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able-give it an obsequious House of Commons, a venal House of Lords, and a corrupt Court-allow it all the wish to overstep the bounds of the people's freedom-and he fairly made his appeal from the King's Court at Windsor to the King's

Court at Westminster - there, in that temple of justice, he knew he should find imperishable the palladium of the constitution. Let the danger come from any quarter-let there be a vacillating House of Commons-a Parliament in which the people's representatives knew not their own minds, but voted one day this way by a narrow majority, and the next day voted in another way by an equally narrow majority-let the force of the constitution, thus left without equipoise, reside entirely in the House of Lords, and let the mixed monarchy of this country, the balance being destroyed, be converted into an aristocratical government-still, against all that the corruption of courts and the domination of the aristocracy could effect, he fled for protection to the judges, who would protect the subjects of the Crown against every oppression. Or, if the danger should come (as we might live to see it, though he thought the event

not likely) from the fury of democracy

if the pressure should proceed from the lower region of the body politic-and if the outrages of the multitude threaten to demolish the walls of the constitution, then he opposed to them as an impregnable bulwark the judicial system, against which, as against a rock, all the surges of ■ popular fury would dash, but would dash in vain," (hear, hear.)

And so also De Tocqueville and Chevalier, in their respective and un. rivalled works on the United States.* Public liberty, the integrity of the union, and the preservation of the constitution, are safe-they remarkso long as the independence of judges, and the consequent purity of justice, are not invaded and tampered with. Of late years the judges, in various of the states of the Union, have been made removable at pleasure, have been constituted durante bene placito, or for a term of years; and in this dependency of the judicial power, and consequent pliability or corruption, those profound observers discern, with

the increasing power and encroachments of the democracy, the subversion of the Union, the overthrow of free institutions, and the final establishment of a despotic authority. Of the Supreme Court of Judges of the Union, yet untouched in its high attributes, De Tocqueville says "Their power is enormous; but it is clothed in the authority of public opinion. They are the all-powerful guardians of a people which respects law; but they would be impotent against popular neglect or popular contempt." And such is the precise character of the position to which the administration of Lord Normanby degraded the judges and the justice of Ireland, and of whom his system, fairly followed out, would perpetuate the degradation.

Lord Normanby is now tranferred to the Colonial Office, from whence, after but a short probation, he is about to be somewhat unceremoniously deported, if report speak true, to a place more analogous to both heels and head -that of dancing attendance on the court, in a household capacity. He is dismissed as incapable, by Mr UnderSecretary Stephen of the same office, of whom Sir Francis Head has recorded, in an official despatch to Lord Glenelg, that he is a "rank republican:" an accusation sufficiently borne out by extracts from certain evidence of his before a Committee of the Commons on the affairs of Canada, not necessary to quote here, in which colonial revolution and separation are beforehandadvocated. That Mr Stephen, like most of the anti-slavery jobbers, is a renegade in politics and consistency, we can both believe and testify. But our generally well-informed contemporary of the Newcastle Journal, is incorrect in stating that Mr James Stephen, junior, now Colonial Under-Secretary, was ever Member of the Committee of the famous Constitutional Association of 1821 or 1822, in Queen Caroline's days. He was, we believe, a subscribing member of that association; but his brother

George it was, now, if we are not mistaken, Sir George Stephen, attorney-at-law, who was a member, and one of the most zealous, of that fireeating and liberal press-prosecuting committee, which decreed and had entered on its minutes, duly affirmed according to form, orders for about twenty-four prosecutions for libel at one time against various journals, of which not far from one-half were against the Times alone, some halfdozen against the Chronicle, and the rest various. That they were abruptly stayed, and never proceeded with was owing, not to the after scruples or improved liberalism of Sir George Stephen, Knight, the committeeman, or Mr James Stephen, the associator, whose loyal rage was unbounded at the check; but to the admonitions, the threats even, of one who, himself then of the press, chief defender of the association in the press, and once high in the Times himself, but then at bitter strife with it, held the rights of the press-those of his order to be sacred, and its excesses to be leniently construed-a noble oblivion of party feel ings and private animosities in the common cause. It has been with no small astonishment, therefore, that we have since witnessed the sudden trans. formation of the zealous anti-slavery Tory, Mr James Stephen, into a "rank republican" under-secretary, and of his equally thorough-going Tory brother into a Whig knight or baronet, and most obsequious correspondent and supporter of that same Times, formerly by him devoted to the vengeance of the harpies of the law. The elevation, as the conversion, of Mr Under-Secretary Stephen was, we presume, influenced by the same policy which has uniformly prevailed under the sway of the Whigs. They have ever preferred to pay off the foe, as the Romans in their decay bought off the Hun and Vandal, with gold instead of the steel of Camillus. In Canada we have seen the policy in operation on every nomination to office-in the elevation of Bedard and Vallières to the bench, treason-mongers both, less dangerous, only because inferior in talent to the arch-traitor Papineau, to whom, moreover, as to his great compeer in Ireland, the highest judgment-seat was likewise proffered, but honestly and consistently, at least, refused. So also in

the cases of Lord Durham, Turton, Buller, Chapman, and a host of other subordinate agitators-the weakly Cabinet has been found ever as prompt to offer terms as the patriots at market to close a bargain. To independent members like Mr Hawes, the grant of L.170,000 for his father-in-law, Brunel, in aid of the Thames Tunnel, of which Mr Hawes himself is a large proprietor, has not been deemed a bribe too magnificent; Mr Hawes could tell besides of other unpublished, because more private obligations. After liberality so splendid, Mr Spring Rice may surely be pardoned the Shannon grant of L.250,000 for improving his lands on that noble river, into a majorât worthy the peerage of which he is to be the founder, seeing that the Parliamentary allocation of the former L.250,000 had made his fortune only by half.

Among the memorable mementos of his passage through the Cabinet, and existence in the chrysalis state in the Commons House, previous to the expansion into the gaudy butterfly of the peerage, Mr Spring Rice has bequeathed to the country an empty exchequer, and leaves it a bankrupt in credit. His last, and one year's, exploits, have been to increase the permanent debt by four millions sterling; to present a budget of deficiency in income below expenditure of nearly one million, non-inclusive of charges for the augmentation of the army voted since, of provision for further Canadian invasions, of reinforcements for the navy, which the complications of foreign affairs would seem to render inevitable, and of other contingencies for the repair, fortification, and defence of our coasts, which, from the following mysterious paragraph, would appear somehow, and from some quarter, to be menaced with invasion.

"Dover, August 13.-Sir James Gordon, and the other naval and military officers and civil engineers, named in the Parliamentary commission for an inquiry into the state of the harbours on the southeastern coast of England, having completed their survey of this port, proceeded in a Government steamer, this morning, to the westward, to continue their labours."

As if the deficiency under such heads were not sufficient evidence to warrant a fiat of insolvency, Mr Spring Rice has further proposed and carried a resolution for the abolition of post

48,988,954

£860,954

To which add the postage and other contingent defalcations, as before noted. With all the elements of confusion in full chaotic action in the country_ with Chartists in open revolt, or waiting the propitious moment for open revolt, in scores of thousands with distraction and dissensions in the Cabinet, where the cry of sauve qui peut has been raised how fares the palace and the court? Is that peace so ruthlessly affrighted from the cottage, reposing its silken wings, adjusting its downy plumage, and nestling more happily in the bosom serene of a brightly fair and maiden sovereignty? Alas, no! the palace is no more exempt from cares and crosses than the humblest of cots; misery, which disdains not the lowest, mounts also into the highest places; civil and kindred strife may rage as rifely, and inflame as remorselessly, in the splendid abodes of the mightiest and most glorious of royalties, at the same moment that social and civil wars may desolate the meanest of huts. Intrigues and factions may create as much deep-seated wretchedness in the court as New Poor-Laws in the country; they may act, as they do act, with spell more malign upon the interests and the happiness of a great empire, than all its concentrated wisdom and patriotism are equal to counteract, although

never in the proudest annals of its glory can one epoch be found, when in Parliament and in the nation the union and array of both were so grandly pre-eminent. Never, also, were they more needed; for in times of revolution it is not fields that have to be won, Talleyrands baffled, or Napoleons overcome. Genius and talent are not required to infuriate the masses and demoralize the people, but the meaner souls and the vulgar attributes of Robespierres and Marats. Whatever and wherever else the bizarre, the frightful, heads of the hydra of revolution, its heart's blood is ever in the court, and from the court circulates to its extremities and vivifies its energies. For good or for evil; for weal or woe; for conservation or disorganization; for commanding respect or inspiring contemptabroad; for ensuring contented obedience to the laws and the powers that be, or assisting their subversion and promoting insubordination-for all these the court is all-powerful-for all these tremendous is the responsibility lodged there. Causes however trivial, however apparently contemptible, thence originating and therein fermenting, may come to affect the future destinies of half a globe. The graces and grimaces of a flaunting, fly-away bedchamber woman, sufficed for the overthrow of a Wellington and Peel. Sully in his memoirs observes, that "the most grand, magnificent and serious affairs of state, derive their origin, and their most violent movements, from the sillinesses, jealousies, envy, and other whims of the court; and are rather regulated by these, than by meditation, or by considerations of honour and good faith." Who shall pretend to say what mishaps may flow from early tastes and habits, imbibed, we may say, from the maternal breast, and sedulously fostered by the prejudices of education! That is, if we are to believe Lord Melbourne, who has not scrupled to declare that Queen Victoria "hates the Tories by education and the Radicals by nature." According to this grave, and, as many may consider, undoubted authority, the Queen was educated for a party and not for her people. The policy suited doubtless the mercenary views and the ambitious aspirations of Leopold, its author, with whom the interests of the empire were subordinate to the aggrandizement of the Coburgs; for the Whigs, as well he knew, were the most pliant of tools and the most prodigal of paymasters. But that this mighty realm should come to be sacrificed, or made to pander to the pounds shillings and pence calculations of a huckstering sovereign of its own elevation that its power, wealth, and resources, should be made subservient only to the profit of a cabbage-garden like Coburg-monstrous the conviction, more monstrous still the reality; yet so is the fact!

We dwell not-we loathe to dwell -on the deadly perils, the baleful intrigues, the officials corrupt and depraved, which environ and pervade the Court of a youthful Queen, unsuspicious because guileless, confiding because inexperienced, pure and spotless herself as the freshness of opening spring. Nor will we enter on the history of the wrongs, and of the untimely fate of that lady of high descent, of royal blood, and of fame

spotless as the unsullied nobility of her lineage, who fell the melancholy victim of Court calumny and courtly malignity of the noble Lady Flora Hastings, and that dreadful business, we would only say, requiescat in pace; she sleeps in that peace which has fled for ever from the pillows of her persecutors.

But what confusion_what dissensions-what, disorganization every where, and in all departments, from the Court to the Cabinet, and from both to the Country! Well might that enlightened statesman and that eloquent orator, the ornament of his own, and the admiration of other countries-Daniel Webster-say to the assembled élite of the Whigs at Holland House.* "There never was but one England-there never will be but one England-there never can be but one England! Ye, oh Whigs, have done your best to spoil and ruin this grand. est of all the creations of the Almighty!"

Ir is the custom for many of the liberal writers, both of Germany and of our own country, to depreciate the literary character of Austria. It is spoken of as a German Bœotia-a soil wherein the fine arts, with the exception of music, can take no root; and where poetry, in particular, has never displayed any vigour or originality of character. In all this there is, with some truth, also much exaggeration. It is true that Austria has produced no Goëthe or Schiller; but, when we de. scend to writers of a respectable though lower order of genius, we can perceive, at the present moment, but little difference between her position and that of the other states of Germany. In none can any writer of commanding ability in poetry be pointed out; while in all there are many who respectably support its pretensions, both in the lyrical and dramatic departments: the epic being left very much in the same state of abeyance in Germany as it is among ourselves. In the drama in particular, Austria will not suffer by a comparison with any or all of its German rivals; and the names of Grillparzer and the Baron von Zedlitz may safely be opposed to those of Immermann and Raupach, who, though not an Austrian, has composed all his best dramas for the Vienna theatre. Grillparzer was at first

led into a wrong direction by his imitation of the vulgar fate school of Mullner, who seems himself to have been led astray by a misconception of the principle on which Schiller had composed his Bride of Messina. But of the tragedies constructed on that unhappy model, the Ancestress of Grillparzer was certainly the best. He effected all that could be done for such a subject; for he contrived to infuse a true supernatural grandeur into a legend which in ordinary hands would have been simply ludicrous. This CastleSpectre style, however, he soon exchanged for one of a higher and purer character. His Sappho † and his Golden Fleece ‡ are classical plays in the best sense of the word; and his King Ottocar's Prosperity and Death,§ (Konig Ottocar's Gluck und Ende,) and his True Servant of his Master, (Treuer Diener Seines Herrn), are historical plays of great dramatic beauty and interest.

None of the plays of the Baron von Zedlitz have as yet been translated into English, though many of them have been successful on the German stage. The author has distinguished himself in more than one capacity. He was originally in the army, and served in the war of 1809 under the Prince of Hohenzollern; was present at the battles of Ratisbon, Aspern, and

† Id. Vol. xix. p. 404.

§ Id. Vol. xxii. p. 300.

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