have written in defence of it. Now In fact it is already clear that the wherein does this doctrine differ, as prophecies do not bear the meaning far as its political tendency is concerned, from the doctrine of the Jews? If a Jew is unfit to legislate for us because he believes that he or his remote descendants will be removed to Palestine, can we safely open the House of Commons to a fifth-monarchy man, who expects that before this generation shall pass away, all the kingdoms of the earth will be swallowed up in one divine empire?

put upon them by the respectable persons whom we are now answering. In France and in the United States the Jews are already admitted to all the rights of citizens. A prophecy, therefore, which should mean that the Jews would never, during the course of their wanderings, be admitted to all the rights of citizens in the places of their sojourn, would be a false prophecy. This, therefore, is not the meaning of the prophecies of Scripture.

And

Does a Jew engage less eagerly than a Christian in any competition But we protest altogether against which the law leaves open to him? the practice of confounding prophecy Is he less active and regular in his with precept, of setting up predictions business than his neighbours? Does which are often obscure against a mohe furnish his house meanly, because rality which is always clear. If actions he is a pilgrim and sojourner in the are to be considered as just and good land? Does the expectation of being merely because they have been prerestored to the country of his fathers dicted, what action was ever more make him insensible to the fluctuations laudable than that crime which our of the stock-exchange? Does he, in bigots are now, at the end of eighteen arranging his private affairs, ever take centuries, urging us to avenge on the into the account the chance of his Jews, that crime which made the earth migrating to Palestine ? If not, why shake and blotted out the sun from are we to suppose that feelings which heaven? The same reasoning which never influence his dealings as a mer- is now employed to vindicate the dischant, or his dispositions as a testator, abilities imposed on our Hebrew counwill acquire a boundless influence over trymen will equally vindicate the kiss him as soon as he becomes a magistrate of Judas and the judgment of Pilate. or a legislator ? There is another" The Son of man goeth, as it is written argument which we would not wil- of him; but woe to that man by whom lingly treat with levity, and which yet the Son of man is betrayed." we scarcely know how to treat seriously. woe to those who, in any age or in Scripture, it is said, is full of terrible any country, disobey his benevolent denunciations against the Jews. It commands under pretence of accomis foretold that they are to be wan-plishing his predictions. If this arguderers. Is it then right to give them ment justifies the laws now existing a home? It is foretold that they are against the Jews, it justifies equally to be oppressed. Can we with pro- all the cruelties which have ever been priety suffer them to be rulers? To committed against them, the sweeping admit them to the rights of citizens is edicts of banishment and confiscation, manifestly to insult the Divine oracles. the dungeon, the rack, and the slow We allow that to falsify a prophecy fire. How can we excuse ourselves inspired by Divine Wisdom would be for leaving property to people who are a most atrocious crime. It is, there-to" serve their enemies in hunger, and fore, a happy circumstance for our in thirst, and in nakedness, and in frail species, that it is a crime which want of all things; for giving prono man can possibly commit. If we tection to the persons of those who are admit the Jews to seats in Parliament, to "fear day and night, and to have we shall, by so doing, prove that the none assurance of their life;" for not prophecies in question, whatever they seizing on the children of a race whose may mean, do not mean that the Jews" sons and daughters are to be given shall be excluded from Parliament. unto another people?"

We have not so learned the doctrines | evidently been written, not for the purpose of showing, what, however, it often shows, how well its author can write, but for the purpose of vindicating, as far as truth will permit, the memory of a celebrated man who can no longer vindicate himself. Mr. Moore never thrusts himself between Lord Byron and the public. With the strongest temptations to egotism, he has said no more about himself than the subject absolutely required.

of Him who commanded us to love our neighbour as ourselves, and who, when He was called upon to explain what He meant by a neighbour, selected as an example a heretic and an alien. Last year, we remember, it was represented by a pious writer in the John Bull newspaper, and by some other equally fervid Christians, as a monstrous indecency, that the measure for the relief of the Jews should be brought forward in Passion week. One of these humourists ironically recommended that it should be read a second time on Good Friday. We should have had no objection; nor do we believe that the day could be commemorated in a more worthy manner. We know of no day fitter for terminating long hostilities, and repairing cruel wrongs, than the day on which the religion of mercy was founded. We know of no day fitter for blotting out from the statutebook the last traces of intolerance than the day on which the spirit of intolerance produced the foulest of all judicial murders, the day on which the list of the victims of intolerance, that noble list wherein Socrates and More are enrolled, was glorified by a yet greater and holier name.

A great part, indeed the greater part, of these volumes, consists of extracts from the Letters and Journals of Lord Byron; and it is difficult to speak too highly of the skill which has been shown in the selection and arrangement. We will not say that we have not occasionally remarked in these two large quartos an anecdote which should have been omitted, a letter which should have been suppressed, a name which should have been concealed by asterisks, or asterisks which do not answer the purpose of concealing the name. But it is impossible, on a general survey, to deny that the task has been executed with great judgment and great humanity. When we consider the life which Lord Byron had led, his petulance, his irritability, and his communicativeness, we cannot but admire the dexterity with which Mr. Moore has contrived to exhibit so much of the

MOORE'S LIFE OF LORD BYRON. character and opinions of his friend,

(JUNE, 1831.)

Letters and Journals of Lord Byron; with
Notices of his Life. By THOMAS MOORE,
Esq. 2 vols. 4to. London: 1830.

We have read this book with the great-
est pleasure. Considered merely as a
composition, it deserves to be classed
among the best specimens of English
prose which our age has produced. It
contains, indeed, no single passage
equal to two or three which we could
select from the Life of Sheridan. But,
as a whole, it is immeasurably superior
to that work. The style is agreeable,
clear, and manly, and when it rises
into eloquence, rises without effort or
ostentation. Nor is the matter inferior
to the manner. It would be difficult
to name a book which exhibits more
kindness, fairness, and modesty. It has

with so little pain to the feelings of the living.

The extracts from the journals and correspondence of Lord Byron are in the highest degree valuable, not merely on account of the information which they contain respecting the distinguished man by whom they were written, but on account also of their rare merit as compositions. The letters, at least those which were sent from Italy, are among the best in our language. They are less affected than those of Pope and Walpole; they have more matter in them than those of Cowper. Knowing that many of them were not written merely for the person to whom they were directed, but were general epistles, meant to be read by a large circle, we expected to find them

clever and spirited, but deficient in | intellect, affectionate yet perverse, a ease. We looked with vigilance for poor lord, and a handsome cripple, he instances of stiffness in the language required, if ever man required, the and awkwardness in the transitions. firmest and the most judicious training. We have been agreeably disappointed; But, capriciously as nature had dealt and we must confess that, if the epis- with him, the parent to whom the office tolary style of Lord Byron was arti- of forming his character was intrusted ficial, it was a rare and admirable in- was more capricious still. She passed stance of that highest art which cannot from paroxysms of rage to paroxysms be distinguished from nature. of tenderness. At one time she stifled him with her caresses: at another time she insulted his deformity. He came into the world; and the world treated him as his mother had treated him, sometimes with fondness, sometimes with cruelty, never with justice. It indulged him without discrimination, and punished him without discrimination. He was truly a spoiled child, not merely the spoiled child of his parent, but the spoiled child of nature, the spoiled child of fortune, the spoiled child of fame, the spoiled child of so

Of the deep and painful interest which this book excites no abstract can give a just notion. So sad and dark a story is scarcely to be found in any work of fiction; and we are little disposed to envy the moralist who can read it without being softened.

with a contempt which, feeble as they were, they did not absolutely deserve. The poem which he published on his return from his travels was, on the other hand, extolled far above its merit. At twenty-four, he found himself on the highest pinnacle of literary fame, with Scott, Wordsworth, Southey, and a crowd of other distinguished writers beneath his feet. There is scarcely an instance in history of so sudden a rise to so dizzy an eminence.

The pretty fable by which the Duchess of Orleans illustrated the character of her son the Regent might, with little change, be applied to Byron. All the fairies, save one, had been bidden to his cradle. All the gossips had been profuse of their gifts. One had be-ciety. His first poems were received stowed nobility, another genius, a third beauty. The malignant elf who had been uninvited came last, and, unable to reverse what her sisters had done for their favourite, had mixed up a curse with every blessing. In the rank of Lord Byron, in his understanding, in his character, in his very person, there was a strange union of opposite extremes. He was born to all that men covet and admire. But in every one of those eminent advantages which he possessed over others was mingled something of misery and debasement. He was sprung from a house, ancient indeed and noble, but degraded and impoverished by a series of crimes and follies which had attained a scandalous publicity. The kinsman whom he succeeded had died poor, and, but for merciful judges, would have died upon the gallows. The young peer had great intellectual Dowers; yet there was an unsound part in his mind. He had naturally a generous and feeling heart: but his temper was wayward and irritable. He had a head which statuaries loved to copy, and a foot the deformity of which the beggars in the streets mimicked. Distinguished at once by the strength and by the weakness of his

Every thing that could stimulate, and every thing that could gratify the strongest propensities of our nature, the gaze of a hundred drawing-rooms, the acclamations of the whole nation, the applause of applauded men, the love of lovely women, all this world and all the glory of it were at once offered to a youth to whom nature had given violent passions, and whom education had never taught to control them. He lived as many men live who have no similar excuse to plead for their faults. But his countrymen and his countrywomen would love him and admire him. They were resolved to see in his excesses only the flash and outbreak of that same fiery mind which glowed in his poetry. He attacked religion; yet in religious circles his

the scandal, talk about it for a day, and forget it. But once in six or seven years our virtue becomes outrageous. We cannot suffer the laws of religion and decency to be violated. We must make a stand against vice. We must teach libertines that the English people appreciate the importance of domestic ties. Accordingly some unfortunate man, in' no respect more depraved than hundreds whose offences have been treated with lenity, is singled out as an expiatory sacrifice. If he has children, they are to be taken from him. If he has a profession, he is to be driven from it. He is cut by the higher orders, and hissed by the lower. He is, in truth, a sort of whipping-boy, by whose vicarious agonies all the other transgressors of the same class are, it is supposed, sufficiently chastised. We reflect very complacently on our own severity, and compare with great pride the high standard of morals established in England with the Parisian laxity. At length our anger is satiated. Our victim is ruined and heart-broken. And our virtue goes quietly to sleep for seven years more.

name was mentioned with fondness, | periodical tits of morality. In general, and in many religious publications his elopements, divorces, and family quarworks were censured with singular rels, pass with little notice. We read tenderness. He lampooned the Prince Regent; yet he could not alienate the Tories. Everything, it seemed, was to be forgiven to youth, rank, and genius. Then came the reaction. Society, capricious in its indignation as it had been capricious in its fondness, flew into a rage with its froward and petted darling. He had been worshipped with an irrational idolatry. He was persecuted with an irrational fury. Much has been written about those unhappy domestic occurrences which decided the fate of his life. Yet nothing is, nothing ever was, positively known to the public, but this, that he quarrelled with his lady, and that she refused to live with him. There have been hints in abundance, and shrugs and shakings of the head, and "Well, well, we know," and "We could an if we would," and "If we list to speak," and "There be that might an they list." But we are not aware that there is before the world substantiated by credible, or even by tangible evidence, a single fact indicating that Lord Byron was more to blame than any other man who is on bad terms with his wife. The professional men whom Lady It is clear that those vices which deByron consulted were undoubtedly of stroy domestic happiness ought to be opinion that she ought not to live with as much as possible repressed. It is her husband. But it is to be remem-equally clear that they cannot be rebered that they formed that opinion pressed by penal legislation. without hearing both sides. We do therefore right and desirable that pubnot say, we do not mean to insinuate, lic opinion should be directed against that Lady Byron was in any respect to them. But it should be directed against blame. We think that those who con- them uniformly, steadily, and temdemn her on the evidence which is now perately, not by sudden fits and starts. before the public are as rash as those There should be one weight and one who condemn her husband. We will measure. Decimation is always an not pronounce any judgment, we can-objectionable mode of punishment. It not, even in our own minds, form any is the resource of judges too indolent judgment, on a transaction which is so imperfectly known to us. It would have been well if, at the time of the separation, all those who knew as little about the matter then as we know about it now had shown that forbearance which, under such circumstances, is but common justice.

We know no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its

It is

and hasty to investigate facts and to discriminate nicely between shades of guilt. It is an irrational practice, even when adopted by military tribunals. When adopted by the tribunal of public opinion, it is infinitely more irrational. It is good that a certain portion of disgrace should constantly attend on certain bad actions. But it is not good that the offenders should

merely have to stand the risks of a be for any one of these, the virtuous lottery of infamy, that ninety-nine out people who repeated them neither of every hundred should escape, and knew nor cared. For in fact these that the hundredth, perhaps the most stories were not the causes, but the innocent of the hundred, should pay effects of the public indignation. They for all. We remember to have seen a resembled those loathsome slanders mob assembled in Lincoln's Inn to which Lewis Goldsmith, and other abhoot a gentleman against whom the ject libellers of the same class, were in most oppressive proceeding known to the habit of publishing about Bonathe English law was then in progress. parte; such as that he poisoned a girl He was hooted because he had been an with arsenic when he was at the miliunfaithful husband, as if some of the tary school, that he hired a grenadier most popular men of the age, Lord to shoot Dessaix at Marengo, that he Nelson for example, had not been un-filled St. Cloud with all the pollutions faithful husbands. We remember a of Capreæ. There was a time when still stronger case. Will posterity be- anecdotes like these obtained some lieve that, in an age in which men credence from persons who, hating the whose gallantries were universally French emperor without knowing why, known, and had been legally proved, were eager to believe any thing which filled some of the highest offices in the might justify their hatred. Lord Byron state and in the army, presided at the fared in the same way. His countrymeetings of religious and benevolent men were in a bad humour with him. institutions, were the delight of every His writings and his character had lost society, and the favourites of the mul- the charm of novelty. He had been titude, a crowd of moralists went to guilty of the offence which, of all the theatre, in order to pelt a poor offences, is punished most severely; actor for disturbing the conjugal feli- he had been over-praised; he had excity of an alderman? What there was cited too warm an interest; and the in the circumstances either of the of- public, with its usual justice, chastised fender or of the sufferer to vindicate him for its own folly. The attachments the zeal of the audience, we could never of the multitude bear no small resemconceive. It has never been supposed blance to those of the wanton enchanthat the situation of an actor is pecu-tress in the Arabian Tales, who, when liarly favourable to the rigid virtues, the forty days of her fondness were or that an alderman enjoys any special over, was not content with dismissing immunity from injuries such as that her lovers, but condemned them to which on this occasion roused the anger expiate, in loathsome shapes, and under of the public. But such is the justice crucl penances, the crime of having of mankind. once pleased her too well.

In these cases the punishment was excessive; but the offence was known and proved. The case of Lord Byron was harder. True Jedwood justice was dealt out to him. First came the execution, then the investigation, and last of all, or rather not at all, the accusation. The public, without knowing any thing whatever about the transactions in his family, flew into a violent passion with him, and proceeded to invent stories which might justify its anger. Ten or twenty different accounts of the separation, inconsistent with each other, with themselves, and with common sense, circulated at the same time. What evidence there might

The obloquy which Byron had to endure was such as might well have shaken a more constant mind. The newspapers were filled with lampoons. The theatres shook with execrations. He was excluded from circles where he had lately been the observed of all observers. All those creeping things that riot in the decay of nobler natures hastened to their repast; and they were right; they did after their kind. It is not every day that the savage envy aspiring dunces is gratified by the agonies of such a spirit, and the degradation of such a name.

of

The unhappy man left his country for ever. The howl of contumely fol