tions which become a creature who must make it a continual suit to God that he will bear with infirmities and pardon offences. For the rest, in spite of some happy lines at the commencement, this ambitious attempt to naturalise the Homeric metre was not generally admired. He says, however, that his 'compeers' were of a different opinion, and expressly dwells on the satisfaction which women, as far as he could learn, took in the new rhythm' (v. 77). The good ladies of Cat's Eden were lenient critics of ill-represented spondees and monotonous cæsura. The best of his minor pieces are those in which the subject is made subservient to moral feelings. A few specimens are of most admirable excellence-the Holly Tree and the Lines on his Bookroom, for example-many are elegant and graceful; the bulk of them he wished in later years had been committed to the flames instead of the press. His caution nevertheless did not increase with age. The youngest child of his Muse was always a favourite however deformed, and it is amusing to observe the constant expression of his entire satisfaction with newly-composed poems which he afterwards found it expedient to re-write. Nothing he sent into the world at the beginning of his career can be more rude, bald, and pointless, than All for Love and The Pilgrim to Compostella, which he published in the mellow evening of his days. They are the rinsings of the cask when the wine was drawn out. He contributed largely to the intellectual pleasure of his country, and not a little, we think, to its social and economical improvement; but it had been better for his fame if his lot had been cast, not on this England and this Now,' but a comfortably furnished cell in a Benedictine monastery some two centuries earlier. Then-besides that, after living easily amidst a proud and an applauding corporation, he must assuredly have been canonized in due season-his writings would have been reverentially collected into a range of folios, and no editorial care would have been thought too much for their illustration. In our steam-paced age, and elbowed by writers more in unison with its impatient vivacities, all his solid and elegant endowments could win for him at best a secondary place in the eyes of men: and we doubt that any future era would welcome a complete edition of his works. It is, however, impossible that partial reprints should not from time to time be called for: we incline to think that even now an authentic collection of his poems-all the occasional ones being included in their original form and in strictly chronological order - would be acceptable to the public; and that a judicious critic might make make such a selection from his published prose as would fill at least a dozen very saleable octavos. Even in his Histories many of the passages that were tiresome to the eager contemporary as interrupting the narrative, are in themselves both beautiful and curious, and would form rich Omniana. Of his letters we have spoken at sufficient length: here we anticipate not abridgment but expansion. They present one of the most interesting portraitures of the literary character that mankind are ever likely to contemplate, and, as respects the better inner life, a lesson of true and loveable virtue and purity which never was or will be surpassed. Multa pars vitabit Libitinam. ART. IX.-1. The Queen's Ministers responsible for the Pope's new Hierarchy in England. By Dudley M. Perceval, Esq. 2. An Appeal to the Reason and good Feeling of the English People. By Cardinal Wiseman. 3. The Church of England and the Church of Rome contrasted. By the Hon. and Rev. Grantham Yorke. Birmingham and London. 4. Catholic Safeguards against the Errors of Rome: being Select Tracts from the Divines of the Seventeenth Century. By the Rev. J. Brogden. 2nd edition. 3 vols. 1851. WE readily admit, and Dr. Wiseman is welcome to the benefit of the admission, that the astonishment with which the Pope's Bull for the erection of a Roman Catholic hierarchy in England has been received at the close of 1850 is altogether unreasonable. The Bull of Pius IX. was drawn up, and Dr. Wiseman says printed, in 1847. The various causes that deferred its publication are of no consequence to us. Its existence was perfectly well known at that date in this country; we ourselves in vain endeavoured to fix on it the languid attention of the public; nor certainly have intervening occurrences tended to disturb our conviction then expressed, that this supreme insolence would be considered by the future historian as the natural fruit of the original rashness wherewith the Relief Bill of 1829 was framed, and of the persevering malice of Whig governments against the Church of England. Where do ye come from?' is but an unsatisfactory answer to the inquiries of the belated tra * * See our article on Ministerial Measures, Dec. 1847 (Quar. Rev. vol. 82) Observe the repeated mention of the Archbishopric of Westminster, Bishopric of Birmingham, &c. &c., pp. 302 and 306.. veller ; veller; but it suggests the most important subject for reflection to the politician who is desirous of ascertaining his actual position and the means of extrication. eyes of Her Majesty's Ministers are mainly and directly responsible for the aggression of which they now affect to be the first to complain. Were they so ignorant of the spirit of Popery, and so little acquainted with the character of the existing Pope, as to expect improvement from the one or forbearance from the other? In every case the Roman court had displayed before the the whole world the same spirit of intolerance, arrogance, and prepotency-in Prussia, in Switzerland, and in Ireland; and Pius IX., in one respect at least the worthy successor of Gregory VII., had shown far more energy in advancing his spiritual dominion than in regulating his temporal sovereignty. While a prisoner in the Quirinal, or an exile at Gaeta, he did not abate one jot of his ecclesiastical pretensions; and when now, though barely maintained on his tottering throne by the bayonets of semi-infidel France, he presumes to violate more audaciously than ever the majesty of the British sovereign, and throw a firebrand among the English people themselves-who has a right to be surprised? When the scheme of Romish Emancipation' first engaged the minds of statesmen, many circumstances concurred to mislead public opinion as to the nature of the problem to be solved, in order to bring about so great a change with safety. During the latter part of the last age the very spirit of Popery had seemed altered: the enlightened Ganganelli, the enemy of the Jesuits-the magnificent Braschi, the collector of statues and drainer of marshes,-seemed rather called to vindicate their orthodoxy than to purge themselves from the charge of bigotry. At the close of the century the aspect of Europe was such, that there seemed everything to dread from infidelity—from superstition nothing. Neither Mr. Pitt, nor afterwards Lord Grenville, could much fear aggression from a Pontiff struggling in the iron grasp of France, and looking, as the only chance of deliverance, to the success of England and her allies ;-he was at that time in so low a condition that it might be doubted whether even in Ireland a new Bull on a new subject would command much attention;-yet neither of these thoughtful statesmen ever dreamt of emancipation absolutely without safeguards. On the restoration of the papal throne at the end of the war, it was generally assumed that a very moderate spirit prevailed, and would continue to prevail, in the grateful Vatican. The Pope permitted the English tourists, whose numbers and wealth made them of importance to the impoverished Romans, to assemble for worship in a barn without the walls. This concession, strenuously opposed by the priests of British birth (or blood) resident at Rome, was for that very reason regarded with additional confidence by others as the earnest of all future liberality; and it was only close observers who soon perceived how much the ancient animus of the Papacy was reviving, and how well directed and systematic were its efforts to recover its influence everywhere-but especially its influence here, so long impaired by the misfortunes of the see and the interruption of intercourse during the war. By and bye the Protestants of the Continent began to understand pretty generally that the confidence which Rome had been enjoying was but that which credulous man is apt to repose in a slumbering volcano. No change, however, took place in the conduct or arguments of our modern Emancipators. These mainly consisted in an exaggerated dread of the physical power of the Irish Papists, and an affected contempt for the moral power of Popery. It was assumed to be a worn-out superstition, which, when not kept alive by persecution, must languish and die. In England, it was said, there were a few people of condition whom an honourable punctilio alone attached to a proscribed Church. In Ireland the strength of the priests lay in their sway over a barbarous population; soothe the masters, and the slaves must cease to be formidable. How little did these enlightened reasoners know of human nature when they supposed that vanity and ambition can be pampered without being stimulated; or that Popery, containing, as it does, the substance of eternal truth, and overlaid with fictions so marvellously adapted to man's weakness and corruption, could be thus disposed of by a pointed sentence of a 'liberal' harangue ! By such arguments and with such expectations the Relief Bill was violently urged on; the opposition to it was suddenly abandoned by those who alone could oppose it-and it was carried. No one attempted to grapple with the true difficulties of the question. By one party they were denied; by another they were thought insuperable. The one demanded the simple removal of all disabilities; the other did not think themselves bound to provide the correctives for a measure they disapproved in toto. It was easy to ridicule the power of the Pope; no one thought of searching history and carefully examining the precedents of other States of mixed religion, to ascertain if, by any restrictions, it could be rendered comparatively at least harmless. Yet no lesson of the past is so clear as that the unrestricted government of the clergy by the Roman See is incompatible with the free action of civil government, the freedom of the laity, and even of the clergy itself. The early pages of European history are chiefly a record of the struggles that each of the great States maintained maintained with the See of Rome. The disputes between the Empire and the Vatican deluged Europe with blood; it cost ages of scandal and schism, fraud and violence, to establish the immunities of the Gallican Church. In more modern times, and especially in mixed States, a similar result was brought about by the more obvious and less objectionable means of negotiation and voluntary agreement. But in every Continental country there had been somehow secured for government an adequate control over the priesthood-a voice in the nomination to benefices, more or less potential-the inspection and previous approbation of papal bulls-with an unlimited right of excluding certain or all of the orders of regular clergy at pleasure. In short, it is only modified Popery-considerably lowered beneath the high theory of ultramontane pretensions-that is to be found in any great realm of the modern Continent. Here, then, was the inherent fault of the Relief Bill. What neither fear nor favour had obtained from any Roman Catholic state, Protestant England gave away in precipitation, in ignorance, or in contempt. It may be true that if, as was urged at the time, it was necessary to hurry on the Relief Bill without delay, it would hardly have been possible for its framers to engraft on it a suitable and well-weighed scheme of restriction; it is perhaps more true that the temper of the country, already sorely tried, could not have been expected to endure at that crisis the additional novelty of a formal negotiation with Rome. We only profess to declare what should, from the first, have been the object of our emancipating guides. We maintain that the alternative was never fairly stated to the country. The choice, as it should have been proposed, lay between the restrictive laws as then in force, and the removal of those laws with the imposition of such other restrictions as had been admitted in various European states, and as the circumstances of this country rendered peculiarly necessary in her case. Had our popular writers fairly stated the problem, and frankly addressed themselves to the task of solving it, instead of indulging in vain declamation and irreverent ridicule, the nation would not have been taken by surprise, as it was; if forced to adopt an unpalatable measure, would have chosen the least objectionable form of it-and in their aversion to the evil would not have rejected the palliative. Up to the passing of the Relief Bill all was at least consistent. No interference of the Pope was, in theory, permitted-his very existence was ignored by the law. Now that the emancipation was complete, and his access to his own adherents unrestrained, to persist, for the sake of nominal and fallacious consistency, to ignore the Pope, was to confer upon him the plenitude of eccle siastical |