called Targums, were written, and Chronicles itself is perhaps the earliest Targum. The explanation of the Law was effected by a separate work—the Mishna-in the second century of the Christian era, at a time when every jot and tittle of the sacred books were holy. The Mishna was not edited or corrupted, but commented upon in Jerusalem and in Babylon, in treatises known as Gemara, although in some few cases the comment in time became fused with the older text. The Assyrians, when they copied their ancient tablets, were most careful to secure accuracy, and added notes like that which terminates their account of the Deluge: 'Written and made clear like the ancient copy;' and when further explanation was needed it took the form of a lexicon upon a separate tablet. The Egyptians took equal pains, at an early date, in attempting to preserve the text of the Book of the Dead, by notes and marginal readings. In the Korân certain passages create difficulties, by contradicting others; but no Moslem ever dared to expunge them: the doctors explained that such a passage was mansukh, or abrogated by a later revelation, but was nevertheless as revelation to be retained-just as the Jews reconciled, or allowed to remain, passages of which they saw the difficulty long before Europeans had any familiar knowledge of the Bible. Within two centuries from Muhammad's death, Al Mamûn (in 218 A.H.), by public edict, declared the Korân to be 'created,' and those who thought otherwise were whipped, imprisoned, or slain. All explanation was, therefore, conducted in the separate commentaries of the Sunna, and no editing of the confused mass of the sacred Suras was ever attempted. Indeed, such ideas of procedure are, and have always been, foreign to the character of Oriental literature; and the commentator or scribe never seeks, or sought, to criticise, but only reverently to copy, or to explain as best he was able, holding his want of understanding to be the cause of his difficulties, and not the obscurity or contradictions of his teacher. It is only the Jewish priests of Ezra's time who are supposed to have acted on different principles, and in a different manner, or those of the days of the Hasmoneans, when men suffered death for the Torah. So unnatural is the theory of editing or redaction, when applied to any Oriental literature, and most of all to the Hebrew Scriptures, that it is impossible to believe that the present lines of critical study can commend themselves to any who are familiar with the manners and history of the East.

Nor is this the only feature of the latest critical tenden

cies which must be condemned. Sympathy and insight are the first necessities for true understanding. To start with the assumption that the ancients were less observant, and knew less of themselves, than the modern scholar, who, so long after, and so far away, under such different conditions and theories of life, and surrounded with so different an atmosphere, is thought better able to construct real history than those who were more nearly contemporary, and more completely familiar with the land, the people, and the history of their own race, is to start on a false and presumptuous basis. To depreciate the style of stories which have for so many centuries gone home to the human heart, and which speak with the voice of genius, to which the less gifted may be deaf, is surely vain. It is not a sign of intellectual power to despise or write contemptuously of those whose words no modern writer can hope to rival. The most learned of modern scholars would be unable to pen such a narrative as the beautiful story of Joseph, or the simple tale of Hannah and her son, consecrated as a child-priest, to whom the mother brought each year his little coat. We are apt to forget that the questions which form the subject of controversy have little import, as compared with those which arise. from contemplation of Hebrew thought. There is danger that our children may regard with as much contempt the lucubrations of their fathers as the critic who despises the words of the ancients.

In spite of centuries of criticism, the voice of solitary truth, crying in the desert of superstitious ignorance in Isaiah's wailings over an Israel that would not hear, has grown louder as time passed by, till its sound has filled the earth. Long after Wellhausen has been forgotten, and new systems have taken the place of those now regarded as final, men will revert to the noblest of literatures to refresh the mind amid the troubles of their lives. The words of Job will be precious in their eyes when the Prolegomena are gathered to their literary forefathers, in peaceful repose upon the dusty shelf.

ART. IV.-1. Secret Service under Pitt. By W. J. FITZPATRICK, F.S.A. 8vo. London: 1892.

2. The Sham Squire, and the Informers of 1798. By WILLIAM J. FITZPATRICK. Third Edition, completely recast, with new matter. 8vo. Dublin 1866.

ranks of Irish treason have never been wanting in THE raitors to the sacred cause of disaffection. The evidence of that most loyal of transatlantic Fenians known to fame as Major le Caron, and his bold and unblushing revelations of the secrets of the conspirators in two hemispheres before the Parnell Commission in 1889, are still fresh in the public memory. The more commonplace career of the chief informer of 1867, who owned or adopted the singularly incongruous name of Corydon, was familiar to readers. of Irish newspapers for some time after the Fenian rising in Dublin about five-and-twenty years ago; and although, in 1881, the Government of the day, trusting, perhaps, overmuch to messages of peace,' were so imperfectly informed that the murderers of Mr. Burke and Lord Edward Cavendish remained for some time undenounced, if not unsuspected, yet, as soon as it was known that information was really wanted, and would be loyally paid for, the informer was at hand, and the hidden assassins were duly arrested, convicted, and executed. Even among the purer patriots of 1848 there was no lack either of information or of informers. Some of the seemingly staunchest hearts in Smith O'Brien's movement of '48, says Mr. Fitzpatrick, were false to their chief and colleagues, and when the crisis came, suggested to the police magistrates that, in order to preserve consistency and keep up the delusion, they ought to be arrested and imprisoned! *

But at no time did the spy and the informer flourish in greater and more abundant luxuriance than in the good old days before the Union, when Ireland enjoyed her own

The Sham Squire, p. 327. See also a very curious letter in the Dublin Irish Times of March 25, 1892, where it is stated, upon apparently good authority, that 'every meeting of "Young Ireland" was known in the Castle half an hour after their secret plans were arranged.' 'I was enabled,' says the writer-an eyewitness to warn my friends that every step they took was revealed at once to the Castle. I informed J. B. D., and a not less true and trusted patriot, J. P., son of the C. B., and they laughed, and said it was "impossible." Yet they, like so many in the days of Pitt, were deceived.'

VOL. CLXXVI. NO. CCCLXI.

G

Legislature in Dublin, and a well-worn path led from the Parliament House in College Green to the Treasury in Lower Castle Yard. From the constitution of an independent Legislative Assembly in 1782 to the Union, eighteen years later, Ireland was distracted by disaffection in every form, was actually visited with rebellion, ill organised and hurriedly undertaken, and was hardly saved from the horrors of civil war by the faithlessness, the corruption, and the shameless treachery of the sworn leaders of the revolt. Of these disgraceful days, and of the strange and secret personages who lived and moved in Ireland, and more especially in Dublin, at that time, Mr. Fitzpatrick has given us a most original and interesting account; and his work, though wanting in form and arrangement, and professing to be rather a collection of notes and studies than a consecutive narrative, will be found of the utmost value to all future historians who desire to present in their true colours the ways and works of the leading actors in the strange events in Ireland before the Union.

The present day is a day of specialists, and Mr. Fitzpatrick is a specialist in spies, the greatest living authority on the secret history of the rebels and informers who flourished in the last decade of the eighteenth century. The Sham Squire,' an account of the life and operations of Francis Higgins and many of his contemporaries, was published by Mr. Fitzpatrick nearly thirty years ago, and the greater part of the information collected in that very interesting little book is republished in the larger and more important work that now lies before us. But the title of his last volume is by no means as happy as that of his first. 'Secret Service' is no doubt a phrase of doubtful signification, but it scarcely describes the venal and impudent treachery of Turner and McNally. And although the introduction of the name of Pitt as the employer or accomplice of Higgins and Magan may please those who denounce the 'baseness and blackguardism' of his Irish policy, the great Minister was no more concerned with the secret history of the spies employed by the authorities at Dublin Castle than with that of the gentleman who blacked the ministerial shoes in Downing Street, or drank the ministerial port wine at Putney. 'Irish Spies and Informers' are the subject of Mr. Fitzpatrick's book, as we purpose that they shall be the subject of the present article.

Rebellion in Ireland has commonly been frustrated by rebels, and in the most secret councils of the most select com

mittees the spy or the informer has ever occupied a trusted seat. Most uncompromising of all patriots in his patriotism, most suspicious of the hidden enemy, most terrible in his denunciation of doubtful friends, he tasted at once the sweets of office and the joys of conspiracy; and as he pocketed the salary so easily earned, and performed at his own good pleasure the congenial duties of his irresponsible office, he could chuckle at once over the completeness with which he had betrayed his friends, and the incompleteness with which his good nature, his self-interest, or his mere love of artistic duplicity might have led him to serve his employers. But under all circumstances he took care that he was well paid. He did not, at least, sell his country for nought. The recorded emoluments of these Irish informers were enormous. As to their indirect profits it would be idle to speculate. One Reynolds, a spy of very secondary importance, received on March 4, 1799, a sum of 5,000l. from the Secret Service money, and was further gratified with a secret pension of some hundreds a year. He afterwards obtained the office of British postmaster at Lisbon, the emoluments of which amounted during his four years of service to nearly 6,000l. He was subsequently appointed to more than one well-paid consulship, and at length, retiring in middle life from the public service of his country, he chose Paris as his final place of abode, and enjoyed his well-earned pension to the day of his death, having drawn from the exchequer of a hated Government not less in all than 45,000l. Armstrong is said to have received close on 30,000l. for his truly valuable information, and Magan, who took up the business as a needy barrister, left over 14,000l. to his sister. Higgins, who was not even an informer at first hand, but a species of information agent or spy keeper, began life as a pauper and a 'Sham Squire,' and after many years of free and easy living in Dublin, maintaining a reputation for that liberal hospitality so necessary to his success in his profession, died worth no less than 40,000l. Very few were the real squires, or peers of Ireland for the matter of that, who left so considerable a sum of money behind them in the early days of the present century.

Of all the delusions that possess the mind of the average Englishman as regards Ireland and the Irish, and the delusions are many and great, none is more universal, and none is more false, than that the Irishman is careless or in

different to money. The ordinary Irishman may not be thrifty, but he is acquisitive; he may not be economical,