-In the daylight grew contracted,

As 't would rather not admit it ;-
In short, as if a man would quite

Throw time away, who 'd strive to let in a
Decent portion of God's light

On lawyer's mind or pussy's retina.

Hence, Southey was all but totally unconscious of his own inconsistency; he was equally satisfied with Wat Tyler and the Vision of Judgement; he would probably have asserted that the principles of both were directed to the same end, viz. human happiness; but that experience had led him to alter his means,-having failed to achieve the regeneration of mankind by democracy, he sought to accomplish it by despotism. It may further be added in his vindication, that his democracy itself was despotic in its character; it resembled the republicanism of a certain popular leader in the north of Ireland, who having frequently exclaimed, "I wish I were free! I wish I were free !" and being asked by a friend "Are you not free to do as you please?"-replied, "Yes; but I am not free to make you do as I please!" The first article of Southey's creed, and the constant burthen of his addresses to the nation was, "A prophet is among you, but ye heed him not!" He hated Canning, and he hated Byron, because both avowed their infidelity in his mission; the one having covered with ridicule his revolutionary sapphics, and the other having rendered the same service to his conservative hexameters. The capital error of Southey's life was, that he mistook deep reading for extensive observation, and contemplative deduction for practical reasoning. We have too many sympathies for the solitary student not to tolerate the idola specûs,-the imaginings that people the scholar's den. Mr. Howitt regards them too much in the spirit of an Iconoclast.

We admire the criticism on Wordsworth, as much as we deprecate the savage attack on Southey. The bard of Rydal Mount is the masculine counterpart of Madame Guyon,-or, what is the same thing, a George Fox bigoted to the forms of the Church of England. Howitt's comparative analysis of Wordsworthism and Quakerism is truly admirable; and what is still better, it will equally gratify the believers and the unbelievers in the poetic mission of the bard of Rydal Mount. There are those who remember Burns only as an excise-officer, and those who think of Wordsworth only as a stamp-distributor; we abandon all such to the merciless sarcasm of William Howitt, but we protest against the injustice of its distribution. He assails the court and the aristocracy for withholding patronage from literature and literary men; but we should like to know the amount of patronage given to literary talent, even when its aid was courted-by the wealthy manufacturers of Lancashire and Yorkshire? Have cotton-lords been more generous patrons than landlords? or have not both bought genius in the cheapest market, and sold it, when they could, in the dearest? Whether the question of patronage is to be decided by the laws of poetical economy or political economy, may fairly be questioned; but, whatever canons be adopted, the rule must be equally applied to all possessors of wealth, to the millionaires as well as the landed aristocracy. keeps a poet," said Mrs. Packwood, when questioned about the clever verses, in which her husband's razors were advertised; it is not clear but that the keeping of poets by others may lead to a similar prostitution of talents in puffing.

"We

There is something like an intrusion into private affairs in Howitt's examination of the relations existing between Moore and the Whig

aristocracy; we could point out more than one misstatement in his account, if we were to follow the example which we condemn. But, whatever may be the short-comings of the titled friends and noble hosts with whom Moore has been associated, the gross and signal ingratitude of an entire nation throws them far, if not completely, into the shade. Moore, rather than O'Connell, deserves the title of Liberator of the Catholics of Ireland; the Irish National Melodies were infinitely more efficacious in winning the mind of England than all the speeches made by all the orators of the Catholic Association; and the Memoirs of Captain Rock produced a deeper and wider effect than the Simultaneous Meetings. When emancipation was denounced from the pulpit, it was preached from the piano; the husband may have voted on the illiberal side, but the wife and daughters propounded liberal sentiments, superadding the charms of melody to the flashings of wit and the force of argument. Parliamentary majorities were scouted in the drawing-room, and the gravities of the Court of Chancery were routed by the gaieties of the saloon. Fully two-thirds of those who voted against the Catholic Bills of 1825, did so, not through dislike of the measure, but through reluctance to have it settled by their intervention. Peel's speech of that year was not so much a reply to Plunket, as an apology to the boardingschools; he felt that it was a hopeless task to answer songs by sermons; he felt somewhat like the Knight in the Tale of the Honeystew, whose ponderous armour could not resist the diamond weapon wielded by the King of the Kobolds. Now, what has Ireland done for Moore?-simply this; it has neglected him in private and assailed him in public-made no inquiry respecting his condition, and attacked him in the columns of the "Nation." When Ireland has paid some instalment of its large debt of gratitude, it will be time enough to inquire respecting the smaller debts said to be due to the poet from the Whig aristocracy.

We visit not the homes and haunts of living poets, nor the tombs of those recently dead, to pry into their domestic secrets, or hazard conjectures, which, without vindicating the dead, cannot fail to inflict unnecessary pain on the living. We could wish that Mr. Howitt had always exercised a similar forbearance. There was no necessity for his becoming coroner at a second inquest over the unfortunate L. E. L.; he had not, and he could not have sufficient evidence on which a verdict might be safely founded; materials even for plausible conjecture are yet wanting;

Then be her feelings covered by her tomb,

And guardian laurels o'er her ashes bloom!

It has not been our purpose to criticise this work; it is too desultory from its very nature to admit of formal examination. But it contains so much of a generous appreciation of what is noble and exalted, and so much of an equally generous indignation against everything which appears mean and sordid, that we have been led along in a delightful ramble, generally concurring with the praise, but not always assenting to the justice of the blame. The most striking feature of the book is its intense individuality; we do not so much read the book, as talk with the author; the two volumes are William Howitt himself, with all his noble impulses and all his personal feelings,-feelings that, perhaps, in some instances too nearly approximate to prejudices. Placed before such a book, the critic was not unnaturally tempted to have a talk in his turn, and instead of a review, to give his reader a rambling conversation. That we differ from Mr. Howitt on many points, is sufficiently obvious; but trust it is equally obvious that he possesses our respect, and his work our warmest approbation.

THE BOY AND THE MANTLE.

A THEFT FROM THE PERCY RELIQUES.

BY ALBERT SMITH.

WITH AN ILLUSTRATION BY LEECH.

In a very agreeable little volume of our English Nursery Rhymes, -which will entertain all who love to have the days of their tranquil childhood recalled in this grown-up anxious wearing struggle for existence-compiled with singular care by Mr. Halliwell, there is this metrical historical information :—

When good King Arthur ruled this land,

He was a goodly king;

He stole three pecks of barley-meal,
To make a bag-pudding.

A bag-pudding the king did make,
And stuff'd it well with plums;

And in it put great lumps of fat,
As big as my two thumbs.

The king and queen did eat thereof,

And noblemen beside;

And what they could not eat that night,
The queen next morning fried.

Were we addicted to putting forth those hazy speculations and attempts to make facts out of nothing-as the biographers of Shakspere and other great people delight to do—we might, perhaps, in time, glean the whole events of King Arthur's somewhat unsatisfactory career from our nursery tales. Starting from this point, it would not be a task of much difficulty to prove that the monarch and his consort were identical with the royal pair who counted out their money, and ate bread and honey during a domestic wash, in which the maid was attacked by a savage bird, and after that singular meal, whereat the dainty device of the two dozen blackbirds in the pasty eclipsed all that Soyer, great as he is, ever conceived. But we would rather come to facts: and, therefore, with admiration for the king's "goodliness,"-who, not being at all proud, stole the materials for a banquet, cooked it himself, and displayed, through his spouse, a most praiseworthy spirit of economy with respect to the debris, we plunge at once into our legend, premising that, like everything else in the literary line at the present time, it is copied from something that has gone before.

It was at "merry Carleile" that the King, and Queen, and Noblemen of the ballad were assembled; and in the sunny smiling leafy May of "once upon a time "-for we have no such Mays now. The seasons have gradually been falling back, like the time of an uncared-for clock, and the year wants fresh regulating.

And merry indeed was the rout that had met together at Carlisle in the castle, and a glorious time they had of it. Queen Guenever was a fair young hostess; and not exactly the one to stop any fun once started; indeed, perhaps it is as well for her character, that the chroni

VOL. XXI.

I