the Revolution." It will hardly be allowed that Captain Chamier was an entirely unprejudiced spectator, for his work bears evidence of a very hearty hatred of everything republican. But in spite of his monarchical tendencies, which are not likely to lessen the value of the work in the eyes of Englishmen, he deserves the credit of being a sincere well-wisher to the glory and prosperity of France. In common with many Frenchmen, he entertains the gloomiest forebodings of her future destiny, unless a permanent, vigorous, and sound system of government be re-established. If space permitted, we could give many interesting extracts from the work, but we must refer our readers to its pages, whether they seek for amusement, or for further and fresh details of the important events of which it treats.

Guy Faux: a Squib manufactured by Horace Mayhew and Percy Cruikshank.-Grant and Griffiths.

The well-matched pair of wags, who have "let off" this jeu-d'esprit, have wisely resolved to explode the bouncing "crackers" of the chroniclers, and to ex-Hume the genuine legend of Guy Faux so fascinating to the puer imagination. What a phoenix is our hero! Of all the fiery spirits who have endeavoured to illuminate their times, Guy is the only one who is really "burnt into" our memory. Bacon, his great contemporary, could never have been preserved through such a perennial singeing and smoking.

Nevertheless, familiar as we have been made with the effigy of Guy in all shapes; and although his annual "exposition" has been always ushered in with a gutter-al chorus, commanding posterity not to forget. him; what, after all, does the public know of his Memoirs and Works, his Remains excepted? Now, we can assure all who are curious on the subject, that this well-timed publication will be found to unfold more accurate information about Guy than "Le Guide Faux de l'Histoire." We may add, that its "facts and figures" bear a strong impress of truth, and however highly coloured, deserve our warmest commendation.

Mr. Percy Cruikshank has displayed in this little work a breadth of humour, a knowledge of costume, and a power of composition not inferior to any comic illustrator of the day.

The Jew-de-Brass. By Paul Pindar. Newby.

We should not refer to these very indifferent rhymes, were it not that the writer has assumed a name under which one of the contributors to this "Miscellany" is known to the public. It is sufficient to add, that, in literary life, this is a novel mode of seeking a father to a sickly bantling.

Selections from the Poems and Letters of Bernard Barton. his Daughter. Hall, Virtue and Co.

Edited by

Bernard Barton was not a great poet, but he was a very amiable His whole life was a little poem in itself, simple, gentle, and spiritual, and having as little of earth in it as was consistent with the

man.

necessity of living. For forty years he held the position of clerk in a bank, where he continued to drudge cheerfully till within two days of his death. Some gleams of sunshine fell upon his course once or twice, and cheered his quiet retirement with a competence sufficient for his modest wants. A few friends of his own persuasion, subscribed for his use a sum of £1,200, which enabled him to gratify a longing desire by purchasing the house and land he loved as the habitation of his wife's mother; and, on retiring from office, Sir Robert Peel recommended him to the Queen for a grant of £100 a-year.

He lived amongst books and pictures. Shut up as he was in a daily routine, at a distance from the metropolis, personal intercourse with literary men was impossible, but he enjoyed the high pleasure of corresponding with some of the most genial of his contemporaries, Southey, Charles Lamb, C. B. Taylor, Mitford, Mrs. Opie, and others. The letters to and from various friends collected into this volume, are extremely interesting, and, in addition to pleasant revelations concerning a variety of people, they bring out the qualities of Barton's heart and mind in a charming spirit.

He was all through life an ailing man, but the very reverse of a hypochondriac. He was never positively ill till towards the close of his life, and, with the characteristic negligence of a poet, took little care of his health, and laughed at drugs and doctors. He had a most cheerful and hopeful temperament, and once entertained a notion of throwing up his monotonous occupation in the bank, and trusting to literary labour for an income, a project from which Charles Lamb judiciously and earnestly dissuaded him. "Throw yourself on the world!" exclaimed that man of the kindliest heart and the soundest judgment, "without any rational plan of support beyond what the chance employ of booksellers would afford you!!! Throw yourself rather, my dear sir, from the steep Tarpeian rock, slap-dash headlong upon iron spikes." Happily, Bernard Barton took his advice, and lived out his innocent life in ease and contentment.

This volume, edited by his daughter, is an acceptable contribution to the literary history of our time, and introduces us "in his habit as he lived," to one whose productions will always be held in esteem for their moral tendency and natural beauty.

Murder-Heroes, and the Diseased Drama of their Crime, Trial, Sentence, and Execution. By R. H. Horne. Kent and Richards.

A timely satire upon the recent epidemic communicated to the people by the trial and execution of the Mannings. Under the form of an imaginary biography of a great heroic criminal, Mr. Horne traces the whole course and progress of the popular infatuation, and shows how curiosity, wonder and admiration grow upon the ostentatious publicity of sanguinary offences and their expiation on the scaffold. The elevation of culprits into heroes is exhibited as one of the effects of all this judicial parade, and the intoxication of the multitude, leading to the imitation and extension of the worst crimes, as another. The subject is treated with a veiled and pungent humour, which indicates its salient points very happily.

Paddy's Leisure Hours in the Poor-House; or, Priests, Parsons, Potatoes, and Poor Rates. By a Native Resident of Ireland. J. W. Parker.

The object of this clever brochure is to draw attention to the working of the Poor Law in Ireland, and to show how grievously it oppresses the population in general and the clergy in particular. The form adopted by the author is that of the autobiography of an Irish peasant, relating his downward course through one calamity and another, until at last he finds himself in a ward of the poor-house separated from his wife, who is in another. This disruption of the domestic ties is a great misfortune to our sensitive Milesian; but being, it seems, a bit of a philosopher and patriot as well as a tender-hearted husband, he discovers more extensive evils in the Poor Law than the breaking up of the mud cabin and the severance of man and wife. 66 What," says he, "if the rates can't be paid, and the people run away, and come into the poor-house, as I have done myself? All the property in the land couldn't support the paupers that are growing up. The able-bodied, like us," says Paddy, with an unwonted access of forethought and sagacity, "are shut up doing nothing; the fields, in coorse, will not be laboured; there'll be no crops at all at all; and the landlords will become beggars."

We believe this picture to be tolerably accurate. No doubt, the fields can't be laboured if the able-bodied are shut up doing nothing; and if the fields can't be laboured, it is quite clear that there will be no crops at all at all, and that the landlords will be beggared. We admit all this. Indeed, it would be impossible, with any conscience, to deny the irresistible conclusion at which Paddy arrives. But we must take the liberty of refusing his premises. To use a popular Hibernian figure, he puts the cart before the horse, by no means an uncommon incident in a process of Irish reasoning. Paddy sets this deplorable state of things before us as a consequence of the Poor Law; whereas, had he looked a little further back into the history of Irish misery, he would have discovered that this deplorable state of things was the direct, longexisting, and imperative cause of the Poor Law. It was because the fields were not laboured, and because the landlords had reduced themselves to the last extremity by neglecting the duties which they owed to themselves and the country, and because the Irish poor were perpetually thrown for support upon the benevolence of England, instead of finding at the hands of those whose province it was to supply it the means of supporting themselves at home, and because this system of sustaining a whole population in a course of reckless dependence upon external aid, and the accidents of fortune, could not go on for ever, that it became incumbent upon the legislature to introduce a law which should have the effect of compelling the proprietors to maintain their own poor, or to do that which, judging from all past experience, nothing but the coercion of some great and final exigency could induce them to donamely, to find employment for them.

The action of the Poor Law is extremely simple. It knocks at the door of the landowner, and it says to him,-"Here is a crowd of famishing people, many of whom are able and willing to work if they can get something to do: give them employment, or pay, rateably with others, for their maintenance. We cannot let them starve."

The

In the abstract the justice of this principle is undeniable. It is recognized in every Christian community in the world. Until this law was recently introduced into the sister-kingdom, Ireland was the only country within the girth of civilization which was destitute of a systematic provision for the poor. Her magnates seemed to regard their own poor as having no claim upon their compassion or their resources. fundamental truth that the population of the soil have a right to sustenance from the soil was never acknowledged in Ireland; and, instead of making some effort while it was yet in their power to avert the increasing pressure of pauperism, although, by the exercise of a little common sense, they must have foreseen that it would overwhelm them in the long run, they flung the burthen of this accumulating mass of wretchedness upon the charity of their neighbours, with an insouciance which would be incredible in any other part of the globe. All that can be said of their present position is, that they are now paying the bitter penalty of past mismanagement, negligence, and selfishness, and must abide the issue as they can.

Nobody, we believe, challenges the justice of the abstract principle. It is the application of this principle to Ireland that Paddy quarrels with. But this is only the old story over again. It is the old reluctance in a new shape to support the masses of poverty which have been, and continue to be, produced by the wilful indifference or strange bungling of the proprietary classes. If, as it is asserted, the working of the Poor Law is calculated to bring the landlords in the impoverished districts to beggary, why did they raise such a factious opposition to that wise and considerate proposal of the Government, the Rate-in-aid, by which the local pressure would have been diminished, and the responsibility spread more lightly over the surface? They have, surely, nobody but themselves to blame if, having succeeded in strangling that measure in the House of Lords, they find themselves suffering under the inevitable consequences.

We shall be told, "in coorse," as Paddy says, that the opposition to that measure was carried on chiefly in the north. But we know that the suicidal folly reared its head also in the south, west, and east. However, that is no business of ours. Ireland must be legislated for as a whole. She must support her poor as a whole, support them how she may, agreeably to her own fancies and caprices. We have nothing to do with factions, sects, and divided interests. And we may here observe, that until the people of all interests, classes, and religious persuasions shall have made up their scattered minds to co-operate in this great work of national regeneration, the curse of pauperism and its demoralising influences cannot be removed from the land. We have an example before us in this little publication of the strife which besets every attempt to accomplish this desirable object from within. The writer claims commiseration for the clergy of the Established Church, and betrays the utmost distrust and aversion towards the Roman Catholic priesthood. We submit that such animosities and antipathies should be set aside in a labour of charity, which demands the zealous union of all creeds, and which never can be effected until all men agree to sacrifice their prejudices and resentments on the altar of the common good.

INDEX

TO THE TWENTY-SIXTH VOLUME.