practise; No. 306, containing the doleful complaints of Parthenissa, on the loss of beauty, by that dreadful enemy of feminine attractions, the small-pox; No. 141, criticisms on Shadwell's Lancashire Witches, a popular comedy of that time; Nos. 83 and 53, on the art of improving beauty; No. 66, on the fine breeding of ladies; No. 104, on the riding-habits of ladies, which, I suppose, were just becoming a fashionable attire, but which he thought sat awkwardly on English modesty; No. 220, on mechanical contrivances for the manufacture of verses; No. 231, on excessive bashfulness before public assemblies; No. 381, on the machinations of fortune-hunters; No. 539, on the injudicious interpolation of standard sermons in the pulpit; No. 540, on the merits of Spenser's Faery Queen; No. 554, an admirable essay on the improvement of genius, in which the characters of Bacon, Locke, Newton, and the unfortunate Leonardo da Vinci are judiciously discriminated; No. 541, on pronunciation and action; No. 91, on the ridiculous rivalship of a mother and daughter, a circumstance not uncommon in the present age; No. 224, on the universality of ambition. Hughes evinced his gratitude to lord Cowper by a dedication of the Siege of Damascus, and his respect to the memory of that worthy nobleman was further testified, in No. 467, for whom the character of MANILIUS in that number appears to have been designed. His observations on conjugal love, in No. 525, deserve to be attentively considered by all who take the dangerous leap: this, with No. 537, on the dignity of human nature; No. 210, on the immortality of the soul; and No. 237, on divine providence, I believe, are all the contributions of Hughes to the Specta

by Hughes, and intended for the Guardian. Dr. Drake concludes his sketch of the life of Hughes, by characterizing all the essays of this excellent man, as written in " a style which is in general easy, correct, and elegant; they occasionally," he says, " exhibit wit and humour; and they uniformly tend to inculcate the best precepts, moral, prudential, and religious."

And I cannot better conclude this hasty sketch, which my respect and love for the man have induced me to compile, than by copying the elegant and impressive testimony of the affection of Steele for his friend and associate.

Mr. Hughes, says sir Richard, in his THEATRE, No. 15, could hardly ever be said to have enjoyed health; but, was, in the very best of his days, a valetudinarian. If those who are sparing of giving praise to any virtue without extenuation of it, should say that his youth was chastised into the severity, and preserv ed in the innocence for which he was so conspicuous, from the infirmity of his constitution, they will be under new difficulty, when they hear that he had none of those faults to which ill state of health ordinarily subjects the rest of mankind. His incapacity for more frolic diversions never made him peevish or sour to those whom he saw in them; but his humanity was such, that he could partake and share those pleasures he beheld others enjoy, without repining that he himself could not join in them. No; he made a true use of an ill constitution, and formed his mind to the living under it with as much satisfaction as it could admit of. His intervals of ease were employed in drawing, designing, or else in music or poetry; for he had not only a taste, but an ability of performance to a great excellence, in those arts which entertain the mind within the rules of the severest morality, and the strictest dictates of religion. He did not seem to wish for more than he possessed, even as to his health, but to contemn sensuality as a sober man does

drunkenness; he was so far from envying, that he pitied the jollities that were enjoyed by a more happy constitution. He could converse with the most sprightly without peevishness; and sickness itself had no other effect upon him, than to make him look upon all violent pleasures as evils he had escaped without the trouble of avoiding. Peace be with thy remains, thou amiable spirit! but I talk in the language of our weakness. That is flown to the regions of day and immortality, and relieved from the aching engine and painful instrument of anguish and sorrow, in which, for a long and tedious few years, he panted with a lively hope for his present condition. We shall consign the trunk, in which he was so long imprisoned, to common earth, with all that is due to the merit of its late inhabitant.

Congreve is the author of a part of No. 42 in the Tatler, in which he has depicted the character of lady Elizabeth Hastings, daughter of the earl of Huntingdon, one of the most accomplished ladies of her time.— "Scarce has any age," says an annotator on the paper, "since the commencement of the christian æra, produced a lady of such high birth and superior accomplishments, who was a greater blessing to many, or a brighter pattern to all. By all accounts she must have been little less than the angels."

But Steele seems to have exerted all his genius, when in No. 49 he speaks of the same lady, and presents to us a portrait with which no one can refrain from being enamoured.

Aspasia must be allowed to be the first of the order of love, whose unaffected freedom and conscious innocence give her the attendance of the graces in all her actions.That awful distance which we bear toward her in all our thoughts about her, and that cheerful familiarity with which we approach her, are certain instances of her being the truest object of love of any of her sex. In this accomplished lady, love

VOL. VI. NO. XXXVIII.

IN my last paper I commenced my observations on the epistle of Maltronio, and then thought to have concluded them; but when once a subject is fixed upon for investigation, it is not easy to tell where the inquiry will end, to what it may lead, or how much paper may be occupied with the representatives of our reflections. The human mind is too independent to submit to such impotent shackles; it spurns them, and they vanish at a touch, like the thin vapours of morning before the rising sun; the subject unfolds itself, it spreads to unexpected dimensions, it exhibits new appearances, occasions new inquiries, and sometimes terminates in an unexpected conclusion.

On looking over the diary of my correspondent, we find that he is generally employed in his professional labours; what they were, he does not mention, nor is it of importance: whether he performed a duty impor tant or trivial, in the eyes of mankind, cannot affect the present observations. One day he "laboured hard to little purpose" (or, as I think, for a trifling advantage); "several circumstances occurred which made him betray impatience;" he then resolved to acquire more of 6

this valuable quality. Another day his labours were continued as usual, and his mind was occupied in contemplating the means by which he might serve the interests, and contribute to the happiness of mankind. Let no one think it degrading to the dignity of the Reflector, to employ himself in noticing the diary of one who labours as does my correspondent. Necessity may indeed chain down the body to the humblest employments, but tyranny itself cannot fetter the mind accustomed to reflection; it bids defiance to the threats of the despot, and exercises its exalted freedom in despite of power. In the present instance, the body, compelled to labour, exercised no influence over the freedom of the mind, nor restrained the indulgence of speculative benevolence, and laudable ambition: and notwithstanding that benevolence was merely speculative, yet that ambition was noble, and the means of gratifying it meritorious. And though impatience sullied the brightness of the picture of his mind for that day, yet it is counterbalanced, by the candour with which the error is acknowledged, and the promptitude of the consequent resolution to correct it.

One day he refused to grant the cheap request of a neighbour to assist him in erecting a stove, because it did not accord with the magnitude of his ideas, and the unbounded extent of his beneficent intentions. At another time, he refused a famished beggar a few cents, to save him from perishing. At another, he was involved in a quarrel, by defending the violated rights of a negro. I am almost disposed to smile at the glaring inconsistencies in the character and conduct of mankind.; at the difference between their theory, and their practice; their future intentions, and their present works. But such, we know, is the character of man, and instead of occasioning surprise, it only excites regret. However, my correspondent is entitled to praise, for borrowing what he had not, to relieve the necessities of another; and, notwithstanding

the vanity of the attempt, to oppose himself to a mob in defence of another's rights, we cannot fail to applaud the generosity of the motive.

There are many means of being serviceable to mankind, at a very small expence; but speculatists overlook them, by stretching their view to some great but distant object. The sphere of benevolence and charity is, with respect to a humble individual, necessarily contracted, yet every one forms one around him sufficiently extensive for the exercise of his good intentions to the utmost of his abilities, whether he exercises it by giving pecuniary relief to occasional distress, or by affording the sufferer the consolations of sympathy, or the little personal services which tenderness so well knows how to bestow.

Those persons have not lived in vain, nor without serving the interests of society, who, by correct conduct, have set a good example for the imitation of their neighbours; who, though they had nothing to give, have awakened the slumbering charity of those who had; who, by their industry and frugality, have supported a family in a state of independence; whose admonitions have saved the youthful from error, and the aged from destruction; whose patriotism, though it has never led them to the "martial plain," has preserved their neighbourhood from the evils of party violence, by the wisdom of their precepts, or the excellence of their example; whose ingenuity has raised them to eminence in their profession: certainly they have not. Nor are these all the means which may promote the interests of society. He that cultivates the minor virtues, though he may do it in the bosom of his family, in the deepest shade of retirement, deserves well the applause of mankind; for such is the organization. of society, that even a negative good, a life passed without the perform ance of any positively good action, promotes its interests, by preventing positive evil. Whether such a life may be properly considered a use

ful one, in a more confined view of the subject, or not, I may, perhaps, make the subject of a future number. I will now conclude, by advising the aspiring Maltronio to give less scope to his speculations, and more to his actions; to calm the fervour of ambition by the dictates of reason, and, though he may lament that the means of doing much is denied him,.to console himself by doing that which is in his power; for though but one talent has been entrusted to his care, he will never theless be compelled to give a strict account of the manner in which he has used it, at that great tribunal where the motives and actions of men will be weighed in the balance of eternal justice.

VALVERDI.

November 17th, 1806.

For the Literary Magazine.

CONDUCT OF ENGLAND TOWARDS

IRELAND.

THE conduct of England towards Ireland is the darkest part of her history. Founded in unjust usurpation her dominion was maintained by a scheme of proceeding, in which folly and oppression went hand in hand. The country was parcelled out among a few English adventurers, who speedily became not less barbarous than the natives, whom it was their chief care to exterminate, while their feuds and rebellions prevented every benefit which the policy of government might, from time to time, have communicated to, so extensive a portion of the empire. Hence, neither by conquest or submission had Ireland become fully subject to the English crown, till the vigorous administration of Elizabeth overpowered the last struggle of Irish independence.

In this infirm state of things the reformation was introduced into Ireland; not called for, as in England, and still more perhaps in Scotland, by the voice of national

opinion, but arbitrarily imposed on a superstitious and ignorant people, by a government which they already detested.

There cannot be any truer principle, with respect to religious establishments, than that the opinions of the majority, when indisputable, should decide on the particular sect by whose ministers they are to be instructed, and the expences of which they are to defray. But, at the beginning of Elizabeth's reign, there were not sixty protestants in Ireland; and the progress of this infant church, with all sorts of protecting bounties to its friends, and every discouragement to its adversaries, was nothing till the colonists of James I, and the soldiers of Cromwell, supplied the place of native converts.

It seems, indeed, a question, whether the anomalous system of the church of England, differing so materially from the catholic in doctrine, and as widely from the other protestant churches in discipline, though proved by experience to be well adapted to the country where it was framed, be equally fitted to any other people. In Scotland, in Ireland, in America, wherever, in short, the experiment has been tried, it has certainly failed of success; and perhaps the ecclesiastic, like the civil polity of England, possesses a racy flavour of its native soil, which, by nations of different temperament and prejudices, cannot be safely imitated. Be this as it may, the people of Ireland adhered to the Romish communion; and various penal laws were enacted during the reign of Elizabeth, which, however, like the corresponding statutes in England, neither impaired the rights of property, nor took away from recusants their seats in parliament.

In the reign of Charles I, broke out that memorable rebellion, during which more than 600,000 lives were wasted by war, famine, plague, hardship, and banishment; and two thirds of all the lands of the island were forfeited by the original pro

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prietors. Whatever might have been the provocations to this contest, it was carried on by the insurgents with a mixture of wickedness and infatuation to which there is hardly any parallel in history; and, from the era of their subjugation, severer treatment from an alarmed and exasperated government was at least the natural reward of their unsuccessful appeal to the sword.

Few statesmen have ever been placed in a situation more embarrassing than the duke of Ormond, in the adjustment of Irish affairs af ter the restoration. The lands of the catholics had already passed, by the tide of conquest, into the hands of Cromwell's soldiery; conflicting claims were set up on every side; some stood on parliamentary compact, some on royal promises, some on personal desert; the innocent were swept away by general presumptions of guilt, and the guilty saved by fictitious proofs of their innocence. Out of this chaos of perplexed and jarring interests arose the act of settlement, the seal and ratification of a transfer of property, amounting to near eight millions of acres, which passed from Irish to English, from Catholic to protestant dominion.

It is not conceivable, that even a race of Gentoos should submit to such losses without the wish to retrieve them; and it may be guessed what effect they would have on Hibernian temperaments. Accordingly, during the short-lived triumph of James II in Ireland, his parliament, in which only six protestants sat, passed a law, against the inclination of that prince, for the absolute repeat of the act of settlement. Victory, on the banks of the Boyne, once more decided that Ireland must submit to protestant rulers; and the keenness of the struggle seemed to impose a necessity on the conquerors, of preserving what their swords had won, by more harsh coercion of the vanquished than before.

The severe laws against popery began in the reign of William III;

that, in particular, which excludes the professors of that religion from parliament, was passed in the third year of his reign. It is usual to charge these laws on the religious bigotry of victors. But the protes tant ascendancy of Ireland cared very little about purgatory and the seven sacraments. They acted on principles simply political; and their severity was not derived from polemical rancour, but from the two great springs of bitterness, which turn the milk of human nature into gall, revenge and fear. They knew what the vanquished had done in the hour of success; they dreaded their numbers, and sought to strengthen the barriers of law against the rude arm of physical power.

The popery laws, in Ireland, in their present state, are folly, caprice, feeble and petulant tyranny. As they stood originally, they were vigorous and consistent; the firm, well-rivetted fetters of conquest, locking into one another, and stretching down the captive giant to the floor. For more than half a century after the revolution, the appellation of the common enemy was regularly given to the catholics, not in loose declamation, but in the legitimate and deliberate language of lordlieutenants and parliaments. The struggles of contending factions ne ver waked them from their lethargy, nor raised them from their abasement; and, while the names of liberty and patriotism were on the tongue of every protestant, it was never conceived that four-fifths of the people could neither share in the one, or be the object of the other. The catholics are hardly named as a distinct body, throughout the whole political writings of Swift. Indeed, their first resuscitation is said to have taken place during the viceroyalty of the duke of Bedford in 1757, when they ventured to present an address to the castle.

The great object of this oppressive policy was undoubtedly to keep under a powerful enemy; the next was probably to force him over to the protestant side. It might, a