and box-trees, and solemn cypress, shaded the place, and rendered it almost impervious to the rays of the sun; roses, jessamine, and honeysuckle, entwined the classic bower, and the green around was covered with flowers of all hues. The rathe primrose, that forsaken dies; The musk rose, and the well-attir'd woodbine,- "This was the favourite spot to which Mr. Grattan loved to retire; there he used to read and compose and meditate upon his country's wrongs-thinking upon the spirit of those who were no more, but who had left a hallowed influence around, and that undying love of liberty which was, and is, and is to come.' On the day that Ireland regained her freedom, he invoked the name of its ancient inhabitant, and at the commencement of his splendid speech he exclaims, Spirit of Molyneux! Spirit of Swift! your genius has prevailed! Ireland is now a nation!" We have rambled through these volumes to pick out a few of their characteristic passages, and shall conclude with something, selected upon the same principle; viz. with portions of some of the letters which Grattan wrote when in London. They are not only interesting as coming from such an authority, but as containing the recent impressions of an ardent study upon subjects that will always engage the attention. The Houses of Parliament naturally attracted Grattan, into which he sometimes obtained admission. Writing in 1768 he says, "I was present at one debate before the execution of the order. It arose on an address to be presented to his Majesty, expressing the satisfaction of Parliament at the measures taken to suppress the recent tumults, and promising the succour of Parliament to all such measures as might further be found necessary. The intent and tendency of this was to get Parliament to approve of the present Administration, and to promise to support it. The Opposition spoke against the Address, but did not vote; so that it passed without a negative. Lord North, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, a man versed in state mystery and learned in finances, spoke in defence of the Court, in a manner impetuous, not rapid; full of cant, not melody; and deserved the eulogium of a fervent speaker, not a great one. Grenville, on the part of the Opposition, was peevish and wrangling, and provoked those whom he could not defeat. "Burke, the only orator I have yet heard in the House of Commons here, (and this character arises from his matter, not his delivery,) was ingenious, oratorical, undaunted; he treated the Ministry with high contempt, and displayed with most animated derision their schemes and purposes." Here is another of his epistolary communications: "My Dear Broome-From a person living in the metropolis of the world, you may expect some news, some politics that may interest you, some facts that may amuse you. Alas! how much must I disappoint all these expectations. Unconnected with the great world, I learn no political intrigues; and unconcerned in the matter-of-fact world I attend to none of its momentous incidents. Excluded from the House of Commons, I want even my usual resort of amusements; and weary of the repetition of bad plays, I am thrown into the wanderer's last resort, the arms of a coffee-house, where I meet few acquaintances-no friends. I leave London in a few days, to retire to a pretty situation in Windsor. I need not tell you how I wish your partnership in my destined hermitage. It is not pure friendship, it is interested selfishness in part, that dictates my passion; for you have an uncontrolled influence over me, banishing every gloomy suggestion, and reconciling me even to myself. "I have heard too little of the capital speakers to characterize them to you; having gained admission one or two days, we have been excluded since. "Burke is unquestionably the first orator among the Commons of England; boundless in knowledge, instantaneous in his apprehensions, and abundant in his language. He speaks with profound attention and acknowledged superiority, notwithstanding the want of energy, the want of grace, and the want of elegance in his manner. "The other speakers whom I have heard do not deserve relation; they sink down to the lumber of our house, only that they are not so deficient in language nor so entirely overrun with vulgarity." When the remainder of the Memoirs appear, we hope to be enabled to present some more striking illustrations of the Orator's character and genius; for as yet we have seen little or nothing in the work that can modify or alter the estimate of him which has been generally formed, and which may be consulted in every popular biographical collection. ART. XI.-La Lampe de Fer. Par MICHEL MASSON. 2 vols. 12mo. Bruxelles: Meline. TIMES have strangely changed since Inclitus Albertus, doctissimus atque disertus, and scholars, like knight-errants, were ready to do battle with every comer de omni scibili, et quolibet ente. But the knowledge of these days is the knowledge of things, and not of words; the slowly ripening fruit of laborious observation-not the easy produce of a dexterous and fantastic logic. The most flexible and capacious genius would find the longest life too brief to span it. It is, indeed, this great increase of information on all subjects and in all classesthe many things which in this day it is necessary to know-the many of which one is ashamed to be entirely ignorant-the variety of acquirements necessary to a liberal education-which render the task of instruction every day more complicated and difficult. We are no longer at liberty to regard the first years of childhood as a period of preparatory training, in which we desire to instil habits rather than ideas: on the contrary, intelligence and instruction must appear on the horizon together. Hitherto, sixteen of the most precious years of life have been devoted to graceful antiquarian pursuits to the study of the ancient mind in the beautiful languages which embalm it, but with far greater reference to the language than the mind. The greatest of education was to employ the intellect usefully on what was comparatively useless, and to administer instruction less as a source of ideas, than an exercise of faculties. To be a scholar was fame; and to be imbued, not so much with the spirit of the writings of antiquity, as with a fine and subtle sense of the graces of their style-to be filled with a contemplative admiration of their genius-to be as nearly as possible an index to the volumes of antiquity, and their echo, this was to be a scholar. But those unfading garlands, wreathed from the choicest flowers of the philosophy and poetry of old, which festooned so gracefully around modern intellect, covering its bare places, and shedding their perfume into its deepest chasms, were fetters (and strong ones, too), flowery and fragrant though they were. While they seemed like light and graceful ornaments, to lay in boundless beauty on its surface, they effectually restrained that natural and unimpeded action essential to the development of its strength. It has required a long effort, and a powerful one, to release it from this brilliant thraldom. In philosophy as in literature, in science as in art, there was for many an age the same superstitious reverence for the past, the same reverted and adorning glance. But, by degrees, the intellect became agitated with new desires-the present business of mankind became the proper object of their knowledge-the craving of their wants summoned science to its aid-and science, hecoming practical, found itself in communication with every man, stimulated every man, and teaching him that the future would be the scene of his triumph and his power, gradually weaned him in all things from his exclusive reveration for antiquity. Society was for a long while, in its intellectual progress, like a traveller, who, fixing his eye on the point of his departure, keeps steadily in view all its features while he can reproduces in his imagination such as he can no longer see and has neither concern nor attention for the objects which surround him, save as by some accidental resemblance they recal the objects he has left. The pure, clear landscape of the present, with its broad masses of fertility, its virgin soil, that asked but the slightest tillage, was con temned as an unfruitful waste; while the future seemed but as the prolongation of the desart which the exile must pass in his eternal pilgrimage from home. But the scene has changed, our long vigil at the tomb of antiquity is broken, and for ever! The spirit song of the past still floats melodiously around us; but our ears are filled with a louder and nearer strain-the Pæan of an enfranchised intellect. We look rarely and furtively at the past, for the prejudice of the age is against authority. Our respect is no longer a superstition, but a sentiment-no longer a subsidy, but "a benevolence." It is questionable if the very fame of the giants of antiquity will not diminish, now that it no longer concerns the reputation of the living to uphold the reputation of the dead. Besides, the value of fame is, doubtless, like all other commodities, affected by the supply, and every age accumulates the stock of reputation in the market. One thing is very certain-that the necessity for a familiarity with them is rapidly decreasing. A few years ago, some outward and visible classical knowledge was as indispensable to an accomplished gentleman as his tie or his sword, -it was a thing to be worn and used. Men have blown out their brains for a much less persecution than a certain young gentleman suffered for making a false quantity in a quotation. Whoever has read the Rolliad, will wonder that he survived it. In those days, illustrations from ancient history were gravely uttered and heard; Thucydides and Tacitus, Demosthenes and Cicero, had a prescriptive right to be heard by proxy in the senate. Trite quotations and profound bows, small scholarship and elaborate civility, were the bearing and the breeding of the age; and it would be difficult to decide which would have been most calamitous to a gentleman, an unclassical memory or an inflexible spine. But in these days it is as dangerous to be in the slightest degree scholastic as civil, for the one would be proclaimed pedantic-the other vulgar; and a man who should quote Cicero to you in argument, would be as insupportable as that one who should offer you his umbrella in a shower. A short time since, a member of the House of Commons was outrageously laughed at for talking of "that illustrious Roman general, Scipio;" and the farther he went on in his illustration, the louder the House waxed in its cachinnation. Fifty years ago, the " illustrious Roman general" would have marched through the House with great applause. It is, perhaps, the first time that Scipio was ever laughed at ;-but what can you expect from men whose fathers left off shoe buckles? History has been called an old almanack; and all respect for antiquity within these twenty years so much enfeebled, that we very much question whether a certain celebrated Northern critic, now, we believe, a Scotch judge, would at this hour be so much shocked at the answer of a foreigner, who, upon being asked how he liked VOL. 11. (1839). NO. IV. RR Oxford, replied, "Oh, very much; but what a pity it is that they don't white-wash the walls." To the old reverence for the past has succeeded an indifference almost amounting to contempt. Assuredly this is an excess in an opposite direction, and a bad and mischievous excess. It must, however, be acknowledged that at any cost it is a great point gained to be enabled to give up our minds, unfettered and unbiassed, to the investigations of philosophy and science, the interpretation of nature, and the magnificent application of the results of these researches to the increase of the power and dignity of man. How noble a destiny to be, from the first glimmering of our reason, brought into contact with that active and productive knowledge, which is everywhere scattering its riches over the surface of society-to be no longer immured in a narrow space, splendidly adorned with the remnants of antiquity, but where our voices could awaken no echoes save of the past, and our minds acquire no more than a conjectured knowledge of the present to receive the revelation, not of other men's minds, but of nature-to possess the key of her oracles-to listen to the wisdom she teaches and boldly to follow whithersoever she vouchsafes to lead! But of all men or classes of men, who have lost their respect for the past, and trust entirely to the resources of the present age, are the tribe of French littérateurs. They would sooner desecrate the tombs of the ancients by throwing mud and weeds upon them, than borrow even as much as a single line from one of their epitaphs. And hence are they now the most original in thought and style, of any school of literature under heaven. To this school belongs Michel Masson, the author of the work the name of which stands at the head of this article. All France, and indeed all Europe, have heard of the literary association formed between Michel Masson and Raymond Bruker, and bearing the appellation of Michel Raymond; and every man, who pretends to know anything about French literature, has read the novel entitled Les Intimes. One of the authors of that novel is the writer of the book of tales which bears the singular denomination of the Lampe de Fer, or "The Iron Lamp." This name is bestowed upon the work, in consequence of the author having purchased an old iron lamp at a public sale, and written, Demosthenes-like, his present volumes by the light of the newly acquired property. We know not whether the tales " smell of the oil," like the lucubrations of the Grecian orator; but this we can answer for, that the style of the author runs as smoothly as that very necessary article of household economy. The principal paper, in the collection that bears the singular title of the Lampe de Fer, is La Voix du Sang; and it is to this tale -a tale written with an iron pen-that we purpose to call the |