Oldalképek
PDF
ePub

except in cases of peculiarly offensive nomination. The enormous misapplication of the funds vested in the Corporation of Dublin for the benefit of the citizens, affords an opportunity of bringing the whole Corporation under legislative revision; and it will be no very great stretch of authority to take away from them the main engine of their power, when once the principle of interference shall have been adopted. I have limited myself, in the consideration of the evils which affect Ireland, and the remedies of those evils, to that class of injury which arises immediately from the relative condition of the Protestant and Catholic population. The first object of the Government ought to be, to correct the bad consequences of that code which it is not sufficient to abolish, in order to efface the traces which it has left behind. I avoid, for the present, any discussion upon other subjects not proximately connected with Protestantism and Catholicity, though I am fully sensible of the importance of the great topics of emigration, and the enforcement of a provision for the poor. To these momentous themes I shall hereafter direct my attention, satisfying myself at present with observing, that the great obstacle in the way of Poor laws, which is supposed to arise from the difficulty of procuring an efficacious system of overseership, might be overcome, by making the Protestant and Catholic clergymen the stewards of the pauper fund, and obliging them to account half-yearly, at vestries composed of all classes of the people. They would act in nominal copartnership; but the rivalry of religion, and their individual competition, would operate as checks, while public opinion would exercise over them a more than ordinary control.

In the views which I have thrown out, I have spoken prospectively. It may be asked, What is the present state of the public mind? There appears to me to exist a languor, which is the consequence that succeeds to great exertion, and the exhaustion of amazing efforts. The only man in Ireland who retains his indefatigability of spirit, and an energy that seems to be indomitable, is Daniel O'Connell. He has invited the nation to co-operate with him in the repeal of the Union with almost as much zeal as when he called on his fellow-citizens to confederate in the cause of Emancipation. Hitherto, however, there has been but a very feeble echo returned to his trumpet-tongued adjurations. The aristocracy stand aloof; the people are torpid and doubtful; and one of the most zealous of his former associates, in walking with him along the beach of the sea, while he was pointing out the utility and the practicability of dissolving the bonds between the two countries, is reported to have stretched his arm towards a steam-boat that hove in sight, and to have replied, "There is my answer." But although a disposition to sympathize with Mr. O'Connell has not as yet been manifested, it must be recollected, that, notwithstanding he may now find no alliance in the national passions, he may soon succeed in enlisting those best of all auxiliaries, events, upon his side; and men who now hesitate and stand still until incidents shall give a determination to their conduct, may be soon hurried back into the agitation from which they have emerged. There is in Ireland a strong democratic feeling engendered by the discussion of the Catholic Question, and in one shape or other it is likely to appear. The love of noting and of hearing inflammatory harangues has not yet passed away; and it would not be very difficult to organize an assembly, which would in a short 2 M

Dec.-VOL. XXVI. NO. CVIII.

time apply as strong stimulants to the popular passions as the celebrated Catholic Association. As yet, O'Connell stands alone--his old companions have not united themselves with him, but they will probably suffer a relapse into their former habitudes, and partly from the passion for notoriety, and partly from their vexation with the Government, they will rally round the standard which he knew how to bear so well. A petitioning committee, or even a series of political convivialities provided at a few shillings a-head, would soon furnish a wide field for the indulgence of the rhetorical and tribunitian propensities; and a feeling would be excited by dint of continuous declamation, which would produce a gradual excitement in the country. The Irish Church, be it remembered, is one of the most alluring topics which were ever offered, either to fierce invective or to sardonic derision, and its abuses will, unquestionably, not escape ridicule and denouncement. The transition from the correction of real evils to the suggestion of imaginary ones, is, we all know, not very difficult. It is, therefore, incumbent upon the Government, and especially the local government of Ireland, to watch with great vigilance over the popular emotions. It will be for them to determine whether they will choose the active spirits who have shown themselves to be masters in the arts of agitation, for their supporters or their foes. If any unfair dealing be practised; if the system of studied exclusion shall be adhered to; if the underlings of office at the Castle are permitted to exercise the virtual autocracy which they once held; if no substantial change shall take place, there will soon prevail in Ireland as much disquietude, which will be succeeded by as much contention, as formerly prevailed. I own, however, that I have a great confidence in the wisdom and in the sound views of a man, who, without any ostentation and false glare of liberality, has conducted the affairs of Ireland, which is virtually entrusted to his care, in such a way as to convince all impartial persons that he has the real interests of the country strongly at heart, and that he fully understands them. Lord Francis Leveson Gower is a person of great intellectual attainments, who, by extending his honourable zeal in the pursuit of literary renown to the acquisition of political celebrity, will, in all likelihood, reach to the highest eminence in the State, and be one day enabled to dispense from the heights of power the benefits which I have no doubt his patriotism makes him solicitous to confer upon his country. Borne upon the pinnacles of fortune, with opulence almost incalculably great, and connected with the great patrician families in the empire, with extensive knowledge, genius, of which his works give such abundant proof, and in the flower of life--what may not such a man yet accomplish, by taking advantage of the glorious opportunities with which he is encompassed? The statesmen who filled the office which he holds before him, were commissioned to sow discord, and to perpetuate dissension in Ireland. Yet that bad and baneful function was sufficiently important to render them of great consequence in the political world. How much more noble is the task which has been assigned to him. If Mr. Peel, when his peculiar cast of political opinions, which he has since so generously expiated, threw him into the arms of the ascendency, was enabled, by his government of Ireland, to attain to so much importance, how much more noble are the occasions of genuine celebrity which are afforded to the man, who, in this great crisis, holds the reins of

the Irish government, and therefore the fortunes of Ireland, in his hands! To give to the great name its glorious consummation; to build up to its full height the structure, of which Wellington has laid the foundation; to effect the permanent reconciliation of parties, whom the accumulated odium of a century had divided; to banish the relics of those animosities which, as long as they prevail, must frustrate to a great extent all the wise designs of the Legislature; to correct, with a hand at once cautious and resolute, the abuses which remain to be removed, and to deposit in the national mind the seeds of lasting improvement; to unite the Irish people amongst themselves, and at the same time to complete their identity with the great nation, in whose liberties they now enjoy a full participation;-these are the objects which ought to be proposed to himself, by the nobleman whom, without, I hope, any deviation from the personal respect which is due to him, I have thus ventured to awaken to a consciousness of his large means to achieve incalculable good, and endeavoured to make sensible of all the genuine glory which would attend it.

RECOLLECTIONS OF A GÖTTINGEN STUDEnt.

I LEFT London in the company, and under the guidance of the Royal Hanoverian Quarterly Courier, a long-sounding title enough; the holder of which, however, is nothing more or less than the bearer of Government dispatches to and from Hanover and London, and the executor of various commissions for private individuals; to say nothing of any little speculations, in the way of trade, which he may carry on on his own account. We travelled to Harwich in one of the night coaches, the whole of which vehicle was appropriated to our two selves, a large hamper of puppies, I believe intended for Prince George of Cambridge, and sundry other packages and parcels of all sorts and sizes. From Harwich we started in the packet-boat, without another fellow-passenger, for Cuxhaven, where we arrived safely, after a very quick voyage, performed in what, at least to my landsman's ideas, was a very rough gale of wind. Just off the mouth of the Elbe, we touched on a sand-bank; that part of the German Ocean abounds with shelves of land; but luckily, it was only "touch and go" with us, though it was rather a smart shock too, and jolted a great many boxes and so forth about the cabin, and me nearly out of my birth. It was pouring with rain when we landed, and in spite of cloaks and umbrellas, I was thoroughly drenched to the skin before I got safe into the inn. All ideas of looking about me outside the house I was forced to abandon from the state of the weather, and inside I saw hardly any thing to receive me. I was out of England; the landlord and the waiters spoke English, some of the sentences rather fractured to be sure, and the idiom partially dislocated; there was a good deal of German talking and swearing between my friend the Courier and the porters, who were bringing in or packing up the luggage, but this sounded much like the uncouth Babylonian bustle of an English inn; I was too hungry to note much what I ate; and, in fact, I believe the only things that did strike my observation, were the large protruding stove or oven, cased in glazed Dutch tiles, and the exceedingly dirty and frowzy look of the women

servants. By the by, I wonder that in some national treaty between England and the German States, or Holland, it has not been made an express stipulation that that word frowzy should be excluded at any rate from our dictionaries, seeing that the term is so direct and disagreeable an insult on either the German or Dutch females; it being evidently derived from the crow of the one language, or the frau of the other, either word signifying women.

[ocr errors]

From Cuxhaven we started for Hanover in a couple of open calashed carriages, which my comrade insisted on calling by the literally translated but ominously-sounding name of waggons: one of these held ourselves and the puppies, which were our constant companions, and the other was piled up with luggage of all kinds. As soon as we escaped, a proper expression, for there was some peril in the passage, from the broad ditches in the neighbourhood of Cuxhaven and Ritzebuettel, our road lay over the widely-extended Quenebourg Heath, and a shocking road it was, running for the whole of that, and the greater part of next day's journey over a tract of loose sand, wherein at times the " waggons sank up to the wheel naves: such little accidents, of course, helped to retard our progress, of itself tardy enough; especially as any trifling advance ahead, we, in the lighter-loaded vehicle, were enabled to make, was always of necessity foregone by our being obliged to halt for the arrival of the baggage-waggon. Altogether so bad a road I never journeyed on before, and never but once since, and that was when I returned on the same, a year and a half afterwards. The view on all sides was most lonely; not a house, not a tree, not a shrub to be seen for hours together, nothing but the far flat heath, over which the wind came howling most drearily and dismally. The post-stations were, for the most part, miserable hovels, sheltered by a few trees, generally firs, from the wind, which otherwise would have blown on them unimpeded from every quarter of the heavens. The interior of these houses presented a strange scene of filth and discomfort. The floor was chiefly unboarded, often quite unprepared, that is, composed of the rude earth itself, trodden down into a hard incrustation by the feet of its various in-dwellers; the gorge of the chimney, of immense capacity, seemed insufficient to swallow all the smoke proceeding from the smouldering peat fire, for large clouds were continually eddying about the apartment, and that these were not the mere effects of casual gusts of wind, might be inferred from the soot-blackened walls and rafters on every side, even at a far distance from the fire itself. These houses seemed generally to be of only one story, and often of only one room, that room partitioned off into sundry divisions for bed-chambers, cowsheds, and pig-styes, by skeleton wood framework, and occasionally a coarse baize curtain. In spite of all this, we got at these stationsthe only thing, except horses, that we required--exceedingly good coffee, served up very nicely with hot cream and silver tea-spoons, and costing very little; forming, indeed, a very pleasant contrast to the muddy and costly filth we got at Colchester, where, while my companion grumbled over the exorbitant price demanded, he had triumphantly prognosticated the change I should find on the other side of the water, certainly not without just cause. The horses for the greater part of our journey were nearly as bad as the road; and with

these appliances and means, it may be imagined that our progress was any thing but rapid, in spite, too, of the typical golden greyhound which dangled round my companion's neck, and which, when more than once in our journey even his German patience became exhausted, he would grasp with a desperate energy, and shake in the postilion's face, who seemed as much terrified by the action as ever a London thief could be by the exhibition of a constable's staff. These postilions were altogether strange personages, and in their official garb, consisting usually of a much-worn red coat, faced with blue, a tattered hat, edged with tarnished gold lace, and a bruised and often cracked brass bugle, hung by a piece of rope round the neck, they presented certainly not the most respectable of figures. From these bugles they from time to time, especially when we approached towns or villages, caused to proceed the "most melancholy" sounds, at least so they were to my untutored ear;-to my companion they seemed " most musical," for he frequently enjoined the driver to blow forth some scrannel strain or other, to enliven the tedium of our journey. He varied it at any rate, much after the pleasant fashion that the grating of a knife-grinder's wheel might vary the monotonous silence of some outof-the-way court in the City. It was a curious sight to me, when our horses stopped in ready obedience to the word of command-if such the rumbling "Pooz-z-zh!" of a German postilion might be designated-to see these men standing by the side of the animals with a huge black rye loaf under one arm, from which they were cutting slices to feed alternately themselves and their cattle. This rye bread is the common food of the peasantry from necessity, and is very often eaten by the middling classes from choice; it has a very sour flavour, to which use may so far habituate one, that, in my own case, I became decidedly fond of it before I left the country. I brought one of the enormous loaves home with me, for they bake it in great masses, as it keeps moist a long time; but I could prevail on no English palate to relish it. This was not the only wonder in the eating-way that I witnessed during this journey after I had been enjoying some true German sausage, I inquired of my companion what it was composed of, and was horrified to learn that its principal ingredient was raw ham; and farther astonished to hear that this said raw ham was, in its state of totally unadulterate rawness, considered a dainty, and eaten more frequently in that state than cooked. I had the curiosity, or philosophy, to taste some, after one or two arguments with my companion on the nastiness of the proceeding, and could by no means prevail on myself to be so disgusted as I had intended to be; and as I gradually came to like the ham in this state, I found a sufficient apology for my apparent cannibalism in the fact, that the pieces of the ham did really undergo as chemical a dressing by being hung for a long time in smoke, as they would have done by the more speedy operation of boiling or broiling. The ham in this state was invariably eaten, as far as my observation went, on a small wooden trencher; I presume from the circumstance of its being rather tough, and German knives not over-sharp, to prevent the slithering about, which would probably ensue were it eaten off an earthenware plate. All the Westphalia hams that we import are thus fit to eat in their uncooked state, if we only had the

« ElőzőTovább »