writing, but hero-worship is in a fair way to wipe out the debt. : The philosophic imperialists, indeed, and, we apprehend, imperialists in general, think very little of the free life of the spirit. With them organization is everything and life. nothing. For some of them, indeed, M. Comte has done away with religion and morals, in the ordinary sense, altogether, and left nothing but the science of social man-a subject eminently complex, but whose complexity observation on the positive method may at last unravel, and thus complete the circle of our physical knowledge with the chemistry and anatomy of duty and affection. The great Stagyrite, born when the moral life of Greece had almost fled, was a precursor of this school he, too, was, in ethics, a physiologist of the soul; and in politics, a constructor and conservator of systems, without the animating principle of political duty. To these theorists, conviction is a social force, to be regulated by their science with a view to the harmony and stability of the social system-not the need, the right, and the life of each individual man. A state of things in which an imperial beast or fiend made you worship him instead of God, is to them not revolting, though now it may be obsolete. Even the persecution of the early Christians for interfering with the world-wide harmony of sensualism, does not shock their reason, though it may be alien to the kindness of their hearts. They look with rapture on the vast tyrannic unity of the Roman Empire, and take no heed of the trifling consideration, that under that vast tyrannic unity the soul of man might be as the soul of a sheep. Here it is in great measure that they and Tacitus so much misunderstand each other. The republican Stoic was not content to see humanity rot in peace. The Jesuit will always love despotism. For him despotism For him despotism quenched half the Reformation, holds half Europe in darkness, and robs the other half of the aid of mutual light. Jesuitism and despotism have need of each other, and each knows it well. Free thought shakes alike false shrines and arbitrary thrones. It was sound advice : that was given to the Epicurean despot of Rome, to encourage the priest and augurs, and punish novelties in religion, for the same tended to sedition: and it was sound policy in a Nero and a Diocletian to persecute the truth that makes us free. It was deep wisdom in Napoleon I. to restore, as the stay of his dynasty,' that degrading falsehood which the noblest blood of France had been shed to put away and it is deep wisdom in the priests of that falsehood to glorify the memory of a saviour and protector who was a Mahometan to Mahometans, a German freethinker to German freethinkers, and in his heart perhaps the purest practical atheist that has ever played a part in history. While liberty was strong, the French priesthood blessed the tree of liberty with their lips, but it was with curses in their hearts: their adoration of the Messiah of Order is blasphemous but sincere. The voluptuary, too, will love a form of government which promotes dissipation in order to drug thought, and which not only brings a calm feelingly sweet' after the storms of moral and intellectual life, but graces that calm with imperial architecture and imperial shows. What does it signify to a gourmand and a mélomane that the government does not allow Luthers? What harm will it do to him if the next generation is deprived of truth and public morality, and perhaps even of the thirty pieces of silver for which truth and public morality are sold? An atheist in heart, if not in profession, what does he, the human animal of to-day, care for the fate of the human animals of to-morrow? The bright scene may change. The Saviour of Society may become a Nero; the 'true nobility' of the nation may become prætorians; the Jesuit may become an inquisitor, though now, occupied in struggling with more deadly forms of spiritual evil, he smiles on the voluptuary's unobtrusive creed. But by that time Apicius will have rendered back his grossness to the dust. Only men who believe in God and Spirit can live in the future of their kind. The stockjobber, again, adores a 1857.] The Friends of Despotism. power which, for the moment at least, protects his shares; which does not offend his morality or his public spirit; and which dazzles whatever is left in him of imagination with the splendid image of success. The stockjobber, we say, but not the merchant. Liberty is the only foster-mother of commerce; and commerce wafts liberty with all her sails. For the poor, and the advocates of the poor, if they desire a despotism, surely signs have been given in history as glaring as a sign in heaven. There is the long cry of misery which strikes on the historian's ear from Diocletian to the fall of Constantinople. There is the population of Spain, famished and decimated, as well as degraded, by Charles V. and his successors. There are the taille and corvée, the grasseating serfs and the dragonnades of Bourbon France. There are the bloody vagrancy laws of the Tudors. As to game preserving,' it was under a very civilized despotism and in face of a strong clergy, that the Prince de Charolais used to divert himself with shooting, not pheasants, but workmen on the roofs of houses, whose death-throes, as they fell, beguiled the sameness of a princely life. His pardon was easily obtained. The most Christian king, who had made incest the fashion, could not be hard on murder. Had the Prince de Charolais, however, been an ordinary person of quality, and not of the blood royal, he would probably have been exiled to his country seat. Had he been a peasant suspected of worshipping God in a way not patronized by Louis XV. and the Prince de Charolais, he would have been sent to die by slow torture in the galleys; and if he had resisted, he would have been broken on the wheel. Sociology (if that is to be its classical name) must be a science of experience and what experience shows that the rich and noble will act more conscientiously towards their dependents when they have made over their consciences to a czar; or that a czar amidst his courtiers will think more of those who are farthest from, than of those who are nearest to, his throne? The French freeholds, be they good 505 things or bad, were the gift of a republic, and not of an emperor. We know that some despots have learned the trick of appealing to the passions of the masses against intellect, at the same time that they appeal to wealth against the passions of the masses. But what has been done for the masses, except giving them back, in ostentatious largesses, a little of the money which is ultimately drawn from them in unobtrusive taxation, and sweeping off a good many of them to Cayenne? The population of France, it seems, has hitherto diminished under the 'tranquillity' of the Empire; though diplomatic journalism rationally hopes for a cessation of this sad effect from the continuance of its beneficent cause. On the other hand, whatever may be the shortcomings of English society, we may say without boasting, and we hold it mere reckless cynicism to deny, that great and real efforts are being made by the upper classes to improve the condition and the education of the poor; and the source of these efforts is the sense of individual responsibility, with a sincere religion and a free press. Individual responsibility is what a despotism is desired to supersede: a sincere religion is what a despotism never yet had: a free press is what a despotism never has endured and never can endure. The disappointment of wild political hopes, again, has driven some projectors to political suicide, and they offer to society the halter of their own despair. Society may thank them for their offer, and recommend them the gentle tonic of political duty. If writers on politics would speak not only of political systems, but of the self-command, the charity, the patriotism, the various and perpetual moral effort by which all conceivable systems must be sustained, there would be less hope and less despair in politics; since, if Abbé Sieyes is not conscious of the limits of his intellect, we are all more or less conscious of the infirmity of our will. If the Abbé, by a happy thought in his arm-chair, could have superseded political virtue, he would have done a great thing for humanity, and he would have done a greater thing if he could have superseded moral virtue by the same means. But it seems doubtful whether virtue of any kind is intended to be superseded here. If it is not, our hearts must not be desolate because the alembic of the political regenerator has produced a worthless mixture instead of gold; we must rest contented with the reformer's, instead of the alchemist's, reward. Let those who have tried to jump into the thirtieth century recoil to the despotism of the first; and because their bubble has burst, abdicate at the feet of a despot the dignity and the hopes of man. As to the courtier by nature and calling, he is only to be congratulated on having discovered a philosophic theory of venality and sycophancy; and on being enabled to lick the feet, not of a king, but of a 'crowned democracy,' and an existence necessary to God. A gentler and more amiable friend to despotism is the minor poet. Minor poets, like Celts, care much for persons and little for principles: it is in them a romantic weakness, but it would be weakness without romance in us to let their weakness guide the world. Great poets are also great men. Like other great men, they love principles; and though they are full of loyalty, it is only for that which is divine. They spring, like other intellectual and moral greatness, from freedom; and even when they have suffered from its infirmities and its excesses, they have been conscious of the element from which they spring. Despots patronize poetry. They desire that it should decorate their reign, and help to preserve the intellect of the nation from dangerous speculation. They foster it with judicious munificence, and even encourage the trembling Muse to soar to the most exalted of all themes. A Boileau, and even a Virgil (though Virgil with great diffidence) answers to the august call; but not an Eschylus or a Milton. Despotism had its day in the history of the world. It was necessary to bind together into nations, by force and blind loyalty, the first hordes of men. It was necessary, perhaps, to rid Europe of feudalism, though heavily did the nations pay in civil tyranny, and, what is worse, in spiritual tyranny for unity of government and law. Its recurrence is the natural and just penalty of nations among whom the power of self-control and self-government has been wrecked by demoralization and indulgence in political chimeras, and the passions of the animal have gotten the victory over the reason of the man. But in an England, such as England, with all her faults, still is, it would be an anachronism, a monster, and a crime. And so every sensible, virtuous, and religious Englishman instinctively feels, if he does not theoretically know. He feels, if he does not know, that in casting off political duty, and renouncing his heritage of freedom, he would be casting off and renouncing, not his own personal pride and independence, but that which to every nation which has become worthy to enjoy it, is the law as well as the gift of God. G. S. CROWS AND CHOUGHS. The crows and choughs that wing the mid-way air.-LEAR. BEFORE we rapidly pass in re view the minor branches of the Corvine family-not his who fought and conquered the Gallic giant with the help of his feathered ally, but the cadets of the family of that ally we must bestow a little more tediousness on its head, the great pantophagous representative among birds. Nay, when we consider the perfection of its organization, its longevity, its shrewdness, and its accomplishments, we should not be far wrong if we were to regard The Raven as the ornithic type. In Scotland he is not looked upon with the doubtful eye cast upon him by the Southron. North of the Tweed, he is rather a favourite with the shepherds and keepers, and with John Highlandman generally, on account of his daring enmity and feud with the Eagle; nor is he there dreaded as the harbinger of death-at least in the present day. To be sure, a wedding party don't particularly like him when he crosses their path; unless indeed he should be killed, and so made a good omen of. To be sure, too, the good Scotch housewives have no very affectionate regard for him. They know that he will, if he can, make free with their poultry-to say nothing of eggs; and notwithstanding the countenance shown to him by the shepherds and keepers, on account of his Eagle-driving alacrity, we more than suspect that, in the north, he is no more to be trusted with a feeble or sickly lamb than he is in the south, and that the sly old poacher not only robs the moorfowl's nest, but, not contented with eggs or chicks, occasionally helps himself to a full-grown red grouse. He may often be seen frolicking and throwing summersets heel-overhead, when sailing in the air at a great height, on a fine cloudless day. And though these tumbling feats, like those of the rook on similar occasions, may be sometimes due to his putting up his claw, when actuated by the irresistible * Red Grouse. VOL. LV. NO. CCCXXIX. impulse that compels every living thing to scratch where it itches, it will be quite clear to any close observer that these antics are, like those of the rook and of the tumbler - pigeon, also voluntary. Perhaps they may be classed with the love-pranks of the Knight of the Rueful Countenance. The geographical distribution of The Raven is most extensive. From those arid sands over which the colossal pair cast their shadows, and the tomb of Cheops still rises, as if to defy a burning sun, to the dreary regions within the Arctic Circle, ubi nulla campis Arbor æstivâ recreatur aurâ— nay, in all the four quarters of the globe, this species flourishes; and its habits appear to be much the same in every climate. The Rev. John White, brother to him of Selborne, and who seems to have had a spice of the same talent for observation, remarked that a pair of Ravens which, unlike the foolish man, had built their nest on the rock of Gibraltar, would endure no Vulture or Eagle near their procreant cradle, but drove them from the promontory with amazing fury. In Egypt it is protected for the same qualities that make the vulture cherished; and at Owhyhee it was held in great estimation. In Iceland the bird was dedicated to Odin, who, as the traditional history informs us, had two Ravens, which were let loose every morning to collect intelligence of what was going on in the world, and which, on returning in the evening, perched upon Odin's shoulders to whisper in his ear whatever information they might have collected; and even now, as we learn from Olafsen and Povelsen, the Icelanders entertain superstitious notions regarding the Raven: they be lieve this bird to be not only acquainted with what is going on at a distance, but also what is to happen in future. † Sir James Ross truly says This is one of the few birds that are capable of braving the severity of an Arctic winter and of enduring the scorching rays of a tropical sun with + Barrow's Visit to Iceland. L L out any change being produced in its plumage by the extremes of climate. Cuvier and other authors [Olaus Magnus among them] mention that in the north it is frequently found more or less white: we never saw anything corroborative of such an observation. It preserves its plumage and peculiar characteristics in every quarter of the globe. That there are white and pied varieties we shall presently see; climate, however, seems to have nothing to do with this. But if our gallant Arctic voyagers saw no white ravens, they saw that which must have fixed their attention till they discovered the cause, which was due to climate. During the winter, ravens with white rings round their necks were frequently seen. These collars proved to be frost-rings, caused by the accumulated incrustations of the vapour of their own breath.† Jack-God bless him!-is always tender-hearted at the right time; and one poor Raven that had lost its leg, either by the bitter frost or -it may have been-by a trap, seemed to know this instinctively, for he daily visited the ship, and never went empty away. On the barren grounds' the most intense winter cold does not prevent it from hanging on the herds of reindeer, musk oxen, and bison, which it follows, ready to take advantage of the ravages of beasts of prey, sickness, or accident. It is the companion of the hunter: no sooner has he killed an animal, than the ravens hasten from various quarters for their share; and they attend the fishing stations, where they display equal boldness and rapacity. The experienced native well knows this sign; and when he sees, from afar, a flock of ravens wheeling in small circles, pushes on in the hope of venison from a party of his countrymen, or of sharing with the wolves the earcase of some large quadruped. But it is not only where the carease is that the ravens, in flocks, are there also; solitary as the bird is, it seems to have its gatherings and convocations for some purpose or purposes altogether unconnected with food. The historian of Selborne saw a flock of forty-six over 'The Hanger.' Was this a partial migration? We know that in the Alpine countries of Central Europe, the ravens leave the wooded mountains in which they have enjoyed their summer, for the sheltered valleys in which they solace themselves during the winter. In the United States, they retire to the extreme south during severe winters; but at the first approach of milder weather, they return to the middle, western, and northern districts. The few which breed in South Carolina may be determined by the mountainous precipices, in which they securely rear their young.§ British hunter was as well attended In the old days of venerie, the by the Raven as he of the barren grounds : - There is a little gristle which is upon the spoone of the brisket, which we call the raven's bone; and I have seen in some places a raven so wont and accustomed to it, that she would never fail to croak and cry for it all the time you were in breaking up of the deer, and would not depart till she had it.|| We find, long before this, the corbyn bone' in the Boke of St. Albans: That is corbyn's fee, at the death he will be, sings Dame Juliana. Rare Ben' was not likely to overlook such an incident: Marian.-He that undoes him, Doth cleave the brisket bone, upon the So croak'd and cried for it, as all the huntsmen, Especially old Scathlock, thought it ominous. In truth the Raven had some right to his portion; for, in the days of the good yew bow, the fletcher' loved to wing his arrows with the raven's plume-fit feathers for a death-shaft. Nor was this the only use to which the pen-feathers of the + Third Voyage. Richardson. The Sad Shepherd. Il Turberville. |