a shooting excursion. The island, which he has made the romantic residence of the Lady of the Lake, was then garrisoned by an old man and his wife. Their house was vacant: they had put the key under the door, and were absent fishing. It was at that time a peaceful residence, but became afterwards a resort of smugglers, until they were ferreted out.

In after years, when Scott began to turn this local knowledge to literary account, he revisited many of those scenes of his early ramblings, and endeavoured to secure the fugitive remains of the traditions and songs that had charmed his boyhood. When collecting materials for his Border Minstrelsy, he used, he said, to go from cottage to cottage, and make the old wives repeat all they knew, if but two lines; and, by putting these scraps together, he retrieved many a fine cha◄ racteristic old ballad or tradition from oblivion.'

These illustrations of Scott's literary character are extremely interesting. His social manners must have been as fascinating as his writings. His conversation was hearty, graphic, and dramatic, yet without display, and he could listen as well as talk; that is, he could converse. It was delightful to observe the generous mode in which he always spoke of his literary contemporaries. His humour was free from causticity, and says Mr. Irving, 'I do not recollect a sneer throughout his conversation, any more than 'throughout his works.'

6

6

To complete the moral portrait, we should have liked to know that the " things which are unseen and eternal" had some share of the attention and concern of this much flattered and highly gifted man; but Mr. Irving seems to have regarded religion as too foreign from his picturesque narrative, for even a passing reference. From the commendation bestowed upon an honest parson' of the Church of England, who was not too refined to be happy, laughed loud and long at every joke, and enjoyed 'them with the zest of a man who has more merriment in his "heart than coin in his pocket,' we should, perhaps, be warranted in inferring that the notions which both Scott and his visiter entertained upon such subjects are at the furthest remove from the sentiments of either the Reformers of Scotland or the Pilgrim Fathers of New England. But this is a painful topic, and we turn from it with a sigh. "The world will love its own"-but alas! for those who are contented with its idolatry.

We have lingered so long about Abbotsford, that we must positively decline to follow our Author in his visit to Newstead. The reader will admire the ingenuity with which the very scanty materials are worked up, by means of light and shade, into a picturesque description, from which the living figure that gives it character, is absent. We cannot forbear to notice by the way, the aristocratic predilections of our American visiter. Scott and Byron each belonged to the upper circle of society; the one by birth,

the other by acquired rank. Would their genius have commanded the same interest, if found in a humbler walk of life? Whatever poets may say, poverty is not picturesque; and to be seen to advantage, the finest statue must have its pedestal.

Art. VI. Letter to Lord Melbourne on the Irish Church and Irish Tithes. By J. Broadhurst, Esq. 8vo, pp. 72. London, 1835. 'HAD Ireland remained an independent nation, remarks Mr. Broadhurst, 750,000 persons could not have con'tinued to take the tithe of a nation counting nearly 8,000,000 of people.' This is a proposition which, we presume, no one will dispute. Can we then wonder that the Irish should be impatient under a yoke which has entailed upon them this monstrous injustice? If it be just to appropriate the entire tithe property of a country to the maintenance of a Church alien to the people, because it is the Church of the State, what would it signify if there were not a Protestant left in Ireland, to require the services of a resident minister? In that event, the Church of England might as reasonably claim the whole of the Irish tithe to be divided among her clergy in this country, as her advocates now contend that the tithes of the Roman Catholic provinces of Ireland should be appropriated to the benefit of the Protestants of Ulster. In parishes in which there is not a single Protestant, the tithe is claimed for the sinecure Church. Why should it not be claimed, by an extension of the same principle, if there were no Protestants left in any of the parishes? The bulk of the population of Ireland derive no benefit from the Establishment; and they might as justly be required to pay tithe for a non-existent Church, as for one to which they do not belong, and which exists for them in vain. The arguments employed by the opponents of the Irish Tithe Bill would fairly conduct us to this conclusion,—that tithes are to be viewed as inalienably the possession of the Protestant Episcopal Church: and if the whole of the eight millions who are found on the soil of Ireland were Roman Catholics or Dissenters, still it would be sacrilege and impiety to divert a shilling of the tithe property to national purposes!

6

"The collection of tithe by a parochial clergy,' the Author of this Letter remarks, has ever been found injurious to the cause of religion, even when taken for a Church from which the people have received their religious instruction. In Ireland, tithe is collected for a Church alien to the people.' The collection of it forms a perennial source of heart-burnings and litigation, even in this country, where it is for the most part received in large sums from substantial farmers. In Ireland, it is levied upon

nearly the whole mass of the peasantry, there being scarcely any other country in Europe where land is so minutely subdivided, and the small patches of potato ground being tithed like the largest farm in England. Could there be a system devised, so admirably adapted to sow a country with the seeds of disloyalty and discord, and to bring all the malignant passions into play? Tithe, in Ireland, is demanded under circumstances which have no parallel in any other Christian country. This system, indeed, can no longer be persisted in; and the charge is now to be thrown upon the landlords. In this arrangement, however, Mr. Broadhurst sees a new source of danger.

Tithe can no longer be collected by the clergy. To remedy this, both parties, in parliament, concur in wishing to throw upon the landlords the task which has proved too great for the Church-both concur in thinking that a change in the name will render that charge no longer distasteful to the Irish people. Yet the people know that the additional rent demanded under commutation is for the benefit of the Protestant clergy. There will be nothing changed but the name of the tithe, and its being obtained through the agency of the landlords.

The practical result of commutation is making the Irish landlords tithe proctors for the Church! This will consummate the evil, and set the seal to disorder.

'I have already shown how helpless is the situation of the Irish landlords-but they have, as yet, not been mixed up with the lamentable question of tithes.

The Church must, it seems, at all risks continue identified with the tithes. To insure this, both you and Sir Robert Peel are ready to sacrifice a large portion of this property, to secure the remainder to the Church.

'A small residue of tithes is a better income then for the Church than any amount of income obtained for it from another source! So bent is every government on maintaining a connection between the Irish tithes and the Irish Church, that the landlords are now to be made a party in the struggle!

If making them proctors for the Church can reconcile the people to tithe under another name-well-if it has not this effect, you will regret the hazardous experiment.

с

It matters not, my Lord, what a large bonus may induce the landlords to undertake. If they cannot do that for the Church which the Church cannot do for herself, you will have embarked them in a fearful

contest.

The present struggle is between the people and the Church-hereafter, the landlords will form a third party in the strife.

Again I repeat, the only hope of saving tithe as public property is to disconnect it from the Church. If you do not go this length, tithe as public property is annihilated.'

Give, then, to the Church of Ireland, an income whose collection subjects its ministers to no obloquy. Let their minds, and those of the people they instruct, be no longer under circumstances prejudicial. to moral and religious influence.

We are bound to endow and maintain the Protestant Church in Ireland; but we are equally bound to do this in a manner compatible with the peace of the country. The English government has ever been desirous that the Irish Protestant Church should exercise a spiritual influence over the Irish people; yet its first step was to endow that Church in a manner so objectionable as to render it, on temporal grounds, odious to the people. By this course it placed the interests of the clergy and the people in opposition; and this for the purpose of making them amalgamate in spiritual belief! If this was wrong, when the Protestant Church was first planted in Ireland, the continuance of such a system is not less wrong now. If you examine carefully the whole of our legislation for Ireland, from its conquest by Cromwell to the present hour, you will not find a single Act of Parliament calculated to produce a moral and religious impression. We have in all that time rarely had recourse to any means of governing the Irish, save those of force.

Unless we are prepared to retrace our steps and become wholly intolerant, all we can now do is to re-endow the Protestant Church in Ireland out of the public revenue-protecting her as an independent, but not as a supreme Church.

I would re-endow her in the most liberal spirit; but there should be in future no clergy without important duties to perform. In obliging them to make a return to the public, for a public income, by working constantly in the vocation they have chosen, we shall use the most efficient means for rendering the establishment national and permanent.' pp. 45-51.

We ought also, Mr. Broadhurst contends, to lose no time in offering to the Irish Catholic Church an endowment duly proportioned to that granted to the Protestant Church.

In the present irritated state of feeling among the Irish Catholics, it is to be feared,' he says, 'they would not accept stipends for their priests; but, when juster principles of government shall have gained for us the hearts of the people, we should lose no time in pressing upon them an endowment for their Church. In the mean time, if your Lordship expects peace in Ireland, the value of the tithe must be paid into the Treasury, and appropriated to the general uses of the State.'

Agreeing, as we do, in the latter part of the Writer's suggestion, we shall not spend many words in combating the former part, more especially as the forcing of stipends upon reluctant priests is an expedient too absurd to be seriously contemplated. In fact, Mr. Broadhurst admits that it would not be feasible at present, and therefore it could form no element of a satisfactory arrangement. And what would be the object of those who made this offer? It might bribe the indolence of the priesthood, but

would it abate the still more pernicious fanaticism of the monks and lay orders? Would it relieve the people of any pecuniary demands made upon them in the shape of fees and dues, which now form the main support of the Romish clergy? Clearly not. It would but multiply the rival claimants. For every stipendiary priest, there would spring up two or three expectants or mendicants; and the flocks would be as much mulcted as ever.

The ministers of religion may be divided into three classes, as viewed under three different characters; teachers of religion, ecclesiastical functionaries, and priests. It is not generally perceived, how the question relating to their maintenance is governed by the nature of their office. If it be that of the priest, the dispenser of sacraments, whose main business is to baptize, marry, absolve on confession, administer the Eucharist, and inter, these services are invariably connected with fees, which form the most cherished property of the Church, an essential part of the sacerdotal system, and the very basis of the Seven Sacraments. The fee system enables every priest to enforce his maintenance. It is strictly a compulsory system of ecclesiastical taxation, sanctioned by the most fearful penalties; as compulsory as any taxlevied in the shape of excise or customs. It is obvious then, that no Church, with the framework of whose polity this system has been intertwined, is likely to be induced to part with it for stipends or endowments. The Episcopal clergy of the English Church, even when drawing large revenues from the tithes, shew no disposition to relax their hold on the parochial fees; although the abolition of the Confessional in the Protestant Church has deprived them not only of one material source of profit arising from fees, but of the power of enforcing their ghostly claims upon the laity. Endowments enjoyed by the Romish Church are applicable to the support of colleges, convents, missions, and other establishments; but the stipendiary system is not adapted to the functions and position of the priesthood, and could not, at all events, be substituted for the fee system, without a relinquishment of the distinguishing features of the sacerdotal theory.

Ecclesiastical functionaries whose office is limited to the discharge of a certain routine of specific duties, must be paid by a stipend or fixed salary. If it is deemed, for instance, a part of Protestant Christianity, to keep up the daily iteration of the musical service of the choir in our Gothic temples, albeit no congregations are now attracted by the obsolete performance, it is obvious that funds must be found to pay the choir, and defray other expenses, which neither compulsive fees nor voluntary contributions can furnish. Again, a state clergy, as forming a species of magistracy or spiritual police, may claim support from the State. The idea of a Protestant clergyman is very much that of a parochial magistrate, whose business it is to administer