Charles still hoped that time would wear away, in Ellen's mind, the stern resolution which now alone seemed to interfere between him and perfect happiness. But when weeks had passed away, and no change came over the spirit of that dream of duty, he gave himself up to the hopelessness of despair; he looked upon it as a judgment from God for having taken life. I might tell of scenes of suffering such as seemed enough to atone for guilt far worse than his. There were in the dark and gloomy history of the next few months, a chapter of truth which many might pronounce too highly coloured even for romance; it is time, however, that I should bring this chapter to a close.

Ellen's health and spirits declined so much, that her mother removed to the south of England, in hopes that the change might restore her. Mr. Irving,

who was deeply attached to his niece, accompanied her. Some short time afterwards, Charles Wilson left the country without bidding me farewell. I supposed that he had gone to some foreign climate, in the hopes of finding an early grave. I heard nothing of any of the party until some months afterwards, casting my eye over one of the English papers, I met the following announcement, under the head of marriages

"In the church of South Molton, Devonshire, by the Venerable the Archdeacon of Charles Wilson, Esq. Barrister at Law, to Ellen, only daughter of the Reverend Charles Irving, late rector of in the diocese of Dublin.”

Many years had elapsed, when I saw them both happy and honoured in the midst of a growing family. Mrs. Irving was sitting by their fireside in a venerable arm-chair, smiling on the domestic circle. Mr. Irving had died full of years and honour, and left all his wealth to his nephew and niece, with the exception of an annuity to his maiden sister, who spent the rest of her life wheeling about in a wheelchair, and drinking the waters at Bath. Charles had taken the name of Irving, and transferred himself to the English bar, where he had settled down into a snug situation.

I am glad, so perhaps will be my readers too, that over the close of one, at least, of my gloomy chapters, a gleam of sunshine has been cast.

It becomes our statesmen to be deeply impressed with this truth, that the condition of Ireland will determine the condition of the empire. We hesitate not to say, that if only four years more of such government, or rather misgovernment, as we have had for the four years last past, be persevered in, either the country will be involved in civil war, or the British government will be reduced to the condition of conceding the repeal of the union; and how long after such an event the countries can continue in even nominal connection, it requires no great spirit of prophecy to divine.

These are calamities which we would fain avert, and which, with some little increase of virtue and energy on the

part of our constituencies, might, we are of opinion, be averted. Indeed, there has been so great an accession of late years to the ranks of those by whom sound conservative principles are professed, that nothing but the overbearing influence of a reckless and unprincipled government, could avail to counteract the spirit by which they are actuated, or defeat, even for a season, the energetic resistance which they have opposed to the democratic movement by which all that we hold most valuable is exposed to so much danger. And if we only continue to concert measures by which the cause of truth may be advanced, and the experience of the past may be brought to bear upon the future, so as strongly

to illustrate the folly and the wickedness of the unprincipled faction, to whose domination, for our sins, we have been abandoned, we do not despair to see that faction speedily driven with ignominy from the helm of power, and wiser and better men entrusted with the destinies of the empire.

But nothing short of all our efforts can now be available to avert impending destruction. Our adversaries have obtained a fearful advantage over us. This we say advisedly, notwithstanding the decided reaction manifested during the late elections. This we say, notwithstanding the triumphant manifestation of conservative feeling and principle, which, in England, has stricken ministers with dismay. This we say, notwithstanding the humiliat ing defeat of Roebuck, and Hume, and Bowring, and the gratifying success of men who are in every respect their opposites, and by whom the best interests of the country will be resolutely defended; because, our adversaries still possess that place in the government which may mightily enable them to countervail the powerful spirit which is rising for their overthrow, and because we are not as yet sufficiently awake to the whole extent of our duties or our dangers.

Can any one suppose that the present ministers will neglect the present opportunity, which circumstances have placed in their power, to poison the mind of the young Queen against their opponents? And can such an effect be produced in such a quarter, without leading to almost irremediable evils? Their play will be, to make her Majesty believe that the Conservatives are the enemies of the best interests of the people. They will present, as through a magnifying glass, any abuses which may prevail in the administration of the church, and fain persuade her, that their own measures, by which its foundation would be sapped, are the only remedies by which such abuses could be prevented. They will represent to her the dissenting interest, groaning under the pressure of church rates, at once a badge and a burden; and interest her generosity and her compassion in favour of a class of her subjects, whose tenderness of conscience should not, they will tell her, be shocked by being called upon to contribute to such an abomination as a form of Christianity established by law, and having the permanent and

authoritative promulgation of true religion for its object. But, above all things, they will refer her to the state of Ireland, and present to her pathetic pictures of the misery and degradation of its Roman Catholic population. This, they will not hesitate to tell her, has been produced by what is called Protestant ascendency; and is perpetuated by the continuance of that spirit that has been generated by such ascendency; and they will fain persuade her, that the only remedy for such a state of things, is, the humiliation or overthrow of the Irish church, and the advancement to places of power and dignity of the leading agitators of Ireland.

But can her Majesty be thus persuaded? Have we not good reason for believing that she is possessed of sense and spirit sufficient to detect and repel such false advisers? Reader, remember that she is but eighteen years of age! Imagine yourself, at such an age, called to fill the station which she occupies; and say whether, humanly speaking, you would be prepared against the wiles and the artifices of the insidious men by whom she is at present surrounded. She may possess a strength of mind beyond her years. She may be actuated by a spirit of wisdom which would render her proof against the sophistry and the delusion by which she will be assailed. We are not, assuredly, amongst the number of those who reject the belief that the hearts of kings are, in a peculiar manner, under the rule and governance of the Almighty; and that it is He who disposes and turns them as it scemeth best to his godly wisdom. On the contrary, our fixed persuasion of that divine truth, leads us daily to prefer our petitions to the throne of grace; that it may please the Giver of all good things to extend to our beloved Queen more and more of his benign guidance and protection, that she may escape the snares which are laid for her by ungodly and deceitful men, and become more and more, by her daily growth in virtue and knowledge, an ornament to her throne, and a blessing to her people. But not the less do we feel that a scason of divine chastisement may have arrived, when it may please God to exact from us the penalties of our transgressions as a nation; and that our own conduct, in the very emergency in which we are placed, may determine, for good or for evil, the result of the present dispensation. If

then, while all the ability and all the artifice of our adversaries is employed to deceive her Majesty, we take no pains to set her right, the consequence may be, to the last degree, fatal. If, while they are industrious in possessing her with false views, we are indifferent in presenting to her true ones, it cannot be that an impression should not be made, by which the royal mind might be fatally influenced, to the serious, if not irreparable, detriment of her kingdom. Let us, then, bestir ourselves as men who had some stirring consciousness of the mighty issues which depend upon our exertions. Let us bestow upon truth the same attention which our adversaries bestow upon falsehood, if, indeed, we would do any thing to the purpose, or even be thought in earnest in the adoption of those principles by which we profess to be guided, and upon which the salvation of the empire depends. It is of the very essence of a destructive policy, that it is ever active for purposes of evil. A Conservative policy is, on the other hand, characterised by a remissness in pursuit of the objects which it proposes, by which it is seldom permitted to attain its ends. By many who profess sound principles, a tame disapproval of the conduct of their adversaries, is substituted for that energetic and determined resistance, by which, alone, their devices could be confounded. Unless all this be altered; unless a change come over the spirit of these men, by which they may be animated into a more active defence of the national institutions than they would seem, hitherto, to have deemed indispensible, all will be lost; their nerveless and negative virtue, if virtue it may be called, will never avail to rescue the perishing interests of their country from the active and daring villainy by which they are assailed. The bold, bad men will laugh to scorn the milk-and-water politicians who only oppose their schemes by vain expostulations; and it will be found, in the end, that the Destructives were indebted for their most complete success to the conduct of adversaries, who proved, to all intents and purposes, by the weakness and inefficiency of their measures, a kind of passive conspirators against the constitution.

It was only of late that we were struck by the singular wisdom of that law of Solon's, by which the individual was noted with infamy, who observed neutrality in civil contests. At first it

appears strange that a sapient legislator should seek to embroil a democratic state in more than its natural share of strife and contention. One would think that he would rather be disposed to hail the quietude of his fellow citizens, and to prescribe a reward for the man, who, when all around him were maddened by the spirit of faction, restrained himself from those excesses in which they indulged, and persevered in a calm imperturbability, than to assume the office of agitator-inchief, and so exercise it as to resemble the anarch of old "where chaos umpire sits, and by decision more embroils the fray." To our unreflecting minds, the legislator would appear to apply a stimulant when he ought to administer a sedative; and thus, instead of seeking to correct the natural vices of a democratic temperament, by infusing into the body politic a spirit of sober-mindedness, by which, during the gusts of popular passion to which it must be exposed, it might be restrained and steadied, to exasperate its constitutional headiness and violence so as to render it altogether incontrollable. But there was no such mistake in Solon's regulation. He was not the man to commit so glaring an error in a matter of such prime importance. The very same divisions which obtain amongst us, obtained amongst the generation for whom he made his laws. There was a conservative party, by whom established institutions would fain be preserved; there was a destructive party, who either had, or fancied they had an interest in the subversion of all existing arrangements. Between these two, a sort of instinctive and unappeasable hostility prevailed, by which the well-being of the state was perpetually perilled, and which caused the balanced system of liberty, which it was the pride of the legislator to have devised and instituted, to oscillate, according as the one or the other prevailed, between the licentiousness of a mob and the despotism of a tyrant. Solon foresaw, or his experience suggested to him, that, in the destructive party, there would be no neutrals; that all there would be activity and energy; that not merely their principles, but their instincts and their baser passions and propensities, would all conspire to stimulate them in the contest; while amongst the others, a love of ease, a love of pleasure, a love of abstract contemplation, a shrinking indisposition to engage in strife, would

cause the patriotic ardour of many to wax cold, if they could shelter, under the plausible pretext of neutrality, their constitutional antipathy to political conflicts. Solon saw, that if this spirit was to be indulged, the destructives would have it all their own way, when any vital question arose, upon which the parties were nearly equally divided. He therefore proclaimed the infamy of the man, who, in such a case, hesitated to take a decided part; and he did so with the perfect conviction that the law of opinion which he thus brought to bear upon the conduct of his fellow citizens, while it affected to regard all with equal impartiality, would, in reality, be felt to act upon ten Conservatives, for one Destructive; and would, therefore, operate as a stimulant to the indolence and the remissness of the one, while it would be scarcely felt in imparting any additional vigour to the industry and the activity of the other. There could not, in a democratic state, be a more truly conservative regulation. Only let it be supposed in force in this our day, and where would we have to look for the men who would be, according to Solon's law, notati infamia? Would we have to seek them in our lanes and allies, or in our streets and squares? And if the regulation was effectual in quickening into activity the political virtue or energy, which luxury or timidity or constitutional indolence had caused to slumber, where would such an effect be most distinctly visible? Amongst the high or the low? Amongst the greasy artizans, or the more opulent and respectable classes of the people? Surely no one of us can for a moment entertain a doubt upon such a subject, when we look through our city and see that if only one third of those who either are, or might have been qualified to vote at the late election had duly exercised their constitutional privilege, the Conservative candidates would have been elected by a triumphant majority, if, indeed, they were not returned without

a contest.

And if something similar, in its effect, to Solon's law-a sense of duty, or a law of opinion, or a feeling of danger, do not rouse our indolent Conservatives into action, and make each and every of them feel, that he is called upon to aid, individually, with all his might, in the momentous contest that is at present raging, and upon the issue of which depends our present and future prospects, fatal in

deed may be the consequences of their remissness or infatuation.

Perhaps, since the world began, no country was ever placed in the precise position which is occupied this moment by the British empire. The recent elections in England have demonstrated a truth, of which we required no such confirmation, that the people are indisposed to heady or revolutionary courses; that they are well-affected to the monarchy and the church; and that, if left to the natural impulses of their own plain, unsophisticated English feeling, and sound good sense, no one of our national institutions would be endangered. Whence, then, arises our danger? Strange to say, from the quarter from whence it could least be suspected to proceed. In other unhappy countries, a maddened or deluded people have forced revolution upon the government; in ours, an unprincipled and desperate government are forcing revolution upon the people. All the influence of the monarchy has been exerted for its own undoing. The prerogative has been strained almost to breaking, in pulling down the pillars of the constitution.

Happily, as yet, without effect. The people are withstanding the madness and the wickedness of their rulers. The drunken and infuriate rider is doing what he can to force the horse down the precipice; but all his efforts have as yet proved insufficient to overcome the noble animal's instinct of self-preservation.

He cannot, however, with safety, be left much longer to struggle, by himself, with his frantic master, who, if he be not speedily deprived of whip and spur, will use them until the animal is driven, in sheer desperation, to make the plunge by which both must be destroyed. this, or is it not, a fair representation of the position of the country at the present moment? And if it be, can we remain passive spectators of such a struggle, and yet persuade ourselves that we do our duty?

Is

Wise and good men there are, from whom, upon any subject, it would pain us to differ, and who have expressed a confident opinion that her majesty was well advised, in continuing, upon her accession, the present administration. It may be so. When the Times, the Quarterly Review, and, beyond either, in our estimation, the Standard, says so, we are slow to dissent from such a judgment; but, nevertheless, we are compelled to say, that it docs appear

to us to have been a measure by which the monarchy was placed in imminent peril, and by which all the instincts of loyalty, and all the prestige of a young female reign, were not only left with out their natural rallying point, but pressed into the service of radicalism and revolution. That she should have kept them in place because she found them there, or because it was agreeable to precedent so to do, appears to us an insufficient justification of a course of proceeding by which all that we hold valuable was so seriously compromised; and indicates, we confess it, to our seeming, a partiality in the persons of those to whom she has given her confidence, to courses which cannot be even passively countenanced without danger. That it by no means indicates the predilections of her majesty, we firmly believe. It was not to be expected, from one of her age and sex, that she should have set her own opinion, whatever it may have been, in opposition to that of the experienced individuals to whom she was in the habit of looking up for counsel and for guidance. Upon them devolves the responsibility of the policy that has been adopted, be it for evil or for good. And our opinion has been freely expressed, that the monarchy has been compromised by its adoption.

All the aid, however, which the revolutionists have received from the influence of office, and the use of the Queen's name, has been as yet insufficient to enable them to accomplish their objects. The good sense and sound principle of England has been aroused, and they have felt themselves constrained to acknowledge an influence which they never suffered themselves to believe could have arisen, as it has, to defeat their machinations. But we would impress upon our friends, that what has been already done, will be to no effect, unless it be followed up by measures having for their object the complete exposure and utter defeat of the Whig-radical charletanry by which the empire has been all but ruined. The guilty ministers are still in power-they still have the ear of the Queen—the whole influence of office is still at their disposal;—and they are not the men, under such circumstances, to relinquish the slightest chance of accomplishing, either by open violence or secret manoeuvring, the measures upon the success of which they have staked their political exis

tence.

Let it not be supposed that many amongst them are not conscious of the prodigious mischief that has been already the result of their counsels. They know it well, and they tremble for the consequences. They feel too surely that they would be painfully reminded of their misdeeds, if England only enjoyed a few years of quiet and security, under a wise and a righteous administration. "Where," she would ask, "is my internal tranquillity, my colonial aggrandisement, and my continental estimation? How comes it that my stability is now dependant upon every breath of popular feeling? that foreign states laugh to scorn my authority? and that my distant possessions have become so troublesome, and my tenure of them is so precarious, that they are almost less a benefit than a burden?" Think you not, Conservative reader, that those who have reduced Great Britain to this condition, have need to be apprehensive of those stern interrogatories? Can they calmnly contemplate the awakening of this mighty empire, as a giant refreshed with sleep, without misgivings lest they should be called upon to render an account of their stewardship, and a secret consciousness that their malversations, and their chicaneries would be detected? Depend upon it they are too thoroughly children of this world," not to be "wise in their generation;" and there is no expedient which the most unprincipled cunning can suggest, which will not be resorted to for the purpose of deferring their day of reckoning before the enlightened British people.

We would, therefore, fain prepare our friends for the sleight-of-hand by which the thimble-riggers will make as though they changed their policy, and seem to fall in with Conservative courses. We have already seen symptoms of an attempt on their part thus to deceive their royal mistress; with what success we are not prepared to say; but, most earnestly do we deprecate the success of any such attempt upon the Conservative wisdom and virtue of England. Can, we would ask, anything but evil result from an alliance, no matter under what pretexts it may be formed, with the bond-slaves of O'Connell, who is himself nothing better than the bond-slave of the Irish priests? "Oh, but they are prepared to cast off their dependance upon him.” Indeed. But can they so easily call back their own characters again?