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manly mangled, and is despaired of; the third providentially escaped. A man named Byrne was committed to jail on Wednesday, fully identified as a principal in this inhuman murder. No reason can be assigned for the perpetration of the foul deed, but that the unfortunate men were Protestants."

der him in the noon-day. In those places they visited, they distinctly avowed their determination, with an expression of regret that he had escaped them. Fortunately for Mr Coote, who is suffering from illness, another minister had on that day officiated for him at the parish church, and thus was his life providentially saved from assassins, who have attempted it more than once in that neighbourhood."

"On Sunday morning last, between the hours of three and four o'clock, the house of the Rev. J. Crampton, at Malahide, was for the third time within this year set on fire by incendiaries. A match, composed of hay and oakum, or tarred rope, had been introduced through two broken panes, one in the drawing-room, and the other in the pantry window. The entire sash, shutters, &c. of the drawing-room were consumed before the fire was discovered, and a quantity of furniture destroyed. One of the matches was introduced into the room immediately under Mr Crampton's bed-room."

"Leitrim.-Murder-Mohill, Oct. 26. -A barbarous murder was perpetrated near this town yesterday evening. A Protestant, named John Stretton, was returning from market to his residence near Cloone, when he was fired at and wounded. His barbarous assailants, not content with this, fell upon him with scythes and other sharp weapons, and mutilated the corpse in a most frightful manner. The deceased was, about four months since, denounced by a priest from the altar, and the people were forbidden to speak to him. The stipendiary ma gistrate held an investigation into the circumstance at the time, but nothing more was thought of it until the unfortunate deceased met his fate in this savage manner. Within ten days, Morrow, Lord Lorton's steward, and Stretton have been both murdered-two Protestants, named Cullom and Redfern, have had their houses attacked in the open day by armed men-Cullom's gun was carried Redfern's off, his wife severely beaten; windows were broken, his wife and family abused; both occurring within a quarter of a mile of the town. Both men were absent at the time of the attacks, or it is hard to conjecture what fate would have awaited them.-Correspondent of Saunders."

"Another Barbarous Murder.-On Tuesday morning last, about four o'clock, three Protestants, while on their way to the county Wicklow with lime, were attacked near Tullow by several persons, and brutally beaten with stones and bludgeons; one of them, John Pollard, was inhumanly murdered on the spot, his brains being literally scattered on the road. One of his comrades was inhu

We shall add but one proof more of the persecution to which Protestants have been given up,-the incidental manner in which the circumstance of gentlemen going armed to church is noticed, in describing an outrage on a place of worship.

6. REFUSAL TO ENTER SECRET
SOCIETIES.

Evidences of the existence of a secret society extending itself through all parts of Ireland, are abundant and conclusive in the communications of our correspondent. His proofs, also, are decisive that the principle of a division of labour is adopted by them, and an army of observation, as it were, called the "Polishers," formed, which is to act a part the opposite of that assigned to the sentinels of the bees-not to keep off the "ignavum pecus" from the hive, but to compel them to enter it. Our extracts, how

ever, must necessarily be few.

"County Sligo.-Another Attempt to Burn to Death a Father, Mother, and Seven Children.- We have just heard from unquestionable authority, that a few nights since, the house of a poor man named Patrick Healy, on the lands of Killaney, was maliciously set fire to and destroyed, together with a portion of the poor man's furniture. The time chosen by the brutalized "Precursors," for the destruction of this unfortunate family, was the calm hour of midnight, when, the ruffians well

knew, the unconscious inmates were slumbering in fancied security; coals of fire had been placed in different parts of the thatch at the same moment; but providentially (as in the case of Burns) their faithful watch-dog, alarmed by the crackling of the roof, set up a piteous howl, which awoke Healy and his family, and revealed to them the danger of their perilous situation. The poor creatures fortunately escaped a few minutes before the blazing roof fell in, and procured shelter in a neighbouring village. Thus we have lived to see a second attempt made to burn to death an entire family in this unfortunate county, within the short space of a few weeks, The only reason assigned

for this diabolical attempt to take away human life is, that Healy (who is an industrious Roman Catholic) refused to become a member of the Ribbon Association.'

Such is the agrarian calendar of crime, or, to speak more correctly, a specimen of it. For offences such as we have classified, and by such punishments as we have described, many hundreds, to whom the law owes protection, are every year overtaken by a violent death in Ireland. Many hundreds are sufferers in property and person; and thousands, in incessant apprehension of violence, waste away, an unseen death, at home, or betake themselves to distant lands, where, if there are no fond associations to attach them to their new homes, and no comforts to enhance the zest of life, they are, at least, secure against persecutions and menaces which made the land of their nativity a desolation to them. The reader has had a selected specimen of the manner in which punishments are executed, and of the spirit in which they are conceived, which have had so terrific an influence upon the condition and advancement of Ireland. If we have selected with tolerable skill, he will, we are willing to hope, be already prepared to admit that it is a very erroneous judgment upon such punishments, and one very much calculated to mislead, which pronounces them

crimes, and classes them among the ordinary offences for which men are to be held amenable. They ought not to be thus regarded. Perhaps there never yet was a people, among whom so much cruelty, treachery, and violence, has been manifested-so fearful outrages perpetrated-so many lives taken by shocking murder-and so few offenders punished: in whom, also, it will not be found, that the terrible excesses, committed by them with impunity, have not been reconciled to their notions of right and duty, by some process with which those who judge them hastily are unacquainted. The butcheries, burnings, perjuries, which we impute as crimes to the Irish people, in their judgment are not crimes. They are acts of severe duty; acts for which, if the law of the land prevailed against them, they must die-but which a law, inserted in their abused conscience, taught them they must execute; acts for which, however they might be made to suffer, they could experience no remorse. was the incident, belonging to the character of what has been called Irish crime, which demanded most the attention of magistrates and legislators

This

"The

and this is the incident which they have especially disregarded. knowledge of men," said Coleridge, may be very evil if not corrected by a knowledge of man."

66

MATHEWS THE COMEDIAN.*

Ir biography were honest, it would be among the most valuable of all writings. But is it ever honest? Can the auto-biographer be trusted with the truth? Can his friend, or his enemy, or the somebody, who, being neither, attempts only to make a book that somebody else will read, be trusted more? Are there not vanity, fear, ignorance, forgetfulness, all standing in the way of the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? and what spirit of sincerity can survive those things? From the first man who ever put his pen to paper, in record of his own acts and deeds, to the last, we shall never expect to find the reality which we want; but we may find the amusement which various adventure can supply, the lesson which can be taught by the experience of others, and the interest which can be raised by the eccentricities, struggles, and collisions of character. There is much even in this; if the portraiture of the "inner man" is hidden from us, and it is often hidden from himself; at least we may know his external, the man as he moved before society,-the bold figure of the defyer of chance and difficulty, the wild whim and strange animation of the humorist, or the ardent physiognomy and lofty attitudes of the man of genius.

The biography of the late wellknown Charles Mathews ought to furnish some resemblance to them all; for he had something of the faculties, the feelings, and the labours of all. If his heart had not been among the most buoyant of human kind, he must have sunk under the first anxieties of his trying profession; if he had not possessed the half-mad whim of an original, he must have flattened and fallen away into common-place, and if there had not been that touch of still finer faculty within him, which makes obscure talent anticipate the time of fame and fortune, he must have long before stooped to the wretchedness of his condition, perished, and been forgotten. If all this denunciation of the miseries of a theatrical life should seem too darkly coloured to the

crowd, who see the actor only on the stage, flourishing in silk and gold, smiling among rival princesses, and settling the fates of nations, for five acts together; let them turn to the carlier pages of this narrative, and be comforted that they have never tried to climb to renown on the shoulders of either Thalia or Melpomene.

Charles Mathews was born in London, in June 1776, the son of a bookseller in the Strand. He pleasantly remarks, that the family name, being Matthew, was changed to its present spelling in consequence of the legacy of an estate, and the bequest being thrown into Chancery, and lost. "His father lost at once a T and a suit." He, however, consoles himself. "The estate was worth £200 a-year, and it cost about £210 annually, in law and repairs, so that its loss became a gain."

His life began under circumstances which predicted but little of his character or his career. His father was what was then termed a "serious" bookseller, and was so conspicuous among his sect as to be chosen a preacher in one of Lady Huntingdon's chapels, by the lady herself. But the preacher had a counteracting principle in his household, which generally contrives to carry the day at last. His wife was a Church of England woman; and as she happened to possess excellent sense, also, in other matters, she ruled the preacher, evidently much to his own advantage. Those were the high days of sectarianism. Wesley and Whitfield, both very able, and both very indefatigable men, had roused the popular feelings of religion; and, as in all great religious excitement, there was a sad mixture of chaff with the wheat, individuals who had tried many another pursuit, mingled with the sincere; and men little qualified to feed the flocks in any Church, discovered that the new opinions offered a peculiarly convenient way of feeding themselves. Mathews speaks with measureless truth of the crowd who constantly preyed upon his simple-minded father.

Memoirs of Charles Mathews, Comedian. By Mrs Mathews. 2 vols.

"He, the most guileless, the most intrinsically honest and moral man, I believe now, in my heart, who ever passed sixty-four summers in this sublunary globe, remained a liberal Christian among wretched fanatics,-moderate in a crowd of raving enthusiasts, the mildest of preachers, the kindest of advisers, himself an example to the wholesale dealers in brimstone,-the pawnbrokers, hosiers, butchers, saoemakers-no matter how low, how ignorant, to whose tender mercies I was constantly subject. Such were those by whom my father was surrounded. Had he not been bitten by one of these rabid animals very early in life, his naturally cheerful mind and benevolent disposition would have admirably qualified him for a quiet and happy member of the real and true mode of worship, as I think, and trust ever shall think."

Notwithstanding those propensities of the parent, the child thinks that nature had intended Charles Mathews for a comedian. On the faith of his old nurse, he describes himself as "a long thin skewer of a child, of a restless, fidgetty temperament, and by no means of regular features-quite the contrary; and as if Nature herself suspected that she had not formed me in one of her happiest moments, the Fates, finding that there was not the least chance of making me a beauty, determined to make me comical."

A circumstance, which, in the spirit of an old Roman, he evidently regarded as an omen, occurred at this period. This was nothing less than an introduction to Garrick; and, to crown the singularity of the case, this event took place in the shop of the "serious" bookseller, and through the agency of Hannah More! It is a curious trait in the life of this popularly pious lady, that though she abhorred playhouses, she evidently had no objection to the houses of players; and that, though her sect must have denounced Garrick as the chief of sinners, he being the chief of players, yet she could so delicately draw the line between her convictions and her convenience, that she associated on the most familiar terms with him and his family for very nearly twenty years. The clear case was, that this deplorable culprit gave excellent dinners, and saw very pleasant company; and that the devout Hannah saw the greatest possible difference between the criminality

of an offender spending L.4000 a year, with a remarkably pleasant dwelling in town, only exchanged at suitable seasons for a delightful villa on the banks of the Thames, and the incurable guilt of a theatrical wretch spouting for twenty shillings a-week, and starving by his salary, Peace be to her memory, and that of the tender disciples whom she reared to follow her calling, the race of professional pietists, the soft Pharisees whose horror of ostentation, somehow or other, always threw them into the very path of publicity,-whose right hand was so far from any degree of ignorance as to the virtuous achievements of its left, that if each had been occupied by a trumpet, it could not have made a more vigorous appeal to the public attention; and who, as in the case of Garrick and his playhouse convivialities, exhibited all the original skill of swallowing the camel, while the straining at the gnat exercised their pious delicacy through the whole scale of saintly contortion.

On this occasion, Garrick, with habitual good-humour, took the infant in his arms, he burst into a fit of laughter at its little visage, and said, "Why, his face laughs all over, but certainly on the wrong side of his mouth.' The mouth had a slight contortion from a spasm soon after he was born, which gave a peculiar turn to his countenance through life.

At length he experienced the miseries of this troublesome existence, by being sent to school, where he had the misfortune to meet with a flogging pedagogue. "Had flogging given knowledge," says he, " I might have been a dangerous rival to the seven Greek sages." He then humorously remarks: "Often have I cast an eye on the little cherubs that clung to the school-room organ, and wished that I had been shaped like them-only head and wings."

The imitative passion early disclosed itself; and the sentiment of disgust for the gross vulgarity of the lower classes of the Huntingdonian preachers exhibited itself in almost instinctive caricature. His chief butt was

an old haranguer and haunter of the bookseller's hospitalities, known as Daddy Berridge. Some of this man's exhibitions must have bern absolutely intolerable. He preached at the building called the Tabernacle, in Tottenham Court

Road. The increase of the sect since Whitfield's time, had required an increase of room, and a part of the hearers were thrust into a dismal place under the gallery, called, not inappropriately, the Oven. It was scarcely possible for those persons to hear any part of the oration, unless expressly directed to themselves. When Daddy Berridge exploded a sentence of pecu liar ferocity on the general audience, he stooped his head down, and shot the point of his harangue into the Oven. Mathews gives an instance. "If, with these examples before you; if, when these truths are made manifest; if, with these rules laid down for your conduct, you do not repent, you will all be d-d.' He would then elevate his guttural voice, peep down to the half-stifled wretches underneath, and cry, you will all be d-d, do you hear below?' This being all they heard of the sentence, they might have naturally asked for what. Another of his appeals was, after citing a string of truisms on the uncertainty of life, since last I sojourned among you, my brethren, the fell destroyer has been busy. I can see before me the outward symbols of grieving spirits within.' He would then begin to reckon, 1-2-4-7—8—10—11—13 -18-22 people in mourning; then wheeling to the right-about, 25,then, left-face, 27-29, then stooping to the Oven, he would bellow out, how many are there, there?'"

The future man's habits were all imbibed in early life; his father had a chapel at Whetstone, at some distance from London, to which village, on every Saturday, through the greater part of the year, he went and remained till Monday morning.

He describes his delight in natural and pleasing language. "This escape from all descriptions of fagging and confinement-this freedom of bodyand soul from the fetters of scholastic discipline the contrast between the narrow dirty lane where the school was situated, and the pure air I breathed in my beloved little village, was such a joyous emancipation, that the impression has dwelt on my memory to the present hour, and I feel the same impulse to escape from London with all its attractions, and revel in country pleasures that I did when I was a school-boy. Indeed, every feeling, every propensity or peculiarity, I can

trace to impressions formed in my school days. During my first engagement in Drury Lane theatre, I lived at Colney Hatch; and in all weathers returned home after the play about eight miles, and over Finchley Com mon, in an open carriage. This was from pure love of the country. Four years I lived at Fulham, and paid the same midnight visits, frequently on horseback, to my house; and fourteen years at Kentish Town (commonly called Highgate by my visitors, and not unfrequently Hampstead); and I can truly say, that the same feelings pervade me at this moment. Without enumerating my list of objections to all large cities, and more particularly to London, I can only assert that I always turn my back upon it, with pleasure, when I have any thing like rural enjoyment in prospect."

As the period is undoubtedly contemplated by the Papists and Sectaries, when they shall have all matters exactly according to their own hearts, when the Establishment is to be dust and ashes, and the Tabernacle is to uplift its front above the Church, and with due homage to his Holiness the Pope, "high mass is to be said in St Pauls;" it may be not unsatisfactory to see the specimens of sectarian piety with which the Tabernacle has teemed, even in the eighteenth century, and will unquestionably teem again, the moment the Church shall have ceased to keep down its antics. Since the days of the "Revival," so called, in the middle of the century, the conventicle has not furnished a more popular saint than William Huntingdon, who regularly affixed to his name, S. S. or "Sinner Saved :" This fellow has left a specimen of his style, and of his school, in a volume, which he called the Bank of Faith." Our readers must have a fragment, excluding as much as we can the absolute profane

ness.

"During the space of three years, I secretly wished in my soul that God would favour me with a chapel of my own." He despaired of such a favour; but at length it was given,-by an interposition, which this impudent fanatic ascribes to the Deity in person. A stranger" was sent to look at a certain spot," by another interposition. A wise man was stirred up to offer to build it. "God drew the pattern in his imagination, while he

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