IV. DISSENTERS.-Why-since the Test and Corporation acts have been repealed, it is evident that these people have no sort of existence in the country. They used to make a rumpus once upon a time, but now it is found out that it was only like the hollow rumbling of an empty cask. As, therefore, I do not think that you can be engaged on a dissenting paper, I have no advice to offer for your conduct of one. Baines in Leeds-the Baines whom Cobbett used to call the great Liar of the North-makes something out of his Mercury, and has got himself into Parliament, and his son into a snug birth by means of it; but I think he is the only one, and he is rather flaring down in dissent. If, however, there be so rare a bird as another elsewhere, and that you are engaged upon it, you must talk about the tythe-eating church-be smart upon bishops and doctors of divinity talk about the sufferings of the Covenanters the horrible injustice of believing in the Thirty-nine Articles -puff Baxter, Doddridge, and other luminaries of dissent (sink all the scandal about the latter-named divine)-if there there be a martyr like John Thorogood doing martyrdom at the rate of fifteen shillings a day, while he could not do cobbling at a higher rate than fifteen shillings a-week, be pathetic upon his unheardof calamities-abuse the Church of England on account of its approximation to Popery, but praise Popery itself on account of its hatred to the Church of England-if there be any blackguard story respecting a clergyman, publish it in your most conspicuous type, taking care of course to set it forth as the ordinary conduct of the whole body. I cannot suggest any thing more specific. After all it is a bad hunt, unless you mean to turn preacher, which perhaps you do. In that case, you will make the thing fit. Your congregation will take in your paper, and you will take in your congregation. In other circumstances you will be outdone by the dissenting ministers, who will naturally hate you for interfering with their business. If one among them suspects that you are inserting your thieving hooks into their meal-tub, they will denounce you as the Uzziah who touched the ark with unconsecrated finger, and do their best to palsy your hand. Not a sixpence will they let you sack, Tobias not a sixpence. It is against their interest. I have in my time seen chaps emerge from Hoxton as lean as hoppoles, shirtless as pump-handles, and as ragged as scarecrows, with stomachs that would digest a paving stone, and bellies close compressed against the spine, who, after a year's settlement in a thriving neighbourhood, appeared in glossy suits of ample broadcloth, in well-developed linen, and paunchies bursting the buttons of their breeches. All this done by preaching-by being the schoolmaster at home-by being the best private instructors. How, then, can they be expected to tolerate the man of writing-the schoolmaster abroad-the best public instructor, whose supremacy might in all probability lead to a return to original lankness and nudity. The idea is absurdand, in point of fact, we never do see any dissenting congregation in which two stars are allowed to shine. As to your editing an anti-dissenting paper, in that case your task is easy enough. You have only to print what they say of one another, and any other topic or species of abuse is needless. V. EDUCATION.-All parties now are agreed, or at least they pretend to be, as to the great merits of educating all and sundry-therefore, though you may think the whole affair humbug from beginning to end, don't say so. Quote Shakespeare "Ignorance is the curse of God, Knowledge the wing wherewith we fly to Heaven," and the last return of the Old Bailey, in which, out of 368 persons convicted, 159 only could read and write, 173 read, but not write, and of the whole not more than seven or eight who could write in such a manner as to be deemed fit for the situation of dramatic critic to the Examiner. If you are Ministerial, praise Lord John Russell and the National Board of Education. Talk much of liberality, freedom of opinion, and the necessity of the supremacy of the Roman Catholic priests over the youthful mind of Ireland. If on the other side, say that Education is nothing unless based upon religion, and address a series of letters to Sir Robert Inglis. On the whole, this is an easy topic, but it is hard to say any thing piquant about it. You will have in every town some journeyman educationist who will relieve you of the task, by sending you a couple of co lumns of correspondence every week, "He who rules freemen, should himself or, as Doctor Johnson read the line, so he who talks of education should °66 "Sardanapalus The King, and son of Anacyndyrages, You may observe that this sentiment proves him to be a man of no education, else he would have given a very different line. He would have said, as many others have said since his time, "Instruct the poor,-their food's not worth a filip." Owing to his want of being educated, he kept disreputable company, who never had conversaziones, or soirées, or reunions of philosophical discussion, or never attended any of Dr Lardner's lectures. If he had been duly cultivated in time, and taught to read the works of the noble poet who has made him the hero of a tragedy, or those of his friend, Mr Moore; if he had possessed the means of being able to peruse Don Juan, for example, or the poems of Thomas Little, it is highly probable that he would never have been overthrown by the arms of Arbaces the Median, and the empire of Assyria might be flourishing to this hour, and the emperor offering his mediation between Mehemet Pacha of Egypt and the youthful [July, Sultan anti-Malthusianizing in Con stantinople. A flourish of this kind generally produces a good effect: the ladies will call it " sweet." VI. FACTORIES.-Of course, if you Of 'prentice sacrifice, and parents' tears, "Factory king, besmear'd with blood The childrens' cries unheard that pass d To his grim overseer." On one side appeal to a liberal and air, would support the factory system if his benevolent heart suspected any of the Trollopian horrors. Ods, goose-and-giblets, I should rather think not. On the other hand, would the red Milesian, Feargus O'Connor, now incarcerated in York Castle and steeped in the bitterest waters of Jordan, rouse up the thunders of his eloquence to blow away the millowners with a shout more awful than that which "Vexed Syclla bathing in the sea that parts Calabria from the hoarse Trinacrian shore?" from the office. I have still much to observe on the remaining twelve heads of my political cyclopædia, which I shall impart with as much brevity as I think properly consistent with a full understanding of the business. As I said at the beginning of my letter, I am very doubtful that this will reach you; for, though Doctor Franklin once received a letter which was only directed Dr Franklin, America, yet I think, if I directed mine Tobias Flimsy, Esq., &c. &c. there would not be the same certainty of its coming to hand. Indeed I think a man of your modest and retiring habits would be sorry to find yourself so conspicuous as to render it so easy to reach your place of domicile. No, Tobias, you have chosen the course which Horace desired for himself the "Securum iter, et fallentis semita vitæ." "The path secure, where bailiffs never come, bum;" -I do not know what is so often cramming Milton into my mouth, but, as I shall remark by and by, he is a famous fellow to quote-unless the ery against the factory system arose to heaven, and Feargus thought it necessary to send his after it, in order to give it a shove upwards. On the whole, it is a good question for both sides to write upon: here you have protection of infants, maternal sorrow, waste of youthful life, deprivation of youthful innocence, horrible atmosphere, horrible toil, horrible morals, every tiring That line of march which best deceives a in short horrible, horrible, horrible; and there you are furnished with commerce of the country, England raised to power and glory by manufactures, philanthropic masters, prosperous children, hatred of cant and humbug, defiance of falsehood-and much more besides, which will furnish both parties with materials of endless twines of controversy as long drawn out as the African tapeworm, perpetually unwound from the tortured interior of a slave-protecting settler in Freetown, -happy capital of that which once was Sierra Leone, but which now rejoices in the nobler epithet of Liberia. VII. FINANCE.-This, my dear Tobias, is the most- But the fact is, I am getting very short of paper, and cannot enter upon the subject of finance at this late hour of the night-in the present scarcity of paper, I mean. I wish you had left a few quires behind you; it would not have cost you any thing, as you might have abstracted it without difficulty as Francis, or some other learned person translates it. I have, therefore, chanced this letter-sending it through the cashier of the old office; and, as I know you are not in his debt, because he would not let you overdraw him, though you made not a few vigorous attempts, it is possible he may know something about you. Sally sends her best love. Is there any thing I can do for you? If you have dropped into any salary, you might, perhaps, let me have a little money. You may depend upon my applying it with the greatest judgment and caution in your service. I am, dear Tobias, NESTOR GOOSEQUILL. P.S.-Be candid with me. I heard a whisper that you were gone in the direction of the north. Honour bright and shining, are you in Lancaster Castle? Answer by return of post-at all events as soon as possible. THE Volumes which Mr Alison has already contributed to the history of the last quarter of a century, have given unquestionable evidence of his qualities for his important task. A striking command of language, manly and constitutional principles, a conception at once clear and glowing, and a judgment at once chastised and elevated by religion, place him in the first rank of those who have recorded the wonders of the French Revolution. France has not been without her describers of this most extraordinary time; but she has still to accomplish the achievement of producing a historian. Her triumph is in animated anecdote, her writers are matchless conteurs, and her best modern histories are "mémoires pour servir." The national genius seems hostile to the comprehensive views and majestic strength of history. Nothing can surpass the finish and force of her pictures of the individual actors in her great public events, and to this extent the labours of the later French writers must have a value: they are exact, spirited, and brilliant; the great historian, like the great painter, will avail himself of their physiognomies, but he will form his groups from other recollections. He will shape the general action from loftier knowledge and by the application of broader principles, and the creative power which belongs to genius alone, will give the world that canvass which alone contains the mind of the age. We have read Mr Alison's previous volumes with a degree of pleasure which has certainly been unfelt by us in any other historical work. It has beguiled us from chapter to chapter with all the captivation of a noble romance, while its sound principles and its extensive information have given that romance the still stronger charm of the most magnificent of realities. The whole French Revolution was a drama. It had the beginning, middle, and end, and all within a period not too brief for human interest, nor too extended for human life. It was comprehended within a single generation. It had all the complexity, yet the clearness, the general design, yet the individual objects, the long alternations of hope and fear, the intricate adventure, and strophe. the dazzling and stupendous cata Living remembrance had period from 1809 to the close of 1812; History of Europe, from the Commencement of the French Revolution in 1789 to the Restoration of the Bourbons in 1815. By Archibald Alison, E.R. S. E., Advocate. Vol. VIII. to grow distinct, and the conclusion to shape itself, though still remotely and in clouds, to the general eye. The variety and multiplicity of the events is actually astonishing; and, compared with those of any equal du. ration in European annals, throws the tumults of the past totally into the shade. Whatever may be the perverse vigour of public disturbance among our posterity, it will not have the power of reproaching our age with inactivity in point of political con vulsion. These four years include the most important crisis of the war in the Peninsula:- Wellington's daring plans and successes in the central provinces, and the disastrous struggles of the native armies on the eastern coast, the singular changes of the Mohammedan world, the reforms of Mahmood, and the Russian war in Turkey, - the Russian and French war; the succession of sanguinary encounters at Borodino, Moscow, &c.,-and the memor able retreat and the general resumption of arms by the vassals of France, preparatory to the overthrow of the tyrant who had so long trampled upon them all. The volume commences with a brief but animated view of the mental condition of Europe during the age of George the Third. Of the immorality arising from the French literature of the day, it speaks with equal truth and eloquence : "In no age of the world has the degrading effect of long-continued prosperity, and the regenerating influence of difficulty and suffering on human thought, been more clearly evinced. The latter part of the eighteenth century, the reign of Louis XV., the Regent Orleans, and Louis XVI., were characterised by a flood of selfishness and corruption, the sure forerunners in the annals of nations of external disaster or internal ruin. Fancy was applied only to give variety to the passions-genius to inflame, by the intermixture of sentiment, the seductions of the senses-talent to obscure the Creator from whom it sprung. The great powers of Voltaire, capable, as his tragedies demonstrate, of the most exalted as well as varied efforts, were perverted by the spirit of the age in which he lived. He wrote for individual celebrity, not eternal truth; and he obtained, in consequence, the natural reward of such conduct, unbounded present NO. CCXCVII, VOL. XLVIII. fame, and in some respects undeserved permanent neglect. The ardent and more elevated, but unsteady mind of Rousseau disdained such degrading bondage. The bow, bent too far one way, recoiled too far another; and the votaries of fashion, in an artificial age and a corrupted capital, were amused by the eloquent declamations of the recluse of Meillerie on the pristine equality of mankind, the social contract, and the original dignity of the savage character. manity from the wrong source, traced Raynal, deducing the principles of huprophetic foresight, the establishments with persuasive fervour, but with no of the European in the two hemispheres; and, blind to the mighty change which they were destined to effect in the condition of the species, diffused those pernicious dogmas which have now blasted the happiness of the negro race both in the French and English colonies; and sought to deduce, from the commencement of the vast change destined to spread the Christian faith over the wilderness of nature, arguments against its celestial origin. Every department of thought, save one, was tainted by the general wickedness, and blindness to all but present objects, which prevailed. Man's connexion with his Maker was broken by the French apostles of freedom; for they declared there was no God, in whom to trust in the great struggle for liberning, that truth which is the seed of ty. Human immortality,' says Chanall greatness, they derided. To their philosophy man was a creature of chance, a compound of matter, a worm soon to rot and perish for ever. France failed in her attempts for freedom, through the want of that moral preparation for liberty, without which the blessing cannot be secured. Liberty was tainted by their touch, polluted by their breath; and yet we trusted it was to rise in health and glory from their embrace.' In the exact sciences alone, dependent upon intellect only, the native dignity of the human mind was asserted; and the names of D'Alembert, La Grange, and La Place, will remain to the end of the world among those who, in the loftiest subjects of enquiry, have extended and enlarged the boundaries of knowledge. "But more animating times were approaching fast: corruption had produced its inevitable fruits; and adversity, with its renovating influence, was about to pass over the moral world. The Revolution came with its disasters and its passions; its overthrow of thrones and E |