Many persons think that a well schemed constitution would ensure universal good government.

Constitutions emanate from the state of society; but do not make it. Burke had no "exalted opinion of the virtue of paper "government;" (Works v. iii. p. 30.) "nor of the mysterious virtue of wax and parchment." (Works v. iii. p. 65.)

No. 26, PAGE 14. “Our solemn 'credence-table' disputation."

To those who stir up contention to the advocates for surplice-preaching, posies of flowers, candles, stalls, credence-tables, and other fiddle-faddleries, we may reply "that the Church of England has not yet commanded or authorized them; and that it is an impertinence for any individual to reintroduce [32], or recommend, or allow, observances that have fallen into unreproved desuetude; the most legitimate of all abrogation." To those who stir contention concerning things, if even in themselves harmless, yet of little importance, we may say, "that novelty causes discussion, and discussion strife." It is enough for us to say to innovators, "We had no such customs, "neither the Churches in our land." - (See 1 Cor. xi. xiv.)

No. 27, PAGE 21. “ To his own great benefit and delight."

"God made the country, and man made the town." - COWPER. Curran says, "Let the proud Englishman boast of his mines and work"shops; let him breathe their pure air; let monotonous labour draw his body "into deformed attitudes! The degraded Irish peasant derives health, and "force, and fierceness, from his employment under the open heavens." (From memory.)

Lord Bacon, feeling as Curran did, would have the finer sort of manufactures (not the smith, mason, and carpenter work) put into the hands of aliens, domesticated here.

As gardening is the purest and most delightful, and is perhaps the most experimental and instructing of all occupations; so farming is the most useful and the most honourable; and is only second to gardening in giving pleasure to mind and body.

Men, who have spent their early years on a farm, prefer the cultivation of the soil to any other business; and, little as they expect to make a fortune by it, would not choose larger profits, to be earned in a city, behind a counter, or under a sky-light.

I speak not of these times, when a farmer knows that he is more likely to lessen his capital, than to increase it; but of times when men might fairly expect to bring up their children comfortably, and to leave more behind them than they began the world with. But four out of five of the young men who are working in London shops, or bankers' counting-houses, would

* See the account of the "solemn credence-table disputation" at Ilford, Essex, which has caused no little evil.

gladly change situations if they could; and were competent to manage an agricultural concern.

It is plain enough that the farmer, if prosperous, leads a life more agreeable to human nature than is that of the trader; for he is envied by everybody. The landlord is jealous of him when, in lucky times, he sees the tenants, who occupy his land, grow rich; though without them, his income would be next to nothing.

"All men," says Benjamin Franklin, "abuse farmers."

Men do not envy a shopkeeper, a lawyer, or a manufacturer, who, by employing a capital of two or three thousand pounds, has accumulated fifty thousands; but they do envy and dislike a farmer, who, with the same capital, has realized a third part of the sum. And why? Because they feel that he has been spending his life in a more manly, useful, healthy, and agreeable way than they have. They envy him. They constantly are talking of "retiring from business." The farmer never does.

Shameful it is, but every man's hand is against the farmers, the most useful of all people. Sir Robert Walpole and Burke speak of them as being persecuted by the higher and lower classes of society. They are despised, or men pretend to despise them, as heavy, dull, and ignorant creatures; but Burke, a perfectly competent judge, if there ever was one, says that their concerns are discussed at a market dinner with as much good sense as those on the Royal Exchange.

Cowley does justice to them, and holds their employment in due estimation. He says, "that if heraldry were guided by reason, a plough in a field "arable, would be the most noble, and the most ancient arms."

Bountiful mother earth, let thy praises be sung by all who merit thy favours; by all who have feeling and intellect enough to value them!

As to gardening, Cicero, Bacon, Cowley, and Sir William Temple, all agree in the same feeling, when they speak of it. "God the first garden made, "and the first city, Cain."--COWLEY.

"God Almighty first planted a garden; and it is indeed the purest of "human pleasures. It is the greatest refreshment to the spirits of man : "without which palaces and buildings are but gross handyworks. A man "shall ever see that when ages grow to civility and elegancy, men come to "build stately, sooner than to garden finely; as if gardening were the "greater perfection."-LORD BACON.

"Mira quædam in colendis floribus suavitas, et delectatio."-CICERO. Felicitous expression of sweetest feeling, by a man of purest taste!

Gardening is farming upon a small scale; and its operations are more experimental, and more minute. Lord Bacon who says that "God " Almighty first planted a garden," says also in another place that "man's " employment in it must have been matter of delight in the experiment."

Is not gardening the lovely sister of farming ?

Gardeners almost always like their employment, and consequently are more attentive to it, and more observing, and more considerate than most other men: they are more intelligent, more domestic, and better mannered than other people. How rare it is to see an uncivil gardener! As the politics of our times have destroyed the most respectable of all classes, that of the "little" statesmen-those who worked on their little hereditary

estates-so now, the condition of gardeners is to be lowered. Foreign fruits and vegetables are readily admitted into the country, for the purpose, it seems, of reducing the number of our gardeners. Has a system of demoralization been long since resolved upon? Certainly the consequences of such a system are apparent enough.

One sickens at the thought of legislative folly.

A certain M. P. and an A.S.S. to boot, and of course a man who had been plentifully schoolmaster-d, thus boasted himself to a day-labourer. "I voted for that clause in Peel's late bill which permits the easy intro"duction of foreign fruits. For why shouldn't poor men be enabled to eat "apple-pies and apple-puddings?"

"Very kind of you, to be sure," says the labourer, "but I'm thinking "that it will do you more good than it will me. I don't know what it is "to have a good bellyful: and what I can put into my belly, I want that "it should stay there; and sha'n't put a lining of apples, baked or boiled, "inside my flour: and, I don't want bran in my bread. Pray, sir, are

you the gentleman that got the half-farthings made, and said that they

were to benefit the poor? I haven't seen one of them yet.".

This is not a manufactured anecdote.

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"The charities intended for them" (the poor) are not perceived to be "insults and remedies wholly unsuitable to the nature of their complaints

are provided for them."-BURKE'S Works, v. vi., p. 279.

How much good sense is requisite to help a man to political power, and

to keep him in it? Were Oxenstiern now alive he would say, "as much

as Addington, Vansittart, Perceval, or Liverpool, had-or, A. B. C. or D. "since." Lord Malmesbury too knew how much-" I never yet received," he says, "an instruction that was worth reading."-DIARIES, v. ii., p. 31.

Things will never go on better with us till some fools have been punished for taking power; and others, for employing fools in high offices, as the means of support in keeping power. First, many and gross blunders; and then, enters a Metcalf! But the intellect and energy of no man can remove much of the mountain of evil which has been raised by the accumulations of folly. At length an earthquake operates upon it, and shakes it to pieces-and, alas! to be raised again.

No. 28, PAGE 37. "Of such is the church."

"The Tractarians," as the Bishop of Chester said, "like the Roman "Catholics, make" The Church an abstraction ; "then a person; and lastly "a Saviour." And Hallam calls the Roman Church an "abstraction of the "theologians-a shadow eluding the touch, and vanishing into emptiness "before the enquiring eye." - Lit. Hist. Europe, v. ii. p. 123. In this he speaks truly, unless The Church be considered only as the aggregate of good Christians. "Cætus fidelium." (Latin Art.) A section of that aggregate is a church.

"There may be dissent without disunion." Real Christians have unity, if not uniformity. The reader of history cannot be ignorant of the quarrels and the disunions in the Romish Church. If there was uniformity, there was not always unity. Two cotemporary popes made war on, and anathematized, each other. Was there at that time, either unity or uniformity?

"There be two things, Unity and Uniformity. A man of judgment and "understanding may hear two persons dispute, and know that they both "mean the same thing: and yet they will never agree and shall we think "that God above, who knows the heart, doth not discern that frail men, in

some of their contradictions, intend the same thing, and accepteth of "both?"-LORD BACON.

But the UNITY of the Roman Church, oh, talk not of it! Let the quarrels of Molinists, Thomists, Dominicans, Franciscans, Jesuits, Jansenists, &c. &c., bear witness to it!

The emperors of Germany used to elect the Popes. So did the king of Spain cardinals. So did the French. And yet we are told that the Holy Ghost elected the Pope at each election! But how could this be, when there have been two popes at a time, nay, three popes at a time? Moreover, a pope has, not seldom, equalled the wonder of the Kilkenny cats; he has fought his own self, as Clement the Eighth did: for the Jesuits, and against them.

Is a Dominican's faith that of a Roman Catholic? The Franciscans and Jesuits say, "No." Cardinal Perron told the Pope "that a Protestant might "sign the Dominican creed." Unity, indeed! or uniformity, such as it was! Had that not been supported by physical force, would the H. S. have supported it?

No. 29, PAGE 40. "But you are becoming selfish, and are very conceited." You think yourselves very knowing; and are not. And, if you were, knowledge is not power; though Bacon and Brougham have said that it is.

If knowledge were power, possession of power would be the legitimate proof of possessing knowledge-in those who sought for power. But these two men could not even retain the power that they became possessed of. How completely did they lose it! Was it for want of knowledge?

Had not the Constantinopolitans much more knowledge than their Latin conquerorsa? Even more military knowledge? Read the accounts of their engines of war. But they had not that FEELING which ennobles man, whether well or ill employed. The hen, who defends her children, we admire; but despise the duck who, when she sees the carrion crow, leaves her brood, and flaps her way, squalling, into the sedges. "Do not take us," said the Saracen chief to a crusader, "for ducks; we are hens." To court danger, wounds, and death, does, in some degree, ennoble instinct, folly, or ambition.

The most helpless persons that I have known, were those who had acquired the most knowledge. There is no short cut to much knowledge, whatever conceited people may think. Life is short. When a man has

a

To think, without disgust, of the Crusades, is impossible to him who knows the extent of havoc committed by these ignorant, stupid, self-conceited brutes, whether priests or knights. If Bonaparté had collected together all the authors and pictures in Europe, and had made a bonfire of them, the loss to future ages would be infinitely less than that which we and our forefathers have suffered.

acquired much, his bodily powers failing him, he is unable to bring it into action, and his studious habits have unfitted him for it, and he becomes, more or less, even unfit to take care of himself. Such is human nature, that much is not to be acquired in one way, without some serious deficiency in

another.

Will it be asserted of the much-knowing man that, if he cannot act with great effect, he may teach much?

Alas! Selden says, "I never converted but Two." Both these conversions related only to trifling matters.

Besides-Men do not like to be guided by the wiser among them. Duclos says that such a man as Philip de Comines is rarely seen, and cannot long remain, at the head of a government. Men are jealous of him, and are mortified, and league together to remove him. Did Comines effect much?

Knowledge is not wisdom. Nor is wisdom power. Wisdom can seldom struggle against the multitudinous mass of human folly; and therefore does not try.

But wisdom never plays the fool, as knowledge often does. It does not shame itself. Bacon and Brougham are among the fallen ones.

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my reason con

Wisdom is humble. Never say "it stands to reason," or "vinces me" (on any disputable point) " that I am right." In like manner weak people say, "this picture, or this poem, is not to my taste;" when, forsooth, they have no pretensions to taste.

To say that this, or that, opinion "stands to reason," is as much as to say that men of a different opinion must be fools. Wisdom is humble. Man is a reasoning animal whether he reasons absurdly or not; but he is very seldom a reasonable being.

In our language we want the French verb déraisonner; though most men, unsuspectingly, pass the greater part of their lives in conjugating it.

Instinct is wiser than reason: as a comparison between the actions of men and animals will show. The elephant, whether free, or a captive; the sparrow, whether in London, Moscow, or Cairo, has just cause for saying, "I am less a fool than man is."

Yet instinct is inferior to reason. The former is incapable of much improvement. While, to the possible improvement of our reason, no limit can be set. But, whatever Père Enfantin may fancy, a great extension of it, in this life, is not sanely to be expected. All the histories of thousands of past years agree in this that man is weak, and wicked. But there is a hope-and it is a glorious one, even if it were as contrary to our reason as it was to Cicero's, when he exclaimed, "O præclarum illum cætum!"

Has not the materialist a mean mind? Let those who are suffering in this world, let the poor, indulge that hope! Let them cultivate their affections, let them be kind to each other, and trust that they are the children of Him whom, if their hearts are warm, they know (1 John iv. 7): and let them hope that, not only all tears shall be wiped from their eyes, but that their knowledge shall be immeasurably increased that they shall know, even as they are known!

My hard-working, hardly used countrymen, do all that you fairly can to better your condition-be cool and earnest-be true to each other. But, if your efforts should prove to be in vain, let not your thoughts and wishes