ration the acts of the statesman who seeks by a mild and considerate sway to reconcile the conquered to the new order of things, to confirm the attachment to the state of the great party through whose aid the conquest was made, and to blot from the history of both those painful recollections which had so long divided them from each other. The latter is the mission of the nobleman who now represents the crown amongst us, and his acts hitherto have proved how capable he is of ful. filling the functions assigned to his care. As to Lord Morpeth, he has shown that he is equally fitted for peace or war: he can command, when the occasion requires it, the fortiter in re, as well as the suaviter in modo. In Mr. Norman Macdonald he has an able auxiliary, well suited also to the circumstances in which he is placed.

Ireland certainly never, at any period of her annals, exhibited such a universal picture of tranquillity as she does at this moment. It is a peace too beneath which there is no volcano, so far as her political prospects are concerned. Agrarian wrongs—outrages by individual proprietors against the poorer occupants of the soil, have, as we already intimated, produced a great mass of resentment against their oppressors. Nor is it to be doubted that Lord Stanley's open war against our freedom, and the harangues of his associates, have rekindled many of the old prejudices which alienated the Irish from the English people. "But making due abatement for the operation of these two evil influences, still we assert that more perfect tranquillity never prevailed in Ireland than that which we witness at this moment.

Undoubtedly, much of this happy change from the riotous habits of days not long gone by, is to be attributed, under Providence, to the marvellous abolition, as we may truly call it, of the vice of intoxication amongst our people. The spectacle of a drunken man, in places where even very lately no assemblage was held without giving rise to fierce contests and murders, is now a rarity seldom to be discovered. Crowded fairs and markets occur, day after day, and week after week, without producing even a single case of common assault. The gaiety of the olden times is fast returning to our weddings and our christenings. Our hurling matches go off without å blow struck in anger. Our wakes too-often the scenes of terrible crimes, are conducted with their ancient pleasantry! Let not the English reader be shocked at the word. The smile is often very near the tear on the fair faces of our countrywomen, and more matches originate in the fields and gardens near which a wake is held, than in the cottage where the merry dance is kept up until sunrise. In short, to borrow again the illustration we have already quoted, the strings of the Irish harp so long broken

“ The harp that once through Tara's Halls

The soul of music shed—' are again restored, and if not yet quite “in tune," give out under a master-hand the sounds that promise perfect harmony:

The task of our local government is one of comparative ease to what it used to be. The military and the police are upon the best terms with the people. Indeed, a red-coat is seldom to be seen at all, and the police appear, in many places which we have visited, almost superfluous. They would be entirely so, if the suggestions which we have presumed to offer, as to the organization of the population, were to be carried into effect.

Other highly interesting circumstances besides those we have already mentioned, have recently occurred, which open to us the most cheering prospects of the future destinies of our country. Mr. O'Connell's appearance for the first time in Ulster, occasioned a display of numbers attached to our national liberties, upon which we had not heretofore calculated. We beg it io be most clearly understood, that we do not, in using the word “liberties," wish to commit ourselves, as to any peculiar questions or topics touched upon at those meetings. We rather allude to the general tone of freedom which prevailed amongst them, and which was also rendered so strikingly manifest in the resolutions of the Ulster associ. ation. We do not desire to enter here into any of the points controverted between Mr. Sharman Crawford and Mr. O'Connell. We may say, however, without the least hesitation, that we have been delighted by the fine, uncompromising, ardent tone of patriotism which has thus been sounded in that province, so long the source of those wicked principles of tyranny by which our native liberties were too successfully opposed. The four provinces are now, we may affirm, of one mind, with respect to the great interests of Ireland. Let parliamentary parties therefore contend as they may, we feel satisfied, that whoever holds the reins of government, there is but one course for him to pursue in this country. No cabinet can long exist, which could not be consistently represented by such a man as Lord Ebrington. The ascendancy, for any ime, of the Orange faction, or of any administration at the Castle which is not sincerely friendly to Ireland, has become henceforth a moral impossibility,

The experiment of the Poor Law system in Ireland, has not yet made sufficient progress to enable us to offer any observations on that important subject.

ART. VII.-Scotland and the Scotch. By Miss Catherine

Sinclair. 1840. HA

AVING read “ England and the English,” as also

" Austria and the Austrians,” we were pleased on seeing a work put forth under the attractive title of “ Scotland and the Scotch," and hastened to scan the merits of the chivalrous spirit who thus seemed to court a rivalry with Bulwer and Trollope. We opened the volume, confidently anticipating that it would afford us much interesting matter touching the people and “the land of the mountain and the flood;" our expectations had been indeed raised in no ordinary degree by the title, and were much increased on our reading the encomiums upon other literary labours of the fair authoress, extracted from various public prints, and appended to the present production. We commenced the perusal of it with no small enthusiasm, and with the most kindly feelings towards her, which, she may rest assured, were not diminished by her earnest profession in the conclusion of her preface, of her wishes that the pen might fall from her hand before she wrote “a page not devoted to strict propriety, or which can injure either the dead or the living." But scarcely had we got through a dozen pages ere our hopes were doomed to disappointment, and we were startled to discover how soon our fair authoress had forgotten the rule which she had laid down for herself. As we advanced, it became evident, that in some instances she seems to have neglected Bulwer's excellent observations : -" That one of the sublimest things in the world is plain truth ;” and that when the world has once got hold of (we will not use his word, “a lie,” but) a misrepresentation, it is astonishing how hard it is to get it out of the world again.

Her lack of knowledge of Scottish localities, and of accuracy in the details relating to them, surprised us. She exhibits frequently a most extraordinary deficiency of common information on common subjects. Indeed, many of the

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blunders committed by her are inexcusable, particularly when we consider that she is a Scotswoman writing of “ Scotland and the Scotch." It is superfluous to add that the stranger who wishes to form an acquaintance with the Lowland and the Highland Scotch in their different characteristics, habits, manners, genius, and feelings, will be grievously disappointed if he seek an introduction through the medium of this volume. But this is not all; the worst feature is yet to come. No tone of liberality pervades the work, such as would recommend it to the heart of the patriot and the philanthropist; but, on the contrary, narrow-minded prejudices and bitter anti-Catholic feelings are everywhere displayed. A borror of Popery, and a dread of its rapid increase, appear to have haunted the imagination of the writer, and of course have produced their almost invariable results.

In page 13, we find an insinuation injurious to the “dead," or, to say the least of it, a rather uncharitable allegation against the gallant Charles Edward. In quoting some lines said by her to have been written by that prince when in concealment in the island of Bute, she remarks: “How much these lines might have gained in interest, if the royal fugitive had only added any allusion to his being a Christian."— Why doubt it? Is it necessary that every person who scribbles a few lines should add a profession of his Christianity ? but then he was a Catholic, and that seems to her quite a sufficient reason for such an unwarrantable attack upon his memory.

What are the facts ? Prince Charles was never in the Isle of Bute!! The plain unvarnished truth of the matter is merely this:-a Dowager-Marchioness of Bute was much afflicted with asthma, and after having tried Italy, Devonshire and Madeira, in vain, for the recovery of her health, considered her case hopeless, and went to reside at the family place, Mount Stewart in Bute, where, to her agreeable surprise, she was soon completely restored. When the Castle (Mount Stewart) was repaired some thirty or forty years ago, the lines above alluded to were placed on the walls, in commemoration of her recovery, but without any allusion to her being a “Christian,” or any expressions of thanks to Providence for such a mercy.

Neither doth our authoress overflow with the milk of human kindness towards the “ living," when, with the poli

” tical cconomy of a housemaid, she would deny the lower orders the use of tea, snuff, and tobacco-" these three ruinous luxuries of the poor," as she is pleased to term them. Is it just to praise the dead at the expense of the living, by disparaging their motives, and misrepresenting their conduct? She gravely announces that the late Chisholm of Chisholm, (who unquestionably was much respected for his estimable private character) in his pious zeal, built a church!! but to what purpose was it applied? She herself very good-naturedly and very truly informs us, viz. that the Editor of the Inverness Herald (a violent political partizan) there preached politics or political sermons; and then she boldly asserts, that Lord Lovat built an opposition Catholic chapel on the opposite side of the river. But the very reverse happens to be the fact. The chapel built by Lord Lovat was erected eight or ten years at least previous to the one built by the Chisholm, and for what purpose ? To accommodate a most respectable Catholic congregation of seven or eight hundred souls, many of whom, owing to the anti-Catholic feeling of a certain deceased proprietor, had been turned out of lands held for generations by their forefathers, and were on the eve of abandoning their loved native glens and mountains for the wilds of America, when Lord Lovat, with true patriotic feeling, took many of them under his protection, and gave them lands on his extensive property. She says that the priests rejoice at “ the Chisholm's" decease. On what authority does she make this assertion ?-what had they to gain or lose by the Chisholm, whether alive or dead ?-did the opposition church which he built draw off the people from attending the Catholic chapel ? No, no; on the contrary, many returned to the ancient faith, and others have sent their children to the excellent Catholic school there established.

As the Catholic Church is the object of her detestation, so, of course, she travels out of her way to discharge the overflowings of her pious spleen against its various institutions. In visiting the magnificent Highland lake, Loch-Awe, surrounded with stupendous scenery, bearing on its dark bosom groups of verdant isles, she is wasted to the fair Inishiel (or, as the name denotes, the Beautiful Isle); there, on viewing the venerable remains of an ancient nunnery, she breaks out, with all the ardour and ignorance of a boarding-school lassie, into the usual common-place exccrations against monastic establishments, and takes a fling at the lazy monks. Had she made a historical enquiry, she would have found that the ruins she contemplated were those of an institution not for lazy monks, but for a sisterhood of devout women of the Cistercian order. Although eloquent in her abuse of religious

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