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"This sceptred isle, This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England,

Renowned for her deeds as far from home (For Christian service and true chivalry) As is the sepulchre in stubborn Jewry

Of the world's ransom, blessed Mary's Son;
This land of such dear souls, this dear, dear
land,

Dear for her reputation through the world,
Is now-pawn'd out to Jews!"

This is what ought to be said; and I look for it, if not from lords spiritual, then even from lords temporal. But surely it would well become the primate's mouth! Of course, it would do little good; but then the religion of England would fall at least dramatically. It would make a picture quite as good as the death of Chatham. Do you remember the lawn-sleeves in that picture? The bishops are "in at the death," but nothing more.

But another steamer has come in with news; and France is all the talk. The elections are over; the Modérés have triumphed; the National Assembly has convened, and the Provisional Government is at an end. Vive Lamartine! Of course the stock of the republic takes a rise, but holders are not firm. The bloodshed at Rouen, the émeutes at Elbœuf and Limoges, and the threats of the Communistes, do not precisely inspire confidence. Still, we are so far surprised, and those who have predicted favourably for France grow a little more sanguine in their hopes. I am glad to say that Louis Blanc has no sympathisers here. All are convinced that Lamartine will make the best of it, and that, if he fails, the republic will be suffocated and expire in a stench. For one, it seems to me that Lamartine is not bad enough to encounter successfully the frantic malice of his opponents, and that their eventual success is cer

tain. Already, things have very likely taken a decisive turn, and by the time this letter reaches you, the doings of the Assembly will have enabled you to conjecture whether the nation is going by the long way, or the short cut, to Henry Fifth. As all will be stale before you can read what I now write, I will not presume to predict the immediate results; but I am sure that the assembling of such a set as have been returned to the legislature, would be enough to blow up the strongest government on earth. Jew, Dominican, pastor and bishop, poet and butcher, all in their tricoloured sashes-was there ever such a fullblown tulip-bed of liberty, equality, and fraternity!

The announcement of several clergymen as members of the Assembly

reminds me that there has been some sickly sentiment among us, about the piety that has been displayed in this revolution. In Boston we are favoured with some strange types of religious enthusiasm; in fact, the type of Christianity that prevails among us is peculiarly our own; and like our improvements in machinery, deserves the proverbial name of a " Boston notion." Emerson, who is now illuminating England, may give you some idea of what I mean; and a queer story that is told of one of his disciples, may furnish you with an explanation of the fact, that some men see religion in the sacking of the Tuileries. The youth was at the Opera to see a celebrated danseuse, and excited general attention by his somewhat extraordinary applause. enthusiasm so transported him, that the emotions of his heart became unconsciously audible. As the dancer began to whirl, he cried, "Ah, that is poetry!" As she stretched her toe to the horizontal, he exclaimed, "That's divinity!" but when she proceeded to an evolution that forced the ladies to pay attention to their fans, he burst into the climax-“ That's religion!" If this be caricature, the Emersonians richly deserve it. They are laughed at even in Boston. But they are not alone in thinking well of the piety of Paris, and arguing from it that there will be no reign of terror; as if there was not vastly more show of religion in the first revolution! If there is an archbishop

His

of Paris now, there was formerly a Talleyrand for high-priest and master of ceremonies. Oh, but they rejoin with a story! When the blouses were gutting the palace of its pictures and marbles, they found, among other works of art, an image of the Crucified. As a blouseman was about to dash it to atoms, there was a cry, "Save itsave the great teacher of fraternity!" The crucifix was accordingly saved, and borne about the streets amid songs and curses, and, very appropriately, "with lanterns and torches." "Ah, that's religion!" says your Emer. sonian. So, when recreant priests baptise a liberty-pole, or join à procession of blouses, with crosses and censers, that's divinity, at least. Was ever hypocrisy so revolting! The nauseous mockery has its only parallel in the writings of George Sand, who makes a favourite hero and heroine betake themselves to an adulterous bed, after duly reciting their prayers, in which the absent husband is very affectionately remembered. If a revolution thus begun is not destined to go speedily through all the ripening and rotting of a godless anarchy, it is to be accounted for only on the principle that He who is Eternal can wait." The old scene at Notre Dame may not be actually revived, and the Bible may not be literally dragged through Paris again tied to an ass's tail; but the undisguised atrocities of the first revolution may, after all, be exceeded by the smooth-faced blasphemies of that which has already degraded the world's Redeemer into the patron saint of insurrection, and the father of infidel fraternity.

66

Poor Lamartine! Is this the man, my Basil, whom you once likened to Chateaubriand? Quantum mutatus ! I knew him, till lately, only as a poet and a traveller. He certainly went to Palestine with the spirit of a

palmer. IIe bathed in Siloa with enthusiasm, and almost expired of feeling under the venerable olive-trees of Gethsemane.

How Frenchy-how intensely French! mass in the morning, and weeping and sighing,-a revel before nightfall, and desperate gaming. And this man to be the Cromwell of the commonwealth? He could hardly have been the Milton, though it would have been more becoming. And what will be his career? It is a pity Lady Hester Stanhope was not permitted to consult his stars in full when he met her on Mount Lebanon, when she praised his handsome foot and arched instep, and told him he should be very important in the history of the world. Ah, how certainly he will yet lament, if he does not lament already, the fulfilment of the oracle! Such weird sisters as Lady Hester generally tell only half, leaving the rest to imagination and to time. But whether this Phaeton, who has grasped the reins, is to set the world on fire; whether he, in turn, is only to try the game of Humpty Dumpty and to fall; or whether, even as I write this, he be not already under the foot of Louis Blanc and his Communistes,-what probabilities or improbabilities shall aid my conjecture? This thing only will I venture as my surmise, though not my hope, that kings shall reign again in France, as if Lamartine never lived: that tricoloured cockades shall be made no more, and lilies be cultivated again: that there will soon be longings for a sight of the drapeau blanc, and a prince of the sons of St Louis and that, fat as he is, and Bourbon as he is, and half Austrian as he has made himself, Henry Duke of Bordeaux will soon be known as HENRI LE DÉSIRÉ.

Yours ever, my dear Basil,

ERNEST.

THE CAXTONS.-PART IV.

CHAPTER IX.

I was always an early riser. Happy the man who is ! Every morning, day comes to him with a virgin's love, full of bloom, and purity, and freshness. The youth of nature is contagious, like the gladness of a happy child. I doubt if any man can be called 'old' so long as he is an early riser, and an early walker. And oh, youth!-take my word of it,-youth in dressing-gown and slippers, dawdling over breakfast at noon, is a very decrepid ghastly image of that youth which sees the sun blush over the mountains, and the dews sparkle upon blossoming hedgerows.

Passing by my father's study, I was surprised to see the windows unclosed-surprised more, on looking in, to see him bending over his booksfor I had never before known him study till after the morning meal. Students are not usually early risers, for students, alas! whatever their age, are rarely young. Yes; the great work must be getting on in serious earnest. It was no longer dalliance with learning: this was work.

I passed through the gates into the road. A few of the cottages were giving signs of returning life; but it was not yet the hour for labour, and no" Good morning, sir," greeted me on the road. Suddenly at a turn, which an overhanging beech-tree had before concealed, I came full upon my Uncle Roland.

"What! you, sir? So early? Hark, the clock is striking five!"

"Not later! I have walked well for a lame man. It must be more than four miles to and back."

"You have been to - not on business? No soul would be up."

"Yes, at inns there is always some one up. Ostlers never sleep! I have been to order my humble chaise and pair. I leave you to day, nephew."

"Ah, uncle, we have offended you. It was my folly—that cursed print—” "Pooh!" said my uncle, quickly. "Offended me, boy! I defy you!" and he pressed my hand roughly.

"Yet this sudden determination! It was but yesterday, at the Roman

Camp, that you planned an excursion with my father to C Castle."

"Never depend upon a whimsical man. I must be in London to-night." "And return to morrow?"

"I know not when," said my uncle, gloomily; and he was silent for some moments. At length, leaning less lightly on my arm, he continued — "Young man, you have pleased me. I love that open saucy brow of yours, on which nature has written Trust me.' I love those clear eyes that look man manfully in the face. I must know more of you-much of you. You must come and see me some day or other in your ancestor's ruined keep."

"Come! that I will. And you shall show me the old tower-”

"And the traces of the outworks;" cried my uncle, flourishing his stick.

"And the pedigree—"

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Ay, and your great-great-grandfather's armour, which he wore at Marston Moor-"

"Yes, and the brass plate in the church, uncle."

"The deuce is in the boy! Come here come here; I've three minds to break your head, sir!"

"It is a pity somebody had not broken the rascally printer's, before he had the impudence to disgrace us by having a family, uncle."

Captain Roland tried hard to frown, but he could not. "Pshaw!" said he, stopping, and taking snuff. "The world of the dead is wide; why should the ghosts jostle us?"

"We can never escape the ghosts, uncle. They haunt us always. We cannot think or act, but the soul of some man, who has lived before, points the way. The dead never die, especially since—”

"Since what, boy? you speak well." "Since our great ancestor introduced printing," said I, majestically. My uncle whistled "Malbrook s'en va-t-en guerre."

I had not the heart to plague him further.

"Peace!" said I, creeping cautiously within the circle of the stick.

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Uncle Roland was gone. Before he went, he was closeted for an hour with my father, who then accompanied him to the gate; and we all crowded round him as he stepped into his chaise. When the Captain was gone, I tried to sound my father as to the cause of so sudden a departure. But my father was impenetrable in all that related to his brother's secrets. Whether or not the Captain had ever confided to him the cause of his displeasure with his son,—a mystery which much haunted me,my father was mute on that score, both to my mother and myself. For two or three days, however, Mr Caxton was evidently unsettled. He did not even take to his great work; but walked much alone, or accompanied only by the duck, and without even a book in his hand. But by degrees the scholarly habits returned to him; my mother mended his pens, and the work went on.

For my part, left much to myself, especially in the mornings, I began to muse restlessly over the future. Ungrateful that I was, the happiness of home ceased to content me. heard afar the roar of the great world, and roved impatient by the shore.

I

At length, one evening, my father, with some modest hums and ha's, and an unaffected blush on his fair forehead, gratified a prayer frequently urged on him, and read me some portions of "the great Work." I cannot express the feelings this lecture created-they were something akin to awe. For the design of this book was so immense—and towards its execution, a learning so vast and various had administered-that it seemed to me as if a spirit had opened to me a new world, which had always been before my feet, but which my own human blindness had hitherto concealed from me. The unspeakable patience with which all these materials had been collected year after year-the ease with which

My

now, by the calm power of genius, they seemed of themselves to fall into harmony and system-the unconscious humility with which the scholar exposed the stores of a laborious life;-all combined to rebuke my own restlessness and ambition, while they filled me with a pride in my father, which saved my wounded egotism from a pang. Here, indeed, was one of those books which embrace an existence; like the Dictionary of Bayle, or the History of Gibbon, or the Fasti Hellenici of Clinton,-it was a book to which thousands of books had contributed, only to make the originality of the single mind more bold and clear. Into the furnace all vessels of gold, of all ages, had been cast, but from the mould came the new coin, with its single stamp. And happily, the subject of the work did not forbid to the writer the indulgence of his naïve, peculiar irony of humour -so quiet, yet so profound. father's book was the "History of Human Error." It was, therefore, the moral history of mankind, told with truth and earnestness, yet with an arch unmalignant smile. Sometimes, indeed, the smile drew tears. But in all true humour lies its germ, pathos. Oh! by the goddess Moria or Folly, but he was at home in his theme! He viewed man first in the savage state, preferring in this the positive accounts of voyagers and travellers, to the vague myths of antiquity, and the dreams of speculators on our pristine state. From Australia and Abyssinia, he drew pictures of mortality unadorned, as lively as if he had lived amongst Bushmen and savages all his life. Then he crossed over the Atlantic, and brought before you the American Indian, with his noble nature, struggling into the dawn of civilisation, when friend Penn cheated him out of his birthright, and the Anglo-Saxon drove him back into darkness. He showed both analogy and contrast between

this specimen of our kind, and others equally apart from the extremes of the savage state and the cultured. The Arab in his tent, the Teuton in his forests, the Greenlander in his boat, the Fin in his rein-deer car. Up sprang the rude gods of the north, and the resuscitated Druidism, passing from its earliest templeless belief into the later corruptions of crommell and idol. Up sprang, by their side, the Saturn of the Phoenicians, the mystic Budh of India, the elementary deities of the Pelasgian, the Naith and Serapis of Egypt, the Ormuzd of Persia, the Bel of Babylon, the winged genii of the graceful Etruria. How nature and life shaped the religion; how the religion shaped the manners; how, and by what influences, some tribes were formed for progress; how others were destined to remain stationary, or be swallowed up in war and slavery by their brethren, was told with a precision clear and strong as the voice of Fate. Not only an antiquarian and philologist, but an anatomist and philosopher -my father brought to bear on all these grave points, the various speculations involved in the distinctions of race. He showed how race in perfection is produced, up to a certain point, by admixture: how all mixed races have been the most intelligent how, in proportion as local circumstance and religious faith permitted the the early fusion of differing tribes, races improved and quickened into the refinements of civilisation. He tracked the progress and dispersion of the Hellenes, from their mythical cradle in Thessaly; and showed how those who settled near the sea-shores, and were compelled into commerce and intercourse with strangers, gave to Greece her marvellous accomplishments in arts and letters-the flowers of the ancient world. How others, like the Spartans, dwelling evermore in a camp, on guard against their neighbours, and rigidly preserving their Dorian purity of extraction, contributed neither artists, nor poets, nor philosophers to the golden treasure-house of mind. He took the old race of the Celts, Cimry, or Cimmerians. He compared the Celt who, as in Wales, the Scotch Highlands, in Bretagne, and in uncomprehended Ireland, retains his old characteris

tics and purity of breed, with the Celt whose blood, mixed by a thousand channels, dictates from Paris the manners and revolutions of the world. He compared the Norman in his ancient Scandinavian home, with that wonder of intelligence and chivalry which he became, fused imperceptibly with the Frank, the Goth, and the AngloSaxon. He compared the Saxon, stationary in the land of Horsa, with the colonist and civiliser of the globe, as he becomes, when he knows not through what channels French, Flemish, Danish, Welch, Scotch, and Irish-he draws his sanguine blood. And out from all these speculations, to which I do such hurried and scanty justice, he drew the blessed truth, that carries hope to the land of the Caffre, the hut of the Bushman-that there is nothing in the flattened skull and the ebon aspect that rejects God's law, improvement; that by the same principle which raises the dog, the lowest of the animals in its savage state, to the highest after man,-viz. admixture of race—you can elevate into nations of majesty and power the outcasts of humanity, now your compassion or your scorn. But when my father got into the marrow of his theme-when, quitting these preliminary discussions, he fell pounce amongst the would-be wisdom of the wise; when he dealt with civilisation itself, its schools, and porticos, and academies; when he bared the absurdities couched beneath the colleges of the Egyptians, and the Symposia of the Greeks;-when he showed that, even in their own favourite pursuit of metaphysics, the Greeks were children; and in their own more practical region of politics, the Romans were visionaries and bunglers;—when, following the stream of error through the middle ages, he quoted the puerilities of Agrippa, the crudities of Cardan; and passed, with his calm smile, into the salons of the chattering wits of Paris in the eighteenth century, oh, then his irony was that of Lucian, sweetened by the gentle spirit of Erasmus. For not even here was my father's satire of the cheerless and Mephistophelian school. From this record of error he drew forth the grand eras of truth. He showed how earnest men never think in vain, though their thoughts may be errors. He proved

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