blood. We find the same commencement in justified popular discontent -the same sudden mixture of an aversion to all authority-the same predominance of perverted law and unprincipled force-the same elevation of obscure soldiership to mili tary rank-the same defeat of esta blished institutions, and the regular forces of the state-the same creation of a republic, and the same submission to a Dictator. But here the comparison ends, and France, commissioned first to astonish, and then to scourge Europe, went on from strength to strength, from crime to crime, and from triumph to triumph, with an atrocious grandeur, which suffered no minor object to engross the eye-the parent revolution withered away, and was forgotten in the shadow of its gigantic offspring. But short-lived as it was, it enjoyed the triumph of having baffled the most powerful monarch of Europe. Joseph's last words were, that Belgium had sent him to his grave, (20th Jan. 1791.) With this commotion raging at her gates, Holland could not be long tranquil. A party arose which proclaimed themselves the Friends of the People, began by attempting the overthrow of the government. The Stadtholder was suddenly deprived of the command of the troops, and removed from all his offices. The injured prince justly appealed to his allies. He was soon redressed. England declared her strong displeasure; and Prussia, sending an army of 20,000 men under the Duke of Brunswick, in a three weeks' campaign swept the mob of patriotism from the land, and restored the sovereign. But revolution was to be conqueror at last. The French Republic poured its troops into the Belgian provinces. Insurrection had there already done its work, and the famous victory of Jemappes, gained by Dumourier, and the still more famous victory of Fleurus by Pichegru, less conquered the Netherlands than seconded the wishes of the people for the fall of the Austrian supremacy. But French republicanism never forgot French aggrandisement. To the popular indignation, the Netherlands were finally declared, by the treaty of Campo-Formio, (17th October, 1797,) a portion of France, and the nation was left to feel the disgrace of political extinction, and probably to repent the follies of a too rash zeal for an ill understood liberty. The next French conquest was Holland. A frost of signal intensity turned the natural defences of the country, the rivers and morasses, into bridges for the enemy's march. Pichegru, at the head of 100,000 troops, exulting with victory, and still more exulting with the wild animation of republicanism, swept all obstacles before him, overpowered, in a series of desperate encounters, the steady valour of the British army, commanded by the Duke of York, with a bravery, and even with a talent, which nothing but party could deny, but which were rendered fruitless to all but the national honour by the smallness of his force, and the irresistible circumstances of the time; and, proclaiming universal freedom, advanced to the capital. The Stadtholder withdrew, but not by an ignominious flight. He repaired to the presence of the StatesGeneral, then sitting at the Hague, formally deposited his power in their hands until better times, and then embarked for England, the common refuge of exiled royalty and religion. The French general proclaimed the downfall of priestcraft and kingcraft, and followed the proclamation by the demand of a hundred millions of florins! Holland had now to feel the full caprice of her formidable deliverer. She was declared the Batavian Republic, to please the democracy of France; she was next declared a monarchy, to give a crown to Louis, the brother of Napoleon; and she was finally declared a province of France, to feed the insatiable ambition of Napoleon himself. In all the changes, she was crushed, plundered, and insulted like a bondslave. But the ruin of the French armies in the great campaign of Moscow, which revived the hopes of Europe, awoke the vigour of Holland. Insurrection spread through the smaller towns; deputies were sent to invite the son of the late Stadtholder, the present King, to resume the government. He was proclaimed in the Hague, (17th November, 1813,) and on the 30th, the Prince, escorted by a small force of 200 English marines, landed, and was received with universal joy. The writer of the present sketch was in Holland at this period, and can give full testimony to the popular delight. William, thesixth Stadtholder, was inaugurated by the title of Sovereign Prince, at Amsterdam, in March 1814. The treaty of Paris, (30th May, 1814,) confirmed by the treaty of London, gave a new extent to his dominions. It of Popery, that its priesthood, powerless for national good, is irresistible in the cause of national evil. Without the vigour to rectify a single popular vice, to clear away a vulgar prejudice, or to stimulate a personal virtue, it knows no rival in the art of rousing the people to the wildest excesses of popular commotion. Without the faculty to heal a single public error of the state, it can overthrow the state with a word. A Protestant prince has now assumed the crown of Belgium; it remains for time, and probably for no long time, to shew the feebleness of his possession. Popery will not endure the mildest dominion of Protestantism. It must be superior, or it is nothing. It must have the authority to resist the natural progress of the human mind, to live on the spoils of national industry, and to interpose between man and the right of choosing his own way to salvation, or it turns from the most abject flatterer of royalty into the most daring and indefatigable rebel. The Belgian King may secure his throne, like Henry IV., by apostasy; but we will not insult an honourable man, and one so nearly allied with England, by reminding him of the thorns which apostasy sowed upon the renegade's pillow, and its utter degra dation to his name. IRISH SCENERY; AND OTHER THINGS IRISH. 1 "loveliness Needs not the foreign aid of ornament, THERE appears to exist among our writers of all grades, an irresistible passion for introductory mottoes. From the newspaper essayist to the author of a novel, historical or hysterical, a quotation from some bygone retainer of the Muses, must act as a sort of master of the ceremonies to the matter of its chapter. I think I hear my readers ask-" What possible connexion can exist between your own quotation above, and the heading or title by which it is preceded?" My answer is, "You shall know in good time." It was a maxim of an THOMSON'S Seasons. old friend of mine, that more information was often to be had by listening than by asking questions; and the maxim is of peculiar value to those who wish to get credit for knowing many things, of which they really know no more than Lord Althorp of finance, Lord Grey of theology, (although he can make bishops,) Hunt of modesty, Lord J. Russell of constitutional reform, or O'Connell of the manners, principles, or courage of a gentleman. To ask questions is to proclaim your ignorance, and what man of the world will commit so great a mistake? Let him wait awhile, and things will come out of themselves. I was acquainted twenty years with a man whom I never suspected of being ignorant of the dead languages, he always contrived so well to appear to feel the application of a classic quotation. If addressed to him in conversation, he gave a significant nod of the head-a" very true"-" nothing more just"-" quite apt"-a smile gave qualified assent, and sometimes he has had even the hardihood to venture on a decided laugh! How he managed the matter I cannot tell, unless that with the eye of an anatomist he watched the action of the muscles of the face, connecting them with the passion or sentiment expressed, or that he was fortunate in happy equivocation: deaf people do wonders this way, and why may not the same be the instinctive property of ignorance ? The poet's mystified definition of the charm of simplicity in the female costume, will be fully understood by the lover of Nature transporting himself from trimly dressed and ultraornate England, to the less cultivated, but more various and strongly characteristic scenery of Ireland. If the stirring interest of human life consists, in a great degree, of ungratified wishes, in like manner, much of the interest of Irish scenery arises from the same cause. In England, Art has done so much, that she has become more than the "handmaid" of Nature-she has subdued her mistress to her own power, and so covered her in her own livery, that scarcely any distinction subsists between them. The alternations of the waste and the cultivated, of pleasure and surprise, cease to affect us; the power of contrast is lost in the uniform continuity of the richest cultivation, and the feelings of the traveller are reduced to a state of quietude, like the becalmed waters, losing in rest the animation constituting sublimity. Look at the scenery of England (proper), and if asked what you would add to its richness, you would answer-" Nothing." If asked how you would increase its more striking effect, you would probably reply, by reducing the exuberance of art, which encumbers and imparts sameness to its aspect. This illustrates the power of simplicity in the personal decoration of female. a Travelling in England awakens less of the springs of dramatic interestwill engage the passions less than travelling in Ireland, where the dark bleak bog and moor contrast with the vivid green of her beautiful fields; the lofty mountains, the lesser undulating hills, and sequestered valliesthe intermixture of severest sterility with tracts of pasturage, which, in native strength of production, fattens an ox to the acre-the wild woods too scantily relieving the heathery sides of the mountains-the clear and sparkling streams-the generally respectable and often noble rivers, pastoral all; and the numerous lakes, diverse and multiform in size, and shape, and beauty, cast over the surface of Ireland. Then the Danish raths or forts, crowning almost every eminence; the relics of old chapels mocking calculation of their dates, and surrounded by the tumuli of a race who seem destined never to find repose but in death; the round towers equally mocking antiquarian conjecture of their uses; the proud monastic ruins that, relatively to the state of society, still proclaim the gorgeous temporalities of the Church before the period of the Reformation, and in the rich and happy choice of their sites, tell of the superior wealth, power, and worldly enjoyments of the Popish priesthood through all its orders. At various points of view the high lonely castle, and quadrangular towers, within whose strong and gloomy walls the rude Chiefs or Toparchs of ancient days lived in reciprocal fear and hatred, snatching their physical enjoyments from the steeled grasp of danger, and maintaining their feverish and hazardous existence-their constantly disputed and barbarous dominion, by international warfare! Such inanimate memorials of the barbaric ages, can scarcely be said to meet the eye of a traveller in England. Splendid and interesting remains of " the olden time" are there, but they are those (even the remotest) of a state of civilisation to which Ireland has not yet arrived, and never will while Doyles and O'Connells spring up in her soil, and we have rulers who regard the Christianity of the Reformation as little as they do the OATH of their KING. Unhappily Ireland abounds in the moral evidences of a barbarity which has not yet passed away, and which, with the help of Popery, promises to bid defiance to the generally subduing influence of time, upon whose backward path we shall cast a furtive glance. It is now nearly three centuries since SPENCER the poet lived and wrote. He bore evidence to the natural beauties of Ireland in his day: its topographical aspect he thus describes. "And sure it is yet a most beautiful and sweet country as any is under heaven, being stored throughout with many goodly rivers, replenished with all sorts of fish most abundantly, sprinkled with very many sweet islands, and goodly lakes, like little inland seas, that will carry even ships upon their waters; adorned with goodly woods, even fit for building of houses and ships, so commodiously, as that if some princes in the world had them, they would soon hope to be lords of all the seas, and ere long of all the world." The rivers and lakes remain in spite of their proprietors, but, for the most part, the woods have disappeared before the advances of modern luxury and extravagance. There are still, however, many districts wherein the bold and continuous woods delight the eyes of the traveller for miles together. Whoever follows the course of the Suire, as I have, from "sweet Clonmel" to "rich Waterford," as they are named by Spencer, will see even yet, maugre the devastations of the axe, the mountains clothed from their bases to their lofty summits, with trees chiefly of the monarch oak, viewing themselves, Narcissus-like, in the mirror of the beauteous Suire, those on the immediate banks dipping their pendent branches in her clear and full-flowing waters. Magic powers of mental association, that fill up the wide and deep spaces of time, and bring to the heart and memory of age the warm rush of juvenile feeling and circumstances! I cannot name Clonmel, and the beautiful Suire, and not live again over the days of my boyhood. Reader, make it your own case. I went to school there. Where is my kind master, honest Tom Chaytor, the Quaker, who mingled in our sports as a boy, yet never compromised his authority and his duty as a preceptor; who was obeyed more through love than fear, and who even in fear was beloved? Where is he? Long laid in a grave which could not entomb the memory of his worth! Where are my schoolfellows? Ah! that is a question nearer home. I know not that there live one dozen out of the fifty who buzzed in the school-room, and shouted in the playground. I know not if there are three individuals, whose crispy locks of youth are turned to grey, who care one straw whether all the rest be living or dead! how the living fare, or how the dead died! Such is the world. I cannot forget that there first flashed on my soul the lightning of a Curran's eloquence, Duquery's calmer advocacy, Toler's precision of language, Scott's impudence, Bully Egan's fierce aspect and storming energy, who indeed was wont to "Tear a passion to tatters;" and more than all, and above all, Barry Yelverton, afterwards Lord Avonmore, certainly the greatest man of his day. Where are they all? Gone! gone! gone! They have escaped witnessing the degradation of their country in the triumphs of Popery; the degradation of the bar in the prostitution of its honours-and I have lived to see all. What a picture of life, now obsolete, did an assize week then present! Those who think that the judges, the sheriff, the counsel and attorneys, the jurors, grand and petit, the criminals and their accusers, &c., constituted all that was necessary to a "general jail delivery," are greatly mistaken. There were other classes whose attendance was indispensable, not merely to "the head and front," but to the head and feet of justice; these were the hair-dressers and shoe-blacks, a race now extinct, and who, from Dublin, (par excellence,) went circuit as regularly as did those whose extremities of understanding they so materially assisted to furnish. The French Revolution of 1789, was, indeed a revolution to them, and they have feeling cause to curse crops a la Brutus and long pantaloons. But I have taken an excursion out of the direct-road, for which, Mr Editor, I beg your and your readers' pardon. More southerly still, there are the noble woods which fringe the banks of the Blackwater, the prime charm of the scenery of Lismore: those of Shillela, in the county Wicklow, are identified with the pugnacity of the Irish character. Wicklow! beautiful county! who that has visited that Eden of Ireland, can refuse to it the application of the following description from the "Fairy Queen?" "Fresh shadows fit to shroud from sun ny ray; liberals of the Church who see little or no difference between the creeds of the Protestant and Roman Catholic-one of those shepherds who can perceive no distinction between the black sheep and the white; if so, who can wonder that the characteristics of Popery prevail ? The Dargle, one of those romantic glens with which the county Wicklow abounds, lies close by Enniskerry-I need not describe it. The next point of moral reflection is Tenehinch, the beautifully situated residence of that once boast and Fair lawns to take the sun in seasons due; glory of Ireland, the late Right Ho Let no Englishman, who visits Dublin in summer, and who has three days to spare, and five pounds in his pocket, incur the reproach of not having seen the county Wicklow, from Enniskerry to Rathdrum. He will find on the road moral points of contemplation for his mind, as well as the beautiful and picturesque in nature to delight his eye. Owing to the cares of a good and religious landlord, Enniskerry is now, not only one of the handsomest, if not the most handsome, village in Ireland, but also the happiest; for, owing to the untired zeal and pastoral labours of its exemplary rector, the Reverend ROBERT DALY, it is the freest from the ordinary vices of society. The word of God has been diligently sown in it, and its fruits are manifest-industry, sobriety, religious feeling, and, necessarily, peace, are in its dwellings; the same blessings pervade the whole of the reverend gentleman's parish, and the demeanour and appearance of its people scarcely permit one to believe that he is in Ireland. The town of Bray is but three miles from Enniskerry-the parishes join, yet they exhibit the strongest moral contrast; and why? Perhaps it is, that the rector of the former is one of those nourable HENRY GRATTAN. Pause, traveller, on the little bridge that fronts Tenehinch-house. On your left hand, the lawn is divided by the beautiful pastoral stream wherein its late master was wont to lave his limbs every morning, winter and summer: the mansion is a modest one, but it was, what it is not now, the domestic temple of a great mind. It was originally an inn, and there are yet living those who have had in it "entertainment for man and horse." The purchase of it was among the first fruits of the L.50,000, the national composition in payment of the full debt of national gratitude for the equivocal benefits of 1782. The last time that I stood on that bridge, leaning on its battlement, and looking at the house, a tide of interesting recollections rushed on my mind; the various situations in which I had seen that man so prominently and honourably identified with the history of his country, passed in array before me. His name and portraits in the magazines of that day, combined with "free trade," and "the volunteers," were familiar to my boyhood. At a more advanced period I listened to him, the Demosthenes of the Irish House of Commons, and every passion acknowledged the irresistible powers of his eloquence. In 1798 he was suspected of the O'Connellism of that period - the unnatural, and therefore improbable, wish to destroy his own political creationthe independent federal connexion between Great Britain and Ireland; his portraits were removed from their places of honour-his name erased from the Privy-Council, and his person all but proscribed! And |