we are surprised at its intricacy; but we do not find ourselves more competent to judge of the workings of the human heart than our fathers were. We are apt to forget that in this case, the data, the experience, the subject itself, remain the same; and, above all, revelation, already beyond the utmost limits that the most advanced march of intellect could ever hope to attain, has long since laid down the principles, and furnished all the knowledge that can be attained by man upon the subject.

In conclusion, we must address a few remarks to the present state of this kingdom. The Reformation has comparatively failed in Ireland: the causes of this we have elsewhere endeavoured to trace. There can, however, be no doubt in the mind of any one who will take the trouble to read our national history, and to make himself acquainted, not by theory, but practice, with our national character and circumstances, that this country has never been properly governed. England has acted not only unjustly, but, as in such cases usually follows, unwisely towards Ireland. No pains were taken to improve her people; no endeavour was made at the same time to enforce the law with uniformity, and to render that law beneficial to the subject: they were alternately either subdued by force, or encouraged in sedition; but no extensive or permanent endeavour was made by England to communicate to this kingdom the blessings of religious truth and social comfort. The versatile talent of the Irish character requires above all things a strict, steady, unyielding, uniformity in the administration of the law. In no part of the empire does the uncertainty of punishment produce so much mischief as in this country. Man will always consider rather the chance of escape than the probability of punishment; but if there exists one class of mankind who possess this disposition in a higher degree than the rest, it is the Irish peasant. The English nation ought long since to have been as intimately acquainted with our national character, resources, wants, and circumstances, as their own; and this knowledge would ere now have afforded them means of doubling

the wealth and power of the empire; but that ignorance and crime, which resulted in a great degree from their own original mismanagement, was adopted as the excuse for neglecting the best interests of the kingdom. The government of this country has, therefore, been perpetually wavering. At one time an administration acquainted with the real state of things, but conceiving it rather their duty to retain, than to improve, contented itself with compelling submission to the laws. Again, some silly or designing ruler would adopt some Utopian notion of conciliation, and in a few months destroy, by injudicious encouragement, all the order and subordination which his predecessor had effected by the labour of as many years. But no one ever steadily and energetically applied themselves to overcome the ignorance and superstition, which were the root of the evil, by active and moral education.

But this was a state of things which would not survive the advance of civilization. The increased facilities of communication between the several kingdoms of the empire, and between the parts of the same kingdom, have rendered it impossible that the evils of one country should be any longer confined to its own shores. The act of union brought Irish interests before the notice of England; the act of emancipation introduced Popish barbarism, falsehood, and treason into our English legislature. The first effect of the shock was the absurd and wicked attempt to obtain a temporary respite by throwing as a sop to the monster all that remained of English civilization in his native land. But the respite thus gained was too brief and partial to serve the purpose, or to prevent the people of England from being aroused to a sense of their error; and they are at length learning that as it is no longer possible to retain a blissful ignorance of all that concerns Ireland, the only alternative must be so to civilize and improve the habits and purify the religion of her people, that they may become an ornament, instead of a disgrace, to the empire. That this will be the result of the present state of things, as regards this country, and that the fiery ordeal which has

raised her church to a height of purity perhaps unequalled by any establishment of any kind on the face of the globe will have the same purifying effect on her gentry and peasantry, we have little doubt. That the desperate and outrageous attacks now made on Irish Protestantism will ultimately, by arousing the landlords to a sense of their duty and their danger, be the destruction of Irish popery, appears now nearly certain. But the great question whether England shall benefit by this change, or be left to abide the consequence of her own profligate policy, must be decided by her future conduct. Not only is it not yet too late to do that which she ought to have done two centuries since, by taking active means to spread the reformation through this unhappy benighted population, but we fearlessly assert, that never in the history of Ireland has so fair an opportunity exhibited itself for the accomplishment of this design. The gentry are at length aroused, the peasantry who profess the popish superstition are already more than half converted by the progress of education and the extravagant conduct of her priests; and we feel assured we are not going beyond the fact when we assert that more than onefourth of the nominal Irish papists are at present bound to their faith chiefly by the ties of political ambition, the consciousness of political patronage, and the prospect of political dominion. If discouraged and subdued, these men would leave a sinking ship; but while excited by the hope of power, they are, of all the followers of that church, the most desperate, the most unprincipled, and the most difficult to control.

We have stated, and endeavoured to prove, our opinion, that the present state of Great Britain is not a crisis, which will pass over and leave things as they were before; but that it is the

final lesson of experience, which is to root out those false, unsound, and baneful errors into which the people of this empire had fallen; to fix the bounds of toleration; to mark the distinction between superstitious bigotry and uncompromising religious principle; to explode the doctrine of expediency; to demonstrate the direct connexion between religious principles and political conduct; to display the natural disposition of infidelity, popery, and dissenterism, to unite together against truth; and, above all things, to impress upon all classes possessed of influence, that that influence is a sacred trust reposed in them for the benefit of society, for the promotion of true religion and sound policy.

We think that all the present sufferings of the empire under bigoted latitudinarianism and republican fanaticism are designed to produce the salutary effects we have described. We feel assured that the past history of Europe, and especially of this em pire, affords tokens not few or trifling that the present era is one of such importance that the great events of the last two centuries have been or dered with a view to render more perfect the lesson now taught to the people of Great Britain. Such are our views; and our readers are at liberty to consider them as consolatory or the reverse. We must, however, draw their attention to one conclusion which will directly follow from our premises, if the truth of those premises be admitted; namely, that the more unwilling and slow the nation are to receive such a lesson, the more severe and protracted will be the means of their conversion, and that a period is approaching when such a conversion may be but a death-bed repentance. The experience has been afforded to them; but to profit by it, or to sink beneath it, must be their own act.

Bishop of Bergen, contributed to Norway her famous national song; and we may now look to Sweden for an important addition to the list, in the person of Esaias Tegner, Bishop of Wexio, the author of the singular and beautiful poem at present before us.

Besides the above, there are two others who may here be mentioned as authors of compositions, which, though in prose, yet breathe the spirit of poetry in the invention and language. We allude to Heliodorus, bishop of Tricca in Thessaly, who in his youth wrote the Ethiopics, or the Loves of Theagenes and Chariclea; and to the illustrious Archbishop of Cambray, whose Telemaque, while by some styled a political romance, as the other is an erotic romance, is by the majority of critics allowed to have a claim to the title of an epic poem, and has even been translated as such into English heroic verse. It is related of the former, though not on very credible authority, that he was required either to disavow the production of his early days, or to renounce his episcopal office; and it is well known that Fenelon was greatly censured by some for writing such a heathen work, and so unsuitable to a dignitary of the church, as they considered his Telemachus to be. We are not aware whether the good Bishop of Wexio has incurred any similar censures; but it is certain that he is greatly beloved in his own country, and his Frithiof is exceedingly popular both there and in the North of Europe in general. Nor are we surprised at this, as it displays the distinguishing excellencies of the two last mentioned authors, together with those of the only two, besides Vida, in the preceding list, who succeeded in the department of epic or romantic poetry combining in itself the tenderness of Heliodorus, the vigour of Gawin Douglas, the vivacity

of Fortiguerra, and the pathos and elevated tone of feeling of Fenelon, together with a certain wild simplicity peculiar to the effusions of the Scandinavian muse.

Frithiof's Saga first appeared in a complete form in the year 1825; and the fifth edition, a copy of which is now before us, bears the date of 1831. It resembles in one respect the books printed in the early part of the sixteenth century, the title only being on the first page, while the printer's name, date, &c., are not given till at the end. The poem consists of twenty-four cantos, each in a different metre, which is strictly preserved throughout. Some of these are of a very singular, and to us uncommon, description: others, on the contrary, are old acquaintances. Thus we find blank verse, ottava rima, classical hexameters, and senarian iambics, interposed between various kinds of what may be styled ballad measures, together with a few that are peculiar to Scandinavian poetry. As the title infers, it relates the adventures of Frithiof, a hero who is supposed to have flourished in the eighth century, and whose exploits have descended to posterity in the Saga called after his name. We have not been able as yet to procure a copy of the old Saga itself, but as we have a digest of its contents, as well as of those of Thorsten's Saga, in the Historia Rerum Norvegicarum of Torfæus, which, we have reason to believe, exactly follows their steps in all that relates to our hero and his father, this matters but little. In fact, there is quite enough of the original legend given, to enable us to judge of the skill the poet has displayed in suppressing some incidents, and altering others, which, as they stood, would rather have shocked the more refined feelings of our days, and diminished some of the interest and moral effect of the fable.

Tegner's poem had not long appeared before it was translated into German by Mohnike, and afterwards by Amalie von Helwig, and by Schley. There are also two or three Danish versions, of which that by Foss, a Norwegian, is, we understand, considered the best. It was first introduced to the notice of English readers by the Foreign Quarterly (1828), in an able review of the Swedish original, in which mention was also made of Mohnike's translation. This was immediately followed by an admirable article in Blackwood's Magazine, in which an analysis was given of the whole poem, and several passages were translated with great spirit into English verse, though not, we believe, directly from the original, but from the German version of Madame Helwig. A hope was at the same time expressed that the notice might " perhaps have the effect of calling into so worthy a field, some master spirit, capable of transfusing into the Well of English undefiled' the singular and unhackneyed strains of the Northern Minstrel." Seven years, however, elapsed before the invitation was responded to, when, as if by numbers to compensate for the delay, no less than four individuals undertook the task, three in concert, and one, more courageous, or less pressed for time, single-handed: and as the last-mentioned personage was as little aware of the intention of the three partners in this literary enterprize as they were of his, and the versions appeared about the same time, each claims for itself the honour of being the first. The joint production, though bearing the name of London on the title-page, was printed in Paris, and is published anonymously, or at least, with the initials only of the parties appended to their respective portions of the work. The other, by the Rev. Mr. Strong, emanates from a London press; and, though twice the price of its rival, is, independently of its merits as a translation, worth the difference, on account of the very superior manner in which it is got up, with respect to printing and embellishments, &c., as well as of the much greater quantity of matter contained

in the notes. With respect to the text, notwithstanding an unfortunate propensity to a pedantic and grandiloquent style, which displays itself almost invariably in the prose, and not unfrequently even in the verse of Mr. Strong, his version is on the whole superior to that of his rivals, especially in point of faithfulness, and of greater resemblance to the original in the various measures employed. His knowledge too of the northern languages is evidently greater, and his acquaintance with their literature more extensive. On the other hand, the joint version, from its greater simplicity, has in some places the advantage; but is in many others too much in the ballad style, which at times approaches to flatness and childishness, to do justice to its archetype: the simplicity of Homer and of a doggrel ballad are two very different things. We observed, also, in glancing over it, passages in which the meaning of the original has been totally misunderstood; and the errors are of such a nature as to infer either extreme haste and carelessness, or a very slender knowledge of the Swedish language: but of this anon. At the same time, however, it is highly probable that this version will be the most popular, as it reads easily and fluently, unobscured by those Miltonic constructions and affectations of unusual and antiquated words, which abound in the other. In our analysis of the poem we shall take extracts indifferently from either, as it best suits our purpose.

The first canto, which is entitled "Frithiof and Ingeborg," contains an account of the childhood and youth of these personages, the hero and heroine of the tale. We learn afterwards that she was the daughter of Bele,* king of Sogne in Norway, and he the son of Thorsten Vikingsson, a renowned warrior, the friend and companion in arms of the king. Brought up together in the country, under the care of Hilding, a friend of their parents, the result is only what was to be expected; and the development of their love with their years is beautifully described. Even here, however, we have a hint of the trials that await the lovers, as