangement; only they were not willing that Wales should be deprived of the superintendance of a bishop in order that Lancashire might obtain it. Indeed they went farther. They recommended that the orders of the ecclesiastical commissioner should be carried out, as far as Lancashire was affected by them; and that a new bishoprick should be erected at all events. What inference do we draw from this? A very important as well as an obvious one: that the Church of England requires, and will ere long obtain, a much more extensive system of episcopal superintendance than is at present afforded to her. The Bishop of London resisted the proposal of Lord Powis, on the ground that Manchester must have a bishop at all events; and that if you consecrate him, yet retain a prelate in Bangor, there will be no seat for the former in the House of Lords. Was this argument conclusive? By no means. His lord

ship was assured that it would be better for the Church to have fiftyfour bishops, not one of whom should hold a seat in the House of Lords, than twenty-seven, each claiming and exercising his right to assist with his councils the upper house of parliament, and to become a consenting party to all laws ere they should pass. And this proposition was virtually affirmed by the defeat of the government, and of the ecclesiastical commission, and the retaining of Bangor as a separate see, without one word of advice having been offered as to the reversal of a decision long ago come to, that there should be a bishop of Manchester as well as of Ripon.

Here is a change of opinion with a vengeance! and it is the more remarkable that it has taken its beginning in the house where the bishops sit, that it has been advocated by several of the prelates themselves, and pronounced to be a good change, in spite of the resistance that was offered to it, not only by the Bishop of London, but by the Duke of Wellington. Nobody can believe for a moment that the matter will rest here. The first step is taken, and we are just as sure that it will be followed up by other and wider strides in the same direction

as we are confident that, in course of time, the whole of the laws by which our commercial dealings, both with foreigners and with our own colonies, are regulated, will be repealed, and others substituted for them. We do

not pretend to fix the period when either bishops shall be multiplied twofold in England, or the colonies treated in all respects as if they were so many Kents or Yorkshires. We merely give it as our opinion that it is in this direction that public feeling has set in, and that the party which is wild enough to oppose itself to public feeling-to a feeling in itself so just and reasonable at least as this will not only destroy itself, but will certainly endanger, perhaps destroy, the constitution which its members affect to defend, while all the time they are defending their own prejudices rather than their own in

terests.

And now, having described what we believe to be the real state of this country, as well as the tone of men's minds, and the objects towards which their views are directed, it remains for us to say something in reference to the line of policy which a wise minister will, under such circumstances, adopt, and a patriotic legislature sanction. To speak of change as an evil in itself is to speak nonsense. The whole course of nature is a course of change, but then nature brings her changes about gradually; so that they work out her great purposes without doing violence to the beings that are the objects of them. A wise minister will become, in this respect, nature's pupil. Never standing still, he will yet direct his onward march so warily, that the people over whose interests he presides will scarcely be aware of any change in the institutions under which they live, till they feel the good effects of his measures in the increased comforts or conveniences which arise out of them. On the other hand, a wise and patriotic legislature, a wise and patriotic party, will be ready to co-operate with the leader under whom it has placed itself in a spirit of mutual and manly confidence. There must be henceforth a great deal more of the give-and-take system in legislation than there ever was before in this country. The close boroughs

are gone, and with them all power of carrying on the queen's government as it used to be carried on under the Georges. Neither may the Conservatives disgrace themselves by appearing to act for so unworthy a purpose as the mere exclusion from office of a set of statesmen who happen to be the objects of their political or personal jealousy. Accordingly, there must be on the part of the minister a readiness to communicate out of doors with his parliamentary supporters on all subjects, and a disposition among them to receive such communications, not as if it were their business to detect in each proposed plan flaws or errors, but the reverse. If they trust the minister at all, they are bound to trust him wholly. If they do not trust him, let them say so, and the queen will find other ministers to serve her. But, for Heaven's sake, let us not have a repetition of these lovers' quarrels, which do not tend in public, any more than in private life, to strengthen the esteem either of parties or of individuals for one another.

Are we, then, contending that the Conservative party is bound to follow without remonstrance whereever Sir Robert Peel may require? We say no such thing. It were vain to expect in any party such an absolute surrender of the will of many to the will of one; and if the thing were attainable it is not to be desired. But why make choice of a leader at all, if, in every petty question that arises, each man is to exercise his own judgment, or indulge his own caprice? Can any community, can even a private family, be rightly managed on such a principle as this? Is it not one of the first requirements of the social state that individual humour shall be restrained for the public good? We do not, therefore, advise or expect that the Conservative members of the House of Commons shall become, in all cases, the mere affirmers of the minister's will. But let them choose better grounds of difference than have heretofore occurred to them. The time is coming when questions really important will be mooted. This very point of church discipline, for example, is from day to day making itself more and more

visible, nor will it surprise us to find that projects are entertained for the erection of a score of new bishoprics, for the redistribution of the funds of the present sees, so as to pro vide for the whole; and finally either for the entire removal of the bishops from the House of Lords, or the introduction into the body of the elective plan by which certain Irish bishops and Scotch peers are sent to act in behalf of their respective orders in the legislature. Now here is a ground of quarrel worthy to be fought over to the death. So, of course, would be any proposed abolition of the corn-laws, sudden and complete; but to fall out with the minister whom themselves have made, about matters of such comparative littleness as those which have recently divided Sir Robert Peel from his party, is pitiable. Our notion therefore is, and it seems to us to be in consonance with the dictates of common sense, that if a minister deserve the confidence of Parliament at all, it is precisely in the management of such measures as the late readjustment of the sugar-duties that he ought to be implicitly trusted. At the same time we would ven

ture to suggest, that where he finds his friends bent on obtaining some small triumph, Sir Robert Peel will do a wise thing if he concede it. Had he yielded a little, for example, on a recent occasion, he would have suffered no damage in the opinion of his friends; had he gone out, as it was rumoured that he proposed to do, he would have deserved the severest censure. The sugarduties question was not a ministerial question at all. It was a mere fiscal arrangement, liable, as all such are, to be sifted and turned in committee, if the committee care to waste so much time upon it; and to lose his temper, and talk of want of confidence, and threaten to resign because its details were in committee interfered with, was unworthy of the place which Sir Robert fills in the eye of the world and in general estimation. For the future, he must give as well as take, if he desire to work out those essential benefits to his country for which he has been raised up. And he will be able to do this with better grace now that his party have twice given proof that they are ready to make any sacrifice rather than force him to a resignation.

THERE are two great families of poets, —one of manners, one of description. It is, however, difficult to affix to either certain positive and unmistakeable marks of recognition. Traces of resemblance will continually perplex the eye in some unexpected harmony of feature or some startling identity of expression. It is almost impossible to map out the rich country of Imagination into separate provinces that shall never run into each other. The boundary-line, however anxiously and clearly indicated, will sometimes waver. The mountain region of philosophic eloquence and reflection will imperceptibly wind into the sunnier and greener slopes of pastoral life; and the splendid metropolis of epical dignity and triumph will stretch its sumptuous ar chitecture up to the grassy tombs of elegiac poetry. Theocritus tunes his pipe amid the exulting chorus of Aristophanes, and the plaintive accents of Simonides resound through the magnificent warfare of Homer. What bucolic ever rejoiced in a more restless interchange of light and shade, than may be seen chequering the turf under the trees of Shakspeare? Who shall say that tenderer tears of lamentation were ever wept than by the stern and rugged genius of Dante? One thing, at least, is certain,-the poetry of rural description is never

YOL. XXX, NO. CLXXVI.

the earliest poetry of a nation. The unworn buoyancy of life glows into action. It is the hardihood of the warrior, or the hope of the lover, that we see depicted upon the mental physiognomy of mankind in its natural barbarism, or its commencing stage of civilisation. The battle-song begins, and the pastoral terminates, the circle of poetical history. Ancient Greece produced no writer who could be said to establish his claim to the title of a true poet of nature, in the sense of describing her works with accurate and affectionate repetition. The feeling, indeed, was active, but not the utterance. The love of nature prevailed, but it was nature held in subordination to life; it was the landscape painted, not only to heighten, but for the sake of the portrait. To deny the pervading, though silent, influence of rural sentiment among the elder Greeks, would be to deny the existence of their very theology and superstitions. Keble adopts, while he translates, the famous verses of Wordsworth upon this subject. What were those sweet families of nymphs, with all their lovely kindred of Naiades, holding their courts in the fair palaces of crystal streams, or shining with a starlike radiancy from the clear depths of wells in the forests?-what were the visions of Pan, dreaming under

K