ministers from the wisest and ablest men of their age and nation-the queens who consolidated their domination by that catholic and syncretic policy to which all philosophic spirits gradually culminate the queens who established an august and dignified coalition of all those political worthies who knew how to prefer philanthropy and patriotism to sectarian puerilities, and would not give up to party what was meant for mankind.

Yes, all great and heaven-instructed spirits arrive, sooner or later, at the same ennobling jurisprudence. I see Guizot, in France, after having oscillated, with painful and anxious vacillations, from party to party, at length assuming that catholic and syncretic policy which extends an equal patronage to Jews, Papists, Protestants, Tories, Whigs, and Radicals. He sees that no possible stability can exist in those partisantic administrations which, like the puppets of a baby's toy shop, are raised up in one minute for the purpose of being knocked down in the next. He sees the incalculable mischief of making the government of great kingdoms the mere sport of factious time-servers, who thus foment a spirit of dissension among all orders of society, and divide the national energies, which, by being severed, are so easily annihilated.

Queen of thy people's hopes, though thou art young, thou canst do much in uniting and composing parties. By showing favour and patronage to all noble-spirited unionists and coalitionists, you may advance political harmony; and by regarding with disapprobation all violent partisans you may abate civil discords.

Treat your contentious and stormy subjects as a benignant mother would treat her quarrelsome children. Beneath thy mild tuition, they may learn what all history is striving to teach them-the benefits of syncretism, union, and universal coalition. Men will then discover how pleasant it is to stand with "good Erasmus, in an honest mean;" and be inclined to sympathise in the sentiment of Pope

"In moderation placing all his glory,

By Tories called a Whig, by Whigs a Tory."

Nor is it impossible that they may even understand the fable of Æsop, respecting the old man and the bundle of rods.

Queen of Britain, the only path to greatness, and universal empire over the energies and hearts and passions of your subjects, lies open and plain before you. It is the path of that Wisdom whose ways are ways of pleasantness and peace. Show yourself disposed to cherish the wise and virtuous coalitionists of approved talent and honesty. Choose your ministry from men such as these; and like a second Elizabeth, so admirable for the patronage of merit, sweep from the circumference of power the idle hirelings of party.

Believe me, that the real moral and political contest in this country exists between unionists and coalitionists on one side, and the divisionists and party-mongers on the other. If the first triumph, this monarchy and country will be immensely consolidated and corroborated; if the latter succeed, it will be impoverished, broken, and scattered.

Compared to this great, this all-absorbing and all-important struggle betwixt political harmony and civil discord, the low and sordid contentions betwixt Tories and Whigs and Radicals sink into most pitiful

Insignificance. Nor would any men be base enough to make such a stir about them were not their eyes dazzled by passion, and their hearts petrified by interest. But, forsooth, they tickle the pugnacious propensities of those noisy Britons who are never so happy as when they are quarrelling about moonshine.

That the preceding arguments in favour of union, coalition, and peace, are not unconfirmed by authority, will appear by a few quotations, which I take the liberty of adducing.

"When the legislator," says Montesquieu, "has believed it a duty to permit the exercise of many religions, it is necessary that he should enforce a toleration among these religions themselves. It is a principle that every religion which is persecuted becomes itself persecuting; for as soon as by some accidental turn it arises from persecution, it attacks the religion that persecuted it,-not as a religion but as a tyranny.

It is necessary then," continues Montesquieu, " that the laws require from the several religions not only that they shall not embroil the state, but that they shall not raise disturbances among themselves. A citizen does not fulfil the laws by not disturbing the government; it is necessary that he shall not trouble any citizen whomsoever."

"A sovereign," says Bielfeld, "should be the umpire and arbitrator of his kingdom, when the divisions of sects and the factions of parties become formidable. His authority will generally mitigate the misunderstandings among the chief leaders of the state, and the discords of the people will be appeased.

"A prince sins against sound policy when he contents himself with favouring either one faction or another. He will secure few real friends, but he will make many real enemies. The whole science of monarchy consists in extinguishing the rising fires of faction. They may appear insignificant sparks, but they are surrounded with combustible materials.

"These quarrels and animosities are not called factions in their origin; they only deserve this name when they embroil great numbers against great numbers. Such were the Guelphs and the Ghibelines; such are the Tories and the Whigs.

"These factions," continues Bielfeld, "are often a long time in forming their views are generally weak and limited at their birth, but their projects grow with their growth, and strengthen with their strength. Taking their rise from particular interests of individuals, they end with embroiling whole nations. Infamous in all their degrees, they contradict the very object of civil societies, formed for the common benefit and mutual assistance."

But the panegyric of political union has never been more eloquently written than by Cicero himself, in his newly recovered treatise on the state. "I see," says Lælius, "what sort of duty you would impose on our imaginary prince." "Yes," replied Scipio, "I would urge him to one noble enterprise of philanthropy and patriotism, which includes all the rest. I would advise him never to suspend his self-reverence, or his self-examination; and thus seeking to obtain a kind of personal perfection, he will excite his subjects to a most admirable emulation. For, as in musical instruments and voices, a certain consent and concord is to be preserved among the distinct sounds-which, however little violated, would shock an accomplished ear-which exquisite harmony is formed

by the blending and coalition of tones various and dissimilar, so is a wisely governed state to be composed by the re-union of the three unequal orders, and political harmony to be educed out of elements the most opposite. For what musicians call concord in song is union in the social empire-union, the strongest and the best bond of public prosperity; union, which walks hand in hand with justice."

This idea of Cicero's is thus imitated by Montesquieu: "That which we call union in the body politic is that harmony which is composed of all parties, however opposite they may appear to us, concurring to the general good, as those dissonances in music which blend in universal concord.'

A

CALIBAN.

To be poor, to be alone in the world, to devote one's whole faculties, one's whole future to an art, which those who treat it as frivolous are not the worst enemies of, to have the consciousness of one's talent, and doubt whether it will be able to develope itself in its true vocation, to remain unknown when one loves glory, strives after it, and would attain it, if deserving it were alone necessary; verily this is sad!

Yes; but the painter Randal was twenty-four years of age; and at twenty-four we snap our fingers at Destiny. Thus did he, and he had good reason. Nature had made him a visionary, but she had given him energy and health, qualities as necessary to an artist as imagination itself. I can tell you, that when we are suffering, the Beautiful veils itself from our eyes: a man's health is the whole man, and there are many things in that question, How are you? all insignificant as it may

seem.

Rarely was it addressed to Randal. He lived apart, and had no one to meet; nothing commodious for him who loved to walk alone in the crowd, or occasionally took a ramble with a friend-a friend whose charming face was concealed under a long veil. The lover then thought little about painting; yet the artist was no loser thereby. Love does harm only to philosophers-to nobody.

Thanks to it, Randal tasted those lively and beautiful emotions, which his obscurity hindered him from finding in the career of glory: like many others, he owed to his sentiments for a beloved woman his only resource against what is vulgar, what is impoverishing in the destiny of the greater number.

He was happy then, after all, and saw, without giving way to despondency, his precocious and vigorous talent still unrecognised. But, all of a sudden, his labours were disturbed, annihilated, in a manner at once so irritating and so strange, that he was thrown into the most violent condition of mind that can be imagined.

Every time he quitted his study, he found, on returning, his canvas smeared with great strokes of the brush, by a pitiless hand; and it was always the parts least imperfect, which this ruffian-hand seemed to have taken pleasure in spoiling the most. The mischief, with great difficulty made good again; came new and more intolerable repetition. The

horriblest mixtures of the palette were rubbed in, here and there, on the canvas, with a disorder, a fury of the brush, indicating, you would have said, a hand rendered convulsive by hatred. Oftenest, even, scratchings, as of ten fingers loaded with colour, tore up, in a thousand ways, the devastating marks of the brush. It seemed as though the scoundrel could not sate himself with hurting the unfortunate painter's work, but must grope, widen, torment with his hands the wounds which he had every where laid on.

Yes, hatred alone, and better than ignorance, could do such mischief, and so much mischief. Hatred alone could invent those hideous tints, those forms (if they were such), more monstrous, more maddening, than the abortions of a hag-ridden dream. That alone could every time invent something worse, and scourge with defacements, ever more horrible, this canvas where the genius of art seemed still to yield to that genius of destruction.

*

*

So thought Randal; and his stupor was not less in contemplating what power of imagination hatred can inspire, than in finding it so fiercely set against himself. He could almost have envied this infernal hand, this fever of execution. One would have said it was one of those frenzies that are catching to look at. Impelled, sometimes, by a movement quite mechanical, detesting his accursed work, and, as if fascinated by those diabolic apparitions, he would seize a brush, and try, mad in his turn, to cope with them, to seize, at least, the secret of them. A man can injure himself as much as his cruellest enemy; a man can kill himself: but Randal could not, so much as his enemy, injure his own work. *

*

Calamity to drive one madder than mad! to find, on a sudden, and without a reason for it, that you have got a dastardly and fatal enemy, when you are alone in the world, and without a friend, or, rather, when you know nothing of the sentiments of others, except what is best and sweetest in the heart of a woman. To learn hatred against oneself, and within oneself, by all that is fiercest in the character of hatred,—to feel it against one knows not whom, so that it recoils wholly on oneself, -this inconceivable warfare, these strokes so well-directed at the heart of an artist, a whole power employed in destroying, this mixture of petty mischievousness and indefatigable cruelty-Randal lost head; and when the friend in the long veil stole over to encourage him, she quitted him, still weeping, and without having left consolation.

Randal lies in wait, watches, goes out every day, scarcely shutting his door; for, at any price, he will surprise his enemy. By and bye, one thing becomes clear to him, that the villain, namely, cannot (would you believe it?) enter except by the window, traversing the roof, at the risk of killing himself twenty times for once. "He must be very far gone in hatred," thought he; "What can I have done to him, then?"—and he searched in his memory. "But it is incredible, it is a predestination, a dream." The idea occurred to him for a moment, to fasten to his window some deadly trap. "No!" cried he; "when I shall get him, I

must have him still alive."

Finally, he plants himself behind his door, his eye intently watching through the key-hole. He waits, impatient and immoveable. Suddenly a face, a hand, shove themselves half in at the side of the window.

Randal's heart stands still. A foot advances, some one enters: O surprise which exceeds all that he had imagined!-he has recognised his enemy, but he can scarcely believe his eyes;-it is the last whom he would have supposed capable ;-he does not believe it yet; but the other pushes back the window, places the drawing-frame better or worse, seizes palette, brushes, maulstick, installs himself. Randal falls back in a peal of laughter: it was an ape!

Yes, an ape; Caliban, the most ridiculous face that an ape ever received from heaven, perched upon a body of no common cut. Randal had seen him twice or thrice, in front of his window, leaning with his arms hung over the railing of a loft, grave, his eyes constantly fixed on him while he worked, motionless, except the arms, which he swung negligently to and fro, or darted out in capture of a fly.

Ha ha! wise painter that thou art! Diabolic hatred-genius of destruction-contagious frenzy-fatality-thirst of vengeance--and not so much as an ape's malice in it; for it was with the best purpose in the world that Caliban did the thing.

"My God!" thought Randal, "how she will laugh when I tell her;" and he laughed himself the more heartily.

Another might have been at once ashamed and angry; for Randal, all this had become too absurd; he could not but have a right laugh over it. Then, after cursing over a demon infernally bent against you, how feel any anger at a poor ape ?

Happy chance for a painter of twenty-four! A spectacle so grotesque, an orang-outang-crotchet so droll! Figure to yourself Caliban, the artist, better than I can describe him to you; imagine, that whilst he falls to in joy of heart, you view him by stealth and through a keyhole.

It was a picture which would have required another ape to copy it; and Randal, the good youth, would not, for his best picture ruined, have missed the enjoyment of it. In brief, he enters. Caliban, wholly given up to his inspirations, had heard nothing.

"Keep your seat, neighbour," said his comrade to him. The other rose hastily, drew back, but without laying down his arms. Then, perceiving the window closed, and that the artist smilingly extended his hand to him, he returned, negligently gave him his, and in the finest manner, with much grimacing and gesturing, he recommenced his skirmishing against the canvas.

Randal gave him credit for his coolness. "We shall be good friends," said he, twitching his ear; and, taking a palette and brushes in his turn, "have with you, comrade!"

And behold them who to be first ;-brushing, smearing, thumping the canvas, and at each stroke, laid on with ever more vigour, turning on each other a look of defiance. The painter got heated overmuch; the ape had the best of it.

"Retire," said Randal, seized with a sudden desire. Never had he felt himself in such aptitude. Caliban was truly unique of his kind; now every thing which distinguishes itself pertains to art. And with this first movement so rare, so powerful, so imperative in true artists, with all the energy of that sense which sometimes bursts out in them, which inspires and directs all their organs, the painter fell to, full dash,

N. S.-VOL. I.

Y