Now, Lord Melbourne is held up, by all parties, throughout the correspondence, as the chief adviser and guide in the whole affair. He is therefore answerable for this gross proceeding. Any thing more insulting to the queen's mother, or more unjust to the innocent party accused, cannot be conceived.

But further: Lord Melbourne openly and frankly takes upon himself_the sponsorship of the whole affair. That the only reparation that could be made -that reparation which was signally due to the injured lady and her family, -the dismissal of the male offender,-the ignorant, insolent, brutal slanderer -that this piece of justice, specifically demanded, is still refused, is his act. Even if we suppose, that in so acting he merely panders to royal caprice, that excuse forms no justification. A man of honour, appealed to by a motherand such a mother as the dowager marchioness-for the. merest act of justice, had but one course open to him. A moment's hesitation, even, would have been disgraceful. But he has not merely hesitated,- he has deliberately refused! And, whether as a nobleman, insulting, in cool blood, a lady of higher rank and better blood than his own, or as a man, outraging all gentle and manly feelings; that denial stamps his name with a depth and breadth of disgrace which has had no parallel in modern times. We know the miserable plea that is offered — his duty to his sovereign!-a pretext which gives the last finishing touch to the ignominy. Lord Melbourne, under the pretext of obsequiousness, is betraying his sovereign! What if he, caring little who is court physician, merely falls in with predilections which he finds to exist?-his duty, assuming

as he does to manage both the court and the cabinet, was to offer his sovereign honest and honourable counsel, and to enforce it by his strongest argument his tendered resignation. This was his plain path and duty. By shrinking from it, he may have spared himself and his mistress a momentary uneasiness; but he has extensively injured the queen in the affections of her people, and has irretrievably ruined his own fame.

3. The highest culprit we will not, because we cannot, name. There is an evident determination, throughout the published correspondence, to screen somebody from the just indignation of the irritated relatives of the deceased. We cannot, therefore, fix the charge on any party; and we shall not imitate the original error, by surmising guilt which we cannot prove. Another party, however, it is clear there is, and, shrouded within the innermost precincts of the palace, she still remains. And in this quarter the ultimate and the highest criminality must rest. Sir James Clark was the ready, and unhesitating, and unfeeling instrument; Lord Melbourne the sponsor-almost the bravo, called in to bully and to fight for his employers. But the moving spirit of the whole transaction,the real perpetrator of this deed of slow, ruthless, excruciating, torturing murder, still skulks behind! And there she must remain, we fear, for the present, acting the part of the evil genius of the monarchy. For, if this first specimen is to be taken as a sample of the future, a very few years will suffice to bring the throne of England into about an equality of comfort, strength, and security, with the sister sovereignties of Portugal and Spain !

works died more sunk into oblivion with their generation. The Florentine and the Frenchman, and something, too, of their respective fortunes, were bound up in their works; more, however, in the instance of Dante than of Rabelais. Therefore, he who chose to play the buffoon approaches nearer in the spirit to Homer and to Shakspeare than the author of the Divina Comedia. Dante created as well the language as the literature of his country. His style amongst authors is even as that of the Catholic king, Yo el Rey! His work is not alone Italian,-it is personal : Dante himself it is who sees, encounters, and describes every shape named in his astounding narrative. He has, with a forlorn audacity, seized the pen which dropped from the hand of the apostle. Yet, alas for human nature! we are made to feel that whether, vain mortal! he leads us through Purgatory, Paradise, or Hell, every good and evil passion of his heart is still in Florence, The poem, too, is the most unfeignedly melancholy that was ever yet composed it has the shadow of Dante's life upon it.

**All's cheerless, dark, and deadly!"

Ilis career was one of struggle, labour, unmitigated suffering. The haughty spirit was crushed to the dust. He had felt the bitterness of exile: magnus venerandusque cliens, he had felt the bitterness of the stranger's hospitality; and ob spite of fortune, beyond the imagination of the fervid satirist in the whirlwind of his passion, the descendant of the Frangipani he had stretched forth his hand on the highway, lest he perish, and eaten of the bread of charity. In truth, he passed through life "a man forbid." Love and ambition he had wooed in vain; and even to slake his burning heart in vengeance was denied him. The mortal of divine genius he that should have been honoured as the hero or the demigod, was driven from every shrine and sanctuary, as though he were of the profane herd. Procul, o procul este profani! And he died miserably! Yet, no! Death must have been a release-an ushering to that repose be bad never known on earth. Glory beamed from the poet's brow; but he had preyed upon his own heart. The bitterness was passed: it had been of the olden time; it was long before the

not saith

Jeremiah," for the dead; but weep ye sore for him who goeth forth from the place, and returns no more." There is no trace of withering passion or sorrow upon the seventy years of the Frenchman's existence; though he too was a statesman, and a vigorous champion in the lists of theology, where all combats are to the utterance. The sayings and doings of Gargantua and Pantagruel were not more different from the Divina Comedia than the lives of their respective authors. Yet neither is it possible to separate the idea of Rabelais the man from his works. Maître Alcofaribas is always present upon the scene, even though he omit an all hail! such as Beuveurs, très-illustres; et vous Goutteur, très-précieux! No inconsiderable portion of his work (I beg to be understood throughout as alluding to his romance only) has accordingly died with him and his generation, -more, however, with his generation than with him; for, allowing for the local and personal allusions we have lost, Rabelais still lives and plays a part in his own person and character, in all the better passages of the work. His life threw no shadow like to Dante's in its philosophy and its humour, it harmonised with a composition in which there is all manner of inspired wisdom, and a most learnedly libidinous frolic with absurdity, Not in any rage of party, or politics, or religious enthusiasm, or of aught else which might lead the calm and allsufficient mind astray, not in any excess of mental agony, when the soul, crushed by circumstances, renders forth divine emanations, did Rabelais write. And herein was he like to Homer and to Shakspeare, and superior to Dante. The inspiration arising from excitement, originating in or referring to mere self, must always have about it some taint of the earth, earthy." The poet who has never " penned his inspirations" for lack of adequate excitement; the poet (type of a much more numerous class) who, were it not for what the individual man had in this frail world of ours done and suffered, would, peradventure, have had no inspirations at all to pen, are both of an order far inferior to those in whom the principle of philanthropy and beneficence of love (as we apply it to the cherubim) is so strong, that in pouring forth the effusions of their divine