Almighty Lord, if day by day Yet no this pray'r is idle breath. Swept in a wide and trackless curve, I will not seek to live or die; Father! grant that day by day I MARKED where lovely Venus and her court to fly, Bound from the ground and in mid air to sport. Or low, and cooed after their tender sort. But when flushed Autumn thro' the wood- I spied sweet Venus walk amid the wheat: Argosy. LOVE LIES BLEEDING. LOVE that is dead and buried, yesterday But felt my quickened heart leap in its place; Caught afterglow, thrown back from long-set days, Caught echoes of all music passed away. Was this to meet? Not so, we have not met. In the following verses the identity of thought and similarity of expression are not a little remarkable : "He who for love hath undergone "A grace within his soul hath reigned Monckton Milnes (Lord Houghton). "I hold it true whate'er befal; I feel it when I sorrow most; I think it will be readily granted that the thought has not gained by condensation. A. G. Notes and Queries. From Macmillan's Magazine. trine of this school is the worship of success as the supreme evidence of goodness. AMONG the intellectual phenomena of Wherever they find might there also they the present day, one of the most remarka- find right. To decide whether a nation is ble is certainly the presence among us of right in invading, dispossessing, or enslava small but able body of literary men, ing another, the one real question is whose repugnance to modern liberal ten- whether she is able to do it. If she is, the dencies has led them to opinions on secu- pretext she chooses is of little consequence. lar policy more fitted for the latitude of Her ultimate success is her justification. Russia than of England, and on religious She is obeying "God's law,” and the weakpolicy more fitted for the Middle Ages er nation, if unable to resist effectually, is than for the nineteenth century. The two immoral in resisting at all. The supreme things they hate the most are civil and re-law of political ethics is thus ligious liberty. Freedom of speech, freedom of the press, representative governbment, the rights of nations to determine the form of government under which they will live, the rights of weak minorities to G. in' the protection, as long as they do not injure their neighbours, the right of every man to profess the religious belief and adopt the religious worship which he considers the best, are in their phraseology mere cant or shams. The two fundamental principles of all constitutional government -that the will of the majority should rule, and that the scruples of the minority should be respected -are equally antipathetic to them. The whole tendency of modern policy in their eyes is a mistake, and history has to them a certain melancholy charm as a record of religious and political despotisms which have been weakly banished from the world. "The good old rule, the simple plan, As Mr. Froude expresses it in the pres- The That the leading writers of this school Opinions such as these, though now rare, and, we venture to think, morbid eccenare not only men of great genius, but also tricities, were once supreme in Europe, and of eminently noble and humane disposiwere usually based upon theological tenets. tions, may be readily conceded. The belief in an infallible Church, in the character of a writer is one thing. The criminality of religious error, and in the principles he advocates are quite another, divine right of kings, has at different periand nothing which is here written about ods led good men to justify some of the the latter is intended to cast the smallest most atrocious crimes that ever disgraced reflection upon the former. Of the docour world. The modern school, however, trine, however, we can speak with no rehas no sympathy with these doctrines, and spect. It appears to us not only profoundly it is a melancholy, and indeed a humiliat-false in itself, but also as well fitted as any ing fact, that some of the most ardent eulogies of the policy of destroying certain forms of religion by the sword have come from men whose own opinions on these matters are notoriously heterodox or lax. It would be a mistake, however, to suppose that there is no distinct principle underlying these views. The leading doc in the whole range of opinions to pervert the moral judgments of men. No system can strike more directly at the root of all that is noble and generous in human nature than this deification of success, this worship of force as the incarnation of right, this hatred of all that is weak and of all that is unsuccessful. It makes it the function of History to stand by the scaffold and curse the victims as they pass. Its natural fruits have been an enthusiasm for despotism and persecution, a firm belief in the power of ends to justify means, a systematic depreciation or neglect of all the virtues which soften the character and adorn the social or domestic sphere, without fortifying men for the great collisions of life. It has led one great and venerable writer to inake Frederick William a hero, and to become the eulogist of the invasion of Silesia, and the partition of Poland, while he speaks with contempt of the philanthropy of Howard, and of all the noble efforts that | have been inade to break the fetters of the slave. It has made another great writer. the panegyrist of Henry VIII., the apologist for the use of judicial torture, and the author of one of the most uncompromising defences of religious persecution it has ever been our fortune to peruse. This book belongs to the class of histories which are written, not for the purpose of giving a simple and impartial narrative of events, but clearly and almost avowedly for the purpose of enforcing certain political doctrines. It is written with passion, and apparently under extreme irritation, and is, for the most part, a bitter invective against the Irish people, against the Catholic religion, and, above all, against the maxims of liberal policy. The Irish Celts, in the opinion of Mr. Froudo, are a race hopelessly vitiated and debased, absolutely, incurably, and constitutionally unfitted for self-government, and only to be ruled by a strict and steady despotism. They are a people "who do not understand forbearance, who interpret lenity into fear, and respect only an authority which they dare not trifle with."* They are "a people incapable of self-restraint."† "The worst means of governing them is to give them their own way. In concession they see only fear, and those that fear them they hate and despise. Coercion succeeds better. They respect a master hand, though it be a hard and cruel one." The main object in ruling them should be to annihilate their social and political power, to prevent them as far as possible from amalgamating with, and thus depressing the ruling race, and, above all, to extirpate their religion. Cromwell, and Cromwell alone, we are told, endeavoured to govern the Irish "by true ideas," or, in other words, "by the laws, so far as intellect can discern them, appointed by the Maker of the world." When the capture of Drogheda and Wexford and the deliberate massacre of their entire garrisons had concluded the rebellion, he availed himself of the opportunity to confiscate all the land in the three chief provinces of Ireland. He colonized those provinces with his soldiers. IIe left indeed the peasantry to till the soil for the new masters, but he banished all the ruling classes, "the chiefs, the leading members of the Irish race - the middle and upper classes, as we should call them,"† into Connaught. IIe absolutely suppressed that religious worship which the whole native population believed to be essential to their eternal salvation. He pronounced by one sweeping judgment, and without any detailed investigation, the entire priesthood guilty of high trea son; and those who remained to sustain the faith of the wretched peasants, or carry comfort to their desolated homes, were either put on board vessels for Spain, transported as convicts to the Barbadoes, or imprisoned in two small islands in the Atlantic. Having taken these measures with the natives, he endeavoured to encourage the Protestant colony by commercial freedom, by abolishing the separate parliament, and giving the colonists a representation in England. This scheme of policy in all its parts is the subject of warm, repeated, and unqualified eulogy by an English historian of the nineteenth century. The attempt especially to extirpate by law the religion of an entire nation arouses his most ardent sympathies. He dilates with fervour upon the disloyalty of the Catholics, upon the penalties which in other lands they inflicted upon Protestants, upon the pernicions nature of their opinions. No Moslem conqueror, no Spanish inquisitor, was ever ese biss L them less troubled with scruples of humanity | dependent chiefs, each of whom could comin persecuting the enemies of his faith. mand the undivided allegiance of a con"The lines of the two creeds,” we are told, siderable body of followers, each of whom were identical with the lines of loyalty was constantly at war with the English, or and disloyalty."* "The best minds of with the others. At certain periods, inEngland really believed that besides its termarriage with the Irish, and the strange treasonable aspects the Roman Catholic re- | fascination which the freer Irish mode of ligion was intellectually degrading and life appears to have exercised over the colspiritually poisonous." "The mass -asonists, induced the latter in great numbers a symbol whose supreme pontiff had ap- to adopt the manners of the natives. At plauded the insurrection of 1641 - it was others, the line of demarcation was clearly not legitimate only, but necessary to in-drawn. Intermarriage was forbidden. terdict, till the adherents of it retired from a position which was intolerable in civilized society." Of the efficiency, as well as of the legitimacy of persecution, Mr. Froude has no doubt. 66 Had the Catholic bishops been compelled in earnest to betake themselves elsewhere, had the importation of priests from abroad been seriously and - sternly prohibited, the sacerdotal system must have died a natural death, and the creed have perished along with it."§ "Ireland, had Cromwell left a son like ele himself, must in another generation have been Protestant." || Romanisin, sternly repressed, must have died out as Protestantism died in Spain and Italy." ¶ g of d to Sabts boms he efs t 66 The Irish were placed beyond the pale of law, and were accustomed themselves to levy black mail upon the English. There was a kind of chronic hostility, accompanied on both sides by great barbarities. On the one side was a compact body of disciplined men of a higher civilization, and often actuated by motives and views of government that were far from ignoble; on the other were a multitude of divided chiefs and undisciplined clans, recoiling from the obligations of feudal law, and struggling to free their country from a foreign invader. 66 The Reformation came, and it undoubtedly furnished some new pretexts, aggraWe do not intend to the great ma- vations, and alliances; but it did not projority of our readers we believe it would duce, for some years it hardly influenced be wholly superfluous to make any com- the quarrel. On the rupture of England ment upon the morality or humanity of with the Papacy," says Mr. Froude, “the those sentiments, or to enter into any gen- Irish, by immediate instinct, threw themBeral defence of the principles of religious selves on the Roman side.”* It would be is toleration. We shall content ourselves more correct to say that the Irish simply with pointing out what appears to us the remained in the position in which they gross historical exaggeration involved in were. The causes which induced the the belief that the creed of the Irish was English suddenly to change their creed that the root of their rebellions. The strug-did not operate in Ireland, and the main gle between the two races had raged for demand of the Irish for a long period was centuries when their religion was the same, merely to be permitted to worship accord and it was the natural and inevitable con- ing to the religion in which they were sequence of their relative position. It was born. Their creed, however, at this time a question of nationality, and of race, and rested very lightly upon them, and no part Tafterwards of the possession of land, much of their violence can be ascribed to fanatmore than of creed. Ireland had only icism. Under Henry the chiefs were inbeen very partially conquered by Strong- duced with little difficulty to accept large ated اختي hfe bow. The English remained a small mili-portions of the confiscated Church lands.† tary colony, planted in the midst of a Under his successor proselytism was more large, hostile, and half-savage population. active. Unconsecrated prelates were The Irish followed a multitude of great in- | thrust into Irish sees, but still there was hardly a ripple of religious agitation. • P. 210. IP. 212. † P. 218. § P. 213. T P. 140. * P. 89. † P. 40. Under Mary, when the supreme power ity of the Irish race, and especially of the passed once inore into Catholic hands, and at the very time when a fierce persecution was raging in England, the Protestants in Ireland were absolutely unmolested. A more decisive and, it must be added, a more honourable proof of the absence of religious fanaticism it would be impossible to conceive. -- description might fairly be left to the common sense of the reader. It happens, however, that only a few years ago, Mr. Froude himself treated this portion of Irish history in his former work, and those who desire to test his weight and consistency as an historian can hardly do better than turn to what he then wrote. The following plain and unsophisticated account from his own pen is a crushing answer to his later book: Irish Catholics, that the more they are indulged the more they will rebel, and their rebellion under Elizabeth is his first great proof of this position. He deliberately argues that if they rose against the Queen it was not because she had proscribed their religion and overthrown their altars, not because she had driven the priests out With Elizabeth matters began to change. of the churches and plundered their reve"At this time," observes Mr. Froude, "in nues, but because "she had forbidden her Ireland, of the birth of the land' there viceroys to meddle with religion," bewere no Protestants at all."* Elizabeth cause she had connived at the secret celedetermined and Mr. Froude appears bration of their worship. The rebellion warmly to approve of her resolve to was not due to the rigour of the Governthrust upon this people the new faith. ment. It was an ungrateful return for The mass was accordingly forbidden by excessive indulgence.* A paradox of this law. Fines were imposed on those who abstained from the Anglican service, and the bishops within the pale, who refused to take the oath of supremacy, were deprived of their sees. Yet no serious measures were taken for the conversion of the people. The Bible was not translated into Irish. Proselytism was discouraged. As the Government desired, as far as possible, to suppress the Irish tongue, it was ordered that the Anglican service amid an Irish-speaking population should be "The suppression of the Catholic serread in English, or, if that language was vices enforced wherever the English had not understood, in Latin. At the same power, and hanging before the people as a time the extreme difficulty of enforcing a calamity sure to follow as the limits of that general proscription of the religion of the power were extended, created a weight of nation, as well as the natural temperament animosity which no other measure could of the Queen, which inclined to half- have produced, and alone made the probmeasures, placed limits to the persecution. lem of Irish administration hopelessly inCatholicism was branded by law. The soluble."t "The language of the Archpriests were deprived of their churches and revenues, but the mass was celebrated without difficulty in the castles of the chiefs and on the hill-sides. It was inevitable that under these circumstances the people should have continued Catholic. It was equally inevitable that the religious feeling of the country should be driven into rebellion. Mr. Froude, as we have said, in the present work warmly eulogizes the efforts that were made to extirpate Catholicism. He is full of eloquence about its natural disloyalty; and if he blames Elizabeth, it is chiefly for the feebleness and lenity of her policy. Most persons, we should imagine, in reviewing the rebellions in her reign, would consider that penal laws directed against the religion of the entire nation were sufficiently oppressive and sufficiently irritating to account for them. Mr. Froude, however, has a different theory. He assures us that it is a peculiar • P. 47. bishop of Cashel to Cardinal Alciati shows that, before the Government attempted to force a religion upon them which had not a single honest advocate in the whole nation, there was no incurable disloyalty. If they were left with their own lands, their own laws, and their own creed, the chiefs were willing to acknowledge the English Sovereign."+ But it was not only the worship of the nation that was threatened. We know from the unimpeachable authority of Sir John Davis, that a project had long been entertained of "rooting out "the Irish from the soil. Before the great rebellion had begun, a design had been already formed and already discovered for taking possession of three-fourths of Munster, and exterminating the native population. "To these intending colonists," writes Mr. Froude, "they were of no more value * Pp. 51, 52, 211, and 364. 223. |