important with reference to the subject, than it is itself strange and anomalous; presenting to the observer, a singular combination of barbarism and civilization, affecting the same class, and involving the self-same intellects, in the strong glare of contrasted light and darkness.

Over by far the larger districts of the country, if an intelligent stranger were to have full means to observe the manners, the moral principles and .training, the opinions and knowledge of the peasantry, he might well feel as one transported some two centuries backward in the scale of progress. If, on the other hand, the same observer were to introduce among these seemingly simple and undisciplined barbarians, questions of national theology and politics, and really contrive to draw them into the sincere exertion of their understandings, he would be equally astonished to observe a nice ness of logical tact-an intelligence in the politics of the day-and generally a progress in that casuistry, which depends exclusively on the native power or the habitual use of the mere intellect -such as might do no discredit to Maynooth. Such is the anomalous inequality, which, whether we have exaggerated it or not, exists to obscure the question as to our real state of advance. While we must be allowed to stand below the level of English and Scottish civilization, in all its more momentous elements, we stand at the lowest on a level with them in the mere development of intellectual power. To shew the little value, or indeed serious disadvantage of this condition, would be to digress widely from the purpose we have in view.* But we may advantageously notice its obvious cause.

While a dominant superstition, of which it is the vital principle to depress the advances of the mind in every direction, has with other familiar causes

of a historical and political kind, conspired to foster ignorance and retard civilization, a violent political fermentation, with the causes of which, our discussion is not involved, has operated as a powerful stimulant on the national mind, and awakened all the faculties of a people-by nature shrewd and observant - into their intensest action. These dispositions have found a school in the political arena, only inferior in power and mischievous efficiency to the mob-oratory which produced very similar effects in the "fierce democracy" of Ancient Greece. The ear for oratorical effects

the logical sense-the expansive tact that brings the mind into contact with events, have been fostered and matured at the public hustings and at the agitation meetings. But the sole food which has been thus imbibed, has been from the misstatements of faction-partial views of fact-fallacious principles and all the prejudices and ignorances which have ever formed the material an ammunition of party warfare. Thus trained, developed and furnished with a system of specious fallacies, cunningly interwoven with the grievous realities of their condition, the bulk of the Irish peasantry exhibit a singular mixture of cultivation and barbarism-of shrewdness and ignorance-of scnsitiveness and brutality-of meanness and moral elevation.

These considerations are capable of an application far more extensive than it is our desire to give them. For while a highly educated class is also to be found throughont the country, existing rather within itself, than in contact with the public mind, the body of the Irish gentry is also in no small measure affected by causes arising out of the same state of things. The close propinquity and personal nature of the causes of political excitement, seem to have given them an exclusive possession of the mind. Men are classed

by their party feelings, and rather to be characterised by the colour of their creed, than by any personal attribute. The gentry of Ireland are Whigs and Tories. And while the civilization of the 19th century sits in the twilight of the darker ages, a fierce conflict, fiercely carried on, suppresses, obstructs, and confines the diffusion of the mental element of civilization. There is thus on every side, broadly and plainly visible, a diffusion of moral and intellectual action, quite distinct from the humanizing principles of knowledge or education-a spurious vitality in the nature of disease, in which faction only derives growth :by which thought and talent, sentiment and opinion, abundantly called forth, are shaped as they rise to the narrow views of the day, and moulded to the blind expediencies of either party. Every thing is looked on by public feeling through this misty medium, and nothing is rightly appreciated that does not in some way connect itself with public events and party notions; while, to the convulsions of party are added the noise of theological contentions, and the struggles of ecclesiastical defence.

It should indeed be noticed before we leave this topic, that the obstacles to progress, which we have here been explaining, were the more likely to be protracted, that there has been no very decided principle of counteraction. In former times, as still, the mind of Ireland received its impulses from the maturer action of that of England; but England has itself been, for the same period, the stage of a complex revolution, of very varied and of opposite effects as regards this subject.—If we consider this with a view to her political influences on Ireland, one sentence must here express our opinion:-she has made this country, itself convulsed from end to end, the arena of a revolutionary contest. But the same contest, though it has been far from shaking in the same degree the mature structure of the social system in England, has there, as here, long since arrested and withered the germs from which literature derives its growth; the public ear is there almost as dull as here, to all that concerns not the feelings of party. This is, however, not an abiding condition political excitement itself wears out, or with its causes, subsides. And there is in the vast accession of knowledge—of principles —of language and of educated minds,

a powerful reaction preparing in favor of an advance more exclusively moral and intellectual. There is in educated man, in proportion as he rises in the scale of mind, a tendency to strive after permanent principles and results; and though public virtue, or self-interest, or vanity, may draw men wholly into the collisions of ephemeral questions and parties-yet these having subsided, the calmer and more abiding interests, and the more profound and elevated realms of truth, excellence and beauty, obtain the preference of the intellectual part of our nature.

Having now taken as large a compass as we think necessary for a superficial and popular view of the prospects and advantages of Irish literature, other topics of more immediate connexion with the subject present themselves our actual capabilities; the obstacles that exist to retard us; the efforts which have failed; the progress we have made; the objects to be gained by success; the necessary conditions of that success; and the means we have to pursue.

Our actual capabilities are, we are inclined to believe, much undervalued. Every one who is practically conversant with the opinions of Ireland and the Irish, abroad, must be aware that the general estimate of our moral and intellectual condition is of the lowest. In Germany, France, Italy, in fact, through Europe, and still more in America, our island may be said to represent the ancient ultima Thule of civilization.

The vast capabilities of this country for literary pursuit, are in fact concealed by the overpowering demand of the English marts. Whatever is produced here is consumed there. The better portion of our mind is absorbed into the sphere of the ascendant genius of England, and thus our real progress is concealed from the eyes of the world. Neither is it only America, which has but a fortuitous knowledge of our existence, or France, which all but excludes us from the scale of literary existence; but indeed England, our sister, with whom we have so long taken sweet counsel-in England, while there is an exaggerated notion of our wit and imagination, nothing can be more observable than the very low opinion which there exists as to our state of civilization, and of our literary pretensious.

The causes of this impression are not foreign from our purpose.

suredly there are names among us not soon to be blotted out from the record of after days. We challenge no ridiculous comparison with our maternal soil the land of Newton, Shakspeare, Milton, Bacon, the unrivalled minds of Europe-such master-spirits are no the common produce of their time. We simply affirm our claim to no small catalogue of illustrious men; and we may add, that there is a constant though concealed stream of Irish talent flowing to swell the mass of English and Scottish literature. We might, indeed, on this head, point to the public arena of party strife, and ask who are the foremost on either side, the most effective in appeal, the most allowed in power, either for good or evil, all Irish, nearly to a man. It is an easy transition to imagine this overflow reduced within its channel, and spreading the light of civilization at home. We have said to imagine, because, in truth, many obstacles must be overcome, and time must have brought forth many changes before this desirable consummation is to be reached. But it lies within the fair scope of exertion, and, therefore, it is no vain or useless object to fix upon. It is to be looked for from enlightened effort; and we are disposed further to point it out as a result in the course of a progress which has actually set in.

Already there is a change upon the spirit of the time. In the wildest burst of the storm there is a still small voice among the elements of wrath, and fury, and popular madness. A slow but grow ing sense of their delusion is stealing from rank to rank among the people so long abused-the false pledge, redeemed by accumulated lies, has grown almost too broad and black for infatuation's self to mistake for any thing divine or good. The language of truth and right have acquired an expansive and still expanding influence and authority; and there is among the higher and nobler class of spirits a trustful expectation of more congenial times, when the winter shall be past, the rain over and gone, and the flowers shall appear on the earth. Even amid the din of party there is a growing desire to revert to more permanent and standard thoughts and things; and in the waste of a depraved literature, a strong spirit of just and true criticism is beginning to indicate the approach of that spirit of refinement and severe good taste which is now wanting to correct, reduce, chasten, and harmonize the tumultuous

and turbid exuberance of our uhprincipled and random literature.

There is a tendency in civilization, when it has reached a certain point, to advance onwards towards perfection. This may not be reached, because the. distance is infinite, and the course interrupted. In observing this important principle, we must always make allowance for small indications, such as must seem trifling to unphilosophical understandings. This must be our apology for noticing the continued efforts and failures of the Dublin press for some years back, to produce periodical works. The vast and rapid increase of intellectual excitement, the spread of knowledge, and the coarse stimulus of political feeling and action among the middle classes, had the natural consequence of bringing more mind into action. The pressure of intellectual effort soon began to find or make channels for itself. As we have noticed already, England, and in a lesser degree Scotland afforded rapid outlets, and by absorbing, concealed the abundance of the production; but at the same time numerous literary productions of a more youthful, untrained, and therefore transient and obscure character, also began to spring up season after season, into an existence scarcely known beyond the writers themselves, who paid the cost, and with juvenile admiration exulted in their unfledged authorship; for they were for the most part boys, receiving their first bent from a spirit that was in the time. To these we have ground for adding, there was no small accession from the humblest walks of handicraft occupation. The books had no sale, and the writers no payment; it was a labour of love, and all seemed willing to contribute their share. The tinker's well-trained ear betrayed itself in the harmonious jingle of his rhyme; the tailor vindicated his goose by swan-like notes; printers' devils were evoked by most unheard-of incantations, and uttered strange responses. All Castle-street chimed together in "Kidderminster stuff," and Thomasstreet answered "from its misty shroud." Thus one gay swarm followed another, and was swept into the stream of oblivion. Experience pronounced their epitaph as they disappeared-tinker and tailor became sadder and wiser men and it became perceptible that essays and poems were not altogether to be compassed by plain stitch and

solder; and that even Lilly and Voster, Euclid and Murray must undergo some important transmutations in the mind, before they were likely to effloresce in the form of readable literature. The county of Kerry itself, famous time out of mind for its Latinity, could not support a literary effort which wanted the essential principle by which all successful effort thrives, the sinews of war and commerce, money. Nothing, in truth, had the effect of repressing for a single season, the laudable efforts thus begun; and as the youthful writers grew more ripe, they now and then exhibited transient gleams of higher pretension and even occasionally brought out flashes of very considerable power; but it was absolutely impossible they could have in the bulk a material success, beyond that we have described. Patriotism itself could not find heroism to read, still less pay for such callow literature. The mere desire of public good never has, or ought to retain the efforts of any marketable mind, and as it sprung up to maturity the effective talent of the country found its level and its price. It obtained from the profitable wisdom of our neighbours that value which all should seek who have any thing which they have the power and right to dispose of. The talent of the successful writer, is the result of much labour, and that of the severest kind— it is the mature fruit of many trials, and often the result of a waste of the better years of life, and of many of the happier sensibilities of our nature-melted down into that crucible over which the student broods in the fever of ambition, and the sorrow of hope deferred, for the visionary prize of some surviving fame, so hardly won, and so invidiously allowed.

It was, therefore, an indispensible preliminary to the desirable object of calling home our scattered forces, and concentrating those lights which were so long losing themselves in the full-orbed day of England and Scotland, into a native and home existence, that this operation should commence, where alone all that is permanent or effective can cominence, with the public-spirited and enterprizing trade. But the obstacles to be encountered were seemingly insurmountable. The name of Dublin on a title-page was a sufficient reason for neglect, and, in the case of periodical literature, it was too truly the indication of youthful incompe

A

tence, while many of the English periodicals had no unprofitable possession of the tables of the Irish gentry. strong prepossession of this nature, combined with the usual caprice of fashion to exclude every thing of home growth. Capital, enterprize, patience and no small portion of experience, were necessary to obtain even a chance of fair trial. A combination of accepted writers, who had already secured the voice of criticism and public notice, was to be secured at considerable cost; the loss attendant on such undertakings, under such circumstances, was to be sustained; and the risk of the more serious loss consequent on failure, where all had failed, to be dared.

How we have entered upon and triumphed over these disadvantages needs not to be dwelt on. We trust that the bold experiment may be felt to be so far successful. Of this the public may rest secure; and this upon the strength of an obvious commercial principle, of which nothing but the most extreme infatuation can lose sight;" that we have not one permanent contributor, who has not been received in the pages of our most successful cotemporary periodicals, and who has not met the undoubted testimony of public applause, or the approval of authorized criticism. To vouch for the merit of every article, or even of every monthly number, would be absurd; to such praise no periodical is entitled. Having taken the best steps to ensure the cooperation of mature and able men, we must abide by their inequalities and trust to the common sense of our readers. Let it be felt that, if indulgence were to be claimed in any case, it is in ours. Yet we ask no indulgence, though we are grateful for the justice which we cordially acknowledge to have received from the public. It is in truth among the best indications of these distracted times, that our country should have produced her first successful attempt at native literature, and that a decided and uncompromising political tone has not had the effect of eliciting any respectable reproof among our radical contemporaries.

We must conclude our summary, and we fear too meagre notice, by a brief enumeration of the public advantages to be hoped for from this undertaking. To appreciate them by the mere success of a magazine, would be unjust. To retain at home, a large