protect the poor, misguided slave of Irish popery from the inquisitional tyranny of the priest, and the murderous dominion of the agitator-grant to the peasant the free exercise of his conscience-instruct, employ, encourage, indulge the peasant; but stand between him and those terrors, whether of the assassin of the body or the assassin of the soul, which are exerted with unrelenting fury to prevent him from availing himself of the opportunities of scriptural education. Away with that offspring of crafty priests and silly ministers-that expensive and ostentatious nuisance, the National Education Board! Restore that system which was dreaded, hated, misrepre

sented and denounced by the priesthood, because it was loved by the people; extend its root, and it will extend its branches; subject to the heaviest penalties all, whether priest or layman, who shall, by act, word or deed, endeavour to deter the peasant from exerting his free will in sending his children to what school he pleases; tell the seditious agents of Rome that it is not to them you will apply for advice in the improvement of Ireland. Try this course for one year, and you will learn the wishes of Irish natives on the subject of education; persist in it for ten years, and you will have Ireland the brightest gem in the British diadem.

MAN.

Addressed to Lord Byron.

FROM THE FRENCH OF ALPHONSE DE LANARTINE.

I.

Thou, whose mysterious name Earth yet can scarcely tell,
Man-demon-demigod-the birth of Heaven or Hell,
Byron! whate'er thou art-Spirit of Ill or Good,
I love thy barbarous lyre and darkly museful mood,
Even as I love the whirlwind and the thunder's sound,
And the strong torrent's roar when tempest howls around.
Night is thy bosom's home and Horror thy domain :
The eagle, desert-king, thus, too, disdains the plain;
Like thee he scorns to dwell except on jagged rocks

Which Winter swathes in snows and lightning vainly shocks,
And desolate shores whereon the wrecks of storms are lying,
And battlefields all gory with the dead and dying:

And while the Bird of Earth, which weakly pipes and grieves,
Builds by the river's brink its nest in flowers and leaves,
The other, soaring far where Athos' peak appears,

His eyry o'er the gulf 'mid carcase-carrion rears,

And there, encompassed round by limbs that writhe and quiver,
And crags from which black blood trills trickling in a river,

He hears with savage joy his victims' bootless cries,
And, cradled by the tempest, slumbers in the skies.

II.

Thou, Byron, too, like this bold outlaw of the air,
Drawest music from the shrieks of Anguish and Despair.
Earth is thy slaughterhouse-thy victim's name is Man;
Like Lucifer's, thine eye has dared the Abyss to scan.
Renouncing the bright spheres where God and Beauty dwell,
Thou plungest headlong down, and biddest Hope farewell!

With him-that Evil Power-thy soul in darkness reigns,
And pours its miseries forth in groans and funeral strains ;
He triumphs-and thy muse, with lamentable skill,
Awakes the hymn of glory to the Prince of Ill.
But what avail thy struggles in this blind estate?
Can thy rebellious reason hope to conquer Fate?
Thy reason, like thine eye, moves in a bounded sphere:
Seek not to pass beyond while Sense's captive here.
Beyond it all is cloud-all baffles-all is not.

Within its narrow round thy God hath marked thy lot.

How? Wherefore ?-Who shall say? His will and word have given
Breath to the race of Man, form to the circling Heaven,
Even as His hand hath pied Earth's fields with flowrets fair,
And sown the Light and Darkness through the unending air.
He knows it all: Enough-Wisdom is His, and Power.

And what are we? Dust!-shades!-the ephemera of an hour!
Our gravest crime is this-as Men we seek TO KNOW,
Nor feel that blindfold bondage is our doom below.
Byron! the word is hard; I spurned it in my youth,

But wherefore dupe ourselves? Why wrestle with the truth ?
What art thou before God? His handiwork-no more.

To own thy holy thraldom and in dust adore,

An atom borne through systems to thy final goal,

To yield thee to His will with unupbraiding soul,

And, as His mind conceived thee from the eternal Past,

To glorify His name while Consciousness shall last,

To such fate wert thou born!-Ah! blame not Life's Great Giver,
But rather kiss the yoke thou mayest not hope to shiver.
Descend from that false height thy maniac daring scaled.
Whatever is is well; the Godhead hath not failed.
Seek not to fathom Him whose hand outrolled the skies,
When grains of sand and worlds are equal in his eyes.

But this harsh law, thou sayest, revolts thy sense of right:
It strikes thee as unjust-a freak of despot might-
A clueless labyrinth by Blindness to be trod.
So, Byron, let it seem-yet, yet, judge not thy God!
My reason is as weak, as dim as thine can be,

Nor is it mine to expound this world of woes to thec;
Let Him who gave it birth illumine thee on this :
For me, the lower I sound the deeper seems the Abyss.
Here everspringing sorrow is twinborn with sorrow,
And woe is linked with woe as morrow throngs on morrow;
Yet, mendicant in means, but Croesus-rich in will,
Man is a fallen god whose thoughts tend heavenward still.
Whether condemned an outcast from the skies to roam—
He still preserve the memory of his primal home,
Whether his high desires, though indistinct and dim,

Be presages of glory yet unveiled to him,

The one grand Mystery of the Universe is Man.

Caged in the prison of Sense on Earth's contracted span,

A slave, he bears a heart aye-panting to be free,

A thing of sighs and tears, he woos Felicity!

His mind is dulled with clouds, yet he would all things prove;
His idols are but clay, yet he would always love!
How like to Eden's Exile is each mourning mortal!
An alien from his God and from the glorious Garden,
He still discerns, through tears, the interdicted Portal,
And sees the flaming sabre of the cherub-warden.

Still to his weary ears, far-heard and faintly swelling,
Float the ineffable music of the heavenly Dwelling,
The choral notes of Joy, the beatific lays

Of those who in God's bosom celebrate His praise,
Till, from the mocking vision forced to turn away,
He gazes on-himself, and shudders in dismay.

IV.

Woe to the wretched one who, bound and groaning here,
Is won by those illusions of a dreamier sphere!

Soon as the nectar's glow-the ideal bowl-is quaffed

Nature grows drunk at heart and loathes each homelier draught.
Away she flies and flies, upborne on Fancy's pinions,

Through the Supposed and Vague, the soul's own vast dominions;
Then is she mistress of the revels in those bowers
Where Love and Science charm the intoxicated hours,
There doth she bathe in seas of loveliness and light,

And slake her thirst of bliss with ever fresh delight;
Then—then—in thunder calling, Truth invades her sleep,
Her gorgeous halls are dust--she wakes, and wakes to weep!

V.

Alas! such fate was mine-such is my destiny!

I, too, have madly drained the empoisoned cup, like thee.
Like thee I had eyes and saw not: long I strove to pierce
The impenetrable veil that shrouds the Universe;

I called on Nature for the secret of her birth;

I asked its being's end of every shape of Earth;

Height upon height I clomb, depth below depth explored,

And prayed Earth, Air, and Heaven for one illumining word;

I anticipated Time; I traversed eldest ages;

I passed from shore to shore to gather lore from sages;
But Nature was and is a clasped scroll for Pride.
Despairing here, to explore the inanimate world I tried:

I buried myself in the heart of Solitude,

Which spake, methought, a tongue my bosom understood.
I studied the great laws whereby the planets roll,

And through the wilds of Heaven bade Newton guide my soul;
I meditated o'er the ashes of dead nations;

Rome's sepulchres reëchoed my interrogations :

Troubling the old repose of the world's mightiest ones,

I weighed their urnless dust-I arraigned their whitened bones;
I asked those bones, that dust, Were they designed by Fate
To prove the immortal lot which men anticipate?
What further shall I say? Close by the bed of death

I watched the o'erglazed eye, I inhaled the gasper's breath;
High upon sharp white peaks piercing the dun of Heaven,
Far upon boiling waves by tyrannous tempests driven,

I shrieked, I shouted through the elemental din,

For I believed that (like the ancient Sibyl in
Her frenzy) Nature 'mid convulsions and in storm
Intelligibly spake and gave her oracles form.

I trod her path of flowers, I trod her gloomiest path,
But vainly in her smiles, bootlessly in her wrath

I sought the eternal secret until reason Reeled:

God everywhere I saw, God great, but God concealed.

I saw Good, Ill, Grief, Joy, without design or care,

Showered from His general hand, fall here, there, everywhere;

I saw Crime laurel-crowned and Virtue without friend,

And I blasphemed that Power I could not comprehend;

But vain my blasphemies, vain as my prayers had proved,
Heaven's floor of triple brass repelled my voice unmoved;
Till of a time, one day, when, drowned in my despair,

I had wearied with my plaints the unanswering wastes of air,
The day-spring from on high on my couched vision burst,
And I, even I, knelt down and blessed the Might I had cursed;
And, yielding up my Spirit to this newborn sway,

I seized my poet's lyre, while Heaven inspired my lay.

Hymn.

Glory to Thee, through Life, in Death, alway,
Eternal Wisdom, all-upholding Will,

Whose presence the Unknown of Space doth fill,
Whose reign Creation publishes each day!
Thy Providence unsearchable, decreeing

My existence, spake me from the Abyss of Nought;
I answered to Thy call while yet I sought

Admission at the Vestibule of Being.

Behold me, Lord! An atom of the Earth,

A nullity salutes Thee at its birth!

From Thee to me what thought can span the distance ?
For me, who in Thee respire my fleet existence,
Fashioned by Thee ere Thou to me wert known,
What didst thou owe me ere I saw the Sun?
Nought then-nought since. Glory to Thee alone,
Framer of all, who overlookest none!

Employ the work, Great Artist! of Thy hands;

I am here the minister of Thy commands;

Dispose, direct, fix, change, through Time, through Space,
Even as Thou willest, me, my term, my place;

My soul without enquiry or complaint

Shall yield its powers to Thy divine restraint.

Like those pale globes which through the Inane of Night,
Marshalled by Thee, ever pursue their flight,
I, whether Light or Cloud o'erspread my day,
Shall follow where Thy finger points the way.
Whether-called up from old chaotic gloom

To fret with novel fires the vault on high-
I shine, a sun, ordained by Thee to illume
Surrounding worlds and beam from sky to sky,
Whether a thing minute beyond the reach
Of eye-my place in darkness I shall find,
A trampled grain of sand upon the beach
Or atom wafted by the volatile wind,
Proud of my fate, because it is Thy will,
I, though next-neighbour to Nonentity,
Thy grand design shall everywhere fulfil,

Nor murmur aught save-Glory, Lord, to Thee!

So high, so low not yet! My doom, as Man,
Involves a problem which I may not scan.
I am like that mournful orb which Thou hast given
To Earth when daylight flees the face of Heaven,
Whereof one part reflects the empyrean light,
While one looks out into the waste of Night.

Man is that mystic point wherein the two
Infinities are fraternised by Thee;
As aught but Man less wretched, it is true,

But still, at worst, that which he ought to be.
I adore Thy wisdom where least understood :
Glory to Thee! All Thou hast wrought is good.
Supporting daily my downdragging chain,

I have known through Life little but Care and Pain;
I stumble on a lone and lightless mountain,

Unknowing my forward as my bygone track,
And vainly call my vanished Youthtime back,
Which passed, a headlong torrent, from Life's Fountain;
Glory to Thee! Even from my cradle Woe
Has tossed me as its plaything to and fro;

I have steeped my bread of bitterness in tears
And drunk the waters of Thy wrath long years:
Glory to Thee! Thou hast contemned my cries :

I have glanced with dreary gaze round my clay prison;

I have looked to see Thy Day of Justice rise,

And it has risen-and for my torment risen!
Glory to Thee! The Pure offend Thine eyes!
One being was left to me below the skies;
Her heart and mine, her soul and mine were one;
Thyself hadst blended them. Thy will be done!
Even as a flower blasted while yet in blossom
Was she torn ere her season from my bosom,
And this dread blow, that I might suffer all
Its agony, was tardy in its fall!

In her expiring lineaments I saw

Love battling against Nature's changeless law;
I saw the vital flame, even while its glow
Under the damps of Death was ebbing low,
Afresh rekindling at Affection's ray:

I cried each morn, O, Sun, one other day!
And, like those criminals of old, whose doom
Of death immured them, living, in the tomb,
And whose immovable eyes were ever turned
On their last hope, the lamp, while yet it burned,
I would have chained the soul about to fly,
And watched it flitting from the filmed eye.
At length, O God! that soul to thee she sighed :
She died, and if with her my hopes, too, died,
Forgive the blasphemy Despair dictated!
I abjure it here. I adore Thee, Uncreated!
Who madest oaks to flourish, fire to burn,
Ocean to undulate and Man to mourn!

And well have I fulfilled that law for Thee!
Nature obeys her God unconsciously;

I only, led by Reason to adore Thee,
Here immolate my proud self-will before Thee :
1, only, from intelligence obey;

I, conscious of obedience, shall rejoice
To hear and follow everywhere, alway,
My destiny's injunctions and Thy voice.