fall upon it from a higher source than the passions or principles of man, it must break off by the nature of human things; what began in imprudence must end in caprice: fortunate if a community of error does not end in a community of corruption, and the ill-judged alliance of the vices and the follies surprise the world with the moral, how a great nation may be most speedily undone.

It is not to be supposed that we can be panegyrists of the ancient church of France. Its prejudices, and its unfitness for being the teacher of a national mind, or the depository of those deathless truths, which were given for the instruction of that mind in higher objects than the rights even of kings, churches, and prelates, brought their own heavy penalties. But, we think, with Plutarch, that the darkest superstition is better than infidelity; the most ignorant reverence of an Eternal Source of truth, purity, and justice, is a better element of society than the most sparkling contempt of them all; and that when the winds are abroad, and the commonwealth is on the surge, we should confide more in the fidelity that piloted itself by the dimmest gleam of the worlds above, than in the most flourishing promises of reaching our anchorage, with republican honour at the prow, and republican Atheism at the helm. We therefore pronounce that our alliance with the throne and people of Louis-Philippe must be insecure; if we extend it, must be dangerous to the full degree of its extent; and in the first serious collision with Europe, may be our ruin. In France, at this moment, there is no national religion. That has been abolished by the legislature of the streets. The deliberations of the pike and the pistol, in the three days of July, decided that question without the formality of debate. The rabble of Paris spoke the word, and it was done. The legislature was worthy of the work, and the work worthy of the legislature. Now every man in France may choose his religion for himself, or make his religion, or may neither choose nor make. Thus, nine-tenths of France have no religion of any kind. The rising generation will be the inheritors of their fathers' principles;

France, without the declaration of Atheism, will have the substance; and the popular novelty will be the man who believes in the existence of a hereafter, or binds his oath, and keeps his conscience in awe, by the acknowledgment of a God. We say this in no angry recollection of old rivalry, and in no modern fear. We say it as little in offence to the personal honour of her people, or the political integrity of her sovereign. The stipulations of public council may be formed in the purest spirit of good faith; but the solidity of the connexion is forbidden by a law more powerful than human honour or national policy. With a people nationally divorced from religion, no other safe connexion can follow. Strength and weakness may combine. But Protestant England and Infidel France must overpower a repulsion seated in nature, before they can combine. As well might both ends of the needle point to the pole.

When Pitt, in 1793, was reproached by Opposition with refusing to make peace with France, he turned on his reproachers, and boldly asked, With whom was he to make peace? where was the French Government? Was England to send an ambassador to treat with the Tribunal, or catch the faction as it passed through the streets to the scaffold? What, could the honourable gentleman tell him, was the Government of France at that hour, or who; or how long they might last, or whether another week of change might not see the firmest treaties worth no more than the paper they were written on, and France, under the new sovereignty of a new mob, choosing new allies, acting on new principles, and finishing a mock negotiation by a furious plunge into hostilities? And what is the difference in the year 1834 ? A rabble quarrel, a popular play, a trial for libel, a Parliamentary duel, a refugee princess, a duellist's funeral, each and all shake the consumptive frame of the State into convulsions. A hundred thousand of the rabble following the hearse of an individual never heard of before, and five-and-twenty thousand troops of the line paraded to keep them from sacking the Tuileries, are the evidences of royal stability. If LouisPhilippe were to die to-morrow, who

to the whole oratorio family,-a species of authorship, which, whether on or off the stage, or whether flourishing in stage frippery, or limited to the orchestra, utterly lowers the solemn dignity of the subject, vulgarizes language which ought never to be used but in scenes totally remote from the heated follies and gross feelings of a theatrical audience, and always has offended, and always must offend, every sentiment of every mind that can distinguish between ribaldry and reverence. In these censures, we pass by managers, publishers, and the whole crowd of mere agents; they follow but the change of the time-they are passive

would ensure royalty in France for a week? The succession of his family would be as fair a matter of the die, as any game at the tables of the Maisons de jeu of the Palais Royal; the whole a matter of chance whether the Duke of Orleans put the crown on his head, or M. Lafayette ascended the chair in the majesty of the bonnet rouge; whether the Parliament took the oath of allegiance, or the bayonets of the National Guard, crossing the bayonets of the line, set tle the succession in their own way, and establish a Grand National Republique of ten-franc freeholders. These truths are as palpable as the day and it is to this floating government that we are to anchor the British Empire, and bravely resolve to sink or swim with our companion.

But the still more formidable fruits of the alliance are already sprouting among ourselves. The literature of France, the product of Republican principles on private licentiousness, is coming over in every shape of temptation; profligate novels for the closet, profligate plays for the theatres, are the last importations from France. We have already had an exhibition on the Metropolitan Stage, of the profanation of the tomb, the dead actually walking out of their coffins, to the tune of a quadrille, and a hundred and fifty opera girls running about the stage, in a condition, as to dress, startling even among opera girls. In this instance, the public were taken by surprise. Disgust soon put down the exhibition, and a fortnight in London finished the display which in Paris enjoyed the full flame of popularity for a year. But another exhibition followed, of a more mature order of the profane. The history of that magnificent and wonder-working period which brought Israel from the Egyptian dungeons, was turned into a stage show, and Moses sang, harangued, and even would have danced, but for the intervention of an authority, which ought to have at once extinguished the whole offence. The "Sacred" Ballet was prohibited, but just in time, by the Bishop. Another attempt of the same kind was hurried on, too injudiciously, before the public had time to forget the disgust of the former. It perished, and we shall hope it has given a deathblow

they are the carriers, the conduits, the instruments-to them the results may be unconsidered, or unknown. The crime is in the public taste, and the perversion is the work of France. If this channel be not cut off, the corruption of the land must follow.

And the chief calamity of this state of things is, that it assumes something of the shape of an operation of nature. Whether the present Ministers have been the cause (we do not believe them to have been the cause), or whether they would desire to get rid of the result, it is beyond their power. A violent sepa ration might be as ruinous, as identity.

we

We are Siamesed to France; cannot cut asunder the link without hazarding blood; and we must await the work of time, and be vigilant to watch for those opportunities which Providence gives to nations, not wilfully undone. We must try to recover our character with the great German powers; to cherish such amity as we can with Prussia, now only an outpost of the great northern Empire, to fix the most unhesitating faith with Austria, now shrinking from our revolutionary tactics, and in that terror, siding with Russia; and with France neutral, neither provoked to injure, nor enabled to betray, calmly and resolutely make our preparation for the bloodiest contest that Europe has ever seen, and in which the war will be with England, against England, and for the last ship and shilling, the last acre and the last privilege of England. A war with Russia, in the course of a few years, is as inevitable as the spreading of the sea over an

contempt for each, and an open determination to wield the supremacy of all, are the securer means by which France now pursues her old object the sceptre of the world. She no longer tears her way through nations with the thunderbolt; her more powerful destroyer is the silent, creeping, wide-spreading malaria of republicanism."

Now, the fact being unquestionable that French principles are the principles of a large, powerful, and reckless party in England, who, alternately regarding Ministers as their tools and their antagonists, feel perfectly satisfied as to their being able to sweep all administrations into their current; it must be of some import to know what those principles are. Forty years ago their creed as to Kings was laid down by the celebrated Condorcet in his paper on the education of the Dauphin, of whom he had been chosen by the National Assembly to be the tutor, or rather the jailor. "The Assembly willed that the uselessness of a King, and the necessity of seeking means to establish something in lieu of a power founded on illusion, should be one of the first truths offered to the reason of the pupil; the obligation of conforming himself to this, being the first of his moral duties. The object is less to form a King, than to teach him that he should know how to wish no longer to be such." This was the creed of the man who had filled the chair of the National Assembly, was their perpetual secretary and their principal guide. And this was in the period when a King was still acknowledged, and before the philosophers had given the practical illustration of their doctrines by cutting off the King's head.

But while Burke was thus supporting, by his parliamentary labours, and by his unrivalled pen, the cause of the Constitution and human nature, he received a blow which almost totally unmanned him. Richard Burke, his only son, was seized with an illness which speedily made such progress, that to all eyes, but those of his fond and sanguine father, his fate was sealed. It had been Burke's ambition to educate his son for public life, and no pains had been spared to cultivate him for

His disor

all the distinctions of Statesmanship. It has been too much the habit to compare the son with the eminent father, and to depreciate him below the level of ordinary talent, as much as he fell below the level of extraordinary. By this unfair estimate Richard Burke has passed for one of the customary examples of parental blindness to filial mediocrity, and has been reckoned altogether beneath his value. But Burke was not a man to be so simply hoodwinked by affection. If the son of Cicero was a blunderer, we have to learn that Cicero proposed him for public business. Burke certainly would not have embarked his son in the most difficult career of talent and of life, if he had not gravely satisfied himself that the bark was equal to the voyage. On retiring from Parliament in June, 1797, he had obtained his son's return for Malton, and had placed him on the first step of office, by Lord Fitzwilliam's appointment of him as his secretary in the Irish Viceroyalty. But his career was to be untried by the temptations of power, and unshaken by the casualties of fortune. der soon gave evidence of consumption. Burke's sensitiveness of heart was so well known to his friends, that Bracklesley, the family physician, decidedly suppressed all intimation of the nature of the disease from the unfortunate father, declaring that it would sooner put an end to his life than his son's. The patient was now removed to the suburbs for the benefit of the air, until he should commence his journey to Ireland. But that period was never to arrive. At length, but a week before he breathed his last, it was found necessary to give the intelligence to his unhappy father, who, from that moment until he closed the tomb upon him, scarcely slept, tasted food, or was able to restrain himself from the most affecting expressions of sorrow. A longer notice would probably have worn him out of the world. Some letters from Dr Laurence, the well-known friend of Burke, and brother of the present Archbishop of Cashell, present a detail of the progress of the disorder, and of what must interest us still more, its influence on the great mind and feeling heart of Burke.

feel myself better, and in spirits, yet my heart flutters, I know not why. Pray, talk to me, sir; talk of religion, talk of morality; talk, if you will, on indifferent subjects.' Then turning round, he said, What noise is that? Does it rain? No, it is the rustling of the wind through the trees.' And immediately, with a voice as clear as ever in his life, and a more than common grace of action, he repeated some beautiful lines from Adam's morning hymn. They are favourite lines of his father's, and were so, as I recollect, of his poor uncle's, to whom he was then going, with those very lines on his tongue,—

The letters are to Mrs Haviland, a connexion of the family. A few extracts are here given:-" August 1, 1794As Dr King" (afterwards Bishop of Rochester)" undoubtedly communicated to you the melancholy contents of my yesterday's letter, you will be anxious to know whether another day has brought any new hope. There is a little, feeble and faint. The sentence is at least respited for a time. A second letter from Mr Burke yesterday evening informed me that the physicians forbade him to despair. The disorder is a consumption, which has, however, not yet reached the lungs. * The family are with poor Richard in lodgings a little beyond Brompton. It is a house of mourning indeed. Dr Bracklesley says, it is almost too much for him, who, as a physician, is inured to such sights, and in some degree callous to them. * * * * * Mr Burke writes to me that he is almost dried up. The conclusion of his first letter was highly affecting. He ended with an abrupt exclamation-'Oh, my poor brother died in time!'"

Before the next letter, the catastrophe had arrived. "August 4, -When I shortly informed you of the melancholy event on Saturday, 1 was acquainted with the event, and nothing more, from the mouth of Dr Bracklesley. Some of the particulars I have since collected, as well as I could. They may afflict you, but there is a pleasure in such sorrow, which he who cannot taste, deserves to be pitied. You know every thing till the night previous to his death. During that night he was restless and discomposed. In the morning his lips were observed to have become black. His voice, however, was better. * * * * * His father and mother did not suffer themselves to be flattered by the favour able symptoms. Their lamentations reached him where he lay. He rose from his bed. He then desired the servants to support him towards the room where his father and mother were sitting in tears. * *

*

He endeavoured to enter into conversation with his father, but grief keeping the latter silent, he said, after some observations on his own condition, Why, sir, do you not chide me for these unmanly feelings? I am under no terror. I

"His praise, ye winds, that from four quarters blow

Breathe soft or loud; and wave your tops, ye pines,

With every plant, in sign of worship wave !'

"He began again, and again pronounced the lines with the same happiness of elocution and gesture, waved his head in sign of worship, and, worshipping, sank into the arms of his parents, as in a profound and sweet sleep! The behaviour of our two poor friends is such as might be expected by those who know both their sensibility and their strength of reason. During

* *

the first day, the father was, at times, as I have heard, truly terrible in his grief. He occasionally worked himself up to an agony of affliction, and then, bursting away from all control, would rush to the room where his son lay, and throw himself headlong on the bed or on the floor. Yet, at intervals he attended, and gave directions relative to every little arrangement, pleasing himself most with thinking what would be most consonant to the living wishes of his son. At intervals, too, he would argue against the ineffectual sorrow of his wife." * 7. At last I have seen poor Burke. His grief was less intolerable than I had supposed. He took me by surprise, or I should then have avoided him. He told me he was bringing his mind by degrees to his miserable situation; and he lamented that he went to see his son after death, as the dead countenance has made such an impression on his imagination, that he cannot retrace in his memory

"Aug.