10. Read Sir H. Taylor's Last Days of the Duke of York with the most intense interest: a most interesting chapter in the history of human nature---the love of life balancing his heroic dreadless gaze at the approach of death---incredulousness alternating with desponding anxiety---the human catching at the straws of hope, prevailing to the last over the most perfect religious resignation---all colored by the singleness of heart, unchangeable amiableness of disposition, and deep sincere piety, of the illustrious deceased. Notwithstanding its tendency to, if possible, increase the general esteem for the trulylamented prince, I question if it do not supply his political opponents ---he had no personal enemies---with some formidable weapons of assault against the unartificialness of his fortitude :---there is too much unqualified anxiety to live---too much leaning on the mere ceremonies of the Church for support---in the narrative, for the character of an ideal Christian soldier. By the way, it struck me forcibly, the Lutheran---I was going to say Romish---veneration of his Royal Highness for the Sacramental Communion. I question if the shades of difference between his consubstantiative and the Catholic transubstantiative doctrine of the Sacrament, were as marked as a follower of Zuinglius might have wished. He would evidently have been a plastic material in the hands of an ambitious designing clergy; much more so than the present Heir-Presumptive. Talking of the Duke of Clarence, I cannot but condemn the continued petulant obstinacy of honorable members to the proposed addition to his income. Althorpe, Milton, and Tavistock have acted a manly part in protesting at first against the principle, and then ceasing to ungraciously oppose its subsequent progress. I told Althorpe and Milton so. I heard but one good argument against it last night---that of Davies Davenport and my friend Sir R. Heron---of which, by the way, not a syllable in the newspapers. It is---that when Lord H. Petty (the present Marquis of Lansdowne) was proposing, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, in 1806, an increase to the duke's settlement, he stated his sole object was not to increase it virtually, but nominally---that the proposed addition was merely a recompense for the then depreciated currency. That being the case, if the original settlement were sufficient, when the currency became improved, and raised in value, the noble lord should have proposed a nominal reduction; but as he had not the virtual as well as nominal increase of the duke's revenue had anticipated his Royal Highnesses claims as Heir Presumptive. I was not aware of this important fact, otherwise might have voted with Althorpe. So the Duke has become an advocate for emancipation. Stourtoun told me so months since, but I doubted his reasons. Royal Highness views it as I do---not as the positive, but as the negative, condition of Ireland's peace and prosperity---that is, that it is comparatively nothing one way or the other, taken by itself; but is the essential preliminary step to the introduction of more important and more salutary measures. He means to grant it as a royal bcon--in the event of his succession to the throne. I trust his wise policy will have been anticipated in the meantime. 12. His We"landed interest" are going it gallantly in the House ---carrying every thing we wish---not hearing any body we dont like ---very galling to the cockney political economists. I am surprised to hear a shrewd, sensible man like Milton talk such nonsense as he does on the subject. Denying in the teeth of facts and sound theory, that the agriculturists are the heaviest taxed class in the community. What are the average rates paid by the landed interest? 4,892,000l. per annum What the average levied on the manufacturers? but 259,000l. The only good thing I ever heard that Calcraft utter, was when Milton asked what did a "remunerative price mean? "that considered as it might, it resolved itself into the attainment of ample rents." Calcraft replied, "It was 3 per cent. on the money "vested in the land, and 5 per cent. upon the capital expended upon "it." Calcraft is right. I wish he was more modest---I might be inclined to countenance him. Milton's next assumption is equally absurd---that tythes are not a tax paid out of rent, but, like all other taxes on agriculture, by the consumer of corn. I am by no means a worshipper of the theories of the "Philosophers" of the Ricardo and and M'Culloch school; but if any of them be perfect in argument, and corroborated by fact, it is that tythes must be invariably paid out of rent, as must the largest proportion of the taxes on agriculture. It would be easy to demonstrate that these taxes have as little to say to the cost of producing corn, and therefore to the price of consuming it, as those on tobacco, nutmegs, or Bohea tea. Let tythes suffice it for the present. If tythes were a tax upon production, tythes should be levied on all land that produces. But tythes are not levied on all the land which produces corn; for at least a third of the land of England and Wales is exempt from the burden of tythe, exclusive of considerable tracts in Ireland, and of the whole of Scotland. What are the consequences of this fact? That it is highly absurd to suppose that the cultivators of the tythed lands have had any power so to narrow the supply of corn brought to market, as to throw any considerable portion of the burden of tythes on the consumers. Had the expense of tythe-free land been inconsiderable, they might have thrown the greater part of it upon them; but when they have had to enter into competition, not with a few, but with a third of the cultivators of England, and all those of Scotland, it is obvious" that the price of corn must have been regulated by the price for which it can "be raised on the last lands cultivated that are free from tythe"," and not by what it could be raised for on the last lands cultivated that are subject to that change. The same might be demonstrated of the poor rate, if the fact did not speak for itself; of the land-tax, county rates, and other peculiar taxes on agriculture. 13. The murder is out: Copley's an oration for the Chancellor's medal; Canning's life, 13 to 1 worse than Peel's, therefore 13 chances to 1 in favor of Peel's cabinet prepotency. Canning will ---must be---after all the intriguing, the Premier. Nobody else fit for it. Serve under Peel---a 74 strike to a merchantman---then is doomsday near! * Edinburgh Review. 15. I repeat again and again, that the Corn Laws cannot be with safety touched till the currency is decided. I trust the writer of the dialogue between Adam Smith and Ricardo, will state the question fully; would recommend him to be more elementary in his arguments, rather abstrusish--had to read him three times over before I thoroughly understood him. Tis astonishing the general ignorance on the subject. Not five men in the House understand a principle of it. There is Huskisson, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Tierney, Sir H. Parnell, and I, and perhaps two or three more. What words, words about " over issue," and " depreciated currency." Paper issues dis place their own value (I mean current) of coin; and there cannot be an over issue as long as the currency is not lowered in value; and it cannot be lowered in value as long as paper displaces coin, that is, as long as there is a gold sovereign in the country. There is the argument in a nut shell: let the dialoguist give the rationale. 17. Shade of Charles James Fox rest in peace. I never overrated your abilities; but still feel indignant. "I rise, sir, to repel "the insinuations against the conduct of my dearly lamented Right "Hon. Friend, &c. &c." C. J. Fox defended by Mr. John Calcraft! an eagle defended by a tom-tit; a lion by a little mangy cur; O tempora, O mores, O modesty, O matchless impudence! 20. I have not been able to stir from the cursed election committee: I am actually fagged to death, and all to get in that note of interrogation, Mr. Fysche Palmer. 22. The Chancellor indignant at Plunkett's attack upon that "most audacious forgery," the Pitt Club, and upon the "Reformation "Crusade." Great schism behind the scenes---now or never, friend Canning. By the way, were I to become the " Peter the Hermit" of the religious crusade against Popery, I would circulate at least equally with the Bible, Don Quixote, the most profound satire upon the Catholic religion that ever came from the pen of man. Miss Dulcinea del Toboso was the immaculate peerless virgin, to doubt whose perfections and charms was death. Charles V. was the Knight of La Mancha, devoting his labors and vigils, his wars and treaties, to the chimerical idea of making all minds, like watches, bear their indexes by a simultaneous movement to one point. The windmills and giants were the different sects of Christianity; and my old friend Sancho was the symbol of the people, possessing sound sense in all other matters, but ready to follow the most extravagant visionary in this, and combining implicit belief in it with the grossest sensuality. For "religion, "when it is hot enough to produce enthusiasm, burns up and kills "every seed entrusted to its bosom." To say that Don Quixote was an attack upon knight errantry, is absurd in the extreme; for knight errantry was then dead for more than a century. Cervantes delighted his romance readers by his caricature of the false taste of his rivals and predecessors; and his own heart by his solitary archery, well knowing 'what amusement those who came after him would have in picking up his arrows, and discovering the bull's eye hits. THE RETURNING WANDERER. Yes, those must be the cliffs of white And hark! Oh yes, indeed I hear With joy I see yon white peaks hold My Emma, does thy once fond heart And that thou hast with tearful eye This very eve beneath yon hills My aged parent's ear Shall catch each sound blue ether fills, And joy shall conquer fear; In his fond smile I hope to find Each venial fault forgiven, And love and friendship thus combin'd Blow fresher yet propitious breeze, And once again the proud oak trees And should amidst the starlight pale Each glitt'ring orb I'll gladly hail E. B. Review. Stories of Chivalry and Romance.-Longman & Co. This really seems to us to be a pretty book with a pretty title. There is not a man whose heart is in the right place, or his head in a right condition, that will not like to be told of a book of 300 pages containing six very well written and descriptive tales. For our parts, we wish they had been less in number, so that they might have been longer; the great brevity with which they have necessarily heen treated, has led the author into most of the conspicuous faults which are to be observed. The prevailing fault in all of them, more or less, is, that the author relies more upon his powers of description, than any art or contrivance in the story. We are told this is the first essay of the author, and we almost fear that he is inclined to neglect giving the form of the story a sufficient consideration with a view of making it intelligible and interesting, and to rest upon flowing and somewhat verbose description as a compensation. If he appear again before the public, which we have no doubt he will be encouraged to do, he must bestow a greater share of contrivance in the construction of his plot and incident. In works of this nature, nothing can atone for a want of these. For example, in the first tale, "Jacques de Wilton," there is, as the young ladies say, hardly a grain of love. The idea of a knight presenting the prize he had won in a tournay to his sister! A story of chivalry without love, or only fraternal love! But notwithstanding many conspicuous faults in the forms of the stories, the whole are extremely well and unaffectedly written, and will afford pleasure, we think, to readers of every class. There is some very pretty poetry interspersing the stories. We can only afford room for two short extracts from the story of "The Knight of the Plumeless "Helm," which we consider the best of the six. For a specimen of the prose style, we may select the account the hero Gaston de Biern relates to his page of his life and present intentions. "Nor will I give thee any longer cause to think that I suspect thy loyalty: attend then, while I gratify thy wish. Eight years ago,---young as thou art, thou may'st perhaps remember it---my liege, the warlike Edward, wrested from my hold the fair possessions of my ancestors---I was branded with the foul name of rebel, unknighted, and imprisoned. Justice is sometimes deaf as well as blind.---Whilst our gallant sovereign tarried upon his return from Palestine, at the Sicilian court of Charles, his lady, Eleanor, received into her train the fairest and the proudest of the daughters of Britain: among them was one, whose matchless beauty fired my soul with love. I asserted successively the superiority of her charms in the tournay and the joust, using all honorable means to merit her affection; and not altogether in vain, if this memorial prove not the pledge of falsehood;"---(here Sir Gaston, ungauntleting his hand, exhibited to his page a ring formed of a plaited lock of dark brown hair, ornamented with a small bright topaz.)---John de Langeville," he continued, "was my rival in the maiden's love; and jealous of the preference shewn me, resolved upon my ruin. He whispered vague rumours into Edward's ear, touching my visits to the queen's apartments; and my liege lord, in the full presence of his knightly court, charged me with treason! Indignant and enraged, I swore the charge was false, and in an unguarded moment, threw down the gauntlet at my accuser's feet. Thereat the king, who brooked not this outrageous insult, bade those around disarm me; but I felled to the earth the craven knights who |