the progress from ferocity and turbulence, were almost obliterated by tranquillity and refinement. Commerce and diffused knowledge have, in fact, so completely assumed the ascendant in polished nations, that it will be difficult to discover any relics of Gothic manners, but in a fantastic exterior, which has survived the generous illusions through which these manners once seemed splendid and seductive. Their direct influence has long ceased in Europe; but their indirect influence, through the medium of those causes which would not perhaps have existed but for the mildness which chivalry created in the midst of a barbarous age, still operates with increasing vigour. The manners of the middle age were, in the most singular sense, compulsory: enterprising benevolence was produced by general fierceness, gallant courtesy by ferocious rudeness; and artificial gentleness resisted the torrent of natural barbarism. But a less incongruous system has succeeded, in which commerce, which unites men's interests, and knowledge, which excludes those prejudices that tend to embroil them, present a broader basis for the stability of civilized and beneficent manners.

Vindicia Gallica.

WE

MARIA EDGEWORTH.

Maria Edgeworth (second in order of time on the roll of English lady novelists who succeed each other without break from Fanny Burney to George Eliot) was born in Berkshire in 1766, and died at Edgeworthstown in 1849. The most good-humoured and sensible of women, she wrote with more fertility than distinction, except in her Irish stories and her chil dren's tales, both of which are unsurpassed.

THE DUBLIN SHOEBLACK.

proceed to establish the truth of our minor, and the first evidence we shall call is a Dublin shoeblack. He is not in circumstances peculiarly favourable for the display of figurative language; he is in a court of justice, upon his trial for life or death. A quarrel happened between two shoeblacks, who were playing at what in England is called pitch farthing, or heads and tails, and in Ireland, head or harp. One of the combatants threw a small paving stone at his opponent, who drew out the knife with which he used to scrape shoes, and plunged it up to the hilt in his companion's breast. It is necessary for our story to say, that Lamprey is a very eminent cutler in Dublin, whose name is stamped on the blade of his knives in the usual place. The shoeblack was brought to trial. With a number of significant gestures, which on his audience had all the powers that Demosthenes ascribes to action, he, in a language not purely Attic, gave the following account of the affair to his judge.

“Why, my lard, as I was going past the Royal Exchange I meets Billy-Billy,' says I, 'will you sky a copper?'-' Done,'

says he 'Done,' says I—and done and done's enough between two jantlemen.-With that I ranged them fair and even with my hook-em-snivey-up they go.-' Music!' says he 'Skull !' says I-and down they come three brown mazzards.-' By the holy you fleshed 'em,' says he 'You lie,' says I.—With that he ups with a lump of a two year old and let's drive at me-I out's with my bread-earner, and gives it him up to Lamprey in the bread basket."

To make this intelligible to the English, some comments are necessary. Let us follow the text, step by step, and it will afford our readers, as Lord Kames says of Blair's Dissertation on Ossian, a delicious morsel of criticism.

As I was going past the Royal Exchange I meets Billy.

In this apparently simple exordium, the scene and the meeting with Billy are brought before the eye, by the judicious use of the present tense.

Billy, says I, will you sky a copper?

A copper! genus pro specie! the generic name of copper for the bare individual halfpenny.

Sky a copper.

To sky is a new verb, which none but a master hand could have coined; a more splendid metonymy could not be applied upon a more trivial occasion; the lofty idea of raising a metal to the skies is substituted for the mean thought of tossing up a halfpenny. Our orator compresses his hyperbole into a single word. Thus the mind is prevented from dwelling long enough upon the figure to perceive its enormity. This is the perfection of the art. Let the genius of French exaggeration and of Eastern hyperbole hide their diminished heads-Virgil is scarcely more sublime.

"Ingrediturque solo et caput inter nubila condit."
"Her feet on earth, her head amidst the clouds."

With that I ranged them fair and even with my hook-emsnivey.

Hook-em-snivey.—An indescribable, though simple, machine, employed by boys in playing at head and harp.

Up they go, continues our orator.

Music! says he—Skull! says I.

Metaphor continually; on one side of an Irish halfpenny there is a harp; this is expressed by the general term music, which is finely contrasted with the word skull.

Down they come, three brown mazzards!

Mazzards! how the diction of our orator is enriched from the vocabulary of Shakspeare! the word head, instead of being changed for a more general term, is here brought distinctly to the eye by the term mazzard, or face, which is more appropriate to his majesty's profile than the words skull or head.

By the holy! you fleshed 'em, says he.

By the holy! is an oath in which more is meant than meets the ear; it is an ellipsis—an abridgement of an oath. The full formula runs thus-By the holy poker of Hell !—This instrument is of Irish invention or imagination. It seems a useful piece of furniture in the place for which it is intended, to stir the devouring flames, and thus to increase the torments of the damned. Great judgment is necessary to direct an orator how to suit his terms to his auditors, so as not to shock their feelings either by what is too much above, or too much below common life. In the use of oaths, where the passions are warm, this must be particularly attended to, else they lose their effect, and seem more the result of the head than the heart. But to proceedBy the holy! you fleshed'em.

To flesh is another verb of Irish coinage; it means, in shoeblack dialect, to touch a halfpenny, as it goes up into the air, with the fleshy part of the thumb, so as to turn it which way you please, and thus to cheat your opponent.-What an intricate explanation saved by one word!

You lie, says I.

Here no periphrasis would do the business.

With that he ups with a lump of a two year old, and lets drive at me.

With that. These are not unmeaning words, used like expletives by some orators, merely to gain time; the phrase, with that, varies in signification according to circumstances; either it denotes, that one action immediately follows another as its consequence, or else it implies, that two actions happen, or two ideas occur, actually at the same time.

He ups with.-A verb is here formed of two prepositions-a novelty in grammar. Conjunctions, we all know, are corrupted Anglo-Saxon verbs; but prepositions, according to Horne Tooke, derive only from Anglo-Saxon nouns.

All this time it is possible, that the mere English reader may not be able to guess what it is, that our orator ups with or takes up. He should be apprised, that a lump of a two year old is a middle sized stone. This is a metaphor, borrowed partly from the grazier's vocabulary, and partly from the arithmetician's vade-mecum. A stone, to come under the denomination of a lump of a two year old, must be to a less stone as a two year old calf is to a yearling. It must be to a larger stone than itself, as a two year old calf is to an ox. Here the scholar sees, that there must be two statements, one in the rule of three direct, and one in the rule of three inverse, to obtain precisely the thing required; yet the untutored Irishman, without suspecting the necessity of this operose process, arrives at the solution of the problem by some short cut of his own, as he clearly evinces by the propriety of his metaphor. To be sure there seems some incongruity in his throwing this lump of a two year old calf at his adversary. No arm but that of Milo could be strong enough for such a feat. Upon recollection, however bold this figure may seem, there are precedents for its use.

"We read in a certain author," says Beattie, "of a giant, who, in his wrath, tore off the top of the promontory and flung it at the enemy; and so huge was the mass, that you might, says he, have seen goats browsing on it as it flew through the air." Compared with this, our orator's figure is cold and tame. "I outs with my bread-earner,” continues he.

We forbear to comment on outs with, because the intelligent critic immediately perceives, that it has the same sort of merit ascribed to ups with. What our hero dignifies with the name of his bread-earner, is the knife with which, by scraping shoes, he earned his bread.-Pope's ingenious critic, Mr. Warton, bestows judicious praise upon the art with which this poet, in the Rape of the Lock, has used many "periphrases and uncommon expressions," to avoid mentioning the name of scissors, which would sound too vulgar for epick dignity ;-fatal engine,