声 The corrupt sympathy with mankind, neither does own minds, not frame-works for human conceptions and affections, but mere images of his own personality, and vantage-grounds on which to raise himself afar from and above mankind? Would he not say that he had been imbibing discontent, disgust, satiety, and learning to look upon life as a dreary dulness, relieved only by betaking ourselves to the wildest excesses and fiercest intensity of evil impulse. If, as we firmly believe, a sincere observer of himself would give us this account of his own feelings, after communing with the poetry of Byron, the question as to its beneficial or even innocent tendency is at an end. It is true that there are in man higher powers than those which tend directly to action; and there may be a character of a very exalted kind, though not the most perfect, which would withdraw itself from the business of society, and from the task of forwarding the culture of its generation, to contemplate with serene and grateful awe the perfect glory of the creation. But this is not the species of superiority to those around us and independence of them, which is fostered It is mournful to see that so much by the works of Lord Byron. The of energy and real feeling should feeling which runs through them is have been perverted to the formathat of a self-consuming scorn, and a tion of these exaggerated beings, self-exhausting weariness, as remote alternately so virtuous and so vias can be from the healthful and ma- cious, now so overflowing with tenjestic repose of philosophic medita- derness, and so bright with purity, tion, as different from it as is the and again so hard, and vile, and noisome glare of a theatre from that atrocious. These qualities, to be ridnight firmament which folds the sure, are all found in man; but the world in a starry atmosphere of reli- combination, where, in earth or gion; while the practical portion of moon, shall we look to find it? The our nature is displayed in his writ- principles of human nature are not ings, as only active and vigorous mere toys, like phosphorus and amid the atrocities or the vileness of paint, wherewith to eke out goblins: the foulest passions. He saw in and he who pretends to exalt the mankind not a being to be loved, but mind by representing it as superior, to be despised; and despised, not not only to its meaner necessities, for vice, ignorance, insensibility, or but to its best affections, in truth, deselfishness, but because he is obliged, grades it to the basest of uses, by exby a law of his being, to look up to hibiting it, not as a thing to be reversome power above himself; because enced, and loved, and studied with he is not self-created and self-exist- conscientious and scrutinizing reflecing, nor "himself, his world, and his tion, but as a dead and worthless own God." material, which he may pound and As the Lord Byron of "Childe compound-evaporate into a cloud, Harold" and "Don Juan" had no or analyse into a caput mortuum, and subject to all the metamorphoses which are worked by the lath wand of a conjuror. It is only by attributing the favourite thoughts and deeds of his writings to personages whom we feel throughout, though we may not realise the consciousness, to be essentially different from our selves, that he could, for a moment, beguile us into conceiving libertinism sublime, and malignity amiable; and, if mankind were so educated as to know the constitution of their own souls, if they had learned to reflect more and to remember less, they would never be deluded into sympa thy with phantoms as unsubstantial and inconsistent as the Minotaur, the Scylla, the Harpies, and the Cyclops of fable, the Anthropophagi, and men whose heads - "Do grow beneath their shoulders." We entirely omit the question of the direct irreligion and indecency of his writings. As to these matters, those who feel religiously will blame him, without our assistance, and those who approve of infidelity, or gloat over obscurity, will applaud, in spite of us. At present, we neither seek to heighten the reprobation, nor to diminish aught from the approval. For ourselves, we lament the Anti-Christian and impure tendencies of his mind, not so much for any positive evil they can do,-this, we suspect, being much over-rated, -as because they are evidences of the degradation of a powerful mind, and of the pollution of much and strong good feeling. We certainly differ considerably from the greater number of those who have attacked him, as to the particular parts of his writings, which merit the severest condemnation. The story of Haidee seems to us much less mischievous than that of Donna Julia, and this far more endurable than the amour with Catherine. "Childe Harold" will do more harm than "Cain," and either of them more than the parody of "The Vision of Judgment." Of this, also, we are sure, that, had he never openly outraged public opinion by direct blas phemies and grossness, the world would have been well enough content to receive his falsifications of human nature for genuine; and all his forced contortions, and elaborate agonies, would have passed current as natural manifestations of a rea sonable and pretty despair. But, when he once did violence to those names which are the idols of the age, while the spirit of religion is wanting, he became a mark for the condemnation of those who live by the service of Bel and Dagon. He might exhibit man as a wretched and contemptible, an utterly hopeless and irrecoverably erring creature,he might represent selfishness and vanity as the true glories of our nature, he might leave us no home but solitude, and no stay but sensuali ty, and deny not only God, but good-and yet be the favourite of pi ous Reviewers, the drawing-room autocrat, the boudoir deity. But when he once dared to doubt, in so many words, of the wisdom of Providence, and, instead of hinting adultery, to name fornication, the morality of a righteous generation rose up in arms against him; and those who ought long before to have wept over the prostitution of such a mind, affected a new-born horror at the event, though they had been delighting for years in the reality of the pollution, We wish not to deny that Lord Byron was a poet, and a great one. There are moods of the mind which he has delineated with remarkable fidelity. But, as Shakspeare would not have been what he is, had he exhibited only the fantastic way. wardness of Hamlet, or the passionate love of Romeo, so Byron is less than a first-rate poet for the uni formity with which he has displayed that intense self-consciousness, and desperate indifference, which he has undoubtedly embodied more completely than any other English writ er. The sceptre of his power is, indeed, girt with the wings of an angel, but it is also wreathed with earth-born serpents; and, while we admire 'we must sigh, and shudder while we bow. TO MEET AGAIN. To meet again! O, that a cruel fate Should have compelled us now, and thus, to part! I feel as if the world lay desolate For me; a burden presses on my heart; In vain I strive to ease my breast, in vain Life's sole hope is, that we may meet again! To meet again! that is the one lone ray, Which from the blackness of this midnight streams; I gaze around me in my spirit's dearth, I pine in solitude-I muse upon The days, that, meteor-like, have glided by, Methinks I see thee, in thy green retreat, Watering the glow of the flush'd summer flowers; Or, while the streamlet murmurs at thy feet, Sitting with some loved book 'mid sylvan bowers, Ah! changing, like our fortunes, wilt thou change, A home for rest, 'tis in thy noble mind! Yes! I will live in hope-it cannot be (-Oh, if it should, before that hateful day, May death and welcome-set my spirit free-) No! Nature never could be so unkind, As link, with form so fair, a fickle mind! I'll think of thee, I'll think, when joy would come May a perpetual sunshine still illume Thy every thought-and not a woe or care Or dim the silken richness of thy hair; And when sweet sleep comes o'er thee, oh, be bright None in the world like thee! oh, there are none- None in the world like thee! oh everywhere As now, when for thy form I gaze around None in the world like thee! for me the spring But its sweet music palls upon my ear; Blue skies o'erarch green earth, which smileth glad ; None in the world like thee! I look around Exalt my low thoughts, telling them of heaven; I cannot sleep-when beats the heavy rain, The past crowds on my thoughts-I cannot sleep; With thy calm brow, deep eyes, and sunny hair ;— And then thy voice-I list it in my dreams- Yes! I will walk in firmness-I will shake The world's pollutions from my thoughts, and be And I will fly temptation-I will keep For thou wilt come to me at midnight deep, In holiest dreams, my troubled heart to still; And thou wilt chase my fears, and cheer my gloom, To meet again!-without this hope, for me Death would be more than welcome; for life seems The flowerless desert, and the shoreless sea, Of which the melancholy madman dreams, When not a ray of hope beams, shooting fair Through the grey mists of his forlorn despair. To meet again!-till then a sad adieu !——— With thee all joy and comfort disappears, And life grows dark and clouded on my view : Farewell! While wandering through this vale of tears, This one dear hope my spirit shall sustain, That we may meet again-may meet again! THE CONDITION OF THE IRISH POOR. A LETTER TO A MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT FROM A FRIEND IN IRELAND. MY DEAR THIS HIS is St. Patrick's day, a festival here on which the lighthearted and much-enduring Irish drown their shamrocks and their cares in whiskey. Extremes, we are told, meet; thus, as the fine ladies and gentlemen in London take laudanum and Curaçoa, so do the wretched Irish, whiskey. But these fine ladies and gentlemen upbraid the Irish for their dirt and their drunkenness; and even those who are of a better order seem to consider the Irish as more prone than other races of men to the peculiar vices that misery engenders on the half civilized. I am ready to admit that they are the best natures, when perverted, become the worst. This unfortunate country may present an unexampled picture of discord, of recklessness-even of crime; but it undoubtedly does present one of unexampled misery. For myself, however, I am apt to think, paradoxical as it may appear after admitting what I have done, that it also presents more virtue than any other country ever exhibited under circumstances equally deplorable. Other portions of the globe might, perhaps, be pointed out where there exists equal or even greater poverty, with all its attendant sufferings; but none, I think, where the people are equally civilized and equally destitute-and this adds the barb to the sting of misery. Pray observe, I mean only to express that the Irish, however low in the scale of civilization, are exposed to greater misery and poverty than any other people at the same degree of social advance ment. It is not my intention to demand why this is the case, nor to enter into any political argument upon the subject; but I am sure that it is sufficient to justify my opinion that they suffer more than any other nation; B-, 17th March, 1828. and that, suffering more, whatever be the terrible outrages that take place, and the continued disturbed condition of the country, they still endure with a degree of patience and virtue that you in England can form little idea of. The character of the people has been the produce of centuries of discord and injustice. The English found Ireland at war within herself, torn by internal faction; and they have kept her so. I do not intend to blame either party, far less to take the usual course of attributing all the existing evil to one side : my only desire is to draw your attention to the real sufferings of Ireland. Its political evils may partly cause them; but I am sure there are measures which both parties might unite in promoting, that, even without touching upon Emancipation, would lead to some arrangement under which the population might obtain employment and food. The Scotch and English are beginning to exclaim that their labouring population will be degraded in their habits, and reduced to a level with the Irish, by the immense numbers that flock over from this country, and undersell their industry. This ought to give some notion of what must be the state of Ireland. Mr. Wilmot Horton proposes emigration; and justly says, that even tranquillity would not, in any great degree, bring over to Ireland sufficient English capital to occupy the superabundant multitude of living souls. Machinery is a cheaper workman than even the Irishman can prove ;-and the collieries present the natural site for the iron and hardware works, which give employment to such a multitude of hands in England. But whatever may be the difficulties of the case, it is one that imperatively demands to be investigated. Politicians, and political economists are, I fear, too |