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jesty's faithful Commons the free exercise of their ancient and undoubted rights and privileges, and more especially that of freedom of debate. I claim also for them freedom from arrest in their persons and servants, free access to his Majesty when occasion shall require, and that his Majesty will be graciously pleased to put the most favourable construction on all their proceedings; and for myself I anxiously entreat, that when they fall into error, the blame will be put upon me, and not upon his Majesty's faithful Commons.

[Far too much of oriental prostration for the first Commoner of a free people, the president of their representatives. Really if the King were to kick the Commons in the mode advised by the Tory papers, they would almost deserve it for their great humility.]

'The Lord Chancellor: Mr. Speaker, we have it further in command to declare, that his Majesty most readily concurs

[How if his Majesty had not concurred? What would have happened then?]

in all the rights and privileges granted to the Commons by him, or any of his royal predecessors;

[So all these rights and privileges are a Crown grant, it seems. We are the King's, and all that belongs to us.]

and with respect to yourself, his Majesty directs us to say, though you stand in need of no such assurance, that he will ever put the most favourable construction on your words and actions.'

[This insolence of diction well sorts with the other portion of the dialogue. We know very well that the whole thing is an egregious farce, but why should any man of character and ability. be degraded by playing a part in it? It is time for these worse than follies to be amended. Posterity will scarcely believe that the freely and wisely chosen Speaker of this Reformed Parliament could report to its members, with unblistered tongue, that he had obtained for them the exercise of their undoubted rights.']

F.

THE OMNIBUS AND CAB NUISANCE TO CERTAIN PEOPLE.

MR. DEPUTY BROOK, a personage who once figured as the colossal apprehender of an orange seller, whose 'sere and yellow' boutique he remorselessly bestrode, denouncing him as a vender of immoral eatables, which were never meant or made to be enjoyed on a Sunday morning, has now deputed himself to the questionable duty of overthrowing omnibuses and cabs. That they may be occasionally a nuisance to some of those who are fortunate enough to possess the means of keeping their own carriage (Deus nobis hæc otia fecit!) or their cab and tiger, may be true; just in the same way as a clean and fashionably dressed gentleman feels annoyed by dirty or miscellaneous dressed individuals,, who walk on the same pavement, and are in quite as great a hurry as himself.

That they may create so much noise and bustle as to injure the retail trade' of many of those who dwell in some abominably narrow leading thoroughfares' is equally so; for thoroughfares are expressly meant as conduits, and a street that is not at all good for business, is in that respect a very bad street, and ought to be left by the parties most concerned: but that the omnibuses and cabs are a very great accommodation to the majority of those dwelling in London and its suburbs, is a fact toò self-evident to be argued.

It seems that Mr. Deputy Brook has thought it patriotic as well as civic, to run brawling to 'Sir Peel' with a petition, meandering to the following effect:-That omnibuses and cabs were 'an intolerable nuisance;' that they would ultimately ruin the retail trade in the city;' that their number was quite unnecessary, and the issue of them ought to be limited by a jurisdiction 'intrusted to certain commissioners to license only as many carriages as may from time to time be found necessary for the public accommodation;' that they should be driven by respectable individuals, the proprietors being also persons of character and respectability,' &c.

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Now that they are, to those who keep shops in thoroughfares, a nuisance, very intolerable and not to be endured,' is likely enough. But the bad building of the metropolitan leading streets is being reformed continually; and where it seems probable that this reform will be protracted for a very long period, or until some fire or whirlwind step in to aid the cause, the aggrieved occupants should e'en move to a better situation. As to their ruining the retail trade in the city, it is a farce which nobody of thirty years of age who has once been to London ought to listen to without ridicule. What! have we not seen long before an omnibus or cab was introduced to the public,—ay, seen and enjoyed, with the eyes of a schoolboy just come home at Christmas, the rare fun of a stoppage, a lock of carts, carriages, gigs, hackney-coaches, &c. which at high mass' held fast for an hour; never less than a quarter? How seldom does this occur now! It happened continually some ten or fifteen years ago; but the retail trade of London was not ruined. It takes very much more to ruin so vast a machine. The petition speaks of loss of lives. How many have been lost by an accident from an omnibus or cab? Perhaps the misfortune may have occurred twice or even thrice; for since the world was made, and since factories as well as coaches have had wheels, frightful accidents, we know, have happened; but compare the number of these with the deaths and mutilations that have occurred from private carriages of all kinds, and what a mere aristocratic and exclusive tirade of balderdash does this furious outcry become! Again, the number is to be limited at the discretion of certain commissioners.' Yes, a job among those who live in thoroughfares; and to as many

No. 99.

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as may from time to time be found necessary.' To be sure: from the time of paying dividends till there has been time to spend the usual portion that the cognoscenti know to be usual in the city; or at the pleasure of the certain commissioners,' As to the proprietors and drivers being persons of character and respectability,' we suppose that means individuals who have the benefit of a good education and two hundred per annum.

Now that some of the drivers of omnibuses and cabs are most barefaced abusers, besides being peremptory insisters upon an extra sum as the reward of impudence, is a vexatious fact. But only think of the noble and ancient line of Jarvis !-think of the hackney-coachmen of present as well as past days, and how many more choice specimens can be adduced! For one insult or extortion perpetrated by the former, we can all recollect enjoying more than we wish to count from the old treble-coated, slangwitted, hay-hatbanded, rascal-faced curmudgeons who are quite overlooked in this very patriotic petition of Mr. Deputy Brook.

As to diminishing the number, there are not more than the public need. They are generally crammed during the mornings and evenings; and at other times they are commonly as full as convenient to any man not altogether reduced to a thread-paper. At all events, if they did not fill enough to pay the proprietors, there would not be so many. That part of the evil would correct itself; if not, we should see them tumbling one over the other into the Gazette.' But where, we ask, are these lots of bankrupts? And the gallant, well-regulated, well-horsed, and wellappointed Mr. Shilibeer, pulling up his proud coursers with a dignified elbow, echoes-Where?

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CRITICAL NOTICES.

Pantika; or Traditions of the most Ancient Times.
By William Howitt. 2 vols.

So far as we are acquainted with the annals of Quaker authorship, they afford no precedent for the variety and freedom of the incursions made by the Howitts' into the fields of literature. History and fiction, education and controversy, poetry and prose, drama and romance; they have gone forth into all, as knight and Amazon of old, alike adventurous in their chivalry. And that similitude of courage and excursiveness reminds us only more strongly of the contrast, between the good, and gentle, and benignant spirit of the one, with all qualities now called Amazonian; and of the nobler enterprise of the other to any that knighthood ever boasted in the days of castles and battle-axes. The volumes before us are a fresh specimen of daring; we cannot say of manly daring, for the dramas of the Seven Temptations,' by Mary Howitt were at least as bold as these romances of Jewish history and tradition,

by William Howitt. We trust that both will have an ample measure of that purest kind of success which their authors evidently most desire. In diverging from the usual routine of Quaker exertion, they never lose sight of (nay, they regard all the more steadily) the good old Quaker principle of doing service to mankind,

With the single exception of restraint from any wandering that might appear to him to be morally injurious, the Author of these volumes has fairly thrown the reins on the neck of his imagination, and spurred it to its speed. He has overleaped the barriers of the world before the flood, and seen the patriarchs, and the angels, and the fiends, and the giants, and the old Lamia, and the dark Demiurgus, and Lilith the rival of Eve, and the huge monsters of demi-chaotic planets. In the person of the ancient Pantika of Tarshish, he has preserved their strange legends. And some there are of later date, rabbinical versions, like the former, but of the times of the judges of Israel, and down to the reign of Solomon. They seem as remote to our minds as the former; for these also are fresh ground for romance, and under the cultivation of our author, it is luxuriant even to rankness.

The chief defect of the author's delineations is, that they sometimes want distinctness and condensation. We particularly refer to his descriptions of person and character. In the scenery of nature he is quite at home. His incident occasionally strikes us as too theatrical. The rosin and trap-doors of the Adelphi have abated the public relish for thunderbolts and earthquakes.

The charm of these stories is in the freshness of their subject; from which the World before the Flood' and the Loves of the Angels' detract but little; in their poetical construction and adornment; in their derivation from Hebrew legend, and their illustrative or other connexion with genuine sacred history; in the wildness, diversity, and interest of the narrative; and in the moral sentiment by which they are pervaded. The following is a list of the titles of these tales: The Pilgrimage of Pantika, Nichar, the Exile of Heaven,' 'Ithran the Demoniac,' Beeltuthma, the Desolate and the Faithful,' The Avenger of Blood,' The Soothsayer of No,' The Valley of Angels. We had marked several extracts, amongst which was a curious scene of grotesque horror, in the punishment of Noph, the mercenary Soothsayer of No;' but find with regret that we have not room for their insertion.

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Christianity and Church-of-Irelandism. A. Sermon.
By George Harris. Glasgow.

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THIS discourse was first delivered on the 24th January last, and the edition before us is the seventh. The author has touched a string that vibrates strongly in the popular heart. The tithe-slaughter at Rathcormac has passed off, as yet, far too quietly. The public attention has been exclusively fixed, in England at least, on the elections and their results; but there will come a time for it. Meanwhile, we thank Mr. Harris for giving Justice this refresher. It was a proper subject for the indignant animadversion of the Christian and the moralist, as well as the politician; and his thoughts and feelings on the occasion are appropriately and forcibly expressed. We subjoin a portion of the preface, describing the effect produced:1

"The following Sermon was composed in the usual course of the Author's pastoral labours. He was so much struck by the heart-rending details of the Massacre at Rathcormac, he felt that the whole proceedings were so utterly alien to the genuine spirit of the Gospel, they affixed so foul a stigma on the hallowed name of Christian, and so closely associated Protestantism with blood-shedding, that he deemed himself imperatively called on to vindicate the pure and undefiled religion of the Saviour, from any participation in such enormities; to show, that benevolence is not more opposite to malignity, than is the spirit of the New Testament to an anti-national Established Church; to point the abhorrence of his hearers, not so much at the instruments of the evil deed, as against the system which induced and authorized the outrage; and to utter his earnest and most solemn protest against its being for a moment imagined, that Christianity lends the slightest sanction to principles and conduct, as much at war with the doctrines and commandments of the Sacred Volume, as they are with every sentiment of natural reason and every feeling of common humanity.

"The Sermon was delivered to the Unitarian Christian Congregation with which the Author esteems it his privilege and happiness to be connected, on Sunday morning, January 18. His hearers so warmly sympathized in its views and objects, that they requested him to re-deliver it in the evening. He did so to a large and deeply-attentive audience. In the course of the week, the Author was repeatedly asked again to preach it, both by members of his own congregation, and others unconnected with his religious communion. He consented, provided a collection was made for the families of those who were shot on the melancholy occasion which called forth the discourse. The committee of his Society unanimously appointed a collection for that purpose; and in the afternoon of Sunday, January 25, the Sermon was again preached to as large an audience as could possibly be contained within the walls of the building. Many hundreds could not get in, and even before the worship began, a notice had to be affixed to the chapel, that the Sermon would be repeated, for the fourth time, the same evening. The audiences manifested their detestation of injustice and outrage, and their benevolent wishes for the sufferers in Ireland, by a handsome contribution.

The Massacre at Rathcormac is but a single chapter in the history of misgoverned and injured Ireland. The mis-named National Church of that unhappy country, has been baptized in the blood of its unfortunate inhabitants. Instead of enlightening, it has made more dark; instead of civilizing, it has brutalized; the Bible has been associated with the sword, Protestantism with the tithe proctor, education with exclusiveness and bigotry, and the name of England with oppression. High time is it that such enormities should cease. There must be no patchwork attempts at amendment; the root of the evil must be removed; the abomination must be entirely swept away; universal education must take its place; well-directed and unceasing efforts must be made for the enlightenment, the moral and social elevation of the whole people; and the civil and religious liberties of every individual of every denomination, must be founded on a basis, which no intrigue, no human force will be able to overturn, impugn, or pervert.'

The Late Houses of Parliament, and Palatial Edifices of Westminster. By J. Britton, and E. W Brayley. No. I.

THE antiquarian zeal, diligence, and attainments of the authors of this work are well known to the public. The late fire gives additional interest to their subject, at all times one of the most interesting to which their researches could have been directed. The plan is both historical and architectural, and when completed, will form an octavo volume of 400 pages, with 40 engravings. So far as we can judge from the first

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