deer, but it was not.' The story is most spiritedly told, but its ending is most melancholy.

The next tale, entitled 'Heathendom in Christendom,' is the most powerful of all. A more forcible illustration of the deadly heart-burnings of the country-gentlemen, and poachers, could scarcely have been written; and we trace them through the characteristic stages of 'cunning as foxes,' 'harmful as kites,' following war with all men,' until hatred without dissimulation,' hastens the crisis of ruin and murder.

The last in this volume, Four Years at Maude Chapel Farm,' is a most mournful, but truthful, picture of a young farmer, steady, active, and honourable, contending in vain against the crying injustice of the present game-laws, and sinking each year, notwithstanding his utmost exertions, until he is sold up,' and retires to a neighbouring cottage, as a mere day-labourer. The character of his wife, Fanny, is sweetly sketched, and her remarks to her sorrow-stricken husband, form a beautiful conclusion.

The only tears that he had seen wrung from her were about this infant in her arms,-when her husband was thinking aloud one day about whether it was possible that any child of hers should be destined to grow up a clod-pole like the children of most people in their circumstances. At the moment, she said nothing, because she could not speak: but afterwards she told him that she had been thinking about that matter, and her opinion was that they must educate their children to the utmost of their power,-give them of their own knowledge and habits of mind, trusting that their Maker would, in his own time, place them in circumstances favourable to the exercise of their powers.

You know,' said she, this is the case of all of us under God's rule. Every one of us is a great immortal being in humble and confined circumstances, with powers cramped up in us which we hope to use hereafter in a better place. Let us take example by our Father's method with us all, and do the same, as nearly as we can, with our own children.'

You are right,' replied her husband. And his eyes

rested on

the family Bible,-the only article they had saved of all they had at Maudechapel farm. By that book, and our own constant endeavours, we will try, Fanny, with God's blessing, what we can do for our children.'-vol. ii. pp. 299, 300.

The whole of the third volume is occupied by the tale entitled Gentle and Simple ' Like the foregoing ones, it abounds with forcible passages, and sound argument; the last, however, we fear will be thrown away upon the Grantley Berkeleys, of whom, in the character of Mr. Treherne, Miss Martineau has given an admirable portrait. Other teachers,

besides the moralist are, however, at hand, and the greatest of all-for those who heed not argument-time.

It is a greater agent than Sir Francis, or any other man, that brings about revolutions,' observed Mr. Holloway 'Time is the great teacher of what you call revolutionary doctrine,—and in this instance, eminently. When the old fellow falls in with Nimrod, and lays one hand on his shoulder, and points with the other to the plough and team entering upon the scene, it is a sure warning to Nimrod that he must be off to some other hunting-field.'

Ah! it is pretty certain that he will leave his own,' said Mr. Treberne. And his neighbours there will rue his absence when it is too late to get him back again. What think you, Sir Francis?'

If Nimrod keeps up with his age, and will stay at home, and live according to the conditions of his time, nobody will wish him away. But if, wherever he alights, offences spring up, and the jails overflow, and ruin and curses spread like a pestilence from the home-. stead to the hovel, I think the general wish will be that Nimrod should seek a new hunting-field.'-vol. iii. p. 114.

And noble hunting fields are still left, as Sir Francis Grey points out, to the astonished and enraged Mr. Trehern.

There is a wide choice of old and new. There are wild moorlands within the island, if you do not want to travel far. It will be some time before the Scotch moors are under tillage. more than last our time, and our sons' after us.'

They will

The fashion of going to Norway to sport seems spreading,' observed Mr. Holloway. Fishing and shooting may be had in perfection there, for an age to come, and with the people to thank you to boot.'

And look at Canada! There is a field for you!'

Thank you. I prefer my own covers.'

'Yes, indeed,' Mr. Sleath now ventured to put in, in a tone of indignation

Only prepare yourselves for a very short lease from old Time, that is all. He is a peremptory old landlord, that. We are all merely tenants under him,-crowns and cradles alike being but occupations; and there is no erection of his,-no institution or arrangement that we have not to quit after notice from him. It is something when he offers a new tenancy in place of the old, even if you have to travel some way to it. For my part, when I can no longer sport righteously in agricultural districts, I think of being off to the North seas for the noblest sport of all-whale-fishing.' 'Pah!" said Mr. Sleath. To get drenched in oil!'

4

Not exactly. We sportsmen do not clean our own fish, or pluck our own birds: and neither should we cut up the whales we should bag. O! Treherne, think of the nobleness of that sport! Think of the watch for the game ainidst the wild seas! Think of the careering over the waves-the signal-the laying to-the boats out

the chase and circumvention of the prey,-the bold harpoon strokethe giving out the rope-and then the flight of the boat apparently at the creature's mercy, but not truly so,-only the stooping to conquer, then the creature's death-plunge, and the victory of man's devices and nerve over the monster's force and instinct! Is not this noble sport? Is not this exploit, with sympathy in every eye, and fellowship in every hand, and cheers on every tongue, better than shooting timid hares and fluttering birds, amidst the peevish curses of half-ruined farmers, and the jealousy of half-starved labourers,and all this in sight of gloomy new jails built to receive the criminals corrupted by our mere pleasures?'

Romance will not do against common sense,' declared Mr. Treherne.

"

Agreed!' said Sir Francis.

Then let me ask your common sense whether there would not be more poaching than ever if we were to leave our game unprotected, and be off to the North seas?'

I think fact and common sense agree that where there is most game there is most poaching. There never was so much poaching as now when preserving is more strict than ever before. I am for being off to Canada, or Norway, or the North seas, while we mark how nature and time will manage matters between the tillage and the game. Let tillage have her way first: that is the clearest point of all; and she will keep down the game to the point which suits her own purposes,-raising instead of demoralising her labourers, by doing that part of her business as business, and not as aggression and theft.-As for the landlord's woods, there is the law of trespass, which already protects his young trees and his fences.-And if the appetite for game in towns demands a further supply, game will, because it must, be reared in such places and modes as may be innocuous to agriculture. This is the course which, it seems to me, common sense points out and prophecies.'-vol. iii. pp. 114—118.

In closing these volumes, we heartily recommend them to our readers. If any fault may be fouud, it is, that their endings are too uniformly gloomy. When, however, we remember what a curse these iniquitous game-laws are to our rural population, we can scarcely feel surprised that this should be the case. Miss Martineau deserves the thanks of every truehearted Englishman and woman, for her earnest advocacy of the oppressed, and for the eloquent enunciation of noble principles with which this work abounds, and we trust, that she will ere long receive her reward-a more gratifying one, we are sure she wishes not-in the utter obliteration from the statute-book of every vestige of these hateful enactments.

By the

Art. IX.-The Irish Established Church Obstructive to Protestantism, Dedicated to the Hon. and Rev. B. W. Noel, M. A. Rev. A. Gordon, M A. London. Ward. IRELAND has for centuries been a puzzle to politicians of all parties, Tories, Whigs, and Radicals. Measure after measure has been discussed and adopted, but social happiness seems still as far from that country as ever, and mis-government lives and walks abroad with a bold and vaunting front. The goddess of peace and harmony, while joyfully visiting other lands, seems resolved never to touch the soil of the Emerald Isle, or to wave her golden wing over its distracted children. Every means adopted to invite her presence, has been hitherto in vain. Threats and cajolery have been alike fruitless. The presence of the soldiery, and of a large constabulary force, has been found insufficient to awe an irritated people. Endowments of colleges, augmentations of Regium donum, and other appliances have all failed to win the affections of the nation, or to ensure public tranquillity. The elements of social combustion are still rife in the national heart, and we have no statesman bold enough to pour upon them the waters of a righteous policy. Discontent is daily drawing together the materials of increased turbulence, and if the olive branch of genuine conciliation be not soon offered, it will swell and rise, and finally overtop every embankment, and desolate the land.

It is high time the real cause of this mighty evil were explored. In political economy, as in physical science, the principle of the poet holds true

Felix cui potuit rerum cognoscere causas.

Let the philosophers, patriots, and philanthropists, of England look across the channel, and investigate the sad moral phenomena which instantly meet their view. Why is Ireland so full of distractions, civil discontent, and religious animosity? This is the problem to be solved. We know from extended intercourse with its fervid children, that the causa mali is not in their physical nature as we have heard sometimes affirmed. The Chartists of Glasgow, and the operatives of Manchester, have not a tithe of their patience. No doubt each have their share of social wrongs, but the Irishman's burden is the heavier, and his patience by so much the greater. Our question then returns, what is the true cause of Ireland's woes?. A High Churchman, or an Orangeman, would at once resolve the case

into the prevalence of popery. We are no apologists of popery. Far from it. We know what it has done, and what influence it is likely to have wherever it exists. We regard it as exceedingly inimical to the developement of mental energy, to the healthfulness of social morals, to the spirit of commercial enterprise, and to national improvement. Were it necessary, we could bring much proof in support of our assertion. But still popery is not the proximate cause of Ireland's woes. We look to other popish countries, not distinguished certainly by high prosperity, but exhibiting an aspect very different from that of Ireland, and we ask whence the difference? We come then at once to the source of the evil. Our judgment is not a hasty one; it is founded on a careful induction of facts, on extensive intercourse with the Irish people, and a profound consideration of the workings of human nature, and we hesitate not to say that the grand source of Irish irritation has been, and will continue to be the State Church. This conclusion cannot be evaded. Peace there never can be in Ireland till this institution is abolished. We do not assert this from any feeling of opposition to the episcopal church as such, we speak simply in reference to its civil establishment; and could our voice be heard from Land's End to John O'Groats, our language in reference to the ecclesiastical establishment of Ireland would be delenda est Carthago.

That the Protestant church of Ireland is a source of ceaseless irritation, is manifest from a variety of considerations. Its very existence is regarded by the great majority of the people as a standing monument of the degradation of their country. It must never be forgotten, that the established church of Ireland is the church of a mere fraction of the community. The population of the country is calculated at somewhere above eight millions, more than six millions of whom are Roman Catholics, whilst of the remainder there are only about seven hundred thousand belonging to the state church. This fact speaks volumes to our statesmen, and should be seriously pondered by every sensible man in the empire. How, we ask, can the majority of the nation, in the face of such a glaring anomaly, be contented?

But further, the functionaries of the church are not confined to those localities where the main body of their adherents is found, but are fixed in places where they have few or none at all. There are no less than forty-one benefices in Ireland, in which there is not a single Protestant episcopalian. There are ninetynine benefices in which there are not twenty Protestants, and one hundred and twenty more in which the number varies from twenty to fifty. There are fifty other parishes whose whole