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burgh Journal" was everywhere read with delight. Three half-pence each week was a sum within the reach of even the smallest income, and never did conscientious and able men more faithfully fulfil the task they had undertaken, than did the conductors and publishers of the Journal. We have no doubt that many a thriving tradesman, and probably many an independent citizen, traces his progress and success to the humanizing and elevating influence of this excellent work. It is almost impossible for those accustomed, at the present day, to the weekly and monthly shower of magazines, to realize the state of things that then prevailed. The humbler classes were actually without the means of gratifying a taste for reading, and were driven to spend their evenings in the gross indulgences of the public houses. The Journal was a new and welcome resource, not alone indeed to those, but to the general public; and although we have, of late years, perceived in it an Occasional savour of the universal anti-papal leaven of popular English literature, we are content for the sake of its comparative inoffensiveness in this particular, as well as for its general excellence to say still, with real feeling, in the words of the Eastern salutation," May its shadow never be less." It has the merit not only of being a most excellent and useful publication, but of being the first cheap one, and of lending an example which has since been suc cessfully followed to the public benefit. The "Penny Magazine" and "Penny Cyclopædia" first followed that Journal; the Cyclopædia necessarily coming to a conclusion when it exhausted the alphabet, as did also the Magazine from other causes. The latter was perhaps too ambitious. The wood cuts, with which it was plentifully illustrated, must have greatly increased the cost of publication and diminished its chances of pecuniary success, but it is on the whole even now a work of which we can at any time take up and peruse a volume with pleasure and profit. It contains a vast quantity of valuable information communicated in a pleasing and readable shape.

We have already, perhaps more than once, expressed our sorrow that we have been unable to write in terms of praise of our present periodical literature. We have endeavoured honestly, but perhaps not very satisfactorily, to account for the inferiority of these publications by their great number, and the necessity of providing each with matter. The number is probably the effect of the pecu

niary success of the first one or two; what one or two had achieved, might, it was thought, be accomplished by a third-a fourth issued in the same hope, a fifth, a sixth, and so on, until the name of the class is legion. The writers sprang up much in the same way, and what the publishers with less competition would probably have declined, they were in the great demand for matter forced to accept and print. The whole movement, for it really deserves the name, is forced upon the public-it does not emanate from the public; each publisher vaunts his wares and clamours for the public favour, and the poor public, like the traveller beset by hotel touters, would gladly escape from all. The inevitable result is to produce a myriad of writers; some of these, with training and discipline, might attain a respectable position in literature, but a vast number, we may fairly say the majority, were never meant for authors. Ignorant themselves, they boldly assume the chair of the teacher, utter their crude theories with the solemnity of wisdom, and succeed in persuading themselves that they were born to reform the age. They are blinded by vanity, and incapable of improvement, because they are insensible to reproof.

These monthly publications succeeding one another like the waves of the sea, and each number peremptorily demanding its supply, induce over activity. The minds of the contributors receive no rest, have no opportunity for reflection or arrangement, and no time for enquiry; habits of hasty composition are formed which become incurable, and while the reader receives no benefit, the writer is sacrificed to expediency, and lives and dies in the cold shades of mediocrity.

We are far from desiring to discourage the pursuit of literature; we only strive to induce its young and ardent votaries to be calm and deliberate-to learn well the moral of Mr. Tennyson's song which we have quoted above, and to feel sure of the strength of their wings before attempting a distant and lofty flight. When they feel within them the conviction that they can indeed do something to improve or to inform, or even to interest their fellow men, let them come forward and be welcome; but let not a ready and specious style, a fatal facility of word spinning, or the hope of mere pecuniary gain tempt them to thrust themselves upon the great world of letters without the sincere desire to do something worthy of a man and the internal

unmistakeable conviction of a call to do it. If this principle were fully acted upon, authorship would cease to be a trade; those of the magazines which should survive would contain matter fit and profitable for perusal, and both writers and readers would derive real benefit from the change.

It is, we repeat, far from our wish to discourage the pursuit of literature, we only wish to see those who make it a pursuit impressed with a due sense of the grave responsi bility they undertake, and prepared by habits of thinking and study for addressing the great assembly of the reading public. Let them above all cultivate the proud and honourable and virtuous ambition of leaving behind them names which will lie in the remembrance of mankind, as those of men who have given some addition to the great treasury of human knowledge or human intellect and thought.

Indeed of all kinds of fame, by which we understand the transmission to posterity of an honourable and glorious reputation, the highest appears to be that which is earned by literary labour.

The soldier goes out to battle followed in his career by millions of anxious eyes. He returns home crowned with laurel and loaded with spoil-the greatest in the land welcome him on the shore-shouts of triumph rend the air about him, and every voice joins in the great Te Deum, which rises like thankful incense on every side for his success. The poet sings his victories, and the graver Historian records his name as a glorious and inspiring lesson for posterity.

But while apparently universal exultation and praise wait upon his footsteps, and every heart seems to beat a grateful tribute of thanks for his success, how many a heart is really broken, how many a head bowed to the earth by the weight of unutterable woe-a bitter woe the offspring of those victories which, while they raise the conqueror's name and spread his glory, make desolate the homes of thousands and carry a blighting sorrow into many a young and warm heart. There are indeed scenes enacted, parts of the great tragedies constructed by warriors, which in their deep, black, hopeless bitterness of woe, outweigh whole conflagrations of joy-making fires, whole clouds of thanksgiving incense. When aged parents stretch forth their arms to welcome back the ardent youth whom they saw depart with anxious. yet hopeful hearts,

and grasp, in place of his beloved form, the packet that tells them he is no more-when young wives rise with trusting souls to hail the rising sun, and meet, with a joy such as seldom smiles on earthly things, the dear and long expected husband, when, hoping on throughout the day they see the sun go down in hope, yet rising once again, are widows bereaved and desolate. O! there are curses uttered in the first wild paroxysms of grief, which, remembered in cooler moments, shock the soul of the utterer-curses on the head of him who, though but an instrument of higher directing powers, and moving perhaps in the prosecution of a glorious cause, led on to death the object once of love and now of love and sorrow. What man would be solicitous of a fame like this-a fame the more lasting the deeper it is written in characters of blood, and which in the great Temple of the Goddess is inscribed upon a slab blotted with tears and disfigured by the burning execrations of the insanity of grief.

Almost as dearly earned, and, perhaps, as little to be prized, is the fame sometimes secured by years of political exertion.

Certain of pleasing and of securing the golden opinions of but one faction or party, and often uncertain and insecure even of that, the statesman transmits to posterity the record of a life spent in the busy turmoil of Public Life, a record too often disfigured, on the one hand, by the unjust attacks of one party, and on the other, by the fulsome adulations of another. One country dedicates altars and raises memorials to his praise, and the children of another pursue him in his grave with bitter and often merited execration, and deny not only his genius but his honesty.

But he, who by the workings of his intellect or the outpourings of his genius, contributes to the instruction, the refinement, or even the pure and healthy amusement of his fellow men, who, no matter how humbly, adds to the store of human knowledge or human skill, will be gratefully remembered in after ages, and the sons of learning and of literature will plant flowers upon his grave.

There will be no bitterness in his remembrance, and no tongue will execrate his memory; envy will but exalt his name, and malice strengthen the sure foundations of his glory; his countrymen will think of him with a just pride, and other nations will honour and revere him. His

VOL. LI.-No. CIJ

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fame will confer honour on his children's children, through generations, and will endure while literature continues to be beloved, and genius to be appreciated.

ART. II.-1. Hansard's Parliamentary Debates.

2. The State in its relations with the Church, by W. E. Gladstone, Esq. London, Murray.

A FEW days ago Lord Palmerston and Mr. Glad

stone complained in the House of Commons that the Irish Catholics did not evince sufficient gratitude for Emancipation. If Sir Charles Wood was at the time in the House, he might in reply have repeated what he said in 1835, that "he believed that the Catholics of Ireland were grateful to those who supported their just claims, but he could not admit that they fairly owed any gratitude to the Government which conceded, or the Legislature which passed the measure of Catholic Emancipation.'

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The Times of course echoed the complaint of Irish Catholic ingratitude, asserted that Sir R. Peel “disapproved of emancipation to the latest day of his life," and protested that "it is something startling to find out that the benefit is not only unrequited but absolutely disavowed. On this point, as on so many others, the history of England must it would seem be rewritten to suit the emergencies of the infallible Church." History is being rewritten by the Times to suit itself. The late Sir Robert Peel wrote history differently. In a letter to Dr. Jebb, Bishop of Limerick, dated 8th February, 1829, he wrote: "Can we forget, in reviewing the history of Ireland, what happened in 1782, what happened in 1793? It is easy to blame the concessions which were then made, but they were not made without an intimate conviction of their absolute necessity in order to prevent greater dangers. My firm impression is that, unless an united Government takes the whole condition of Ireland into its consideration and attempts to settle the Catholic question, we must be prepared for the necessity of settling it at some future

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