all were swept away, and the Irish continued as unruly as ever. The tamers of men were baffled, but were still determined to make one experiment more. "Perhaps," said they, "this spirit of insubordination may proceed from an excess of book-learning. Let us make it a crime to educate a Catholic. They will probably be more amenable, if we keep them in the dark." It has long been a maxim with mailcoach drivers that vicious horses move more steadily when their eyes are put out,—so far there was analogy in support of the device; but the result of the experiment showed that men and horses, though equally tameable, must be tamed by different methods. The Irish, notwithstanding their ignorance under the statute, continued as unmanageable as before. The penal code was then relaxed: to what extent you know, or ought to know. Taking these relaxations into my consideration, I asked myself if they had obtained their object. "No," replies Mr. O'Connell, "as a Catholic and a Kerry-man, I will never give the state a moment's rest, as long as it is insolently declared that I am unfit to be a judge or vote at a vestry." And the hills and valleys of Iveragh respond in a chorus of indignant assent.-"No," exclaims Mr. Shiel, igniting his auditory by his eloquent appeals, until he makes them feel almost as daring and free-spirited as Englishmen; "accident made us Catholics, but Nature made us men; and as men, we swear to struggle against insult to the last."-"No," shouts out Captain Rock, disinterring last winter's blunderbuss from its boggy resting-place, "the nights at last are long and dark, the police dispersed, my trusty followers at hand; and so now for one burning or murder more for the honour of Old Ireland."-"No," say the Orange alarmists of the North, "the constitution is going to pieces, and the Pope will be upon us, unless they give us back a Viceroy, under whose auspices we may once more drink the 'Glorious Memory' in his presence, and shoot the Papists with impunity when his back is turned."-"No," says but in gentler accents, your ever-to-be-respected aunt at Hampstead, as she lays down the last quarterly Report of the "Female Hibernian Religious Instruction Central Branch Committee," "no, there's something wrong about these poor Irish folk, that I cannot make out, and which I begin to fear that all our tracts will never cure." Pondering upon all this, I turned and turned the matter in my mind, but for a long time my poor brains were as much puzzled as those of the excellent gentlewoman last above-mentioned. And yet surely, thought I, (for to this I always stuck) there is no downright impossibility of governing Irishmen a little more to their hearts content. There must have been some bungling among our governors. There must, in the nature of things,-there must be some principle hitherto overlooked, some latent secret of state, as yet unknown to our statesmen, or, if known, so closely kept as not to have a trace of it discoverable in their policy. Neither could I find a glimmering of it in any of the productions which I naturally consulted upon the occasion. I read all Lord Liverpool's speeches, all Mr. Peel's, as much of one of Mr. Leslie Foster's as I could. They left me where they found me. I read the Quarterly Review, and the Courier, upon Ireland. They aided me not. I read Dr. Magee's stupendous Charge. It taught me what an antithesis was; but as to a receipt for governing Irishmen I was still in the dark. At length, after a long and weary search, conceive my exultation, when by the merest accident, upon taking up a volume of our little girl's story-books, I found the long-sought golden maxim staring me full in the face. "It was remarkable too, (says Robinson Crusoe) I had but three subjects, and they were of three different religions. My man Friday was a Protestant, his father was a Pagan and a cannibal, and the Spaniard was a Papist; but I allowed liberty of conscience throughout my dominions."-Forget your haberdashery for a moment, my Cyril, and agree with me that there was a natural statesman for you. There was a monarch who could govern wisely, under all the disadvantage of not having an equity-lawyer to keep his conscience. His principle was, the whole context shows it, "Unbounded liberty of conscience to all my subjects;" and this principle is precisely the one that, upon investigating the matter, I find, has never been tried in Ireland. Cyril Skinner, I know you to be a thoroughly honest man, and believe you to be capable of giving up a prejudice, even though the sacrifice should serve your country. You are acquainted with one of the under-clerks in Downing-street: go to him, as you regard your sister and her children, whose dearest interests are concerned- -as you would stop Mr. O'Connell's mouth and Sir Harcourt Lees's pen-as you would prevent burnings and manslaughters, and speeches and pamphlets-(lay and ecclesiastical) that yet may be averted-as you would put down fanaticism and hypocrisy and set up sound religion-as you would rescue our Archbishop from his own next Charge-as you would save Dr. Doyle from having his privacy invaded and his meat and drink devoured, for six months without intermission, by a wild man from Palestine: go, Cyril, to that under-clerk, and tell him (in order that the same may be by him confidentially imparted to the statesmen over him), that there positively is a well-attested and infallible method of making Irishmen tractable and useful subjects. Let them be informed of the existence of the blessed specific for all our disorders. As yet they cannot know it. They read no story-books, except ancient and modern histories. Of all men they most require to be told what Robinson Crusoe would do if he were in their place. He was as staunch a Protestant as they, but he was too wise to set up an essentially-Protestant system of government. He thought only of making it essentially just. "Liberty of conscience throughout my dominions,"-that was his maxim. The Papist Spaniard was not pinioned and fretted upon a charge of divided allegiance. The aged and venerable Pagan was not bound down by heavy recognizances and tremendous oaths not to eat up his own son. Had a Muggletonian appeared upon the island, he would not have been molested, nor have been forced by the statute-law of Juan-Fernandez to walk behind Friday, because Friday had taken the benefit of the reformation, in a form which the Muggletonian believed, in his stupid conscience, to be erroneous. This was the genuine art of government. This is that for which Mr. O'Connell and his seven millions are roaring, and will never cease to roar. In the name then, O Cyril, of all that is comfortable and quiet, yield up for once your London notions of misrule to the obtestations of your affectionate brother-in-law. Go, I say it once more, to that under-clerk, and let his illustrious superiors be through him apprised of what it is that Ireland wants-" Liberty of conscience," in the fair and honest meaning of the phrase. Not liberty to enjoy the rights and privileges of men, provided always they swallow some statute oaths which no conscience can digest; not our redoubtable and most doubtable archbishop's liberty of conscience; not liberty of conscience, as understood by the under-graduates of an Orange-lodge; not liberty of conscience in its essentially-Protestant signification;-but true liberty of conscience-Robinson Crusoe's liberty of conscienceNothing else will do. Hitherto you Britons, whether dealers in soft goods or hard-ware, imagined that it could not be in the nature of intelligent and well-conducted Irishmen to aspire to any thing beyond a contemptuous toleration; but the melancholy truth is, they have now come to think so like yourselves, that they look upon your toleration as no longer tolerable. Let then what they thirst for (and theirs is no unhealthy feverish thirst) be given to them. Turn the cock, my dear Cyril, and let their parched lips at length taste those admirable waters which you have hitherto kept barrelled up for your own exclusive use; and then shall chancellors and tipstaffs, archbishops and parish-clerks, -then shall constitutional grave-diggers who had been wont to handle their mortuary shovels in the glorious spirit of 1688,-then shall all the essentially-Protestant old women of both sexes, whether in or out of parliament, behold with wonder how a people, whom no kicks and cuffs could conciliate, no injuries attach, no insults win, no privations enrich, no discords ennoble, no persecutions soften, no disqualifications satisfy, no tracts make tractable, may, by a process that never yet has failed, be rendered orderly and prosperous, and after a season, a benefit and credit to an Empire, of which they now form so disgraceful and worthless a portion. With regard, my dear friend, to your observation, that hedge-rows in the abstract- -but I am interrupted, and must break off for the preYou shall shortly hear again from sent. Yours, though you help to keep him down, L.A. TARSHISH. HOWL! ye children of rich Tarshish, for your dwellings are laid low, The God of Heaven hath humbled you, to prove how weak and vain Howl! ye children of rich Tarshish, for your dwellings are laid low, LONDON IMPROVEMENTS. I LOVE improvement. I admire that noble spirit of enterprise, which prompts the achievement of great national benefits; and whether it is by the construction of subways, railways, bridges, tunnels or canals, the projectors have my fuil meed of praise. Mr. MacAdam, who is engaged in the meritorious office of mending our ways; and Mr. Nash, who puts a new face on things, by transmuting rotten bricks into classic edifices through the magic aid of gypsum,-deserve well of their Country; and I could almost pardon the anomaly of building Christian churches like heathen temples, or even making the Parthenon a model for a fish-market, from my admiration of the impulse which has given rise to it. 66 We are certainly wiser than of yore" in these matters, and contemplate with laudable horror the barbarism of our ancestors, who preferred their oldfashioned blind alleys and crooked lanes to the angular streets and airy im provements of Sir Christopher Wren. The good folks had no notion of wasting ground for mere public convenience: every inch had its value, and they made the most of it. Yet let us do them justice. The sinuosity of their streets was no type of their dealings. They were a straight-forward race, as content in their pent-up snuggeries, and, no doubt, throve as well, as the modern and more modish citizen, who dispenses a yard of ribbon behind a mahogany counter, spreads on the floor of his " Emporium" a Turkey carpet, and looks out for customers through squares of plate-glass, appropriately mounted in brass. The shops of our grand-dads, dark and dirty though they were, were hives pregnant with honey, and were no receptacles for drones. The man, who could not pay twenty shillings in the pound, was no fit associate for tradesmen of character; and a bankrupt was looked upon with that sort of instinctive antipathy we feel when we come in contact with the hangman. The Old English predilection for comfort (a word not to be found in any foreign vocabulary) was evident in all their domestic arrangements. Many houses are yet standing in the by-ways of the City, replete with every convenience,-wide staircases and spacious landings, decorated with pictorial skill; spacious cupboards for the reception of substantial fare; snug closets for the stowage of porcelain rarities and Indian kuicknacks; and rooms, lofty and spacious, wainscoted with true British oak, and proof against all the assaults of the weather. These were sterling matters, my masters, that might bear comparison with the refinements of our day; and would make it a question, whether such domiciles, though secluded in a court, and approached under a gateway, were not as good as that human pigeon-house, a modern cottage ornée, composed of lath and plaster,—a frail protection 'gainst "the winds of heaven," and where all your furniture must be Lilliputian, or your habitation will not hold half the essentials required by your wants. There was some sociality too in those days, when neighbours could shake hands with each other across the streets, out of their garret windows; when seasons of festivity received their customary observance; and hospitality was shown by plain speech and solid cheer. Fashion had not then taught us the hypocrisy of smiling a welcome, where we ineant none; and we rather sought to gratify our guest by the goodness of the banquet, than to excite his envy by the display of our gentility. For all these reasons, there is lingering in my mind, mixed up with my enthusiasm for local improvements, something like regret, whenever a plan meets my eye for levelling some of those haunts of our forefathers, that are yet spared to us, consecrated as they are by so many heart-cheering associations. It is true, I feel the object to be a noble one; and that London may in time emulate Old Rome in the classic appearance of its buildings; but alas! it will be but the appearance. Roman cement is not Roman marble; sound English brick, I cannot help thinking, would shame the stucco, after the lapse of a handful of years; and though it may be very delightful for milliners' apprentices, of refined feelings, to serve out tape and bobbin under an Italian piazza; and the tradesman, whose shop ("parvis componere magna") is constructed on the plan of the Pantheon, may derive some consolation from going into the Gazette as a man of taste, I sometimes have my doubts, whether plain brick and mortar are not best after all. Thus I vacillate between my love of wide streets and stuccoed fronts, my veneration for the architectural achievements of Greece and Rome, with the rapture at seeing them transferred as it were to my own dear Cockney-land, on the one hand; and my equally enthusiastic affection for all that remains of the once-loved abodes of our ancestors, on the other. My fancy is warmed with the first, my heart with the last. I think of them as men, "Industrious, honest, frugal, and so forth, Whose word would pass for more than they were worth;" and I feel it the very barbarism of taste, to sweep away the few vestiges that are left to us of those days of simplicity and plain-dealing. A few relics yet remain, not only of such buildings, but of their primitive inhabitants. They sojourn amongst us like antediluvians, unsophisticated by the manners of the times, and regarding every change as an innovation. Gas they hold in abhorrence; and some, resolutely opposing the introduction even of oil, particularly in patent lamps, continue liege adherents to the more ancient and legitimate usage of short sixes. A shop of this kind stood, not long ago, in St. Paul's Churchyard. I have often gazed at it with a combination of singular feelings. It was an old silversmith-and-jeweller's, curiously situate next door to a dashing mercer's. The contrast between the looking-glass windows and fashionable finery of the one, and the antiquated bow-front, diminutive panes, and clumsy frames of the other, was ludicrous enough. I have often wondered by what earthly means the owner managed to keep his shop open; for no one article that he dealt in could have suited a customer of modern times; and I could only attribute his pertinacity in displaying his goods to the circumstance of his having acquired a competence in better days, which enabled him to show his contempt for the new fashions, by his stubborn adherence to the old. Shoe-buckles, knee-buckles, rings, lockets, and brooches, the fabrique of which was, no doubt, mightily the rage in the reign of Queen Anne; gold-headed canes, used as props to physicians' chins, when their skulls carried more brains, or, at least, were heavier than in our time; solitaires, negligées, and stomachers; hair-pius, when ladies wore turrets on their shoulders half a yard high, euveloped in powder and pomatum; with a long et-cetera of similar oddities,-were all duly and daily furbished up, as if our great-great-grand-papas and mammas were yet living to wear them; or, (more miraculous still!) their weathercock descendants had never wished for a change. I was grieved, a short time back, to find no trace of this memento of antiquity, and that my old jeweller's boutique was converted into a hatter's "Repository," and the venerable triple-sided front transmogrified into a dashing exterior, in the very last taste of the nineteenth century. And what has become of the ancient inmate of the mansion? Could he have willingly quitted a spot, so consecrated as it must have been by all his most fondly-cherished reminiscences?—the scene, which, perhaps, witnessed the fulfilment of his septennial contract, and his succession, by due course of industry and desert, to the business of his patron;-where pence had grown into shillings, and shillings into pounds; and where rank and beauty had flocked to patronize that bijouterie, which a renegade taste no longer deigns to glance at? Or has death removed him from a sphere of action, in which his energies had become useless, and where he vegetated, a living anomaly among the uncongenial bustle that surrounded him? Fashion could no longer have been fashion to him. Like an arrant jilt, she turned from the offerings which once had won her, and yielded her favours to lighter and less constant suitors. Yes, it must have been so. He must have pined away in a “green and yellow melancholy." I think I see him in his Sunday |