trimmers, 2000; making the total number employed in what I call the Northern Coal Trade 38,000. In London, whippers, lightermen, and so forth, 5,000; factors, agents, &c. on the Coal Exchange, 2,500; 7,500 in all, in London. Making the grand total in the north country and London departments of the trade, 45,500. This does not, of course, include the persons employed at the outports in discharging the ships there.' In another place, (p. 53,) Mr Buddle states, that Colliers are always paid by the piece,' and consequently their wages, although at the same rate per chaldron, vary according to the quantity of work they have to do; and it is difficult to form an average, they vary so very considerably; they have varied from 14s. a-week to in some instances 40s. The colliers can earn up to 5s. or even more per day; but there is no employment for them; they have seldom been earning more than half that sum during the last year, (1828); 2s. 6d. is the certain wages that they are hired to receive from their employers, whether they are employed or not; that is a tax on the coal-owner, during the suspension of his colliery from any accident, for he pays them their wages whether they are employed or not.-The men have the option of finding work elsewhere; but if they cannot do so, they may call upon their master to pay them 14s. a-week; it was 15s. a-week till last year. Sea-borne coal imported into any port of Ireland is charged with a duty of 1s. 74d. a-ton, or 2s. 5d. a-chaldron. But in order to provide a fund for improvements, that which is imported into the port of Dublin is charged with an additional duty of 11d. aton! The duties on sea-borne coals imported into Wales are nearly the same as those on importation into Ireland. Scotland is fortunately exempted from this odious impost. ART. IX.-1. The Omnipresence of the Deity, a Poem. By Ro- THE ww A pious Brahmin, it is written, made a vow that on a certain day he would sacrifice a sheep, and on the appointed morning he went forth to buy one. There lived in his neighbourhood three rogues who knew of his vow, and laid a scheme for profiting by it. The first met him and said, 'Oh, Brahmin, wilt thou buy a sheep? I have one fit for sacrifice. It is for that very purpose,' said the holy man, that I came forth this day." Then the impostor opened a bag, and brought out of it an unclean beast, an ugly dog, lame and blind. Thereon the Brahmin cried out, Wretch, who touchest things impure, and utter'est things untrue, callest thou that cur a sheep?- Truly,' answered the other, it is a sheep of the finest fleece, and of the sweetest flesh. Ob, Brahmin, it will be an offering most acceptable to the gods.'- Friend,' said the Brahmin, either thou or I must be blind.' Praised be the Just then one of the accomplices came up. 'gods,' said this second rogue, that I have been saved the 'trouble of going to the market for a sheep! This is such a sheep as I wanted. For how much wilt thou sell it?" When the Brahmin heard this, his mind waved to and fro, like one swinging in the air at a holy festival. Sir,' said he to the new comer, take heed what thou dost; this is no sheep, but an un' clean cur.'-' Oh, Brahmin,' said the new comer, thou art 'drunk or mad!' 6 6 At this time the third confederate drew near. • Let us ask this man,' said the Brahmin, what the creature is, and I will stand by what he shall say. To this the others agreed; and the Brahmin called out, Oh, stranger, what dost thou call this 'beast? Surely, oh, Brahmin,' said the knave, it is a fine sheep.' Then the Brahmin said, Surely the gods have taken away my senses,'-and he asked pardon of him who carried the dog, and bought it for a measure of rice and a pot of ghee, and offered it up to the gods, who, being wroth at this unclean sacrifice, smote him with a sore disease in all his joints. 6 Thus, or nearly thus, if we remember rightly, runs the story of the Sanscrit Æsop. The moral, like the moral of every fable that is worth the telling, lies on the surface. The writer evidently means to caution us against the practices of puffers,-a class of people who have more than once talked the public into the most absurd errors, but who surely never played a more curious, or a more difficult, trick, than when they passed Mr Robert Montgomery off upon the world as a great poet. In an age, in which there are so few readers that a writer cannot subsist on the sum arising from the sale of his works, no man who has not an independent fortune can devote himself to literary pursuits, unless he is assisted by patronage. In such an age, accordingly, men of letters too often pass their lives in dangling at the heels of the wealthy and powerful; and all the faults which dependence tends to produce, pass into their character. They become the parasites and slaves of the great. It is melancholy to think how many of the highest and most ex quisitely formed of human intellects have been condemned to the ignominious labour of disposing the commonplaces of adulation in new forms, and brightening them into new splendour. Horace, invoking Augustus in the most enthusiastic language of religious veneration,-Statius flattering a tyrant, and the minion of a tyrant, for a morsel of bread,-Ariosto versifying the whole genealogy of a niggardly patron,-Tasso extolling the heroic virtues of the wretched creature who locked him up in a mad-house, these are but a few of the instances which might easily be given of the degradation to which those must submit, who, not possessing a competent fortune, are resolved to write when there are scarcely any who read. 6 This evil the progress of the human mind tends to remove. As a taste for books becomes more and more common, the patronage of individuals becomes less and less necessary. In the earlier part of the last century a marked change took place. The tone of literary men, both in this country and in France, became higher and more independent. Pope boasted that he was the one poet' who had pleased by manly ways;' he derided the soft dedications with which Halifax had been fed,-asserted his own superiority over the pensioned Boileau,-and gloried in being not the follower, but the friend, of nobles and princes. The explanation of all this is very simple. Pope was the first Englishman who, by the mere sale of his writings, realised a sum which enabled him to live in comfort and in perfect independence. Johnson extols him for the magnanimity which he showed in inscribing his Iliad, not to a minister or a peer, but to Congreve. In our time, this would scarcely be a subject for praise. Nobody is astonished when Mr Moore pays a compliment of this kind to Sir Walter Scott, or Sir Walter Scott to Mr Moore. The idea of either of those gentlemen looking out for some lord who would be likely to give him a few guineas in return for a fulsome dedication, seems laughably incongruous. Yet this is exactly what Dryden or Otway would have done; and it would be hard to blame them for it. Otway is said to have been choked with a piece of bread which he devoured in the rage of hunger; and, whether this story be true or false, he was beyond all question miserably poor. Dryden, at near seventy, when at the head of the literary men of England, without equal or second, received three hundred pounds for his Fables,-a collection of ten thousand verses,-and such verses as no man then living, except himself, could have produced. Pope, at thirty, had laid up between six and seven thousand pounds,the fruits of his poetry. It was not, we suspect, because he had a higher spirit, or a more scrupulous conscience, than his predecessors, but because he had a larger income, that he kept up the dignity of the literary character so much better than they had done. From the time of Pope to the present day, the readers have been constantly becoming more and more numerous; and the writers, consequently, more and more independent. It is assuredly a great evil, that men fitted by their talents and acquirements to enlighten and charm the world, should be reduced to the necessity of flattering wicked and foolish patrons in return for the very sustenance of life. But though we heartily rejoice that this evil is removed, we cannot but see with concern that another evil has succeeded to it. The public is now the patron, and a most liberal patron. All that the rich and powerful bestowed on authors from the time of Mæcenas to that of Harley would not, we apprehend, make up a sum equal to that which has been paid by English booksellers to authors during the last thirty years. Men of letters have accordingly ceased to court individuals, and have begun to court the public. They formerly used flattery. They now use puffing. Whether the old or the new vice be the worse,-whether those who formerly lavished insincere praise on others, or those who now contrive by every art of beggary and bribery to stun the public with praises of themselves, disgrace their vocation the more deeply, we shall not attempt to decide. But of this we are sure, that it is high time to make a stand against the new trickery. The puffing of books is now so shamefully and so successfully practised, that it is the duty of all who are anxious for the purity of the national taste, or for the honour of the literary character, to join in discountenancing it. All the pens that ever were employed in magnifying Bish's lucky office, Romanis's fleecy hosiery, Packwood's razor straps, and Rowland's Kalydor,-all the placard-bearers of Dr Eady,-all the wallchalkers of Day and Martin,-seem to have taken service with the poets and novelists of this generation. Devices which in the lowest trades are considered as disreputable, are adopted without scruple, and improved upon with a despicable ingenuity by people engaged in a pursuit which never was, and never will be, considered as a mere trade by any man of honour and virtue. A butcher of the higher class disdains to ticket his meat. A mercer of the higher class would be ashamed to hang up papers in his window inviting the passers-by to look at the stock of a bankrupt, all of the first quality, and going for half the value. We expect some reserve, some decent pride, in our hatter and our bootmaker. But no artifice by which notoriety can be obtained is thought too abject for a man of letters. It is amusing to think over the history of most of the publications which have had a run during the last few years. The publisher is often the publisher of some periodical work. In this periodical work the first flourish of trumpets is sounded. The peal is then echoed and re-echoed by all the other periodical works over which the publisher or the author, or the author's coterie, may have any influence. The newspapers are for a fortnight filled with puffs of all the various kinds which Sheridan recounted,-direct, oblique, and collusive. Sometimes the praise is laid on thick for simple-minded people. 'Pathetic,' 'sublime,' splendid,' 'grace'ful, brilliant wit,' exquisite humour,' and other phrases equally flattering, fall in a shower as thick and as sweet as the sugarplums at a Roman carnival. Sometimes greater art is used. A sinecure has been offered to the writer if he would suppress his work, or if he would even soften down a few of his incomparable portraits. A distinguished military and political character has challenged the inimitable satirist of the vices of the great; and the puffer is glad to learn that the parties have been bound over to keep the peace. Sometimes it is thought expedient that the puffer should put on a grave face, and utter his panegyric in the form of admonition! 'Such attacks on private character cannot be 6 too much condemned. Even the exuberant wit of our author, and the irresistible power of his withering sarcasm, are no excuses for that utter disregard which he manifests for the feelings of others. We cannot but wonder that a writer of such 'transcendent talents,—a writer who is evidently no stranger 'to the kindly charities and sensibilities of our nature, should 'show so little tenderness to the foibles of noble and distinguished individuals, with whom it is clear, from every page of 'his work, that he must have been constantly mingling in so'ciety.' These are but tame and feeble imitations of the paragraphs with which the daily papers are filled whenever an attorney's clerk or an apothecary's assistant undertakes to tell the public, in bad English and worse French, how people tie their neckcloths and eat their dinners in Grosvenor Square. The editors of the higher and more respectable newspapers usually prefix the words Advertisement," or From a Correspondent,' to 6 |